A sampling of Class of 2011 winners

Many potential applicants wonder whether they should apply for this fellowship.  It may be helpful in considering your own answer to that question to review the backgrounds and achievements of recent fellows.

The following sketches of nine 2011 fellowship winners illustrate the diversity of applicants who have been successful competitors for the fellowship.   Some fellows have superlative academic records at very prestigious institutions, but others do not.  And many applicants with superlative academic records have not been successful.  The important consideration is how well a candidate’s accomplishments provide persuasive evidence of excellence with respect to this program’s selection criteria.  

Biographical information on other recent winners of the fellowship is available on this web site under the heading, "Fellows' Bios." 

CESAR FRANCIA was born in Caracas, Venezuela and came to this country with his mother when he was 14.  While still in high school he founded a service initiative that renovated children’s recreational spaces, connected at-risk youth to older mentors and hosted workshops to create awareness about youth homelessness. He received his BA in international politics from New York University in 2010. He studied abroad in Italy and the Czech Republic, and volunteered in the Dominican Republic. At NYU, he was named Senator-at-Large and Dean’s Circle Scholar and received the President’s Service Award and the Hale/Chavez Community Activism Award. As a Catherine B. Reynolds Scholar in Social Entrepreneurship, he managed the construction of a community center in Rwanda and helped young entrepreneurs develop business plans.  He serves as Aide to the Chambers of Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Supreme Court. He will enter law school in the fall of 2011.

DEISY DEL REAL came with her family from Mexico to the Los Angeles when she was six. Awaiting action on green card applications, she and her family were undocumented for 16 years. She was admitted with a full scholarship to Grinnell College, where she organized events promoting the DREAM Act and highlighted problems facing undocumented students. She learned that she would “age out” of the family’s green card application when she turned 21, be deported, and banned from returning to the United States for 10 years. She appealed her case to the media, prompting a New Mexico priest to start a Saving Miss Deisy campaign and a lawyer to present her case – successfully – to immigration authorities. Deisy graduated as a sociology major from Grinnell. Finally able to travel abroad, she promoted educational opportunities for students in Cambodia.  In the US, she created two organizations to support both documented and undocumented immigrants. She is currently working at the Asian Pacific American legal center and writing a book about her experiences as an undocumented teen. She will use her Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship to study for a PhD in sociology at UCLA. 

YIN LI was born in Shanghai to parents who sacrificed their careers to give their only child a chance to study in the US.  As a junior at New York City’s Stuyvesant High School, he interned in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel. The resulting research on a memory protein won Yin the top prize at the 2003 Siemens Westinghouse Science Competition.  He went on to study at Harvard as a biochemical sciences major, while working in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Robert Horvitz at MIT, where he identified a neuropeptide signaling pathway involved in the control of locomotion.  Yin graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 2008. Now 24, he has completed two years of medical school in the MD-PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania, where he cofounded an a cappella group that sings at hospitals and nursing homes. Yin is currently in his first year as a PhD student in neuroscience.

MELIS ANAHTAR was born in Maryland to parents from Turkey. Research she did during a bioengineering internship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston earned her a place as a finalist at the 2004 Intel Science Talent Search and first prize in engineering at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair. Melis went on to MIT, where she graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. Her research projects ranged from synthesizing nanoparticles for cancer detection to studying novel drug delivery methods. She served as editor-in-chief of the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal. Awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, Melis earned an MSc degree in immunology during her year at Oxford.   She is now in her second year as an MD/PhD candidate at the Harvard - MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program and will begin a PhD in immunology at Harvard in the fall. Her research projects have resulted in three co-authored papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, five scientific papers as a first-author in MIT publications, and numerous presentations at scientific meetings, symposia and conferences. 

