P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

Boróka Bó was born into the persecuted Hungarian minority in Communist Romania and emigrated with her family to the U.S. as political refugees when she was 14. Two years later her life was again upended when child protective services rescued her from her abusive parents and placed her in a group home. She worked full-time in a bookstore and a factory while she finished high school, and through her undergraduate degree to support herself and her younger sister's education.

Boróka is committed to improving the world around her. In her first undergraduate year at the University of Colorado, Boulder, she founded a nonprofit whose goal was to end the systematic discrimination of Roma and other persecuted minorities in Transylvania. As a graduate student, she cofounded the University of California San Francisco's 1st Generation to College Student Organization, worked as a research fellow in South Africa, China and Canada, and held multiple leadership positions at UC Berkeley while conducting groundbreaking research on time poverty and health.

She is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex.