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Introducing the Galbraith Scholars
P r o f i l e s Leila Agha Quilen Blackwell
José Z. Canto
Jessica Childress Elizabeth Cobacho
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Leila Agha is a graduating senior at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in Economics with a minor in Literature. Her interests in race and inequality have led her to study the effects of affirmative action at American public universities on student diversity and academic qualifications. Her senior thesis also dealt with inequality through its focus on gender and workforce participation. She studied the effects of public pre-kindergarten programs on maternal employment among low- and middle-income families. In her spare time at MIT, Leila choreographed for a student dance group, led science labs for local middle school students, was treasurer of the Model United Nations Society, and was co-president of the Undergraduate Economics Association. Leila grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and has also spent time living in France and India. Her experiences abroad have shaped her interests in economic development and international relations. Next fall, she will begin the Ph.D. program in economics at MIT with support from a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the MIT Ida Green fellowship. Leila is looking forward to participating in the Galbraith program and learning from the faculty and other scholars. 
Quilen Blackwell received his bachelors in history with Comprehensive Honors, one of the highest academic honors, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a Ronald McNair Scholar and received the Hilldale and Trewartha research grants for his senior honors thesis work that concerns the historic impact of broad-based neighborhood organizations on the American political landscape over the course of the twentieth century. He participated in a Freedom Ride Tour to Selma, Alabama, where he was able to help organize the historical archives for the National Voting Rights Museum and helped to convert an old car dealership into an elementary school. The Freedom Ride Tour inspired him to create an organization called People Opposing Prejudice (POP), to address prejudice and hate in a constructive way on campus. POP has worked with 20 other student organizations and has helped to find resolutions to overt discrimination on campus. For example, POP helped to address the complaints of students of color who were being racially profiled in dormitory dining rooms. As a result of POP’s intervention, all university housing employees are required to take diversity training. He has brainstormed new and creative ideas through a company called Brainreactions for organizations such as BMW, Bank of America, Johnson and Johnson, the United Nations, and the Peace Corps. Quilen received the Emerging Leader Award, the Innovation Award, the Excellence in Student Leadership Award, Outstanding Contribution to Campus Award, the Meyerhoff Undergraduate Excellence Award, Tenuta Scholarship, Outstanding Student Organization of the Year Award, and the Palmer Award- only two students in the country receive this reward annually. After graduation, he will join the Peace Corps for an assignment in Asia to work with farmers, non-governmental organizations, community groups, and small businesses under the umbrella of community development.
A native Baltimorean, José Z. Canto is a rising junior at Georgetown University who is pursuing a major in sociology and a minor in theology. His academic interests have particularly focused on social stratification, educational inequalities, Catholic social teaching, and urban sociology. These interests have translated into lived experiences where he has taught summer school courses for elementary school children in the District of Columbia through the AmeriCorp program; operated tax preparation clinics for working homeless persons as part of his community-based research with the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; and served as a community surveyor in the Carver Terrace Redevelopment Project conducted by Georgetown sociologists. Since January of 2006, José has pursued extensive research on the crisis of affordable housing in the District of Columbia through fellowships awarded by the Georgetown Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (GUROP). José’s research has focused on maintaining affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods of the District of Columbia by facilitating the construction of affordable housing units with Faithworks, Inc., advocating for rent control legislation, and establishing Community Land Trust housing policies. José is determined to expand the innovative approaches of his D.C.-based initiative to national and international metropolitan contexts where there is a growing deficiency of affordable housing for social actors of low socioeconomic class. To expand his international understanding of urban issues, José will be studying at the London School of Economics (LSE) during the 2006-2007 academic year. There his studies will focus on the themes of urban politics, policy, and planning within the context of courses on political sociology, economics, law, and urban development. His training at LSE will prepare him for future research projects that include urban development in Santiago, Chile, during the summer of 2007, and his senior thesis, which is centered on urban poverty and antipoverty policy in the United States. José is interested in pursuing graduate degrees in sociology and law in preparation for a career as a professor, lawyer, social activist, and public servant. In his leisure time, José enjoys filming documentaries, reading poetry by T.S. Eliot, lifting weights, and listening to salsa music. 
