Gardner Fellow Profiles 1999-2009

Past Gardner Fellows

2007-2008 | 2006-2007 | 2005-2006 | 2004-2005 | 2003-2004 | 2002-2003 | 2001-2002 2000-2001 | 1999-2000

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2009-2010 Gardner Fellows

Maggie Chen '09 (Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and Human Biology)

Fellowship Placement: White House Council on Women and Girls
Fellowship Mentor: Kavita Patel, Director of Policy, White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs
Hometown: San Francisco
Service Interest: Women's health and reproductive health
Stanford Experience: Maggie studied the intersections of race, gender and health through her two majors. Based on her interest in the ongoing racial disparity in teen pregnancies, Maggie wrote her honors thesis on attitudes towards childbearing among young women of color. She engaged in research and service learning with the Stanford in Cape Town, South Africa program and the Papua New Guinea Medical Project. Maggie played lead roles in the Multiracial Identified Community at Stanford and HIV Peer Anonymous Counseling and Testing.
Other Service Experience: In high school, Maggie worked as a health educator and pregnancy counselor at the Women's Community Clinic. She continued to gain experience in adolescent health by working with New Generation Health Center as a Health Career Connection intern and the UCSF Family Planning Research Group. During the summer of 2009, Maggie is teaching 8th grade science with Aim High.
Fellowship Goals: Maggie hopes to explore how health policy and reform affect women and girls. She will help shape federal response to issues faced by girl with a focus on unplanned pregnancy and science education.
Post-Fellowship Plans: Maggie plans to pursue degrees in Medicine and Public Health.
Quotation about Motivation, Experience, and Goals: My early experiences in community clinics made it clear that reproductive health remains a major issue in women's lives. I am committed to making reproductive health a reality for everyone, both through improvements in public health and broader movements in education and social justice. During this fellowship year, I hope to learn how decisions about women's health are made, and how those in seemingly unrelated fields can help to improve the lives of women and girls. I am continually motivated by the hopes and struggles women have shared with me, as well as family and friends who have devoted their lives to public service.

Jenny Cooper '08 (Geography, minor in Peace and Conflict Studies)

Fellowship Placement: Environmental Defense Fund
Fellowship Mentor: Jennifer A. Haverkamp, Managing Director for International Policy & Negotiations, Environmental Defense Fund
Hometown: Baltimore, MD
Service Interest: Climate justice
Berkeley Experience: Jenny is a founding member of the Berkeley Project, a student group established in 2006 to organize 2,000 Cal students annually to participate in community service projects in Berkeley. Jenny's research interests have led her from Oakland, where she studied the use of vacant land for urban agriculture; to British Columbia, where she lived on Helmet Mountain collecting radar, GPS, snow-depth and weather data; to Mali, where she studied education reform. She is a freelance cartographer, and has produced maps of ancient Iran, southern Sudan, Botswana and South Africa. Jenny worked as a group leader and campaign volunteer for Obama's presidential campaign in North Carolina, was a member of the Berkeley Roosevelt Institution's executive board, and helped to design a student curriculum on environmental sustainability for high school social studies and history classes. She played for the UC Berkeley NCAA lacrosse team and teaches rock climbing at the Berkeley Ironworks Gym.
Other Service Experience: Prior to coming to Berkeley, Jenny helped found a local campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity in Baltimore. She continues to be active leading student efforts for that chapter. She also led Cal Habitat trips to Louisiana and New Zealand while at Berkeley.
Fellowship Goals: Jenny would like to gain experience in the climate change policymaking process at multiple scales of governance. She would like to better understand how climate policy addresses the following issues: 1) the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, food production, industry, and lifestyles; 2) the planning for adaptation to the physical consequences of climate change-rising sea levels, increased frequency of extreme weather events, desertification, etc.; 3) the climate change injustices that exist over space and time, which are intimately linked to the vulnerability of different populations; 4) the public understanding and perception of climate change, its causes, and the need for engaged and informed action. She will work on international policy climate change.
Post-Fellowship Plans: Jenny hopes to return to Mali, West Africa to teach English and environmental education. She then plans to pursue a graduate degree in city planning, education, or environmental law.
Quotation about Motivation, Experience, and Goals: I see climate change as one of the largest and most time sensitive problems that we face. Currently, the dominant discourse of climate change and the physical effects of climate change are perpetuating social and environmental injustices. However, I believe that the threat and effects of climate change can be the catalyst for transforming and reforming our local and global systems of production and consumption to engender equity and justice.

Mondaire Jones '09 (Political Science; Minor in African and African-American Studies)

Fellowship Placement: Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington DC
Fellowship Mentor: Spencer Overton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General
Hometown: Spring Valley, NY
Service Interest: Social Inequality
Stanford Experience: Mondaire successfully advocated progressive and other quality of life issues while serving on the Undergraduate Senate as chairman of the Campus Advocacy Committee and then as Student Body Vice President. Outside of student government, he pursued his passions for social justice and the law as a legal intern for the Stanford Criminal Defense Clinic working on "3 Strikes" defense litigation, as a research assistant for Stanford Law School Professor Rick Banks, and as a researcher for Martin Luther King's former attorney, Clarence B. Jones, as he wrote What Would Martin Do? (HarperCollins 2008). Mondaire also worked as a program coordinator for the Black Community Services Center. In his senior year, Jones was a resident assistant in Ujamaa House, as well as served as a panelist for Judicial Affairs and as a student representative to the university's Board of Trustees.
Other Service Experience: NAACP National Board of Directors, NAACP National Youth Work. Committee Chairman, and co-founder of the Taskforce on Racial Profiling in Palo Alto.
Fellowship Goals: To develop a better understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities facing those tasked with enforcing and implementing social equality at the federal level, as well as discern how to best use the law to improve the status of disadvantaged groups. Mondaire will work on White House nominations to the federal judiciary, speeches and congressional testimony, and policy memoranda and reports focused on civil rights, voting rights, and human trafficking.
Post-Fellowship Plans: To attend law school followed by work in the public interest.
Quotation about Motivation, Experience, and Goals: I plan to devote my career to improving the life conditions of those least fortunate in the United States. Through the classroom, student government, and my work at progressive organizations, I learned much about the kinds of policies necessary to achieve this goal and the capacity of a conscientious citizenry and state to realize a society every human being deserves.

Eyal Matalon '09 (Environmental Sciences)

Fellowship Placement: The Pacific Institute
Fellowship Mentor: Swati Prakash, Program Director; and Dr. Peter Gleick, President
Hometown: Sunnyvale, CA
Service Interest: Environmental Justice
Berkeley Experience: Organized Berkeley's first Climate Change Fair; Co-Founded Kesher Enoshi (Human Connection) and raised $4,000 for solar powered medical equipment for ill Bedouin children in Israel's Negev Desert. Senior thesis explored environmental determinants of disease vectors in rural China. He developed and facilitated "Education for Sustainable Living," an interdisciplinary course offered through Berkeley's School of Public health.
Other Service Experience: Sierra Club Training Academy; Friendship Circle for Special Needs Children
Fellowship Goals: to learn strategies for empowering communities in their struggles for environmental justice. Eyal will work on environmental justice issues focusing on research partnerships, central valley issues, and water sanitation in India.
Post-Fellowship Plans: Graduate school in Geography or Environmental Justice.
Quotation about Motivation, Experience, and Goals: I believe that working on issues of environmental justice and social equity requires a good amount of self-reflexivity; that is, recognizing your position outside of the day-to-day struggles of these communities. The main question I ask myself is: 'what is the ideal channel for someone with my background, my experiences, and my privilege to engage with these issues?' That is the question I asked myself in my search for a fellowship placement and it will likely be one that I will continue to ask for the rest of my career.

Basant Singh Sanghera '09 (History and Political Science)

Fellowship Placement: South and Central Asian (SCA) Affairs Bureau, Department of State
Fellowship Mentor: Patricia Mahoney; Director; India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Maldives Affairs
Hometown: Fowler, CA
Service Interest: Basant's interest in serving his country stems from his family's long tradition of service in the British Indian Army. In the wake of anti-Sikh violence that occurred after the September 11 attacks, Basant worked with his local community and later through the Sikh Students Association at Berkeley to raise awareness and educate the public about Sikhism. He has spoken on Sikh affairs at the San Francisco Public Library and has worked with the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Berkeley Experience: Basant's work in history, including studies at Berkeley, the University of California, Santa Barbara, Harvard and King's College, Cambridge, focused on military affairs and international relations. He led a DeCal course at Berkeley on the subject of World War II and worked at the Berkeley War Crimes Center to create a searchable database on the trials of World War II-era Japanese war criminals.
Other Service Experience: In the summer of 2009, he interned with SALDEF and the Transnational Crisis Project as part of the UCDC program.
Fellowship Goals: Basant has a strong interest in national security and seeks a placement in the State Department or Department of Defense. Basant will focus on India/Pakistan with SCA.
Post-Fellowship Plans: Basant wishes to pursue graduate studies, focusing on international relations, and eventually continue a career in government.
Quotation about Motivation, Experience, and Goals: I do not want to be the person at the anti-war protest, expressing outrage after the fact. I want to be part of the process, in the nation's capital, helping to ensure that the war everyone will protest does not breakout to begin with.

