Spring 2004 Fellows

JACOB CHACKO is currently working for TPG Capital. He received his MBA from Harvard University and his MD from University of California at Los Angeles. As an undergraduate he attended the University of Southern California, where he received a BA in biology, a BS in gerontology, and a minor in health policy & management. He graduated as the University valedictorian, a Phi Kappa Phi fellow, and won a place on USA Today's 1st Team Academic All-American. At University of Southern California, he co-founded a leadership academy for neighborhood children. Jacob spent three years as a Marshall scholar at Oxford University, earning an MSc in economic and social history, and as a consultant for McKinsey & Company, Inc. Jacob was born in El Paso in 1978 and is the son of naturalized parents who emigrated from India. His family lives in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

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AMY CHEN is a Project Manager at Pepsico Hope, a organization within Pepsico aimed at eliminating urban poverty. She was a brand manager for Stacy's Pita chips and holds both a JD and MBA from Stanford University. She was the Managing Editor of the Stanford Law and Policy Review and the Project Manager of the Stanford Affordable Housing Team. In addition, Amy sits on the Board of Directors of Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley as a volunteer Board Fellow. She received a BA in chemistry from Harvard University, where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and delivered the Harvard Oration at her Class Day Commencement Exercises. At Harvard University, she was President of the Harvard Model Congress, the nation's largest government simulation program for high school students, and co-founded the Harvard Political Education Program for local at-risk youth. After graduation, she worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, Inc. in New York City and then at the US Interagency Council on Homelessness in Washington, DC. Amy was born in Chicago, IL in 1980. Her parents, who are of Taiwanese origins, are both naturalized citizens and live in Round Rock, TX.

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JASON CHENG is currently doing his residency in neurosurgery at the University of California at San Francisco where he received his MD in 2008. He was born in Bellflower, California, in 1980 to parents of Chinese heritage from Hong Kong. His family now lives in San Marino, California. As a President's Scholar and Mayfield Fellow at Stanford University, he graduated in 2002 with a BS degree in biological sciences with honors and a minor in computer science. At Stanford University, Jason conducted three years of bioinformatics research on Varicella Zoster Virus, culminating in a publication in the Journal of Virology. In addition, he served as executive director of the Stanford Asia Technology Initiative and interned at Genomic Health, Inc. as part of his Mayfield Fellowship. At University of California at San Francisco, Jason has studied the genetic basis of breast cancer susceptibility and chemotherapy response at the Mt. Zion Cancer Research Institute. He also completed a research year as a Howard Hughes Fellow and was published in Neurosurgical Focus. Jason ultimately hopes to pursue a career in academic medicine, integrating his scientific and clinical passions.

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PAVAN CHERUVU completed his MS degrees in neuroscience and computer science at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Pavan attained his BS in biomedical engineering and electrical engineering and a BA in chemistry at Duke University. A Goldwater scholar, Pavan completed his MD in 2008 at Harvard and MIT HST Program. He spent the summer of 2004 working at the White House. Pavan was born in the US in 1981 to parents who had emigrated from South India and are naturalized US citizens. Pavan designed software that has been transformed into computer models of gene expression, as well as co-designed and patented a urinary biosensor that will be affordable in poor countries. He also worked for IngraReDx, Inc., a medical device startup company in Massachusetts. Pavan hopes to create a nonprofit organization that tailors medical devices to needs in rural and developing communities. He is an associate at McKinsey & Company, Inc.

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ALEXANDRA CHIRINOS O'ROURKE is a clerk for the Honorable Allyson Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She clerked for Honorable Legrome Davis in the Federal Dsitrict Court for the Eastern District of Philadelphia. She received her JD from Harvard University, having finished as a Senator George J. Mitchell scholar at Queen's University in Belfast pursuing an LLM in international human rights law and criminal justice. Alexandra graduated magna cum laude, with highest honors, and Phi Beta Kappa from University of Texas at Austin with a BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) in finance and a BA in plan II liberal-arts honors. A Truman Scholar, Alexandra was invited to speak at her Commencement. At University of Texas at Austin, Alexandra started a bilingual mentoring program and founded the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Chapter in Texas. She worked as a legislative assistant to state representative Jaime Capelo. At Harvard University, she was on the board of the Latino Law Review. Ultimately, Alexandra's aspiration is to be "an effective representative of this nation's growing community of immigrants." Alexandra was born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1980 and was naturalized as an American citizen in 2001. Her parents live in Corpus Christi, Texas. She is married to Alan O'Rourke.

