Spring 2002 Fellows
ALEX-HANDRAH AIMÉ is a Managing Firector of Emerging Capital Partners (ECP) based in Johanessburg, South Africa.
Alex was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and grew up in Brooklyn.
Alex completed a joint degree program in business and law at Stanford Univeristy in 2005. She graduated from Harvard University cum laude in biochemistry.
During her time at Stanford University, Alex focused on conjoining her private sector and public policy interests. She was the senior submissions editor for the Stanford Journal of International Law, for which she organized a young scholars symposium on Africa and the law. Through the Stanford University Law School, she taught incarcerated youth about the criminal justice system as part of the national StreetLaw program, served as a legal intake intern at the East Palo Alto Community Law Clinic, and worked on asylee applications through an immigration law clinic. In addition, she served on the board of directors of International Development Exchange, a multinational San Francisco-based nonprofit committed to economic justice and empowerment for the most marginalized segments of societies.
Alex worked in Washington, London, and Johannesburg for Mercer Management Consulting. While working on a railroad privatization project in South Africa, she became impassioned about international economic development. Following Stanford she worked for Goldman Sachs Internationa in the Investment Banking Division, then later in the European Special Situations Group.
Alex plans to devote her career to promoting economic development and strategic expansion in Africa and the Caribbean.
CHITRA AIYAR is a staff attorney for the African Services Committee in New York
Chitra was born in the United States to parents who emigrated from South India.
Receiving both BA and BS degrees with distinction from the University of California at Berkeley, Chitra received a JD from New York University in 2004.
While at University of California at Berkeley, Chitra established The People's Testing Preparation Service, which provided free SAT preparation to low-income high school students. Later, on a John Gardner Fellowship, she worked at the Grameen Foundation USA promoting international microcredit programs that are modeled after the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.
As a Fulbright scholar in Bangladesh, Chitra conducted extensive research on the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, the world's largest informal education program, which she plans to publish as a book. She has recently worked on a Hurricane Katrina reconstruction project at the Brennan Center for Justice. She intends a life in law as an advocate for the poor.
Chitra is married to Foday Kangbai and has a daughter.
DERRICK N. ASHONG
Derrick was born in Accra, Ghana, but grew up in Saudi Arabia, New York City, and suburban New Jersey.
Attending Harvard University, he received a summa cum laude distinction for his honors thesis.
Derrick left his doctoral studies in African-American studies and ethnomusicology at Harvard University, where he focused on the influence of music on youth identity, to pursue his work with the "Sweet Mother Tour," a movement that aims to use popular culture to create an empowering image of Africa throughout the Diaspora.
Derrick has been active in such public affairs projects as the National Voting Rights Institute and the Fannie Lou Hamer Project. He played the supporting role of Buakei in Steven Spielberg's film, Amistad and has remained active in film and television. A songwriter and producer, he has done innovative work in music licensing and released his first record under the new FAM License, entitled Heavy Structured. Derrick released his second LP in 2004. He released his first electronic book, titled Pirate This CD!!!The FAM Manifesto, which is co-authored by David Brunton.
Derrick currently sits on the boards of Oasis Entertainment, the Interra Project, the Fannie Lou Hamer Project, and Africa Action, the oldest organization in the US lobbying on African issues. He recently founded a media company specializing in niche advertising, called Take Back the Mic.
CECILIA BALLÍ is an assistant professor of anthropology at the
Born in the
Cecilia received her PhD in anthropology at
After graduation, she served as a staff writer for the San Antonio Express-News and now is a contributor to Texas Monthly and Harper's magazines. She was a Ford Foundation fellow and a National Science Foundation fellow, and her research and writing focuses on culture and violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Her Letter from Juarez: Calderon’s War appeared in a recent issue of Harpers.
Her current research is a book focusing on border enforcement policies and their meaning for local communities.
ANA BENITEZ-GRAHAM is working in Mebane, NC at her own dermatology practice.