Seth Silverman BA '08 (Global Politics of Health, Human Rights, and the Environment), MS '09 (Civil and Environmental Engineering

Fellowship Placement: White House Council on Environmental Quality
Fellowship Mentor: Jason E. Bordoff, Associate Director for Energy and Climate Change
Hometown: New York, NY
Service Interest:international environmental issues and environmental justice; violent conflict and human rights; rural and sustainable development; food security and humanitarian relief.
Stanford Experience: Seth served as President of Stanford Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND), Committee Head for Students for a Sustainable Stanford, and volunteered with Stanford GRID Alternatives, Public Service Student Advisory Board, Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility, and Habla la Noche tutoring program. He has also volunteered with Darfur Stoves Project; Community driven solar rural energy project, Cocle, Panama; Chewonki Foundation Advisory Board Member; US State Department, Sudan Programs Group; Byrraju Foundation, India, Rural Energy; Chewonki Foundation, Faculty; Amy Biehl Foundation Trust, South Africa; and Earth Pledge. Seth studied the ramifications of present and future climate effects through his thesis on the implications of climate change for violent civil conflict, with a focus on Darfur. Seth also organized a campus policy forum on China's Strategic Role in Crises of International Concern.
Other Service Experience: During Summer 2009 he is serving as a MAP Sustainable Energy Fellow with the National Resources Defense Council's Climate Center and International Program.
Fellowship Goals: Seth hopes to learn about multilateral negotiation, global politics and US policy as they relate to climate change and humanitarian crises. He will work with climate adaptation policy with CEQ.
Post-Fellowship Plans: Seth plans to attend law school, concentrating on environmental and international law, and focus his career on policy and projects related to adaptation and building resilience to climate change in least developed countries, ideally at least partly through the international climate treaty process.
Quotation about Motivation, Experience, and Goals: It is my conviction that environmental and social challenges and solutions are inextricably linked. The urgency - and thrill - of living with today's global challenges is that we find ourselves at such a critical juncture. At this historic crossroads, we must find the path of sustainability, prosperity, and equality; grapple with the interconnections between society and the environment; communicate these realities persuasively; and make honest, difficult choices without the luxury of certainty or perfect foresight. Doing so will be no small challenge, but is one to which I look forward to dedicating my public service career.

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2008-2009 Gardner Fellows

The 2008-2009 Gardner Fellows are (clockwise from top left): Sasha Pippenger, Christina Hisel, Lia Marshall, Elizabeth Kersten, Debbie Warshawsky, and Olga Medina.

UC Berkeley's 2008-2009 Gardner Fellows

Sasha Pippenger graduated Summa Cum Laude in Peace and Conflict Studies with concentrations in human rights and African affairs. She transferred to Berkeley following volunteer-work on issues of HIV/AIDS treatment accessibility and sustainable development with several NGOs in West and Southern Africa. Sasha's passion for the African continent and humanitarian policy was furthered through her time working with Liberian refugees in the Bay Area and as an intern with the Enough Project in Washington, DC.

Sasha's interest in transnational policy issues also extends to environmental affairs and she spent her semester in the UC Berkeley Washington Program conducting research on the ethical dimensions of international climate policy. Sasha was also an intern with the University of New Hampshire's Office of Sustainability Programs, and most recently traveled as a youth delegate to the 13th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia. As a fellow at StartingBloc's 2008 Institute for Social Innovation, Sasha came together with student leaders and young professionals to focus on issues of social and corporate responsibility, an experience that fueled her interest in multi-sector initiatives for global change. Following efforts on behalf of a non-profit fair trade organization, Sasha and her teammates were selected as the winners of the Institute's Social Innovation Competition.

Trained as an Emergency Medical Technician, Sasha was deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and served as a disaster relief worker in the fall of 2005. She is also an experienced wilderness guide, and in the summer of 2007 she led a six-week backpacking expedition through Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

During her time at Berkeley, Sasha was a member of a student-faculty research team drafting a human rights curriculum, was active in the Obama for America campaign as a Precinct Captain at Nevada's Democratic caucuses, and ran marathons in her spare time. During her John Gardner Fellowship, Sasha will be working with the International Rescue Committee under the mentorship of Vice President Anne Richard.

Christina Hisel graduated with a sociology honors and psychology degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to Berkeley, she served on the board of directors for the Valley Community Health Center and Girl Scouts of San Francisco and founded a district-wide HIV/AIDS peer education program. At Berkeley, she continued to lead in developing public service programs and was awarded the California Alumni Leadership scholarship and Bonner AmeriCorps award for her service with the Cal Corps Public Service Center.

At the Center, Christina pioneered a campus-community initiative establishing new public service research and internship opportunities in low-resource neighborhoods, South Berkeley and Lower San-Antonio Fruitvale. Through the W.T. Chan Fellowship, she worked hand-in-hand with Chinese scholars to aid their designs of four China/Hong Kong-based non-profits. At Berkeley, Christina co-taught two academic courses to her peers, including one on international development through documentary films and an internship course integrating academic studies of local community issues with civic participation. With the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, she initiated racial reconciliation community forums, led Katrina relief teams in New Orleans, spearheaded educational events for the Darfur crisis, and advocated for the University of California's divestment from the Sudanese economy. Christina's breadth and depth of public service work attests to her strong capacity to create innovative programs and manage effective partnerships as well as her determination to address pressing social justice concerns.

Christina's research exemplifies her commitment to local and international justice. At the University of Ghana, Legon, Christina completed a full course load and authored an original research study concerning Ghanaian residents' perceptions of tourism's impact. At Cal, she wrote an honors thesis comparing the role of international donors, national government and civil society in Uganda and Botswana's HIV prevention efforts. She also researched the transnational advocacy funding, networks and strategies for the US-based Darfur movement In her spare time, Christina has developed a strong relationship with an autistic teenager as her functional life skills director and friend, and enjoys yearly travel excursions.

Christina will continue her public service leadership under the guidance of George Scharffenberger, Executive Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies.

Lia Marshall graduated with High Honors in Public Health, and her passion for learning guided her from Berkeley classrooms to Washington D.C. offices to indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Common to all experiences is her mission of making a difference in global health and improving the well-being of the least fortunate.

As President of the Cal Undergraduate Public Health Coalition, Lia empowered students to develop professionally by creating diverse opportunities to take action and gain real-world experiences. In that role, she led coalition events, supervised committee projects, and served as the representative of undergraduate students for four university committees. In 2005 Lia founded a safe drinking water initiative in Ecuador â€" the Shuar Health Project â€" which has become a model of success for development projects at Berkeley.

Under Lia's leadership, over sixty-five undergraduate and graduate students, fourteen professors, and thirty-five indigenous community leaders built twenty rainwater tanks and hosted fifty educational sessions to improve access to drinking water in ten indigenous communities. Lia's team attracted $95,000 in funding from seven grants and awards and received widespread public recognition - including being honored with a United Nations Global Citizen Award in 2007.

But Lia is not interested in impressive numbers. She is interested in real results. As she said during her speech at the 2008 International House Gala, "These experiences have taught me to overcome challenges through listening to local people, embracing humility, and learning from mistakes. Success depends on building a strong foundation of cultural respect, understanding, and trust by creating a shared vision that transforms good intentions into positive outcomes."

Lia is spearheading efforts on water and sanitation for the Global Health Working Group of the William J. Clinton Foundation and she uses her field experiences and lessons learned to assist leading companies and NGOs provide the poor with sustainable solutions. As a John Gardner Fellow, Lia will continue her public service leadership with the World Health Organization under the mentorship of WHO's Director of Water, Sanitation, and the Environment.

Stanford's 2008-2009 Gardner Fellows

Elizabeth Kersten has been passionate about global health equity since childhood, but only upon transferring to Stanford after her freshman year was she fully able to pursue her passion. She joined the newly founded nonprofit FACE AIDS, an organization with a mission to mobilize and inspire students to fight AIDS in Africa. As FACE AIDS Director of Education and later, Director of Chapter Relations, Elizabeth worked to spread awareness of the great disparity between the health and wellbeing of individuals in the developing world and that of individuals in wealthy nations.

In order to experience providing direct service in the field, Elizabeth became a FORGE Project Facilitator junior year. She spent seven months developing a maternal health education project to serve the community of Mwange Refugee Camp, Zambia. The quarter before traveling to Zambia, she studied abroad in Oxford where her tutorial in Global Health Governance provided her with a more comprehensive understanding of the international policies that influence citizen health in developing nations. She saw these policies in action while working with Mwange refugee leaders to implement her program, which continues to educate community members in maternal health and in knitting training.

As a senior, Elizabeth embarked on a thesis to study the Determinants of US Global Health Funding: A Case Study in Maternal Health. She also became a director of thinkBIG, a student-led conference on International Women's Health and Human Rights held at Stanford in February 2008. Elizabeth hopes to continue her pursuit for global health equity by gaining her MD/MPH and working to develop and implement sustainable global health interventions at both the clinical and policy level. Elizabeth will be working with Steve Kadish, Director of Global Health Programs at the Brigham and Woman's Hospital.

Olga Medina attributes her commitment to social justice and her interest in issues of inequality to her personal background. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she witnessed her parents' struggles in a new country and became motivated to help them, and others like them, fulfill the aspirations that brought them to the United States.