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NUSRAT CHOUDHURY is a Staff Attorney in the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she pursues litigation challenging national security policies that violate civil rights and civil liberties.  She clerked for Judge Barrington D. Parker in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and for Judge Denise Cote in the Southern District of New York, and was a Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow at the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. Nusrat completed her MPA in International Development at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and her JD at Yale Law School.  She graduated from Columbia University with a BA summa cum laude in history and election to Phi Beta Kappa.  Prior to her graduate studies, Nusrat worked for the Women's Prison Association & Home, Inc. and for Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children. She has served as a law clerk in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague and as an intern for the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina, CARE India, and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.  She has published in the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism and the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. Nusrat is a founder and co-director of Young Professionals for CARE, a group with over 600 members dedicated to supporting CARE and its mission to end global poverty through fundraising, advocacy, education, and a range of social activities. Nusrat was born in Chicago in 1976 to emigrants from Bangladesh. Her parents are now naturalized US citizens and reside in Northbrook, Illinois.

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BABACAR CISSE is a student in the MD/PhD program at the College of Physicians & Surgeons at Columbia University. He received his BA in chemistry from Bard College, where he won an National Institute of Health Undergraduate Scholarship, a Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research Fellowship, and the Reamer Kline Award, given to Bard College undergraduates who contribute significantly to the vitality of the college. As a physician, he wants to help those in his immediate surroundings in America; as a research scientist, he hopes his future work will have penetrating effects abroad. Babacar has also been a big brother for orphans from the Hudson region. He immigrated to New York with the dream of attaining a higher education and won the green-card lottery. He was born in 1974 and lives in New York City. He and his wife, Fatou Toure, have two children named Maryam and Aishah.

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GEORGE FARAH is an associate at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld, & Toll. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2005. Born in 1978 and a naturalized citizen, he received his BA in public and international policy from Princeton University in 2000. He worked for Ralph Nader before attending law school. George has been published in Extra! and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and he is the author of a book on the presidential debate process titled No Debate. He is the founder and executive director of Open Debates (www.opendebates.org), a Washington-based nonprofit with liberal and conservative board members that is committed to reforming the presidential debates. He also founded Reform Harvard Law School, which aims to increase the visibility of private law firms committed to the pursuit of justice. Among his career ambitions, George includes creating his own private-public interest firm; creating a politicized human rights organization; creating civic organizations that "organize people to defeat organized money;" and running for political office. George was born in Beirut. His family lives in McLean, Virginia.

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LIPIKA GOYAL holds an MD from Harvard University and is a resident in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, earning an MPhil in development studies. In 2001 she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in the biological basis of development from University of Pennsylvania, where she was a University Scholar. Lipika has done research with the International Rescue Committee in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, initiated a baseline study in Ghana for a trial for a proposed anti-malarial drug, and conducted malnutrition research in India. At Oxford University, she volunteered as a youth club leader for young refugees and a visitor to detained asylum seekers through a charity organization called Asylum Welcome. Lipika is currently involved with the organization, Bridging the Gap, which pairs medical students with refugee families in Boston. She intends a career in public health serving underserved populations. Lipika was born in 1979 and is the daughter of two naturalized US citizens from India. Her family now lives in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

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PAKOU HANG, received her master's in political science in 2008 from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She completed her BA in political science at Yale University in 1999. Pakou spent two years in Boston as a financial analyst with KLD Research and Analytics, a firm advising socially responsible investments. Born in 1976, in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand but now naturalized as an American citizen, Pakou is a member of the Hmong community. Active in politics, Pakou served as a deputy political director to Senator Paul Wellstone and campaign manager in the election of Mee Moua to the Minnesota legislature. She has also been active in the nonprofit civic organization Progressive Minnesota and in the University-based Jane Addams School for Democracy and its efforts to engage immigrants in local and state issues important to them. In 2003, she received the Hubert H. Humphrey Public Leadership Award from the University of Minnesota. At University of Minnesota and afterwards, she plans to move between formal study of political strategy and the active engagement of the immigrant population. Currently, she is Deputy Vice President of Field Operations for the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, DC, where she is responsible for developing and implementing strategies and tactics to build a national grassroots movement for children.

