P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Angela Tian Ma is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Seeing how her parents overcame language, cultural, and financial barriers to build a new home in this country has inspired Angela to stay hungry and curious.

Angela became captivated by economics because of its emphasis on both logic and creativity. While studying economics and computer science at Harvard, she has pursued her passion for research and teaching by building a stock bubble detector for the Behavioral Finance and Financial Stability Project, serving as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Economics Review, and working as a teaching fellow for statistics and economics courses. While economics is her great love, she has taken courses in many subjects and has been recognized as a John Harvard Scholar.

Having danced ballet since age four, Angela has been inspired by the generosity and perseverance of her ballet teachers and peers who come from all over the world. In addition to earning the National YoungArts Honorable Mention, Angela has been a dancer, choreographer, and treasurer with the Harvard Ballet Company in order to help create and fund new art on campus.

Angela is pursuing a PhD in business economics at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Economics Department. She hopes to become an economics professor, and she is interested in how regulation may prevent financial crises and how the government can respond once a crisis is underway.