In her freshman year, Olga served as an interpreter for the immigration and housing clinics at Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto. She returned to her hometown of Pasadena, Texas that summer, where she volunteered as a municipal court interpreter, providing assistance to Spanish-speaking individuals on small claims cases. Wanting to encourage other undergraduates to pursue similar opportunities, Olga served as Assistant Director of the Stanford Pre-Law Society's Public Interest Law Volunteer Program for two consecutive years, establishing regular partnerships between undergraduates and nonprofit and legal services organizations. She was an Executive Board member of the Stanford Pre-Law Society, and Derechos, Stanford's Latino Pre-Law Society and was a tutor at the Haas Center in the Upward Bound Summer Program and East Palo Alto Stanford Academy.

Olga's work in local communities inspired her to merge her interests in law and public policy. Through Stanford in Washington, she interned in the NAFTA Economy and Trade Office of the Mexican Embassy. Through the Haas Center's Public Interest Law program, she was awarded the first Luis R. Fraga Summer Fellowship in 2007. Olga worked in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice, as a Civil Rights Analyst, reviewing electoral changes and assessing their impact on the voting rights of minorities. She also researched the impact of voter identification laws in local jurisdictions. Olga is committed to advancing comprehensive immigration reform and protecting immigrants' rights and will be spending her fellowship with Cecilia Muñoz, Senior Vice President of the National Council of La Raza.

Debbie Warshawsky plans to devote her life to fighting for racial, economic, and political justice in the United States. Specifically, she is passionate about alleviating urban poverty in minority-majority neighborhoods. Debbie participated in a Sophomore College program called Homelessness in America. This supplemented her experiences from the previous summer when she volunteered with the National Coalition for the Homeless and surveyed homeless individuals on the streets of Washington, DC for the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty about their treatment by the police.

The summer before her junior year, as a Chappell-Lougee scholar, Debbie had the opportunity to live in Harlem to conduct research on East Harlem public housing. This experience served as the basis for her honors thesis â€" a qualitative analysis of community organizing leadership among public housing residents in East Harlem and New York City. After returning from Harlem, Debbie participated in the Public Service Scholars Program, where she developed strategies to make her research findings useful to the residents she worked with in New York City. She also founded and served as co-executive director of Stanford STOP (Students Taking on Poverty), a student group devoted both to increasing awareness on campus about poverty in the United States and working in the local community with low-income residents to provide increased access to human capital and resources.

Debbie is interested in a community-based, non-profit placement that works to reduce urban poverty and inequality. She hopes to gain a better understanding about how to engage in effective community organizing, public-private partnerships, and community-based efforts to reduce poverty in low-income neighborhoods. Debbie will spend her Gardner Fellowship working with Mayor Cory Booker in Newark, New Jersey.

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2007-2008 Gardner Fellows

The 2007-08 Gardner Fellows are (clockwise from top left): Cammie Lee, Miriam Solis, Elisabeth Centeno, Colin Burke, Jennifer Browning, and Kyle Maurer.

 

UC Berkeley's 2007-2008 Gardner Fellows

Miriam Solis studied ethnic studies and geography at the University of California, Berkeley with an eye towards equitable community development in the United States and abroad. As a McNair Scholar, Miriam studied the impacts of urban growth on her hometown of Modesto, California, home to a large but marginalized population of Latinos. That research earned her the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies' Fredrick E. Cervantes Student Premio.

Miriam's commitment to social justice spans a range of topics, from ensuring access to higher education, maintaining the availability of services for disadvantaged communities, and empowering women of color. As campus organizer for the Bridges Multicultural Resource Center, Miriam served on regional and statewide coalitions to enhance California's commitment to educational outreach and college preparatory programs for high schools students from under-resourced communities. At the Institute for Civic Leadership at Mills College, Miriam initiated a project to visually represent the provision of services to Oakland's youth in an effort to establish alternatives to juvenile detention. She also co-taught a course for her peers at Berkeley on overlooked, subaltern perspectives within the social sciences and coordinated Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, an organization dedicated to supporting the education and dissemination of Chicana/Latina and Native American women's issues. And as a researcher with the Center for Latino Policy and the Greenlining Institute, Miriam worked to create fair public policies in the areas of housing and immigration.

During her time in Brazil as a Haas Scholar Miriam explored the connection between local and global urbanization trends. That research gave rise to her honors thesis on the gendered dimensions of workforce settlements in Rio de Janeiro. For this and other work Miriam was awarded the Carlos Muñoz, Jr. Scholar-Activist Award, the Chicana/Latina Foundation scholarship, and the California Alumni Leadership Scholarship.

During her Gardner Fellowship Miriam will be working at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development under the auspices of Commissioner Shaun Donovan.

Kyle Maurer graduated Summa Cum Laude from UC Berkeley in 2007 with a degree in political science. An accomplished classical flutist, Kyle played with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra between 2002 and 2005 and performed regularly at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and on tour at the Musikverein in Vienna, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Kyle was also a member of the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and won the University-wide concerto competition as a soloist.

Kyle's interest in American politics and classical music coincide in his arts advocacy work. As an advocate in Washington, DC with Americans for the Arts, Kyle lobbied members of Congress to cosponsor HR 1120, the Artist Deduction Bill, conducted research for the Congressional Arts Report Card, and completed quarterly reports of expenditures made by the Arts Action Fund Political Action Committee for the Federal Election Commission. Kyle also co-founded the University of California Arts Advocacy Alliance, a student lobbying organization dedicated to supporting arts education in California, and he currently serves as a Congressional District Captain for Americans for the Arts in the congressional district of Representative George Miller (D-CA).

At Berkeley, Kyle was President of the nationally-ranked Cal Mock Trial team and a recipient of outstanding attorney awards for oratorical performance at the UCLA Invitational Tournament and the Harvard Invitational Tournament. He also worked as a speechwriting and legal affairs intern for California State Senator Tom Torlakson and as a research assistant to Professors Bruce Cain and Gordon Silverstein.

During his Gardner Fellowship Kyle will be working with the Senate Democratic Policy Committee under the direction of Research Director Tim Gaffaney. Thereafter, Kyle will attend Stanford Law School as a Frank H. Buck Scholar.

Jennifer Browning graduated Phi Beta Kappa in Development Studies and French, finding a double major the perfect way to merge her interest in international development with her passion for languages. In the summer of 2006 Jennifer became involved with the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project, an HIV/AIDS research project in rural Malawi. During the fieldwork phase of the project, Jennifer managed a team of Malawi Ministry of Health counselors in the administration of HIV tests to over 300 villagers. During that time she also conducted research on community-based organizations, interviewed local NGO officials, and worked with local villagers on a one-on-one basis. Her research and experiences culminated in a senior thesis on HIV/AIDS community-based organizations, and in the summer of 2007 she traveled back to Malawi to attend a National AIDS Commission Conference where her findings were presented.

During her time in Malawi Jennifer also served as a student correspondent for the UC Berkeley NewsCenter and published four dispatches about life in rural Malawi, a series of articles that UC Berkeley featured on its homepage. She also worked with the Malawi branch of the Invest in Knowledge Initiative ― an NGO dedicated to expanding educational opportunities ― to coordinate logistics for an epidemiology training session for Malawian healthcare professionals.

During her senior year at Berkeley Jennifer revitalized and served as Co-President of Le Cercle Français, a French conversation club. In that role she built a relationship with the non-profit Alliance Française and acted in their fundraising play performed entirely in French. She also served as a peer advisor for International and Area Studies (IAS), organized a successful series of brown bag lunches with faculty and students for the IAS Student Association, participated in STAND's (Students Take Action Now Darfur) campaign for Berkeley's divestment from the Sudan, and played for the Université de Toulouse women's soccer team during her junior year abroad in Toulouse, France.

Jennifer also served as a researcher with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development â€" a branch of the National Institutes of Health â€" as well as ChildTrends, a research and public policy organization in Washington, DC. In spring 2007 she worked with Beyond Borders, a small organization working in rural Haiti, to manage the flow of ethnographic Creole interviews and design culturally-relevant packets of information on agriculture and the environment, child rights, and sexual and reproductive health.

As a Gardner Fellow Jennifer will concentrate on issues of gender and development in Africa under the guidance of Ms. Winnie Byanyima, Director of the Gender Bureau at the United Nations Development Program.

 

Stanford's 2007-2008 Gardner Fellows

Colin Burke's interest in international and domestic health policy springs from his undergraduate academic work in the Public Policy Program and a conviction that functional access to high quality health care is a fundamental human right. He plans to pursue this passion, working on high-level public health policy issues as a clinical physician.

As a participant in Stanford's Public Service Scholars Program, Colin sought to integrate his honors thesis work â€" an investigation of barriers to completion of treatment faced by inmates receiving medication for Latent Tuberculosis Infection in jail â€" with practical policy recommendations to create positive change in Santa Clara County. In doing so, he wove together quantitative and qualitative approaches, including interviews and medical record reviews of released inmates and conversations with public health and jail medical officials.

Among other service and extra-curricular activities, Colin was granted the Stanford Alumni Association's Pierce Award to found Morning Outreach at Stanford, a group devoted to inspiring student participation in a variety of public service issues through direct contact with both community organizations and leaders in the Bay Area. He also worked as a strategy researcher for FACE AIDS, a campaign to mobilize and inspire students to fight AIDS in Africa. Colin has tutored through Habla el Día and East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring, and in his junior year, he studied at the Stanford Overseas campus in Santiago, Chile.

During his Gardner Fellowship Colin will be working with the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases under the direction of Senior Program Officer Kari Stoever.