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SACHIN JAIN is an intern in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and is also a research fellow at Harvard Business School. Sachin received both his MBA and MD from Harvard University. In 2002, Sachin received his BA magna cum laude in government from Harvard University. As an undergraduate, he co-founded a homeless health care clinic and was named a John Kenneth Galbraith Scholar. He has authored published works in health policy while working at the Institute for Health Care Improvement and the Alpha Center. As a medical student, Sachin served as the President of the Student Council and was awarded a Schweitzer Fellowship to support his work with the homeless, as well as a grant from the Commonwealth Fund to lead the Harvard University/Commonwealth Health Policy Education Initiative. He finished co-editing a book of medical student reflections that will be published by the Algonquin Press in Spring 2006. Sachin was born in New York in 1980 to naturalized parents from India who live in Alpine, NJ. Sachin plans to pursue a career as a clinician, scholar, and activist dedicated to improving access to quality health care.

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ALLON KEDEM is a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court.  For the previous two years he had served as an attorney-adviser at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Before joining the Justice Department he served as a law clerk for the Hon. Mark R. Kravitz on the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and for the Hon. Pierre N. Leval on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He graduated from Yale Law School in 2005, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal. He was an undergraduate at Harvard University, from which he graduated, magna cum laude, in 2002 with a degree in Social Studies. His Harvard University honors included Phi Beta Kappa, four years of John Harvard Scholarships, and two Coolidge Debating Prizes. At Harvard he served as president of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society. Allon was born in Rochester, New York, in 1979 to parents who had emigrated from Israel but are now naturalized citizens.

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HOSEIN KOUROS-MEHR is an associate scientist at Genetech in their research oncology department. He completed a post-doctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute. He has completed his PhD in developmental and cancer biology and his MD at the University of California at San Francisco. In 2000, he received his BS in biology from California Institute of Technology, graduating in three years with a 4.0 grade point average. He received a two-year research grant from the National Institute of Health, and was awarded the Kanel Undergraduate Scholarship Award, and the Phi Delta Kappa International Scholarship Award. His latest research addresses exactly when, how, and through which altered gene pathways tumor cells metastasize. Born in Iran in 1979 and naturalized in 1999, Hosein lives in San Francisco. His family lives in Hacienda Heights, California.

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ANNE LEE has a JD from Columbia University and clerked for the Honorable Juan Torruella on the first Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. Now Anne is working as an associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. She received her BA degree, magna cum laude, in 2001 from Harvard University, where she majored in American government. Joining the Harvard and Radcliffe Musical Outreach to Neighborhood Youth (Harmony) program, she initially gave music lessons to two elementary school children, and subsequently became director of the program, which was the largest community service organization on campus. She has also been a business consultant for the Monitor Group, as well as the executive director of Inspire, a nonprofit that works to provide management advice to nonprofits and charter schools. Anne aspires to a career in civil rights litigation, focusing especially on issues of race and public education. Anne was born in 1979 in Lafayette, Indiana, to parents of Korean heritage, and grew up in Charleston, West Virginia.

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ANKUR LUTHRA was born in San Jose, California, in 1981 to immigrants from Punjab State, India. His family now lives in Saratoga, California. He received a master's degree in computer science at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 2003, he received BS degrees in business administration and in electrical engineering and computer science from University of California at Berkeley, where he completed his course work in three and a half years with all A's, more than half of which were A+'s. He was awarded the University Medal for the most outstanding student in the University of California at Berkeley's graduating class of over 7,000 students, and gave the commencement keynote speech with President Clinton's chief of staff, Leon Panetta. Ankur was the chairman and founder of Computer Literacy 4 Kids, a nonprofit organization that brings computers and computer education to underprivileged students around the globe. He also designed computer and artificial intelligence technology, started a dot-com company, and worked for Microsoft's Windows division as a program manager. Ankur was a vice president at Summit Partners, a private equity firm in Palo Alto. Presently, Ankur is in his third year as an investment professional at Ziff Brothers Investments. He intends a career in technology and social entrepreneurship.