Jessica Childress is a rising senior at the University of Virginia, double majoring in Government (American Politics) and African American and African Studies, with a minor in Spanish. A native of Richmond, Virginia, Jessica graduated from Midlothian High School in 2003 with an International Baccalaureate degree. At the University of Virginia, Jessica is involved in various extracurricular organizations. Outside of the classroom, Jessica is the chairman of the University of Virginia’s Black Leadership Institute, a counselor on the University’s Judiciary Committee, and a Peer Advisor for the University’s Office of African American Affairs. Additionally, Jessica is a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Omicron Delta Kappa Leadership Honor Society, Golden Key International Honor Society, and Phi Eta Sigma Honor Society. As a distinguished major in the University of Virginia’s government program, she will be completing a thesis on voter efficacy among low-income citizens of majority-minority voting districts. Last summer, Jessica interned with the Mid-Atlantic Equity Center in Washington, D.C., a non-profit organization that works to bridge the academic achievement gap for racial minorities and language minorities. She is interested in educational equity and bringing equal educational access to all members of our society. In the coming fall, Jessica will be applying to law schools in hopes of becoming a civil rights attorney. 
Elizabeth Cobacho is a proud resident of Albany Park, a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side. She is currently a rising senior at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she is a joint major in Sociology and Gender & Women’s Studies. The inequalities and injustices she observed and experienced first-hand as a student in a poorly funded, inner-city public high school fired her passion to pursue an academic career in education inequity and policy specifically, and a pragmatic engagement in larger issues of socio-economic inequality confronting poor communities of color generally. At Pomona, she has continued to bridge her academic life with community service through taking a variety of courses that deal with these issues while working as an ESL instructor at a day labor center, facilitating a Social Justice Studies class for high school students, and teaching sixth graders about workers’ rights and unions. In the past year, Elizabeth has begun a more sustained involvement in examining community empowerment and education policy by assisting a professor with her research on Latina teachers’ contributions to public education and presenting her own analysis on teacher preparation programs at the Pacific Southwest Women’s Studies Conference; participating as a member in the Southern California Consortium on Research in Education workshop gathering and studying data on the state of education in the nation and the region; and conducting a month-long independent study in Northeast Brazil on Freireian pedagogy and Afro-Bahian consciousness-making through the arts. This past semester, Elizabeth was named a McNair Scholar at Claremont Graduate University and the 2006-07 Craddock-McVicar Fellow and Teaching Assistant at Pomona College. She will conduct a year-long research project studying a local, arts project-based charter school in a poor, largely Black and Mexican immigrant community outside Los Angeles to uncover how the school serves as an alternative to “traditional” public schooling and recommend possible ways in which the public school system can better serve their communities and students. She hopes to pursue a PhD in Education, Public Policy, and/or Sociology to continue studying the effects of community involvement in schooling on student performance and ways to evaluate and propose policy that meets the educational and social needs of marginalized communities. She hopes to one day open an arts project-based charter school with a focus on social change in Albany Park with the help of community leaders and members. Her highest aspiration is to, one day, be appointed Secretary of Education by President Barack Obama. 
Cassandra (Cassie) Fields is a rising senior at the University of Chicago majoring in Public Policy Studies and African and African American Studies. She is from Miami, Florida, where she studied theatre in High School at New World School of the Arts. Living in Chicago has influenced Cassie’s interest in understanding and improving marginalized urban spaces. Academically, she is committed to the study of American and global slum spaces, as well as the intersections between racial identity, inequality, and citizenship. She spent last summer as a Montgomery Summer Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation, researching the effectiveness of the federal crime prevention initiative Project Safe Neighborhood. Her interests lie mostly with housing policy, and Cassie will spend this summer interning with Work, Welfare, and Families, a non-profit organization that advocates for policies aiding low-income individuals and families in Illinois. She is active in a number of extracurricular activities on campus, as a board member of the Organization of Black students, a member of the University Theatre community, and a member of the Center on Urban Development of the University of Chicago chapter of the Roosevelt Institution. Cassie is excited to be a Galbraith Scholar, and looks forward to a career shaping policy and a future of civic engagement. 