Beginning in her freshman year at Stanford, Elisabeth Centeno pursued activities that built upon her on-going dedication to serving underprivileged communities and youth. Believing service to be integral to her studies in Art History, for four years she served as volunteer, coordinator, and then president of Artspan at Stanford, administrating its four arts education program sites, all of which serve disadvantaged youth from low-income communities. Inspired by Artspan, during her sophomore year Elisabeth was a teacher with Breakthrough Collaborative in Sacramento, where she received the AmeriCorps Education Award.

Through service work and personal experience, Elisabeth became acutely aware of the many social inequities afflicting low-income, working-class families. Merging this awareness with a professional calling, Elisabeth embraced the law as a mechanism with which to fight for social justice. Accordingly, Elisabeth became involved with Derechos, Stanford's only Latino Pre-Law Society, working as an advocate for restaurant worker's rights during her junior year and as the organization's Public Interest Chair her senior year, where she led Derechos' community service efforts by identifying and arranging law-related service opportunities for group members and serving as a liaison between Derechos and the Stanford Community Law Clinic and other legal aid organizations in the Bay Area. Also, through the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School and the Children's Rights Project of Public Counsel Law Center in Los Angeles, Elisabeth has worked as a research assistant, interpreter, and legal assistant in pro-bono clinics on the issues of children's rights and immigration. In 2006, she received a Stanford Professional Women of Los Angeles Fellowship to fund her summer externship with Public Counsel. She also served for a year on Stanford in Government's State and Local Fellowships Committee.

Along with '07 fellow Colin Burke, she studied in Santiago, Chile through the Stanford Overseas Studies program in fall quarter of her junior year. These experiences, coupled with her academic training in international relations and service work promoting social justice, have fueled her interest in international human rights law and domestic civil rights issues, as well as in improving legal access within underrepresented groups and low-income communities.

As a Gardner Fellow Elisabeth will be working with Human Rights First under the guidance of Executive Director Maureen Byrnes.

As a freshman, Cammie Lee became absorbed in issues related to incarceration in the region. She co-founded Stanford Beyond Bars (SBB), a student service organization sparking dialogue and consciousness of these issues. SBB students provide direct service as well, tutoring inmates in San Francisco jails. Through her senior year, Cammie co-directed SBB, which won the Dean of Students Outstanding Achievement Award and a MTV-Youth Venture public service innovation grant, both in 2005. In the same year, Cammie received Stanford's James W. Lyons Award for Service.

Cammie utilized her service-related experiences and Haas Center advising and programs to pursue her academic interest in international relations. Having been awarded a Chappell-Lougee research and travel grant, Cammie analyzed memory reconstruction in post-Holocaust Germany during fall 2005 at Stanford in Berlin. Her senior year, she was a research intern for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission while attending Stanford in Washington. As a 2006 Sand Hill Fellow in Philanthropy, she worked at The Asia Foundation in San Francisco developing strategic marketing tools, refining donor cultivation methods and devising solicitation plans for key constituent groups.

At the Haas Center, Cammie was coordinator and financial manager for the 2007 Alternative Spring Break, managing finances and logistics for 200 students to participate in 14 service-learning experiences nation-wide. She also served for a year on the center's Public Service Student Advisory Board.

Having delved into the public, private and non-profit sectors, Cammie is fascinated with the capabilities (and challenges) of each in advancing social change. She is interested in harnessing resources and best practices from these diverse sectors to become a more effective public servant in issues related to US-Asia foreign policy and human rights.

During her Gardner Fellowship, Cammie will be working at the United Nations under the auspices of Dr. Robert Orr, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy and Planning.

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2006-2007 Gardner Fellows

The 2006-07 Gardner Fellows are (from left) Leslie Lang, Leila Makarechi, Regan Johnson, Brian Bergmark, Felipe Lopez, and Tracey Ross.

UC Berkeley's Gardner Fellows:

Leslie Lang earned a B.S. in Business Administration and a B.A. in Rhetoric with highest honors at UC Berkeley in 2006. A future Harvard Law student, Leslie hopes to combine her business and law degrees to combat poverty in underdeveloped countries. A summer 2005 visit to Sierra Leone sparked her interest in fostering international development through good governance.

During her internship at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Leslie worked in the public affairs office of a war crimes tribunal that prosecutes individuals responsible for atrocities committed during a brutal eleven-year civil war. Her experiences living in impoverished Sierra Leone inspired an interest in creating economic growth in poor countries by protecting human rights and combating corruption. In August 2006, Leslie worked with the Rural Development Institute in Beijing on land law reform in rural China.

At Berkeley, Leslie was involved in a number of domestic public interest activities. She volunteered as an interpreter for the Bar Association of San Francisco and founded the Social Welfare Language Access Program. That program offers students the opportunity to provide language services for social workers at the Alameda County Social Services Agency while also participating in a relevant learning component. Leslie was awarded the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship for her work in establishing this program. Leslie has also worked in the private sector for a consulting firm and two major healthcare corporations, was awarded the Regents' & Chancellor's Scholarship and the California Alumni Leadership Scholarship, served as chapter president for the Mortar Board Honor Society, and graduated Berkeley as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Leslie will be working on economic development projects of central importance to several African nations during her fellowship year at World Bank headquarters in Washington DC.

Leila Makarechi earned a double major in political science and social welfare at UC Berkeley which engaged her interests in international development and the protection of human rights. Leila seeks to use women's empowerment to enhance development in the Global South. During her study abroad in Barcelona, Spain, Leila worked with both the International Human Rights Cabinet of the Catalan Red Cross and Ca la Dona, a prominent women's rights organization. Leila spent August 2006 in the Dominican Republic with 180º para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo, a non-governmental organization based in Spain, where she managed a children's summer camp that addresses issues involving HIV/AIDS, environmental sustainability, and cultural awareness.

At Berkeley, Leila was involved with the YWCA Youth Mentor Program. That program matches Cal students with at-risk youth in Berkeley and Oakland and was twice awarded the Chancellor's Service Award. Leila became Program Director her senior year after spending three years as a mentor. As Director, Leila was responsible for managing the recruitment, interviewing, matching, training, and event planning for more than 200 mentors and mentees. She also connected numerous children with community resources such as tutoring, counseling, and, in the most unfortunate cases, Child Protective Services.

Leila also served as Director of Alumni Relations for the Alumni Scholars Association, conducted research for Associate Dean Ananya Roy on microfinance in Bangladesh, Lebanon, and Egypt, and graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Among other distinctions, Leila was awarded a California Alumni Leadership Scholarship and was recognized as a Leadership and Community Involvement Scholar by the Institute for the International Education of Students.

During her fellowship year, Leila will be working in the Latin America and Caribbean division of the United Nations Development Program under the auspices of Regional Director Rebeca Grynspan.

Tracey Ross studied political science and anthropology at UC Berkeley where she developed an interest in understanding educational and welfare disparities within the African American community. A politically active student, Tracey worked in the district office of Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), contributed to publications produced by the Cal Berkeley Democrats, Pop and Politics Magazine, and WireTap, and was accepted into the "Cal in the Capitol" program. While in Washington DC, Tracey worked with the Americans for Democratic Action and the office of Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) on legislation to increase the minimum wage. As Chief of Staff to the Student Body President at UC Berkeley, Tracey managed a seventy-member staff and oversaw student body projects such as UC Berkeley's first Dance Marathon and a fundraiser which drew nearly $12,000 to fight pediatric AIDS.

Tracey also served as a delegate to the College Democrats of America convention, was invited to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and was elected Vice President of the Cal Berkeley Democrats during the 2004-05 academic year. Tracey utilized her leadership position to help register over 3,000 new voters and recruit sixty volunteers (including herself) to campaign for John Kerry in closely-divided Nevada. In Nevada, Tracey worked as a precinct captain for the Kerry campaign.

As a Fellow at a youth conference organized by People for the American Way, Tracey helped create an affirmative action awareness campaign. Tracey also volunteered at Dharma Publishing where she created Buddhists texts to send to refugees from Tibet at the World Peace Summit. Tracey graduated Berkeley as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Tracey will spend her fellowship year in the Washington DC office of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) working on policy issues surrounding children, education, labor, healthcare, and voting rights.

Stanford's Gardner Fellows:

Brian Bergmark graduated from Stanford with a degree in Human Biology and a concentration in Neurobiology and Impairment. His interests in neuroscience, disability issues, and public health have taken him from neuroscience research in the lab to lobbying on Capitol Hill. Brian spent much of his time at Stanford working on advocacy around public health issues through two student groups he co-founded; the Stanford Chapter of the Student Campaign for Child Survival (SCCS), and the Children's Public Health Initiative. He has served as the Treasurer on the National Coordinating Committee of SCCS and plans to incorporate similar political activism into his work as a physician and researcher.

Brian wrote his Honors Thesis on the residence decision-making process and quality of life determinants for adults with quadriplegia. He hopes that interviews he conducted on victims of spinal cord injury quadriplegia will inform future victims in their residence decisions, and also initiate policy and service changes. Among other distinctions, Brian is a Rhodes Scholarship Finalist and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Next year Brian will be applying to medical school and will work on national disability policies as a John Gardner Fellow with the Deputy Director of the Office of Disability in the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Regan Johnson formed her interest in global health and development during high school in Minneapolis where she volunteered for a human rights organization, tutored at a high school for war refugees and immigrants, and founded a human rights journal at her own school. At college, she honed her passion to bring healthcare access to the world's poor on local, national, and international levels. During her first week of college at Yale, Regan became active in launching the nation's first student campaign dedicated to advocating for global children's health: The Student Campaign for Child Survival (SCCS). Soon, she became a chapter co-President and was elected to the national Coordinating Committee for SCCS as a Grassroots Organizer. Along with nine other students, Regan helped to orchestrate all national actions for the campaign and build SCCS into a thirty-chapter organization. After transferring to Stanford her sophomore year, she co-founded the Stanford chapter of SCCS and was re-elected to the national Coordinating Committee in the winter as Partnerships Coordinator.