 

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ARPIT MALAVIYA holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University and graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara with highest honors and was ranked first in a class of 64 students majoring in electrical engineering. Now a naturalized US citizen, Arpit was born in Kanpur, India and immigrated to the United States when he was 22 years old. Arpit has won the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley Chancellor's Fellowship, California Institute of Technology/JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Undergraduate Scholar Award, the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and the University of California Regents Scholarship. He was also awarded the Summer Undergrad Research Fellowship by California Institute of Technology in 2002 and his research on solid-acid fuel cells was the feature article in California Engineer. He currently serves on the executive board of ASSET Foundation, a nonprofit with the goal of using technology to improve the lives of underprivileged children. He has worked for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines for two years and has been involved with two high tech start-ups. Arpit formerly worked with the Boston Consulting Group in the Dallas office. He and his wife, Anita, have a son named Arjun. Now he is scaling up operations at his start-up company, ProDIGIQ based near Santa Barbara, CA.

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ANNA NEIMARK completed her architecture master's program at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and was a junior architect at the Office of Metropolitan Architecture. She taught a studio class in Harvard University's Career Discovery Program. Anna was awarded the Julia Amory Appleton Traveling Fellowship to pursue a year-long independent research and design project entitled, "Water, Politics, Architecture." In 2003, she received a BA degree with high honors in architecture from Princeton University, and received the Haarlow Prize for the best paper in humanistic studies, the Joseph Shanley Travel Prize for architectural design, and the Art and Archaeology Frederick Barnard White Prize for the best thesis in architectural theory. Her thesis, which had substantial visual and written components, explored how architectural theory in early modern Europe was shaped by new forms of inquiry into the human body. Anna is fluent in Russian, French, German, and English and plans to become an architect of international scope. Her work has been displayed at a Princeton University gallery and recently published in a London journal of architectural theory and design, Sexymachinery. A naturalized citizen, she was born in Russia in 1980 and moved to the United States at the age of 14. Her family now lives in Jackson Heights, NY. She is married to Michael Osman. Currently she is a lecturer at the University of Southern California School of Architecture.

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CHI NGUYEN received her MBA from the Stanford University in 2005, where she concentrated on public management. Born in Saigon in 1976, her family fled as "boat people" when she was 3 years old and eventually settled in Sunnyvale, California, where they now live. Chi is a naturalized American citizen. Chi graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude in 1998 with degrees in economics and psychology from Yale University, where she led Dwight Hall, Yale University's umbrella organization for over 80 community service organizations. She then received the Elm-Ivy Award for enhancing understanding and cooperation between Yale and New Haven, as well as the James Andrew Haas Prize. Chi worked for two years at Bain & Company as a management consultant. She also helped found the Alliance for Regional Stewardship and co-authored the publication, Women of Silicon Valley, which received national news coverage. She was a product manager in revascularization cardiac surgery at Guidant Corporation in San Francisco, but now works as a marketing manager at Acclarent, Inc. Her spouse is Daniel Abelson. They have a son named Liam Nguyen Abelson.

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NNEOMA NWOGU holds a JD from the University of Michigan. She is an associate at Hogan & Hartson LLP in Washington DC. She received the MPhil in development studies at St Antony's College at Oxford University with a thesis distinction and graduated cum laude in 2002 with a BA and dual honors in philosophy and Africana studies from Wellesley College. At Wellesley College, she served as a court advocate for victims of domestic violence and also co-founded a summer leadership program for Nigerian students. At University of Michigan, she won the Butch Carpenter Award for community service. Nneoma was honored for her academic papers at Wellesley College and Oxford University with the Ella Smith Prize and the St Antony's Callaway Prize, respectively. She has published articles with the Michigan Journal of Public Affairs and the Human Rights Journal. Her book titled Shaping Truth, Reshaping Justice was released in November 2007. Also a creative writer, Nneoma has published with Wellesley College's Open World, Oxonian Review, and Leverage. At University of Michigan, Nneoma was associate editor of the Michigan Journal of International Law, co-president of the International Law Society, and convener of the Black Law Students' Garvey Discussion Forum. Nneoma is a naturalized US citizen and plans a career in international law.

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SUNITA PURI is a fourth year MD candidate in the University of California at Berkeley/University of California at San Francisco Joint Medical Program. She earned an MSt in Modern History with a focus on South Asia/History of Medicine, at St. Antony's College at Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2002, she received a BA with distinction in cultural anthropology from Yale University, where she established a discussion forum entitled 'Creating a Queer-Friendly Asian America' and a South Asian women's group, and won prizes from Medical Anthropology Quarterly and the departments of women's studies and ethnic studies for her research. Sunita has worked as a counselor and victim advocate for battered South Asian women and minority freshman, published work on domestic violence among South Asian immigrants, and served as an HIV peer educator. In medical school, she has given Grand Rounds presentations at Columbia, UCSF, and Alta Bates hospitals on her ethnographic work on sex selection and son preference among South Asian immigrants in the United States. For this work, she also received UCSF's Chancellor's Award for the Advancement of Women and the UCSF's Dean's Prize in Medical Student Research. Sunita was born in 1979 in Kentucky and is the daughter of naturalized citizens from Punjab state, India. Her family now lives in Los Angeles. Sunita plans a career combining anthropological research on South Asia, grassroots activism, and the practice of medicine with a focus on immigrants and women. She is a Class of 2004 Fellow and is currently applying to residency programs in internal medicine-primary care.