The son of former farm laborers, Ismael Díaz Herrera proudly hails from Mendota, a small agrarian town located within California’s San Joaquin Valley. Ismael will graduate from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in June 2007 with a dual B.A. in Sociology and Chican@/Latin@ Studies. As an undergraduate at UCI, he has been involved with student organizations such as the American Indian Student Association, M.E.Ch.A, and Students for Peace and Justice. In the summer of 2005, Ismael was selected to participate at the Public Policy and International Affairs Junior Summer Institute (PPIA) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is currently completing a research study in which he compares the U.S. military’s recruitment practices in a predominately poor and Latino school district with that of a more affluent white and Asian American district. He is conducting this research study as part of his Sociology Honors Thesis as well as his fellowship with the UCI Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Ismael has also been selected to participate in the Summer Academic Enrichment Program (SAEP) at UCI this summer. This intensive five-week program is designed to enhance the academic research skills of participants. Beginning Summer 2006, Ismael will conduct a case study of his own high school to examine the low admission rates of rural California public high school students into four-year universities. Personal experiences and research have solidified his passion as an advocate for progressive educational reform, specifically within the State of California. Ismael will pursue an Ed.D, with plans of returning to his hometown and becoming his high school district’s superintendent. His studies and travels to Central and Western Europe, Venezuela, Canada, and Mexico have had a profound influence on his perception of the world and himself. Ismael looks forward to meeting and collaborating with the rest of the 2006 Galbraith Scholars. 
Jeric Tao Huang was born in Taipei, Taiwan and raised in Walnut, California by his aunt. He will be receiving his Bachelor of Arts in History, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from UCLA in the spring of 2006. As an undergraduate, Jeric started a policy advocacy student group, served as Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Public Affairs Review, and interned as a legal advocate at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. He received departmental honors for his senior thesis on proposals for universal healthcare in California during the 1950s and was awarded the Eric Monkkonen Memorial Fellowship for the Most Outstanding Undergraduate in Public Affairs. Jeric is a distinguished Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Fellow, UCLA Law Fellow, Community Development and Social Justice (CDSJ) Scholar, and Donald A. Strauss Scholar. Upon graduation, he will be pursuing a Master's of Public Policy at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. After receiving his M.P.P. degree, he hopes to obtain a law degree and a doctorate in public policy. Jeric envisions a career as a policy analyst, college professor, and community advocate, specializing in international labor and immigration issues. He enjoys traveling, especially to Taiwan to visit his younger sister and parents.
After four years of study at the University of Pennsylvania, Jacquelin King graduated summa cum laude as a scholar and an activist. She majored in cultural anthropology with a public interest concentration, indicating a passion for research meant to solve real world problems. She developed the philosophy that research and activism ought to be intimately linked through three years of teaching and learning from students at Sayre High School, an urban school in West Philadelphia populated by African-American children from mostly low income families. During the two demanding years in which Jacquelin co-founded and directed Girl Talk, an after school mentoring program for young women, she gained access to classrooms and common areas to write an ethnography on the high school. Through participant observation as a researcher and directing Girl Talk as a service provider, Jacquelin cultivated her passions for urban education and for women’s health issues spanning nutrition, mental well being, and reproductive rights. In 2004, she jumped from West Philadelphia to West Africa by securing funding for independent research in Lagos, Nigeria where, to her surprise, the most resonant aspect of the trip was racial. While Nigerians did not harass her for being multiracial, prejudice against multiracial individuals is a human rights issue in some parts of the globe, including areas of the United States; during her college career, Jacquelin has become politicized around gender, class, and race as these entities impact her life and those of six billion other people. Back on campus, she declared English, African studies, and urban education as minors and won awards such as memberships in the Ron Brown Scholars Program, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Goldman Sachs Global Leaders, and Phi Beta Kappa. With the establishment of concerns around inequality in education, especially health education, and in racial justice, Jacquelin recognizes that there are several ends her scholarship must serve. She is thrilled to enter the Galbraith Scholars Program to learn strategies for change from the best. 