Ana came to the US from Mexico working alongside her family as a migrant farm worker.
Unable to complete high school, Ana received her graduation equivalent degree and attended Austin Community College before completing and self-financing a pharmacy degree with honors from the University of Texas at Austin. She then graduated from Duke University School of Medicine 2004 and finished a residency in dermatology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, NC.
Ana's interests lie in dermatologic diseases, particularly those that afflict farm workers, and in public policy.0
Ana and her husband Steven have two children.
RONALD CHEN is an attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York City.
Ron graduated summa cum laude in economics from Harvard University, and graduated magna cum laudefrom Harvard Law School. He completed an MBA and an MSc in history at Oxford University.
At Harvard, Ronald was awarded the John Williams Prize as the top graduate in economics. He attended Oxford as a Marshall Scholar and also served as a lecturer in economics.
After completing his JD, Ronald worked as a law clerk for Judge Robert Sack on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City and was the Charles Hamilton Houston Fellow for law teaching at Harvard Law School during 2003-2004. He has been a consultant with McKinsey & Company, Inc. and a staff economist on the Council of Economic Advisers in the White House.
Ronald is married to Fiona Griffiths and they have two boys.
MADHU CHUGH is an attorney at Wilmer Hale in Washington, DC.
Ms. Chugh graduated from Yale Law School. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School at Harvard University. A Texas native, she majored in journalism and government at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating with honors and election to Phi Beta Kappa.
Ms. Chugh was a Book Reviews & Features Editor on The Yale Law Journal. She clerked for Judge Thomas B. Griffith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit prior to joining WilmerHale.
During the 2004 presidential election, Ms. Chugh served as Director of Health Care Policy for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. She was the Policy Director on Senator Jeanne Shaheen’s 2002 campaign, and from 2001-2002, she worked on health care policy for Senator Edward Kennedy. In that role, she helped develop and pass the Health Care Safety Net Amendments, which increased funding for community health centers and the National Health Service Corps program, as well as created the Healthy Communities Access Program.
In 1998, Ms. Chugh served as deputy communications director on Tom Vilsack’s successful gubernatorial campaign in Iowa, where he was the first Democrat elected governor in more than 30 years. While maintaining her communications duties in the Governor’s office, Ms. Chugh organized a coalition of seventy groups to help pass legislation that invested Iowa’s share of a large tobacco settlement in creating and expanding health care programs.
Ms. Chugh has also taught health law as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and she is currently a scholar at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown.
SOURAV DEY is now working as a senior systems engineer at Qualcomm in San Diego, CA
Sourav was born in Michigan to parents who emigrated from India. Sourav grew up in Kentucky, Korea, and Malaysia.
Sourav completed his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His master's thesis title is "Digital Pre-compensation for Faulty D/A Converters." He published a conference paper with the same title for an international conference on acoustics, speech, and signal processing in 2004.
With a lifelong passion for science and mathematics, he has worked on various projects, from global positioning satellites to video games. Sourav worked with Professor Alan Oppenheim at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having recently completed his master's requirements
Sourav has two patents pending from work done at Texas Instruments over a recent summer, entitled "Channel Estimator for Receiver and Method of Operation Thereof" and "Transmitter and Receiver for Use with an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing System."
JOHN OLIVARES ESPINOZA is a lecturer in the English Department at Santa Clara University in California.
Growing up in Southern California, John and his brothers landscaped with his father, a former undocumented immigrant, while his mother, an immigrant of the Bracero program, worked as a special education teacher’s aide.
John completed his MFA in creative writing at Arizona State University in 2004. He received his bachelor’s degree in creative writing and sociology from the University of California at Riverside.
John has published three volumes of poetry: Gardeners of Eden (2000), Aluminum Times (2002) and The Date Fruit Elegies (2008), which was a finalist for The Northern California Book Award in Poetry.
