Adán Briones
University of Texas at Austin
Adán was born in El Paso, Texas and grew up just miles from the U.S.-Mexican border. His mother raised Adán and his little brother by herself in a very humble environment, and she worked hard to improve the family’s situation. This May, Adán is graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with honor degrees in government and history. He is one of twelve UT students recently designated a Dean’s Distinguished Graduate within the College of Liberal Arts. His honors senior thesis examined how a generally lower socioeconomic status affected Latino electoral ideology, partisanship, and participation rates in the 2000 presidential election. While at UT, Adán’s community service efforts included tutoring elementary schoolchildren in a low-income school district, tutoring University of Texas employees hoping to earn their GED, working with a mobile soup kitchen, and volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. Additionally, in the summer of 1999, Adán conducted foreign policy research with the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, DC. Last summer he interned with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, in the office of Congressman Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso. In August he will begin a nine-month public policy fellowship with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. After that, Adán hope to enroll in a joint graduate program in public policy and law and eventually to work to fight the deterioration that has plagued the Texas border and its citizenry.
Amy Chen
Harvard University
Amy is graduating from Harvard College in June 2001 with an honors degree in chemistry and will be working as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company in New York for two years before heading off to Stanford Law School to join the Class of 2006. Originally from Round Rock, Texas, Amy has been actively involved in poverty issues for several years, both through direct service work at the Literacy Council and the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter and through policy work in the Texas state government and at a legal non-profit called Texas Appleseed. She is passionate about social justice issues but is still uncertain about what particular career she will choose—whether non-profit work, public interest law, or government or politics—and is hoping that the Galbraith Program will give her more perspective about the decision. She is looking forward to meeting her fifteen fellow scholars and is excited about what promises to be a fun, thought-provoking, and inspiring week. In the meantime, Amy is enjoying her last few weeks in college by spending time with friends, rollerblading and running by the Charles River, and learning how to take and print black and white photos.
Alexandro Cota
University of Texas at Austin
Alexandro was born in the border city of El Paso, Texas on July 23, 1980. The third and youngest son of Mexican immigrants, he is a rising senior majoring in Government and English at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a member of the Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Society, Gamma Beta Phi National Honor Society and Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society. His senior honors thesis will concentrate on the how strong economic status affects likelihood of voting; one of his passions is trying to increase the Hispanic vote. When at home, he enjoys spending leisurely time in Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city bordering El Paso, and immersing himself in Mexican pop culture. Last summer, he assisted in a program which helped small entrepreneurial businesses in Ciudad Juarez improve their business methods to better compete in a hectic market. This summer he will be conducting research for his thesis and hopes to put together a program raising awareness among high school students on the importance of higher education. He will continue his internship in Texas State Representative Steven Wolen’s office next fall—there he hopes to discover more ways of shaping beneficial social policy. Alexandro hopes to attend law school in the fall of 2002.
Beandrea Davis
University of Pennsylvania
Beandrea is a rising junior in Afro-American Studies and French at the University of Pennsylvania. She is coming to the Galbraith Scholars program to find out if studying inequality and social policy is a useful and conscious way for her to effect real social change. Already she has found working with urban public high school students, particularly young women in communities of color, to be a life-changing experience. For the past two years, she has been co-leader of a service program called Girl Talk, a women’s discussion group that provides a safe space for women from Penn and a local North Philadelphia high school to come together weekly and build relationships and trust, express themselves creatively, have thoughtful dialogue, and collaborate on projects. Last semester, she taught a seven-week English enrichment course on the revolutionary African-American writer June Jordan to a class of 32 seniors at another North Philadelphia high school. This summer, she is interning at the Young Women’s Project, a small non-profit in Washington, D.C., where she will be part of a team researching the role of sexual harassment in the lives of teen women. Next spring, she plans to study abroad in Paris. Beandrea is also a writer (with strong interests in non-fiction), an undergraduate writing advisor, and an active member of the Greater Philadelphia Church of Christ.
Chris Elders
Morehouse College
A native Midwesterner, Chris left his beloved Kansas City to travel down south to Morehouse College in Atlanta where he is a rising senior. His final year will be a homecoming because Chris spent his junior year studying international relations and international law at the London School of Economics courtesy of a Charles A. Merrill Fellowship. Never one for idle time, Chris was active in both his adopted community at the LSE and at Morehouse where he recently assumed the position of Deputy Executive Director of the Student Government Association. A Truman Scholar, Chris has interned the last two summers in Washington DC, first in the Department of Veterans Affairs and last summer working in the State Department. Currently he is volunteering for the British Labour Party’s general election campaign. Chris is ecstatic about the Galbraith Scholars program, particularly the opportunity to meet and share ideas with his fellow Scholars. When not trying to figure out how to save the world, Chris enjoys movies, playing tennis, and traveling to new places—like Cambridge.