Regan has complemented her work in advocacy both through research and by volunteering in Chile, Mexico, and the United States . During her junior year, she co-taught ANTHSCI 60 SI: International Children's Health and Survival at Stanford, and spent her winter in Chile studying international relations and Chilean literature. That summer, Regan traveled to Guadalajara , Mexico , to work as a clinical intern at a small clinic. Building on her interest in providing healthcare for disadvantaged communities and her work in central Mexico, Regan wrote her Honors Thesis on the access Mexican immigrants have to health services in both the U.S. and Mexico. Regan spent the summer of 2006 in India working in a clinic and plans to pursue a joint degree in medicine and public health following her Gardner Fellowship at Population Services International, an international health organization based in Washington DC.

Felipe Perez explored his broad interests through an interdisciplinary major in Human Biology with a concentration in the biological, psychological, and social aspects of human development. A published biologist, Felipe received a Firestone medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for his honors thesis analyzing the developmental mechanism of cells that allow for sight in the eye of an African cichlid fish. Despite this and other accomplishments in academia, Felipe's interests are not limited to esoteric biological functions. They also include a dedication to public service.

Felipe has actively engaged in direct service to underserved communities. To lessen the disparity in access to health care, Felipe volunteered as an interpreter at multiple health clinics to ensure that Spanish speaking patients could communicate with medical staff. He performed this work first in the Emergency Department of the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center through the Shadowing for Clinical Opportunities and Premedical Experience Medical Interpreters Program (SCOPE MIP), and later for Arbor Free Clinic, a community clinic in Menlo Park.

Through his interdisciplinary coursework, Felipe developed deep convictions about resolving educational inequity. He realized that the earlier an intervention was made in a person's life, the more successful it was likely to be. Armed with awareness and conviction, Felipe joined and eventually served as president of Barrio Assistance, a mentoring and tutoring program aimed at Spanish-speaking Chicano/Latino students whose mission is to diminish the discrepancies in quality of education in East Palo Alto .

As a John Gardner Fellow, Felipe will work with the Commissioner of Health for the city of Baltimore.

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2005-2006 Gardner Fellows

The 2005-06 Gardner Fellows are (clockwise from top left) Annie Bird, Sandy Tesch, Michael Harrison Jones, Dung Le, Katie Hill, and Rita Nguyen.

UC Berkeley's Gardner Fellows:

A transfer student to UC Berkeley, Annie Bird was active in service at Santa Monica College where she created Racial Harmony, a full-day seminar for students about racial stereotypes and institutional racism. She went on to hold student government positions as the Director of Student Services and the Student Trustee for Santa Monica College, and was selected by Governor Gray Davis to serve as a Member of the Board of Governors for the California Community Colleges. She also completed internships in Washington, DC with House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt and the Department of State.

Annie attended sessions of the UN Commission on Human Rights, and participated in related academic and cultural events, in Geneva, Switzerland in 2000 and 2004. As a 2003 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, she studied international relations and worked at an NGO dedicated to microfinance activities in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a year. In Senegal the following summer, she continued her work with microfinance through a volunteer project with Operation Crossroads Africa.

Annie served as a research apprentice at the War Crimes Studies Center at UC Berkeley, studying the challenges to international justice in East Timor. Over the summer, she continued this research, as well as taught a class on International Organizations in Switzerland. Throughout her undergraduate education, she has worked part-time and participated in community service organizations and student clubs.

The International Center for Transitional Justice, where she will spend her fellowship year, assists countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocity or human rights abuse. The Center works in societies emerging from repressive rule or armed conflict, as well as in established democracies where historical injustices or systemic abuse remain unresolved.

Michael Harrison Jones's study focused on macroeconomics as it pertains to the developing world and poverty-stricken households. He is founder and former president of Bears for UNICEF, a 100-member nonprofit organization based at UC Berkeley that educates, advocates and fundraises for the United Nations Children's Fund. He headed the association for three years and spearheaded several programs including a nationwide advocacy campaign urging the U.S. government to increase UNICEF funding. These efforts resulted in a $5 million funding increase for the 2005 Fiscal Year, and helped launch the United Nations Student Internship of the East Bay.

While at Berkeley, Michael established the Special Studies Course "UNICEF: Development in Action," sponsored through the Department of Economics, instructing 130 students every week about global economic and social underdevelopment issues and corresponding multilateral response strategies. In addition, he is founder and past president of the Omicron Delta Epsilon International Economics Honors Society at UC Berkeley, where he initiated numerous educational economics activities, including a private summit with the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

In December of 2004, Michael was the youngest person to be elected to the Board of Directors of the East Bay Chapter of the United Nations Association of the U.S.A., which advocates for increased U.S. involvement in the United Nations. He has revitalized the organization's influence with the community's college-aged demographic by initiating collaborative projects with student groups and implementing programs at UC Berkeley.

Michael graduated with honors and is a Regents' and Chancellor's Scholar, a member of Phi Beta Kappa (exclusive initiation as a Junior), a four-time California Alumni Leadership Scholar, and a Delta Chi Alumni Leadership Scholar. He is the recipient of the Edward Frank Kraft Scholarship Prize for Freshmen, among other awards.

In the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Michael's responsibilities will be in two main areas: diplomacy and negotiation with Member States, and policy coordination and implementation within the UN Secretariat.

Having volunteered with the American Red Cross for six and a half years, Sandy Tesch strives to develop the leadership potential of youth and increase the number of young people involved in nonprofits. Her Red Cross involvement includes international public health efforts such as the Measles Initiative, a global partnership to vaccinate every child in Africa against measles. Sandy has raised thousands of dollars for this cause, and has overseen national programs including the Measles Initiative National Youth Champions and a nationwide fundraising competition on college campuses. In December 2003, Sandy traveled to The Gambia in Africa on behalf of the Measles Initiative campaign to meet with Gambia Red Cross Society volunteers, public health officials, and observed a campaign that vaccinated over 700,000 children in one week.

Sandy was selected as an American Red Cross National Youth Council member in 2002 and was chosen as its chair after serving for three years. The National Youth Council sets youth policy and involvement efforts for over 300,000 youth and young adult volunteers serving the American Red Cross. The National Headquarters honored Sandy in 2003 with the Woodrow Wilson Award for Exemplary Youth Service, the highest award an American Red Cross youth volunteer can receive.

Sandy began an internship in 2003 as a blood drive account manager with the Northern California Blood Region of the American Red Cross, and she has since been coordinating blood drives at UC Berkeley and forming partnerships with other student organizations to ensure an adequate community blood supply. She served as president of American Red Cross at Cal, and has also been an HIV Test Counselor for the City of Berkeley for over three and a half years.

Sandy's placement, Youth Service America, is a resource center that partners with thousands of organizations committed to increasing the quality and quantity of volunteer opportunities for young people in America, ages 5-25, to serve locally, nationally, and globally.

Stanford's Gardner Fellows:

Before coming to Stanford, Katie Hill spent 10 months working at a local school in rural Nepal. She came away with a deeper understanding of the glaring injustices of poverty and a sense of responsibility to impact change. In the summer of 2002, she worked in a shelter for street-children in Quito, Ecuador, and she later became one of the vice-presidents of Volunteers in Latin America.

Katie raised awareness of the challenges facing the developing world through her involvement in the Stanford Association for International Development (SAID). She was active in SAID since her sophomore year and served as its treasurer as a senior. Katie spent the summer of 2003 interning at the International Planned Parenthood Federation in New York, where she drafted a youth internship program to bring interns from Latin America to work in the secretariat office.

During her semester abroad in Uganda, Katie applied her Chappell-Lougee Scholarship to researching the impact of microfinance on women's empowerment. Her study of the potential of microfinance to alleviate poverty evolved into her senior honors thesis, for which she was awarded the Firestone Medal. In the summer of 2004, she returned to Uganda to explore the recent commercialization on microfinance. Katie graduated with honors and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

In addition to her commitment to international development, Katie also played competitive rugby. As co-captain of the Stanford Women's Rugby Team, she recently led her teammates to win the 2005 USA Rugby Collegiate National Championship.

Katie's placement is The Acumen Fund, a global nonprofit venture fund that strives to build financially sustainable organizations that help improve the lives of the poor.

Through her two interdisciplinary majors, Dung Le studied social, psychological, and biological aspects of youth development. She became particularly interested in the impact of the juvenile justice system on the social development of youth, especially racial minority youth.

Formerly a pre-med at Stanford, Dung's initial interest was adolescent health policy. She volunteered in various health-related capacities, from serving as an HIV Peer Educator for middle school students to being a Buddy Volunteer at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. She thoroughly enjoyed clinical medicine, especially her roles as an emergency room medical interpreter and as a doctor's aide in Guatemala and Botswana. Her experiences eventually led her to develop an interest in the social institutions that influence adolescent development.