Annalisa Leibold grew up in Petoskey, a small city in Northern Michigan, where she spent most of her spare time as captain of her competitive policy debate team. Through debate she gained a political consciousness and passion for public policy. This inspired her to study at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she is double majoring in political science and economics. On campus she has had the opportunity to participate in several organizations dedicated to human rights and social justice, including Amnesty International and Wal-Mart Watch. As a sophomore she was accepted to the new Michigan in Washington Program, where she spent the winter semester in Washington, DC working for the minority counsel of the House Judiciary Committee. During her time with the Judiciary Committee she gained experience working on issues such as the NSA surveillance program, the reauthorization of temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act, as well as immigration reform. Annalisa loves to participate in politically charged activities, and has a particular interest in public speaking. After completing her undergraduate education, she plans to attend law school, with a possible concentration in International Law. Ultimately she wishes to pursue a career in politics or public service. Besides academics, Annalisa loves music, is addicted to traveling, and has a passionate attachment to the theatre. 
Travis Mason is a native of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area residing currently in Prince George's County, MD. Travis Mason is a national Harry S. Truman Scholar and a Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Fellow. Locally, Mason has been an advocate for educational reform and eliminating educational inequity receiving numerous citations and proclamations from the Prince George's County Council, County Executive, State Superintendent, and the Maryland General Assembly. Travis is a trained operatic vocalist and classical, jazz and contemporary pianist for over 13 years performing internationally at venues such John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, St. Peters Church (Rome, Italy), Washington Metropolitan Church, The White House, and Constitution Hall. As former President of the Syracuse University Student Government Association, Travis is responsible for governing the 200+ student organizations and the 1.5 million dollar student activity fee. He is the co-founder of Syracuse University's OrangeSeeds first-year leadership empowerment program, and of the Empowering Minds Youth Movement, empowering Syracuse city youth through powerful conferences and workshops. He has served as a member North East National Collegiate Honors Conference Executive Board. He is past-president of SU's chapter of African American Male Congress, the oldest undergraduate honors organization for African American men in the United States. In addition to Syracuse University, Mason has studied political and economic thought, and applied micro/macro economics at the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and at Georgetown University. 
A native of Chicago, Nicholas Pearce is an undergraduate member of the Class of 2007 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), majoring in chemical engineering, with a minor in management and concentration in religious studies. He describes himself as "most importantly, a servant of God and others," and has a true passion for helping people. He accepted the call to the Christian ministry at the age of 17, and has been involved in ministry both in Chicago and in Boston. Nicholas is a member of the National Society of Black Engineers and is an American Chemical Society Scholar, Coca-Cola Scholar, U.S. Congressional Black Caucus Scholar, National Achievement Scholar, and recipient of the United States Presidential Service Award. While at MIT, Nicholas delivered the distinguished 2004 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Undergraduate Address and has participated in nationally recognized research in organizational leadership and change. He also serves on MIT's Institute Committee on Student Life, the MIT Corporation Joint Advisory Committee on Institute-Wide Affairs, and the MIT Faculty Policy Committee. In addition to his academic and social commitments, Nicholas is an instructor in MIT's Saturday Engineering Enrichment & Discovery (SEED) Academy, an academic enrichment program of the School of Engineering designed for underserved and underrepresented public high school students in the Boston metropolitan area. He has also contributed original research to MIT on closing the minority achievement gap and the effectiveness of its minority pipeline programming. He currently plans to pursue graduate studies at the Ph.D. level in organizational leadership & religion, which will prepare him for a career in academia and for his ultimate call to church leadership. 