Somjen Frazer
Cornell University
Somjen is a rising junior in Cornell’s interdisciplinary College Scholar Program, where she studies oppression in America with an emphasis on the history of racial and sexual minorities and women. She is originally from Wilkesboro, NC and attended the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Her current research projects involve the history of racialized “drug war” rhetoric; the effects of the media in American Indian land claims cases; lowering barriers to health care for lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people; and development of better measures for activism, political participation, volunteerism and public service. She enjoys all forms of dance and theater and hopes to eventually become a professor.
Shannon Gleeson
Santa Clara University
Shannon was born on December 8, 1980 in Long Beach, California but was raised in Sugar Land, Texas from the time she was two and a half until she was a senior in High School. She moved in the latter part of her senior year to Santa Rosa, CA, where she graduated from Santa Rosa High School. She is currently finishing her third year at Santa Clara University, where she is pursuing degrees in Spanish, Sociology, and Anthropology. She also runs for the Santa Clara Cross Country team. A significant part of Shannon’s life includes her position as Citizenship Coordinator at Sacred Heart Community Service, a local human service organization in San Jose. There she provides citizenship services as well as immigration referrals, and she notes that it has been an enriching and challenging experience for her. Shannon adds that she has a great family, including her 15-year-old brother Danny. She also has a wonderful partner, Gabriel, as well as two lizards (Diego and Frida), a parakeet Tweety, several unnamed fish, and a tabby, Hyacinth. Shannon lives in San Jose, California and looks forward to graduating in June 2002 from SCU, after which she plans to pursue a master’s in social work.
Daniel Korobkin
Swarthmore College
Dan hails from Ann Arbor, Michigan and is a rising senior at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. At Swarthmore, he is pursuing a major in Philosophy, a minor in Political Science and a concentration in Public Policy; he is also a political columnist for the newspaper and a peer writing tutor. He has long had an interest in the cultural and policy issues surrounding racial inequality, which more recently has led him to an interest in the ways the law influences these issues. He has spent two summers interning at the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and this summer he will be at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York. Next year, Dan will be working on a public policy thesis on racial profiling and an independent research project in constitutional law; later, he would like to pursue a joint public policy/law degree and work in public interest law. He recently won a Truman Scholarship to pursue his interests in public service. He wishes he had lots more time on the weekends to write, go to baseball games, browse used book stores, read the New York Times, and drive to small towns he’s never heard of.
Shanna Magee
Xavier University of Louisiana
Shanna is from a small town in southeastern Louisiana named Port Allen. Her school is located about ninety miles away from her home in the city of New Orleans. She is an only child and has had the good fortune of having concerned parents. While both of her parents have been active in her life, her mother has been her primary source of guidance and support. Shanna has always been curious about the world in which she lives. As a child she often wondered why such great disparities existed in the living conditions and resources enjoyed by various groups. She was particularly interested in understanding why these differences persisted even in cases in which members of different groups had similar educational backgrounds and occupations. Her own status as a member of a “minority” group made her acutely aware of the inaccuracy of arguments that substandard environments are reflective of an innate incapacity on the part of those who inhabit them. She realized that a number of factors contributed to these inequalities, and she desired to understand and articulate them. Shanna’s interests and goals have led her to major in Sociology. She hope to use the knowledge that I gain in this discipline to not only address but also redress some of the detrimental effects of inequality and social policy.
Clarisse Mesa
University of Chicago
Clarisse just completed her second year at the University of Chicago, double-majoring in political science and public policy. She is from Fremont, California and ultimately hopes to work for the state government. She has studied public housing in a public policy class and in a summer internship with California State Assembly Member John Dutra, and she has researched education policy as an assistant for Professor Kenneth Wong at Chicago. Clarisse is a member of the varsity cross-country, indoor, and outdoor track teams, writes for a school newspaper, gives campus tours, and volunteers as a Sunday school teacher and youth mentor. Her father is Chamorro and Japanese and her mother is Caucasian, and she says that her multi-ethnicity has given her a perspective on issues of social inequality that she hopes will contribute to her experience with the Galbraith Program.