Dung delved more directly into social issues of youth development as her coursework and activities broadened to include the impact of legal institutions on adolescent development. She worked to make legal advice more accessible to young people while working at the Stanford Education Law Clinic. As an intern at a nonprofit for youth called Summer Search, she designed and developed an alumni internship program to provide recent program graduates with strong and continued support. In exploration of her interest in the disproportionate number of minority children in the juvenile justice system, Dung's honors thesis in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE) sought to examine the ways in which parental involvement in juvenile delinquency hearings affect case outcomes. She graduated with honors and distinction in CSRE, and was awarded the Edith and Norman Abrams Award in Human Biology for Excellence in Public Interest Advocacy.

Dung will pursue her interests at the Annie E. Casey Foundation working on the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. The Foundation fosters public policies, human service reforms and community supports to build better futures for disadvantaged children and their families in the United States .

In both her academic pursuits and extracurricular involvement, Rita Nguyen is committed to exploring why health disparities exist and how these inequalities can be eliminated. Her intellectual interests have centered around understanding non-biological determinants of health, both on an individual patient level and on a health systems level. To address the health needs of low-income immigrant populations in her hometown, Rita helped establish Pacific Free Clinic (PFC) a free student-run clinic on the east side of San Jose that opened in 2003. She worked to expand the services at PFC during her years at Stanford and in 2004, became the first undergraduate Clinic Manager in the two-decade long history of Stanford free clinics.

As a student and then teaching assistant for the service-learning course "Community Health Assessment," Rita connected Stanford students to community partners. She also co-founded and instructed "Medical Vietnamese," a course established through Student Initiated Courses to address the importance of cultural competency and qualified medical interpretation in the Vietnamese-speaking patient population.

Rita served as co-chair of the Stanford Vietnamese Student Association (SVSA) and helped found its High School Mentoring Program. As a co-coordinator for two years, she supported Vietnamese youth and encouraged them to pursue higher education. She was nominated twice for Stanford's Outstanding Asian American Undergrad Award for her "excellent leadership within Stanford and outside communities, commitment to furthering the arts, diversity, or social activism, and exemplary service to the Asian American community."

Rita's honors thesis was a combination of her intellectual interest and her desire to improve health outcomes of residents in low-income areas. Her work was awarded a Firestone Medal for "exceptional quality and value."

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2004-2005 Gardner Fellows

The 2004-05 Gardner Fellows are (clockwise from top left) Tianna Terry, Stephen Chan, Golda Philip, Anna Ferrari, Thomas DeSimone, and Brandon Simmons.

UC Berkeley's Gardner Fellows:

Thomas De Simone graduated from UC Berkeley with a major in political science and a minor in city planning. These two areas of study allowed Thomas to concentrate on his primary interest: local government. His honor's thesis focused on the newly formed system of neighborhood councils taking root in Los Angeles and analyzed the degree to which the City is working to empower those councils. Thomas has served as President of the Cal Berkeley Democrats and spent his 2003-2004 winter break traveling through western Iowa as part of the Howard Dean campaign. He is a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and the Golden Key International honor society.

Thomas has worked and interned in a variety of public sector positions. In 2002, he interned with the Mayor of Los Angeles's Housing and Business Team, working on the City's efforts to revitalize the downtown area. In 2003, he interned with the City's Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, which oversees the neighborhood councils. During both the summers of 2001 and 2002, he also worked for the educational television station in his hometown of Thousand Oaks, continuing his interest in local news programming. While working for the television station, Thomas produced several shows focusing on local public policy issues, providing the community with its only form of local television news coverage.

Thomas will spend his Fellowship year working with Deputy Mayor Renata Simril and Yolanda Chavez in the Los Angeles Mayor's Office of Economic Development.

Anna Ferrari graduated from UC Berkeley in the fall of 2003, majoring in English and Political Economy of Industrial Societies, with a concentration in economic development policy. She spent three terms as a university research apprentice, collaborating on several projects in the fields of history, literature, and political economy. She also served as communications chair of the Berkeley chapter of Mortar Board National Senior Honor Society, as a youth mentor for the Berkeley YWCA, and as a member of Alpha Phi International Fraternity. For two years, she was involved as a volunteer at the Women's Cancer Resource Center, providing legal services, referrals, and practical support to low-income cancer patients and their families.

While interning at the San Diego County Public Defender's Office, Anna developed a strong interest in criminal justice policy. Subsequently, she spent a year conducting pretrial investigations of criminal defendants for the Superior Court of Alameda County. As a policy intern at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, she produced original research on barriers to employment affecting former offenders. Following her graduation, she worked at LIFETIME, a statewide advocacy group promoting education and training opportunities for low-income parents, by assisting with client cases and policy reform efforts.

Anna will spend her Fellowship year working with Marta Neslon at the Vera Institute in New York City.

Brandon Simmons graduated with honors from the Political Science Department and also completed a minor in City and Regional Planning. Brandon's academic and public service endeavors reflect his desire to use his opportunities to improve both himself and his community. During the summers, Brandon has taken part in UC Berkeley's "Cal-in-Sacramento" and "Labor Summer" internship programs, working for State Senator Tom Torlakson and the Alameda County Central Labor Council. He also interned for Berkeley City Councilmember Linda Maio who later appointed him to Berkeley's Fair Campaign Practices Commission.

In the fall of 2002 Brandon was invited to join the executive committee of the Tom Bates for Mayor campaign. Using the skills he gained at the UC Berkeley Center for Campaign Leadership, Brandon participated in the direction of the city-wide campaign while also managing the campus campaign. After the election, Mayor Bates appointed Brandon to Berkeley's Housing Advisory Commission where he now serves as Vice-Chair. While serving on the HAC Brandon has combined his interest in urban policy with his leadership ability. He has served two terms on the Community Development Block Grant Subcommittee, each year overseeing the allocation of over $10 million. He also pushed for a revision of Berkeley's Inclusionary Ordinance as a member of the Home Ownership Assistance Subcommittee. Brandon also represented the Undergraduate students on the University's Long Range Development Plan Steering Committee. Continuously trying to learn new ways to serve his community, Brandon spent his last semester studying homelessness in Berkeley's Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program.

Brandon is a native of Berkeley, CA, and will spend his fellowship in Washington, DC, working with Douglas Besharov at the American Enterprise Institute.

Stanford's Gardner Fellows:

Stephen Chan has focused his academic and extracurricular experiences on exploring innovative strategies to foster sustainable community development. As a Haas Public Service Scholar, he shared the results of his honors research examining the effect of urban growth boundaries on housing prices with various smart growth advocacy organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Stephen received two summer fellowships that allowed him to deepen his interest in regional governance and collaboration. As an Urban Summer Fellow, performed research on local growth control policies at Greenbelt Alliance. As a Sand Hill Fellow in Philanthropy, he helped manage two nonprofit loan funds at Northern California Grantmakers. While at Stanford in Washington, he assisted with fair housing investigations at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He has also worked and campaigned for California State Assembly Member Joe Simitian.

At Stanford, Stephen advised students on service opportunities as a Haas Public Service Advising Fellow, coordinating the program his senior year. He mentored Asian youth and sang at seniors homes through the student organizations Project AIYME and Side by Side respectively. Through the Alternative Spring Break program, he designed and led a seminar and trip to expose students to the growing field of social entrepreneurship. Joining California Student Action for Change, a Campus Compact initiative to promote student civic engagement, he organized campus dialogues and events to promote awareness of salient social issues. He also served on the Haas Center's student advisory board.

Stephen will spend his Fellowship year working with Paul Grogan, President of the Boston Foundation.

Golda Philip's intellectual and extracurricular interests have focused on the issues of South Asia and its immigrant communities. Since her freshman year, Golda has been asking questions about dowry practice in southern India. Her questions led her to pursue honors work through the Feminist Studies program, conducting research in the Indian state of Kerala that analyzed women's experiences with the dowry system. On campus, Golda has been an organizing member for Saheli, Stanford's South Asian Women's Alliance. As a leader of Project Dosti for the last three years and as its current president, Golda has helped organize service learning trips to India for other Stanford undergraduates.

Golda has also been strongly involved in the immigrant needs of the Bay Area community-specifically those of abused immigrant women. As a sophomore, Golda became a certified domestic violence counselor, and began volunteering with Maitri, a local South Asian domestic violence organization. As an Edith and Norm Abrams Fellow in Public Interest Law, Golda worked as a legal intern at Maitri, focusing specifically on clients' legal cases.

Golda is originally from Glendale, California. She will spend her Fellowship year working with Gail Pendleton at the National Immigration Project in Boston.

Tianna Terry has focused her academic pursuits on exploring the influence of race and ethnicity on politics in the United States. Through her Political Science coursework, she developed a passion for fair housing and community development in low-income, minority communities. She was able to explore this interest further during her Stanford in Washington internship at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. As an intern for the Housing and Community Development Project, she assisted with preparing cases for litigation, designed outreach materials for fair housing workshops, and conducted an assessment of the quality of living of public housing residents who had been relocated from a toxic waste site. During her senior year, Tianna worked for Project Sentinel, a fair housing organization in Palo Alto, CA.