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RAHUL RAJKUMAR holds both JD and MD degrees from Yale University and is an internal medicine resident at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He received his BA, cum laude, with distinction in history, from Yale University in 2000. As an undergraduate he served as president of the Yale University's South Asian Society and as a varsity member of Yale University's debate team. As an intern at the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre in New Delhi, Rahul co-authored a book on the living conditions and the legal status of Afghan refugees in India. He has published articles in the Yale Daily News, the Hartford Courant, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the New England Journal of Medicine. He hopes to practice medicine at an academic center as a scholar, teacher and human rights activist. Rahul was born in New York City in 1978 to naturalized parents of Indian heritage, who live in Somers, NY. He is married to Kiran Ghia.

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Raju Raval is spending his transitional year internship at Morristown Memorial Hospital in NJ and then in 2010 will begin his radiation oncology residency at Johns Hopkins. He received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. He completed a DPhil in clinical medicine at the Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He graduated from Indiana University with majors in biochemistry, biology, Spanish, and religious studies. An undergraduate Herman B Wells Scholar, he also received a Truman Scholarship for academic performance and public service. After graduation, he spent the summer doing research in molecular carcinogenesis at the National Cancer Institute on the National Institute of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. His graduate research at Oxford University, under the supervision of Adrian L. Harris and Peter J. Ratcliffe, looked at the pathways underlying angiogenesis in tumor hypoxia. Some of his recent work has led to two publications in Cancer Research. Raju was born in 1979 in Fort Wayne, Indiana to two naturalized parents of Gujarati-Indian descent. He looks forward to pursuing a career in medicine, cancer research, and health policy.

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DIANA (SHAGHAYEGH) SEPEHRI is completing her third year medical studies at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine in California. She holds an MPH and an MA in medical anthropology from Case Western Reserve University. This green card holder was born in 1980 in Tehran, Iran and immigrated to the Sacramento area at age 15. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in 2002 from Bates College with degrees in mathematics, biology, and a secondary concentration in Spanish. An accomplished ballroom dancer, she won intercollegiate tournaments throughout New England and performed with the national Ecuadorian folklore ballet during her junior semester abroad program. She has also served as activities director for the International Club and Solidaridad Latina. Winning the Phillips and Thomas J. Watson Fellowships, Diana has traveled to South America and Asia conducting comparative field research projects on indigenous medicine and is keenly interested in understanding how a marginalized system of folk medicine could develop into an accredited and widely used alternative.

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MIKHAIL SHAPIRO is a senior associate at Third Rock Ventures, a life-sciences venture capital fund in Boston. He also co-founded a scientific networking company called Epernicus. He received his PhD in bilogical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied ways of imaging molecular-level neural activity using magnetic resonance. He received his BSc in neuroscience from Brown University in 2004. He conducted research on the use of semiconductor nanoparticles in neural imaging, and is the primary author of an abstract presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Mikhail was also the business manager and co-founder of Cyberkinetics, Inc., a startup medical technology company developing brain-computer interfaces. Born in Kolomna, Russia in 1981, he is now a naturalized citizen. His family lives in Potomac, Maryland.

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KARIM SIMPLIS is an analyst at First Q Capital, a hedge fund in Newport Beach. He completed his MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2005. A green card holder, he was born in Belize in 1977, came to the Los Angeles area at age three, and attended the University of California at Santa Cruz. His family still lives in the Los Angeles area. As a University of California Regents Scholar, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, with highest honors in economics/business management. He was the recipient of the Benjamin E. Mays Award for academic and community service work. Karim has been involved with a program to expose underprivileged high-school students to collegiate life, assumed leadership of the University of California at Santa Cruz Undergraduate Economic Association, worked as an investment banker for Merrill Lynch, and was a private equity analyst at JLL Partners. At Stanford University, he volunteered with a program that adopts a first grade class and follows it through 12 years of its educational development.

