P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

Born to Chinese parents who emigrated from Vietnam to Canada and then to the United States after the Vietnam War, Eric grew up in Madison Heights, a small city near Detroit, Michigan, where he witnessed firsthand the importance of education as a life-changing source of mobility.

Inspired by his parents’ sacrifices to ensure a better life for their children, and by the many undeterred students and teachers in his hometown who made the most of limited resources, Eric has made it his mission to use his own education to help others access theirs.

Eric received his AB, summa cum laude, from Harvard University, where he studied comparative social policy with a focus on education, health, and welfare systems. He served as a Pamela Harriman Foreign Service Fellow at the US Mission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and organized a field study on educational equality in Finland with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Eric became certified as an educator with the Harvard Graduate School of Education and taught civics for South Boston and Boston Chinatown immigrants. He has worked on social policy issues with a range of government institutions, including the Massachusetts Senate, US Department of State, and the White House.

Now a student at Yale Law School, Eric is a student director of the Education Adequacy Project, a clinic representing disadvantaged youth in an educational rights case, and a member of the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic. He researches at the intersection of law and policy, exploring how legal frameworks including constitutional rights and federalism can improve social policy.