Tianna has held leadership positions in the Black Student Union, Black Pre-law Society, and the Stanford Gospel Choir. She was also a peer academic advisor and a research assistant in the Race and Social Justice Lab in the Psychology Department. During her junior year, Tianna became actively involved in the student-initiated campaign to expand the Black Community Services Center. She served as the principal drafter of the proposal submitted to the administration, helped facilitate a teach-in for undergraduate and graduate students about the campaign, and presented the proposal at a meeting with administrators. During her summers, Tianna has worked as a complaint counselor for the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri and as a legal assistant in small, private law firms in her hometown of St. Louis, MO. She is a Gates Millennium Scholar and has received the Dean's Award for Academic Excellence every quarter. She was also awarded the Condoleezza Rice Award Academic Excellence, an honor granted to the Black female junior with the highest grade point average in Political Science, Public Policy, or International Relations.

Tianna will spend her Fellowship year working with Ellen Lazar at the Fannie Mae Foundation in Washington, DC.

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2003-2004 Gardner Fellows

The 2003-04 Gardner Fellows are Ann Bordetsky, Tess Bridgeman, Amanda Kahn, Jenny Lah, Joanna Levitt, and César Moreno Pérez.

UC Berkeley's Gardner Fellows:

Ann Bordetsky graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with honors from the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Department. Her academic work and public service reflected her passion for issues of environmental health, justice, and responsibility. Her honors thesis focused on the contribution of NGO's to the growth of civil society in Russia and their prospects for creating an environmental and human health protection framework within a politically volatile climate. Born and raised in Chelyabinsk, Russia, a heavily polluted and toxic region, she bears a deep personal connection to a variety of environmental problems.

During the summers, Ann has worked as a biotech intern for Bayer Pharmaceuticals, and for the Environmental Protection Agency. At the EPA, she served as an Environmental Education Grant Evaluator for Region 9 and as an assistant Congressional Liaison in the Office of Planning and Public Affairs. As an undergraduate, Ann participated extensively in Outdoor Connection, an environmental education program for Berkeley school children. She was also involved in the Berkeley Model United Nations and the Cal Pre-Law Society. As President of the Honor Students' Society (HSS), Ann managed the 120-member organization and increased students' community involvement. She also produced original research on term limits in the California legislature.

Ann will be spending her fellowship year in Washington, D.C. at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) working with John Walke, Director of the Clean Air Program. The NRDC is a national, non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has more than 500,000 members nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

César Moreno Pérez was born and raised in Arvin, a small city in California's Central Valley. While at Berkeley, he was on the dean's list and was also recognized as a National Hispanic Scholar and National Collegiate Scholar. César's public service has primarily focused on historically disadvantaged and underprivileged communities. He has worked with RAZA Recruitment and Retention Center, the César Chavez Student Learning Center, and Gamma Zeta Alpha Fraternity Inc. in their recruitment and retention programs. He has also particularly enjoyed working at the East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC) in Oakland as an academic tutor and mentor.

During his summers, César participated in the University of California Public Policy and International Affairs Junior Summer Institute (UCPPIA) at Berkeley, as well as the Civil Rights Summer (CRS). CRS, a fellowship co-sponsored by the Harvard Civil Rights Research Project and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, is designed for student advocates dedicated to creating social change. While working for CRS, César interned at the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the Latino constituency group of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). His studies and travel abroad have taken him to Africa, Europe, and Mexico.

For his fellowship year, César is working in Washington, D.C. with Ingrid Durán, President and CEO of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI), on a housing initiative to increase the number of Latino homeowners across the nation. CHCI's mission is to develop the next generation of Latino leaders by offering educational and leadership development programs, services, and activities that promote the growth of participants as effective professionals and strong leaders.

Jenny Lah's undergraduate coursework focused on international development, gender relations, and China's economic reforms. Her senior history thesis examined a women's magazine in China before and after the Cultural Revolution. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Alpha Theta, a history honors society. As a student researcher, she worked at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C. with a scholar who focused on Chinese economic reforms and privatization, and also for the Emma Goldman Papers Project at UC Berkeley.

Outside of academics, Jenny has been involved on campus and in the community with the advancement of the status of women. She has served as president of Prytanean Women's Honor Society where she helped increase membership, plan a rally for women's athletics, and increase service involvement. She has also volunteered as a tutor for English in Action and for Women in Community Service, an organization that endeavors to reduce the number of women and youth living in poverty by promoting self-reliance and economic independence. Jenny assisted in planning a workshop, Global Perspectives on Women and Disability, for the Third Annual Women's Rights Conference at UC Berkeley. For two years, she served as a Resident Assistant, where she planned programs and helped new students transition to campus.

Jenny will be working at UNIFEM, United Nations Development Fund for Women, in New York City. Her mentor is Joanne Sandler, Deputy Director of Programs. UNIFEM is the women's fund at the United Nations. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programs and strategies that promote women's human rights, political participation and economic security. Within the UN system, UNIFEM promotes gender equality and links women's issues and concerns to national, regional and global agendas by fostering collaboration and providing technical expertise on gender mainstreaming and women's empowerment strategies.

Stanford's Gardner Fellows:

For the past five years, Tess Bridgeman has conducted health, development, and agricultural extension programs in Paraguay and Mexico. Two years ago, she co-founded the non-profit organization Puente a la Salud Comunitaria (Bridge to Community Health) in Oaxaca, Mexico. Puente aims to foster community development by enabling women to act as local health advocates and by establishing relationships among and between communities, grassroots organizations, and institutions. Also in Oaxaca, Tess conducted research on knowledge and use of folic acid, the results of which will be published and used by Oaxaca's Secretariat of Health. After volunteering at Planned Parenthood from ages 12 through 18, Tess was a founding member of Stanford Students for Choice during her freshman year at Stanford and has been its president for the past two years. In 2003, she was named one of the "Top 30 Under 30" reproductive rights activists by Choice USA.

Tess has designed, coordinated and guest lectured in two Stanford courses: "The Health and Environmental Effects of U.S. Foreign Policy" (Spring 2002) and "Post-field Seminar for Students in International Health and Development" (Fall 2002). She was awarded a Truman Scholarship in 2002, and a Deans' Award for Academic Accomplishment and a James W. Lyons Award upon graduation. She is also a Stanford University President's Scholar, a Donald A. Strauss Scholar, a Coca-Cola Scholar, twice a Haas Summer Fellow, and a Latin American Studies Summer Research Fellow.

Tess is from Santa Cruz, California. She will spend her fellowship year in Washington, D.C. at the World Bank Inspection Panel where her mentor is Edith Brown Weiss, WBIP Chair. The World Bank Inspection Panel, is "a three-member panel that receives and investigates Requests for Inspection from people directly affected by World Bank projects."

Raised in Philadelphia, Amanda Kahn came to Stanford with a deep interest in urban policy reform efforts, and has focused her academic and extracurricular pursuits on the exploration of different methods to achieve sustainable change at the local level.

Through her coursework in Urban Studies, Amanda developed an interest in social entrepreneurship. As a founding member and president of FUSION, The Future Social Innovators Network, she led a small consulting-style partnership with a local nonprofit, and helped organize a campus-wide conference on "Creating Social Change in the 21st Century." She also worked on a business plan to address local affordable housing constraints that received the top undergraduate prize in the Stanford Social Entrepreneurs Challenge.

Amanda has been the recipient of two summer fellowships in public service, which allowed her to explore her interests in urban governance and community development. As an Urban Summer Fellow, she worked in Philadelphia for the City Council president on the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. As a Sand Hill Fellow in Philanthropy, Amanda worked with Social Venture Partners and the San Francisco Foundation. During her quarter at Stanford in Washington, Amanda worked at the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy.

Amanda's placement is with Gloria Young, Clerk of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The Clerk of the Board of Supervisors serves the Board by providing leadership and administrative support, implementing Board policies, and providing quality services to the people of the City and County of San Francisco.

Joanna Levitt believes strongly in a human approach to environmental preservation. She was able to explore this passion through her major in Human Biology, focusing on International Conservation and Development, and her minor in Latin American Studies. She has spent significant time in Latin America, including several months in the Peruvian Amazon conducting research on community-based development initiatives. She has also worked and studied in Costa Rica, Cuba and El Salvador. While at Stanford in Washington, she interned with the World Bank doing research for the Latin America and Caribbean Environmental Department.

Outside of the classroom, Joanna worked for four years as a tutor and then a tutor coordinator of East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring, a local non-profit education organization that serves middle and high school students. During her senior year, she was active with the Stanford Women's Center in promoting awareness about sexual violence, including organizing and leading educational panels on issues of domestic violence and sexual assault and performing in The Vagina Monologues. The latter was instrumental in shaping her current feminist perspective on international development and environment.

Joanna is from Stanford, California. During her fellowship year, she will be working with Anne Perault, Senior Attorney, at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) in Washington, D.C. CIEL is a public interest, not-for-profit environmental law firm founded in 1989 to strengthen international and comparative environmental law and policy around the world. The firm provides a full range of environmental legal services in both international and comparative national law, including policy research and publication, advice and advocacy, education and training, and institution building.

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2002-2003 Gardner Fellows

The 2002-03 Gardner Fellows are Heidi Boas, Rachel Goldbrenner, Talya Horowitz, Christopher Maloney, Chanthip Phongkhamsavath, and Michael Umpierre.

UC Berkeley's Gardner Fellows:

Talya (Tali) Horowitz (University of California, Berkeley, '02) graduated Phi Beta Kappa in Ethnic Studies. Throughout her career at Berkeley she has worked in a variety of volunteer and public service capacities, primarily centering on disadvantaged and/or underserved populations. Tali has worked for the University's Disabled Students Program where she was a reader and tutor for a disabled student with cerebral palsy. She was a tutor through an AmeriCorps program, for a sixth grade student with learning disabilities. During Tali's junior abroad in Ghana, West Africa, where she studied at the University of Legon, she volunteered at an orphanage, organizing activities and assisting with day-to-day group living. Tali has also been a caseworker for the Berkeley Suitcase Clinic where she provided health, legal and referral services to low-income and homeless people, and trained other caseworkers.