John iscurrently the staff book reviewer forThe Packinghouse Review and poetry editor for New Border, a journal that publishes criticism and creation of the U.S./Mexico border.
TALI FARIMAH FARHADIAN is Counsel to the Attorney General in Eastern New York (Brooklyn)
Tali was born into an Iranian Jewish family in Tehran, Iran. Four years later and in the wake of the rise of the revolutionary regime, they fled to Israel, then moved to Queens, and finally settled in New Jersey.
Graduating with distinction in humanities from Yale University, Tali attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, pursuing her master's and doctorate in Oriental studies. She graduated from Yale Law School, where she was the only student invited to speak at the Yale University Tercentenary celebration. Fluent in Persian and Hebrew and proficient in Arabic, she was a member of Yale University's Middle East Legal Studies Seminar.
She plans to focus on criminal and international law, with special interest in human rights and democracy in the Middle East and Near East.
Tali was a law clerk to the Honorable Judge Merrick Garland on the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. She was a litigation associate at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York City. Tali was a research fellow at Columbia Law School.
In November, 2010 Tali married Boaz Weinstein.
BERT I. HUANG is a professor at Columbia Law School in New York.
Bert grew up in Houston, Texas, to parents from Taiwan.
Bert received an AB summa cum laude from Harvard and served as President of the Harvard Law Review while completing his JD magna cum laude at Harvard Law School. He also received a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard.
As a Marshall Scholar, he studied at Oxford University; he then worked in the White House as a staff economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers.
After law school, he served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, as well as for Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States. He has since advised the constitutional supreme courts of Brazil and of Taiwan, on issues of judicial procedure. He now lives in New York.
SOPHIA JAN is now faculty at PolicyLab of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia where she conducts health services research on improving quality of care and long-term supports for children and adults with special healthcare needs.
Sophia was born in Brooklyn to parents who emigrated from Taiwan.
Sophia completed her BA at Brooklyn College where she majored in Spanish and gave the commencement speech graduating Phi Beta Kappa. In addition to her MD, she holds a MPH from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. She completed a Masters in Health Policy Research in 2012 at the University of Pennsylvania.
While studying, Sophia was a national officer of the American Medical Student Association, where she actively lobbied for universal health care coverage and runs health awareness and leadership programs for women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered communities, other minorities, and people with disabilities. She also created the first annual Women's Empowerment Institute, an interdisciplinary leadership development program for female premedical and medical students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. As a student at State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, she was treasurer of the Medical Student Council and active with community service programs for inner-city children.
Sophia finished a combined residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center as chief resident. She was also a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.She interned in the New York City Health Department where she was involved in public health research on the West Nile virus.
From her responsibilities as a caregiver for her disabled brother to her volunteering for artisans, the disabled, and children in Mexico, Sophia has been an advocate for people with special needs.
Currently Sophia collaborates with the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response in HHS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency on emergency preparedness and response projects for people with disabilities. She continues to see pediatric and adult patients as an attending physician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania
Sophia lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Shing-Ho Cheng, and two young children.
LEI LANG is a composer. His works have been described as “hauntingly beautiful and sonically colorful” by the New York Times; as “far, far out of the ordinary, brilliantly original and inarguably gorgeous” by the Washington Post.
Lei is a Chinese-born American. Coming to the US as a teenager from Beijing in the wake of Tianamen Square tragedy, he supported himself through his education first at high school, then later at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Lei studied composition with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Robert Cogran, Chaya Czernowin, and Mario Davidovsky, and received degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music (BM and MM) and Harvard University (Ph.D.)
A Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, he held fellowships from the Harvard Society of Fellows and Paul and Daisy Soros. Winner of the 2011 Rome Prize, Lei Liang is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Aaron Copland Award. He was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert for the inaugural concert of the CONTACT! New music series.