SAMIR MAYEKAR was born in Houston, TX to parents who emigrated from India.  He developed an early interest in business and American electoral politics, working as a management consultant and volunteering for several campaigns before joining Obama for America as a budget manager.  On the Obama campaign, he helped manage $600 million of donations and assisted the chief financial officer in operating the first major Presidential campaign to exist outside the public financing system.  After the Obama victory, he joined the transition team and eventually served as National Security Director in the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office, where he managed the selection process for presidential appointees at all national security agencies.  He followed a mentor to the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation, where he is currently Deputy Chief of Staff.  Samir graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University in 2006 with a BA in political science and international studies.  In college he was a drummer in the Northwestern marching band and after graduation he helped form Be the Groove, a professional rhythmic performance ensemble in Chicago.  This fall Samir will pursue an MBA at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.

LILLA HEINRICH-SZÁSZ was born in NJ to parents of Hungarian heritage from Transylvania in Romania. She is an undergraduate soprano student at Juilliard and has won critical acclaim for her “appealing sound, agile coloratura and oversize wit” (The New York Times). Her special devotion is promoting works of Hungarian composers as well as rare works by other composers. Last year marked her Alice Tully Hall debut, performing lieder by Ern? Dohnányi. She won merit-scholarship to summer programs in Tanglewood, Salzburg, Israel, Malibu, Rome, France and will perform Susanna in Mozart’s "Le nozze di Figaro" with Canada's Opera on the Avalon this summer 2011. Performing highlights include her solo debut with the Wallingford Symphony Orchestra, where she is re-invited for Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, The New Juilliard Ensemble, the Lincoln Center FOCUS! Festival and Liederabends of Margo Garrett and Brian Zeger. She recently won prizes in the Giulio Gari International Vocal Competition, the Amato Opera Competition, the National Society for Arts and Letters Competition and was selected for the Marilyn Horne Foundation Festival at Carnegie Hall. She will join the master's degree program at Juilliard in the fall of 2011.

DANIEL SOLIS was five when he came to the US from Honduras with his mother and three brothers. He attended Pomona College on a full scholarship and – with the encouragement of a faculty mentor – applied for and received a McNair scholarship. Following his graduation from Pomona he spent two years at the National Institutes of Health where he researched the genetics of a neuroendocrine cancer caused by mutations in the SDHB gene. He co-authored four published papers, on one of which he was first-author. Daniel then worked for an additional two years as a premedical counselor at the University of California at Riverside, and subsequently was accepted to the MD program at Stanford Medical School, where he is currently in his second year. 

HOMAIRA HOSSEINI was born in 1987 in Afghanistan. When the country was overrun by Soviet forces, her father, a Supreme Court Justice, was jailed and tortured. Homaira was two years old when her family managed to escape to India, and four years old when they were resettled in Fremont, CA. Homaira pursued a BA in political science, with a minor in public affairs, at UCLA. As a 21-year old senior, she was elected president of the university’s student body. In that role, she supported socially responsible investment of UCLA’s endowment, instituted a series of “state of the student government” speeches, and raised awareness of, and support for, homeless UCLA students, many of whom were undocumented.  When she graduated from the College Honors Program, she received the Chancellor’s Leadership Award, the Women for Change Student Leadership Award, and the UCLA Distinguished Senior Award. After completing a year-long CORO Fellows Program in Public Affairs following her graduation from UCLA, Homaira is now a first-year JD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley Law School.

FRANKIE GUZMAN was born and raised by his mother in Ventura County, CA.  At age 15, he was sentenced to serve 15 years in the California Youth Authority for armed robbery.  Focusing on education, Frankie graduated from high and attended college.  He was elected by his fellow inmates to represent them to the prison authorities as a grievance clerk.  Paroled after six years, he enrolled at Oxnard College, served on its student government and volunteered with programs for at-risk youths.  He transferred to the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with a degree in English in 2007.  There, Frankie actively worked to increase the enrollment and retention of low-income students.  He also conducted public policy research and advocacy at the Greenlining Institute.  Following two years of youth advocacy at Oakland’s National Center for Youth Law, he entered the program in public interest law and policy at UCLA School of Law.  He is Co-President of La Raza Law Students Association and serves as Pacific Regional Director for the National Latino Law Student Association. Frankie is a second year student at the Law School at UCLA.