Shadrick Small is a rising junior at the University of Southern California. A National Merit Scholar, he is majoring in sociology with a minor in oboe performance. His enduring research interests have been in how individuals and groups reproduce or challenge pervasive sexism and racism. Shadrick hopes to develop a more comprehensive theoretical framework for the sociological analysis of the issues surrounding systems of oppression. These interests extend into his extracurricular activities, where he is a member of the feminist club, as well as the GLBT allies group, of which he will be co-director in the fall. Last summer, he worked with underprivileged students as a math mentor and saw firsthand the need for educational parity. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Shadrick looks forward to meeting and learning from his fellow Galbraith Scholars. In his free time, Shadrick enjoys playing on the ultimate Frisbee club and writing and performing music. 
A Chicago native, Jimmy is a rising senior at Duke University, where he majors in Ethics, a self-designed curriculum focusing on public policy and philosophy. Jimmy has served as chair of the University Honor Council and was recently elected Vice President for Academic Affairs for the Duke Student Government. He has tutored at-risk youth in Durham middle schools and has worked in low-income communities in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, helping to raise awareness about human rights. His academic interests include juvenile justice reform, gang violence policy, and education policy, and he has worked as a teaching assistant and research assistant in the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. As a Center for the Study of the Presidency Fellow, Jimmy has spent considerable time studying the institution of the Presidency, and will be spending this summer writing an extended paper on Woodrow Wilson. 
Chloe is a rising senior at Johns Hopkins University, where she is pursuing a double major in economics and political science. She is interested in studying the history of economic thought, economic history and political economy and is particularly eager to explore any possible links between social capital and the design of economic institutions – especially those aimed at redistribution – in democracies characterized by ethnic fragmentation and polarization. A New Haven native, Chloe has been involved in a handful of political campaigns at the local and national level, including spending her last few months of high school interning full time for Joe Lieberman’s 2004 presidential campaign. In Baltimore, she has worked as a research assistant evaluating the effectiveness of youth anti-drug programs at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute and also for the past three years has worked at JHU’s Center for Summer Learning, a non-profit organization that conducts research and promotes programs aimed at reducing summer learning loss in low socioeconomic status children. Both work experiences demonstrated the close relationship of policymakers to social scientists and reinforced the importance of using a multidisciplinary approach towards understanding and solving social issues. Having recently completed a research project on the politics and rhetoric of the recurrent Social Security crisis, Chloe looks forward to spending her summer in Baltimore compiling oral histories of illegal cab drivers in an effort to better understand the development of informal institutions that help to govern the underground industry. She spent the past semester abroad as a visiting student in the department of Scandinavian Studies at University College London and hopes after graduation to continue with her studies in political science.
Nancy Zagbayou is a senior majoring in economics, political science, and French literature at North Carolina State University. As a John T. Caldwell Fellow, a scholarship program which recognizes servant-leadership and encourages self development, she used her summer stipend to travel across the southern states of America to investigate the relationship between poverty and race. She is the 2005–2006 recipient of the William S. Moore Scholarship and she was selected as one of two Leader of the Pack scholarship recipients to be recognized at half time of the 2005 NC State Homecoming game. Following her training in the Equal Opportunity Institute, Zagbayou interned at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where she helped investigators enforce federal discrimination laws. She was the founding president of SPEL, the Society for Politics Economics and the Law, and is an alumnus of Georgetown's Institute on Political Journalism. Zagbayou is a member of the prestigious academic honor societies of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi. She has also been a first-year college teaching assistant, the cohost of a show on WKNC-radio, and a reporter for her school newspaper, the Technician. With a grant from the John W. Pope foundation, Zagbayou will spend this summer conducting a self designed research project which aims at testing the prediction that Indian reservation property right systems with transferability restrictions, which prevent the use of property as collateral, increase the cost of developing land and consequently result in less economic development. She plans to pursue a career that will enable her to empower people to help themselves.
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