Other commissions and performances come from the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony orchestra, the Heidelberger Philharnisched Orchester, the Thailand Philharmonic, pipa virtuoso Wu Man, the Fromm Music Foundation, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts, MAP Fund, Mary Flagler Cary Chartiable Trust, the Manhattan Sinfonietta, Arditti Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, New York New Music Ensemble and Boston Musica Viva. Lei’s music is recorded on Naxos, Mode, New World, Innova and Telarc Records. Lei’s music is published exclusively by Schott Music Corporation (New York)
As a scholar Lei is active in the research and preservation of traditional Asian music. Lei taught in China as a distinguished visiting professor at Shaanxi Normal university College of Arts in Xi’an. He served as honorary professor of composition and sound design at Wuhan Conservatory of Music and as visiting assistant professor of music and chair of the composition area at the University of California, San Diego.
IRINA LINETSKAYA is now a primary care HIV doctor at Callen-Lorde, an LGBT community health center in New York bringing comprehensive general, transgender, and HIV care to her diverse patient population.
Irina was born in Kiev, the capital of present-day Ukraine. Having lost her parents at a young age, she came to the United States with her grandparents as Jewish refugees when she was twelve years old, eventually settling in San Francisco. At an early age she became the principal financial support for her family. As a teenager, Irina participated in the Stanford Medical Youth Science Program aimed to reach out to high-achieving, financially disadvantaged youth in the Bay Area; this program empowered her to reach for her dream of becoming a physician, the first in her family.
At Stanford University, Irina majored in human biology with a concentration in community health. She received her MD at Harvard Medical School
As an undergraduate Irina remained involved with the Stanford University Medical Youth Science Program. She led several HIV-based community service trips with Alternative Spring Break, developed workshops on domestic violence in Nicaragua, and ran focus groups on Latino health beliefs at a San Francisco HIV/AIDS project. At Harvard Medical School she gained extensive experience in international HIV medicine through clinical rotations in Dakar, Senegal, Salvador, Brazil, and Lisbon, Portugal.
Irina completed her medical residency at Montefiore's unique Social Internal Medicine Program in the Bronx with a particular focus on HIV primary care in underserved communities. She now works in primary care in New York.
ERICK RUIZ MIRANDA is the Director of Residency Education at Stanford/Kaiser Residency Program
Erick was born in Jojutia, Mexico, but grew up in Los Angeles, California.
Attending the University of California at Irvine, Erick majored in biological sciences and undertook medical research in Spain and Mexico. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 2004. He completed a residency in emergency medicine at Los Angeles County at University of Southern California Medical Center and continued with research aimed at improving healthcare for underserved populations.
Before medical school, Erick taught science to 7th and 8th graders who were learning English as a second language. While in medical school, he maintained a full schedule of tutoring and mentoring inner city youth in Boston.
Erick is currently an affiliate clincial instructor in the Division of Emergency Medicine. He was awarded the ED Bedside Quarterly Teaching Award in the Fall of 2011.
ANNA MORAWIEC MANSFIELD is the head of NGO and Industry Relations at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Anna was born in Poland and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Anna attended Mount Holyoke College, where she majored in political science, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and worked as an aide for the mayor of Springfield. She graduated from Columbia Law School in 2004.
Anna's commitment to improved governance led her to participate in an American Bar Association project to promote the rule of law and to strengthen legal institutions in Central and Eastern Europe. She also worked as a governance coordinator for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Anna's note, entitled 'Ethnic but Equal: The Quest for a New Democratic Order in Bosnia and Herzegovina,?' was published in the Columbia Law Review.
Following law school, Anna went on to work as attorney-adviser at the Office of the Legal Adviser at the Department of State, where she was responsible for all issues pertaining to the Balkans. She was then the legal adviser to the UN Special Envoy of the Secretary General for the Kosovo Future Status Process.
Anna is married to Nicolas Mansfield and they have two children.
EPHREM OLWENY is at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, he specializes in Urology.