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KONSTANTIN SOUKHOVETSKI completed the master's of music program at the Juilliard School, where he also received his bachelor's of music and is now an independent artist. At Juilliard School, Konstantin won the Arthur Rubenstein Prize as an outstanding pianist in the class of 2003 as well as the Gina Bachauer Prize. Additionally, Konstantin has debuted at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, recorded for NPR and WQRZ, performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, won second prize at the Naumburg International Piano Competition, third prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition, grand prize at the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati, first prize at the Hilton Head International Piano Competition, and most recently, second prize at the 2004 UNISA International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa. Konstantin has continuously studied piano with Jerome Lowenthal since 1999. He was in the performance program at Julliard School, where he recently won the William Petschek Debut Recital Award at Alice Tully Hall. A green card holder, he was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1981 and came to the United States after being admitted to Julliard School. His family remains in Moscow.

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JANANI SREENIVASAN graduated from Princeton University in 2004 with a degree in history. Her parents emigrated from South India to the United States in 1976 and are naturalized citizens. Born in 1983, Janani grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, where her parents and her first writing mentor, Alice Ann Eberman, still live. Post-Corvallis, she studied writing with Suzanne Paola, Susan Lohafer, Patricia Foster, and three Johns: Seabrook, D'Agata, and McPhee. In 2007 she received her MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa.  Her author crushes are Patricia Highsmith, Hans Christian Andersen, and Henry James. Janani is currently Managing Editor of Cabinet Magazine in New York.

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VAN TRAN is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology and Social Policy and a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy at Harvard University. A summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Hunter College of CUNY, Van majored in Sociology and wrote his honor thesis on the assimilation experience of Tibetan refugees while working full-time at Wankel's-a local hardware store on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. His academic research broadly focuses on the socioeconomic, civic and political incorporation of post-1965 immigrants and their children, as well as its implications for the future of ethnic and racial inequality in the U.S. in the decades ahead. The recipient of numerous research grants and fellowships, Van's eclectic research interests in immigration, racial and ethnic diversity, social class and culture, civic and political participation, social inequality and public policy originate both from his personal experience as a political refugee and his scholarly attempt to understand the major demographic, social and political transformations of the American society as a result of immigration. Van was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 1979 to a Vietnamese mother and a Chinese father. A naturalized citizen, he came to New York City with his family in 1998 and his parents now reside in Brooklyn.

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DAMIAN WILLIAMS was born to Jamaican parents in New York in 1980 and was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Damian graduated in 2002 from Harvard University, where he majored in economics and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. At Harvard University, he was a four-year member and executive producer of CityStep, a community service performance company that reaches out to fifth and sixth grade public school students. He won the Detur Book Award, the John Harvard Scholarship, the Ron Brown Scholarship, the Harris Prize, and was named the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar for 2002. Under that award, he earned an MPhil in international relations at Cambridge University. After Cambridge University, Damian joined John Kerry for President as a member of its national campaign staff in Iowa and later as the Assistant to the Chairman of the Democratic Party. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Council on African American Affairs in Washington, DC. Damian holds a JD from Yale University, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Law and Policy Review. He clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland on the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC. Now, he is clerking for Justice John Paul Stevens on the US Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. He is preparing for a career as a criminal justice litigator and political activist.

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GRACE YU graduated summa cum laude from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. She received a Master of Studies in Religion and a Diploma in theology at Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She was born in Los Angeles in 1979 to two naturalized parents of Korean descent. Her family now lives in La Canada, California. As an undergraduate, she was presented with the rare opportunity to serve as the White House special assistant for Intergovernmental Affairs during the Clinton administration. Her issue responsibilities ranged from US-China trade relations to enterprise communities and empowerment zones. Grace then served as a research fellow at Japan's Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, where she was a guest lecturer and frequently published in the Matsushita Journal. She is an award winning photographer, and has had solo exhibitions in New York, London, Kamakura and Amsterdam. Grace writes that the form and vitality of film is her visual hymn through which she can best exercise truth-telling and beautification. She is now intent on a career in filmmaking, 'as an intersection of my journalistic impulses, verve for learning, and reverence for the narrative form.' She is completing her MFA in film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and is now producing and directing an observational series on the viability of first time political candidates. She and her husband have one child, Maia Neelu Reddy and reside in New York.

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