Paul Miller
University of Southern California
A rising senior at USC, Paul has been a leader in a number of community projects. In 1998, he initiated a movement to battle the over-concentration of liquor stores in South Central Los Angeles. Last year he hosted a community forum on abortion rights. He also founded and is currently coordinating the first nationwide chapter of GYSE (a non-profit mentoring program for junior high school and high school boys.) Paul is currently working on a legislative proposal to assist legal immigrants in making the transition between high school and postsecondary education. As he completes an undergraduate degree in Political Science and Psychology, he is writing a thesis on the relationship between relative disparity and political participation. His work has earned him recognition as a Truman Scholar and as an initiate of Phi Beta Kappa, among other honors. Paul enjoys ballroom and Latin dancing, songwriting, screenwriting, and theatre.
Westley Moore
Johns Hopkins University
Wes was born in Washington, DC but was raised in the Bronx, NY. There he began to fall behind both academically and disciplinarily in school and in 8th grade was sent to military school in Wayne, PA. He eventually graduated from that school (Valley Forge Military Academy) in 1996. He opted to return to Valley Forge Military College to work for his Associate’s Degree and a commission in the United States Army, both of which he completed in 1998. He transferred to Johns Hopkins University and just graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a double degree in International Relations and Economics. Wes is a varsity football and basketball player and a member of the board of directors of the March of Dimes. He has also done international research and founded a Program called STAND, which works with children who have gotten involved with the criminal justice system. Next year, he will head to Oxford University in England on a Rhodes Scholarship.
Cristina Mora
University of California at Berkeley
Cristina is originally from Los Angeles County and is a rising senior at UC Berkeley majoring in Sociology and Public Policy. Her interests lie in urban education reform, social policy, and urban sociology, especially as it pertains to Latino communities. She has been fortunate to land an internship with an educational policy research institute and has aided researchers in studying class size reduction and bilingual education in California schools. She has also worked with low-income students of color in junior high schools in the East Bay. She hopes to pursue a doctorate degree in Sociology and ultimately help policy makers develop well grounded educational policies that will adequately address the dilemmas of urban school districts. Cristina adds that she is not all academia-ed out: she also loves to dance, travel, and spend quality time with her family.
Brittanya Murillo
University of California at Berkeley
A native of National City, California, Brittanya expects to graduate from Berkeley in December with a degree in Anthropology and a City & Regional Planning minor. In graduate school, she hopes to pursue research on social inequality as it relates to community and economic development policy and then to carry that knowledge into a career as a public servant in National City. She has already gained relevant experience as an intern at two San Diego-area redevelopment agencies. In addition, Brittanya has conducted research for the Golden Gate Neighborhood Revitalization Project, the Latino Issues Forum, and her former high school.
Parag Pathak
Harvard University
A rising senior at Harvard College, Parag Pathak was born and raised in Corning, New York, a small town in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. At Harvard, he is pursuing a joint degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics. Outside of the classroom, Parag has spent much of his time either doing research on retirement savings at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), working with the University Lutheran Homeless Shelter, or serving as an editor of the Harvard International Review. This summer Parag will be in Cambridge continuing his research at the NBER, teaching economics at the Harvard Summer School, and beginning work on his senior thesis. In the near future, Parag hopes to continue his education by attending graduate school in economics. His non-academic interests include discussing minority politics, listening to jazz, and playing the guitar.
Jeremy Skinner
New York University
After graduating high school as valedictorian of his class in Fort Plain, a small town in upstate New York, Jeremy made the leap to New York City and New York University. Three years later, this May, he became the first in his family to earn a four-year college degree, graduating with honors. At NYU, he majored in politics and took several courses on inequality, poverty, and public policy (including two with welfare reform expert Lawrence Mead). He wrote his senior thesis on the official U.S. poverty measure and alternative poverty definitions. Jeremy has held internships and jobs with a local campaign, UNITE, NYU’s Public Interest Law Center, Ted Kennedy’s 2000 re-election campaign, and Fox News Channel. He was also a member of the C-Team and tutored students at the Henry Street Settlement. Most interested in the link between differences in educational opportunity and inequality, he has joined Teach For America, through which he will teach elementary school in Baltimore for the next two years. He is excited about the Galbraith program and looks forward to meeting everyone!
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