Ephrem was born in Kampala, Uganda, and came to the US in 1994. He became a naturalized citizen on March 18, 2009.
Ephrem completed his undergraduate education at Macalester College, where he graduated magna cum laude in chemistry and biology. He received his MD from Washington University School of Medicine in 2004
While at medical school he found time to serve as coordinator of the Surgery Interest Group, provide tutoring in science to public high school students, and advise incoming minority students. On graduation, he was chief resident in urological surgery at the University of California at San Francisco.
Unable to begin medical school directly because of financial restrictions, he undertook scientific research in urological surgery, compiling thirteen publications, for three of which he is the lead author. An additional paper from his prior research 'Comprehensive evaluation of ureteral healing after electrosurgical endopyelotomy in a porcine model: original report and review of the literature' was published in Journal of Urology.
CARLOS PACHECO works for the Boston Consulting Group in Los Angeles.
Carlos came to the United States from Mexico in the late 1990s.
Entirely self-financing his education through the University of Texas at Austin, he majored in computer science and mathematics. Later he completed a Ph.D. in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Carlos completed internships at University of California at Berkeley, the Intel Corporation, and Compaq's Systems Research Center. At MIT he worked in Professor Michael Ernst's Program Analysis Group, researching better methods to find bugs in computer programs. Long interested in good science writing, he has also been a referee for Acta Informatica.
SUJIT RAMAN works as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Maryland where he prosecutes fraud and corruption cases.
Sujit was born in the United States to parents of South Indian origins and grew up in Houston, Texas.
Attending Harvard University, Sujit graduated magna cum laude and earned highest honors for his senior thesis in history.After completing his master's at the University of Bristol on a Marshall Scholarship, Sujit entered Harvard Law School in September of 2002. Hegraduated from Harvard Law School in 2005.
In addition to editing two student publications and heading the Minority Student Alliance, Sujit was also captain of the national championship-winning Harvard University men's crew team. As a law student he continued to be a residential advisor to Harvard College's freshman class, while serving as co-president of the South Asian Law Students Association and also serving on a committee to overhaul the College's alcohol policy.
Suijit was an associate at Hogan & Hartson, LLP for three years before joining the U.S. Attorney's office in 2008. In 2011 he received the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s prestigious Skolnik Award for his work on a significant corruption case.
Sujit lives in Washington DC. In his spare time, he has started an independent research project on the life and thought of William James.
DAPHNA RENAN is currently the Alexander fellow at New York University School of Law.
Daphna was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and immigrated with her parents to Los Angeles, California.
Daphna received her BA in East Asian studies from Yale University, where she graduated summa cum laude with election to Phi Beta Kappa. She completed a master's in international and comparative legal studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London then graduated from Yale Law School in 2004.
Daphna has twice been to China and, in college, received fellowships and a prize for her scholarship in the field. She was an articles editor on the Yale Law Journal.
After completing clerkships with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Harry T. Edwards, Daphna most recently served in the U.S. Department of Justice, as a counsel to the Deputy Attorney General and then as an attorney advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel.
GENEVIEVE SANGUDI is the Managing Director at the Carlyle Group in Lagos, Nigeria.
Genevieve was born in Mombassa, Kenya, but came to the United States when she was fourteen as a refugee from Liberia. Her family resides in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Genevieve attended Macalester College, majoring in communication studies and English. She has received a joint MIA/MBA from the School of International and Public Affairs and the Business School at Columbia University,
While an undergraduate she interned at Proctor & Gamble through the INROADS program as a student mentor, an activity she later committed herself to full time. At Columbia she was editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Affairs.
For the Dart Foundation she headed a human rights group for youth and was later selected for a delegation to the African Development Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Genevieve spent time working on an entrepreneurial venture in the health sector in Southern Africa and was a semi-finalist for the Global Social Venture Competition. She served as the Managing Director at a private equity firm, Emerging Capital Partners, in Victoria Island, Lagos, that specializes in infrastructure investments in Asia, Africa, Latin American and the Middle East and and is now Managing Director and Partner of the Carlyle Group, where she focuses on buyout and growth opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa.
RAVI VIKRAM SHAH is a specialist in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital
Ravi was born and was raised in Tempe, Arizona. His parents are from India.
Beginning college chemistry at Arizona State University when he was twelve and conducting independent research in high school at a neuro-oncology laboratory, Ravi graduated from Harvard University, majoring in chemistry and holding a 3.99 grade point average. He completed his MD also at Harvard University
Placing second in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and in the top 20 nationally in the US National Chemistry Olympiad, Ravi founded and secured private funding for a Harvard Biological Science Olympiad to encourage excellence in high school biology students. His efforts were recently recognized in Science magazine.
Ravi has completed a residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, then a fellowship in cardiovascular medicine also at Masschusetts General Hosptital. He plans a career as a medical scientist.
ERIC SHEU is beginning an advanced laparoscopic surgery fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital from June 2013.
Eric was born in the United States to parents who emigrated from Taiwan. He grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.
Eric graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University, where he majored in biochemistry and did research in cellular immunology. He received a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford University to complete a doctorate in immunology. Involved in peer counseling at Harvard University and offering piano lessons to local inner-city high school students, he also conducted field research on malaria in Kenya while at Harvard Medical School. Eric earned his MD degree in the Harvard and MIT HST Program and in June 2013 will complete a general surgery residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Eric's wife is Nancy Cho. They reside in Massachusetts.
ANIKA SINGH LEMAR is now with the Real Estate Department of Wiggin and Dana LLP, a New Haven, CT law firm and is also a Clinical Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School
Anika was born to parents of the Sikh faith who immigrated to the US from Punjab State, India.
Anika attended Yale University, where she majored in ethics, politics, and economics and graduated cum laude in 2001. Anika attended the New York University School of Law as a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar.
Long interested in housing policy, Anika served as a mayoral appointee on New Haven's Homeless Advisory Commission from the fall of 1998 through spring of 2002. In the summer of 1999, she began a two-year involvement with the Hill Development Corporation, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing. She received the Roosevelt Thompson Prize for commitment to public service and the Elm-Ivy Award for outstanding contributions towards improved relations between New Haven and Yale University.
After graduating from law school in 2004, she worked in the consumer frauds and protection bureau of the Office of the New York State Attorney General and clerked for United States District Court Judge Janet C. Hall in Bridgeport, Connecticut. From 2005 to 2007, she was a Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney at the Urban Justice Center's Community Development Project. Anika's work at the Urban Justice Center was featured in the New York Daily News, USA Today, and the New York Law Journal.
Anika has previously taught land use and urban redevelopment at Yale University and the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment at Pratt Institute. She was a mayoral appointee to the City of New Haven's Municipal Solid Waste and Recycling Authority. An active member of the Urban Land Institute, Anika has organized ULI events specifically targeted to real estate professionals in Connecticut.
She is a member of the Boards of Directors of the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut and All Our Kin, a New Haven-based not-for-profit organization, and she co-chairs Friends of New Haven Legal Assistance. She also helped to found and later served on the Board of Directors of Next City, a national urban affairs magazine headquartered in Philadelphia. Each year since 2010, she has been selected as a "Rising Star" in New England Super Lawyers in the category of real estate.
Anika lives in New Haven with her husband and three children.
LAELA STURDY currently works for Google as Head of Emerging Businesses in San Francisco.
Laela was born in Kingston, Jamaica and grew up in Cooper City, Florida.
Laela completed her BA cum laude in biochemical sciences at Harvard University and a master's at Trinity College Dublin, where she held a George Mitchell Postgraduate Fellowship. Laela graduated from Stanford University Business School in June 2004.
Laela was captain of the Harvard University women's basketball team and was named to the NCAA First Team All Ivy League. She has worked in the fields of education and human rights in Senegal, Kenya, and Ireland. She spent the summer of 2004 in Africa working for the nonprofit organization Right to Play, which is dedicated to improving health education and recreation programs in urban slums and refugee camps. She worked in marketing and sales strategy for Google's media and entertainment business.
JULIE CHI-HYE SUK is a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She is also a professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and Visiting Professor at UCLA School of Law.
Born in Korea, Julia came to the United States at the age of four and grew up in Queens, New York.
Julie studied viola and composition at the Juilliard School's pre-college division, where she won the orchestral composition competition in 1993. She received her AB summa cum laude in English and French literature at Harvard University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She studied political theory as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University, where she completed an MSc and a DPhil in 2003. She also received her JD in 2003 from Yale University, where she was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal.
In May 2003, Julie published an article, with Professor Judith Resnik, in the Stanford Law Review entitled 'Adding Insult to Injury: Questioning the Role of Dignity in Conceptions of Sovereignty.' Her article, "Antidiscrimination Law in the Administrative State" was published in the University of Illinois Law Review this spring.
After clerking for Judge Harry T. Edwards on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Julie was a fellow in law and public affairs at Princeton University in 2004-05.
Julie is married to Jae Lee.
ALON UNGER is completing a residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at University of California at Los Angeles.
Alon was born in Canada. He is the son of Israeli immigrants who settled in Arizona.
At Arizona State University, Alon double-majored in biology and religious studies and received a certificate in Southeast Asian studies. His honors include election to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior, graduating summa cum laude and delivering his class commencement speech. As a Rhodes scholar, he completed his master's in the history of medicine at Oxford University and a second master's in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He received his MD from University of California at San Francisco in 2007.
As a volunteer Alon served children with special needs and people with HIV/AIDS in his community and abroad. His involvement ranged from public health to medical care in Arizona, Guatemala, Thailand, and China. He also spent time doing research in rural South Africa on the impact of HIV/AIDS on health services. He has conducted research on leishmaniasis in Brazil as a Fogarty Fellow.
Jose was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and came to the US at the end of the eighth grade.
Jose attended Loyola College in Maryland and graduated summa cum laude with election to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior. After completing his doctorate in human genetics at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, he entered Harvard Medical School in 2002.
At Loyola, Jose was not only involved in leadership positions on campus, but continually conducted research at the National Institute of Health. During his MD he completed his third year in an internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins University Hospital and started a cardiology fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. His paper, "Stromal cell-derived receptor 2 and cytochrome b561 are functional ferric eductases," was published in the journal Biochimica et Biophysica Acta.
Jose is married to Ruth Elaine Hill.
NEELAKSH VARSHNEY is a Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Neelaksh was born in the United States in 1978 to parents who emigrated from India. His family lives in Madison, Alabama.
Attending the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he majored in electrical engineering and had a 4.0 GPA. Neelaksh completed his master's in neuroscience at Oxford University in 2001, where he was a Rhodes scholar and also studied mathematics. He completed his MD from the Harvard and MIT HST Program
At University of Alabama Neelaksh was the representative to the board of trustees, and on the search committee for the University of Alabama's president and provost.
Neelaksh has worked in a neuroscience lab at Brandeis University studying plasticity in the brain. After completed his MD he went on to work as an associate for McKinsey & Company, Inc. in their healthcare department.
MARKELLA ZANNI serves as Course Director of the Harvard Medical School Clinical Rotation in Endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Markella was born in the US to parents who emigrated from Greece.
Markella studied English literature at Harvard University, writing a prize-winning senior thesis and graduating summa cum laude with election to Phi Beta Kappa. While at Harvard University, she also appeared in many dramatic productions and served on the fiction board of the Harvard Advocate. Sustaining her interest in literature, she
Markella went on to do a
Markella and her husband, David, have a son and two daughters.