For the past year and a half, Tali has interned at the Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC) in their domestic violence section. Her work at the LSPC includes expanding the efforts of the volunteer-based organization the California Coalition for Battered Woman in Prison (CCBWP), and organizing the April event Our Voices Within. This event involved sharing the writing and artwork of the incarcerated survivors of domestic violence. In her senior year at Berkeley, Tali took short fiction writing, drama, and installation art classes. She also taught first and second graders, frequently using acting and art to convey the instructional material and encourage artistic self-expression. Through these experiences, Tali has developed new appreciation for the power of art (writing, theatre, visual arts) to inform and to give voice to the voiceless on an aggregate level, as well as to increase the individual's sense of competence, confidence, and self-awareness. Tali is interested in spending her Gardner Fellowship in an organization dedicated to creating and developing art programs for children and youth.

Rachel Goldbrenner will be graduating in May 2002 with a major in political science and a minor in English. Rachel's course load at Berkeley has reflected her interest in human rights, the ethics of politics and international relations, and constitutional law. She is writing a Political Science honors thesis entitled, "Framing a Judicial Response to Terrorism: Legal Alternatives After September 11," and is interested in broader issues of international criminal justice and human rights law. Rachel has earned many academic honors at Berkeley, including Phi Beta Kappa, UC Berkeley Dean's Honors List, and the Edward Frank Kraft scholarship for academic excellence in the first year of college. She has contributed research and assistance to the publication of the quarterly academic journal "Ethics & International Affairs" and the human rights publication "Human Rights Dialogue," both produced by the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs; and to the final report of the California Abortion Access Project entitled "Holes in the Safety Net: the Lack of Abortion Access in California Hospitals." In addition, Rachel has worked for Bruce Cain, Danforth Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute for Governmental Studies, researching and contributing to numerous publications and conference papers.

Outside of the classroom, Rachel has been involved in a wide range of non-profit research and advocacy positions, working on issues such as women's health rights, improving education in juvenile detention facilities, and the role of ethics in international policy. Both her extensive study and travel in China and Southeast Asia and her summer internship at the Carnegie Council increased her desire to work in the area of international human rights and international criminal justice. The terrorist attacks of September 11 have influenced her interest in finding a just and effective response to that tragic event, while still ensuring the constitutional rights and broader human rights of all involved. As a Gardner Fellow, she would like to pursue these interests by seeking placement at a non-profit organization devoted to human rights, international law and the International Criminal Court, and specifically to some aspect of the world's ongoing response to September 11.

Chanthip Phongkhamsavath graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in December 2001 with a major in Sociology and a minor in Education. As a freshman she took a leadership role in REACH, the Asian and Pacific Islander Recruitment and Retention center committed to promoting higher education to recent immigrant and urban youth as a means for economic and community development. With REACH, she coordinated outreach programs for high school youth throughout Northern and Southern California. Through the Democratic Education for Cal program, Chanthip facilitated an interactive class, incorporating volunteer service into the discussions of Asian Pacific Islander Youth Issues. In her Junior year, Chanthip worked as a research assistant, and later youth counselor, with Asians and Pacific Islanders for Reproductive Health in developing, coordinating, and implementing summer leadership trainings for Asian American women in Oakland and Richmond. As Co-Founder of the Southeast Asian Student Coalition, she organized community roundtables with key stakeholders to identify policy issues impacting Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese students. Currently, Chanthip is developing a Summer Institute focused on promoting cultural understanding and leadership of Southeast Asian high school youth.

Furthering Chanthip's dedication to educational equity and multicultural collaboration, she became the Programs Director for bridges the Multicultural Recruitment and Retention Center. As director, she advocated and developed statewide outreach efforts to increase the number of underrepresented and disadvantaged students in higher education. Throughout her career at UC Berkeley she mentored and tutored local junior high and high school students in Project Collegebound, at Berkeley High School, and with the East Bay Asian Youth Center of Oakland.

In the summer of 2001, Chanthip was selected to participate in the UC Public Policy and International Affairs Summer Institute. She completed rigorous coursework in economics, statistics, and policy analysis. Chanthips' other extracurricular activities have included campaign organizing for CAL Students for Equal Rights and a Valid Education, and serving as a board member of the Canterbury Episcopal Ministry. Chanthip plans to use the Gardner Fellowship in an organization combining her dedication to educational and economic equity with her interests in public policy.

Stanford's Gardner Fellows:

Heidi Boas, a senior from Atlanta, Georgia, will graduate in June of 2002 with a BA in Feminist Studies and a concentration in women's rights as human rights. Heidi has been active in the women's activism community on campus since her sophomore year, volunteering with the Stanford Women's Center and the Stanford Self-Defense Program, and serving most recently as the student representative to the Feminist Studies Program Committee. In the fall of this year, she had the honor of working with Anne Firth-Murray, founder of The Global Fund for Women, as a teaching assistant for a Human Biology course in International Women's Health.

As a recipient of the Gardner fellowship, Heidi hopes to work next year with an organization promoting the rights of refugee women. Ever since hosting a Bosnian refugee in her Atlanta home during high school, Heidi has sought to understand and explore the struggles of refugee women worldwide. Her passion for advocating for refugee rights led to an internship with The Feminist Majority Foundation during the summer of 2000, where she worked intensively on a campaign to educate the American public about the Taliban's abuse of Afghan women. Inspired by her work at The Feminist Majority, Heidi designed a research project to explore the status of refugee women's health in Kenya and traveled to Africa this past summer, sponsored by an undergraduate research grant from Stanford. Since returning from Kenya, she has given several speeches at Stanford and in her hometown about her work with refugee women, and raised money to sponsor the college education of a Sudanese refugee friend she met in Kenya. Heidi is currently compiling her research into a senior honors thesis and was recently honored with a Dean's Award for Academic Accomplishment. She looks forward with great anticipation to the coming year and the opportunity to work on public service issues she feels passionate about.

A native of New York, now transplanted to Hawai'i, Chris Maloney '02 majored in Economics and African and African-American Studies with a research focus on economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. His thesis was concerned with the dynamics of the split labor market in apartheid South Africa. Proficient in Swahili, his interest in Africa stems from years of work on the continent including two summers in Botswana helping build schools, a summer studying political economics at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Transkei, a summer spent completing a marketing review of ApproTEC, one of the foremost appropriate technology non-profits in East Africa, and a summer completing independent research as a Beagle II Fellow in southern Africa â€" where he examined the intersection of popular conceptions of economic growth, government policy, and economic theory.

At Stanford, Chris was the co-founder of the Stanford Africa Forum, an organization geared at bringing together faculty, undergraduates, and graduates interested in Africa from across all disciplines. He was also active on the international fellowships board of Stanford in Government in charge of posts in Africa and India, and was also active within the Stanford Economics Association. He was a part of the Stanford in Washington program in Spring 2001 and interned with the chief economist of the African Economic and Social Policy sector of the World Bank, where he completed a substantial report on market access reform in Africa and the OECD in light of the new free trade agreements.

An avid traveler, Chris hopes to bridge his deep interest in economic and development policy with his passion for international development while in Washington as a Gardner Fellow. He firmly believes in the potential of private investment in catalyzing development and hopes to be placed with an organization that deals with American policy and practice within this arena.

Michael Umpierre will graduate from Stanford in June 2002 with a degree in Public Policy. During his time at Stanford Michael has used academics and extracurriculars to develop himself as a youth advocate. For the past five years, he has worked for the Quest Scholars Program â€" an on-campus summer enrichment program for underserved high school students â€" most recently as the Director. He has also interned at the Children and Youth Policy Division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and worked as an assistant teacher at Bing Nursery School.

Last year Michael took a sabbatical from Stanford to pursue his passion for youth law and advocacy. He worked at two non-profit law offices that represent abused, neglected, and poor children: Legal Services for Children and the National Center for Youth Law, both in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since returning to Stanford, Michael has worked on an honors thesis focusing on California's unlawful practice of detaining youth in juvenile halls when they have been adjudicated to non-secure placements. He also works as the Program Coordinator for the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center (PJDC) -- an ABA-sponsored organization that assists juvenile defenders in California and Hawaii. With the PJDC, Michael has organized two annual statewide conferences on juvenile detention and placement delay issues.

Born and raised in Burbank, California, Michael is proud of his Cuban heritage. Under the guidance of the Gardner Fellowship, Michael hopes to work for a youth policy organization that focuses on juvenile justice, child welfare, and education issues.

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2001-2002 Gardner Fellows

The 2001-02 Gardner Fellows are Priscilla Aguirre, Jennie Berry, Alicia Johnson, Dana Kaplan, and Kori Kelley.

UC Berkeley's Gardner Fellows:

From Daly City, California, Priscilla Aguirre '01 graduated from UC Berkeley in American Studies with a minor in Public Policy. Her senior thesis analyzed mortgage lending and real estate discrimination and proposed recommendations for preventing racial discrimination in the housing market. Priscilla also expanded her research by looking at the legislative histories of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the Community Reinvestment Act to better understand laws related to housing discrimination. While an undergraduate, Priscilla worked as a legal intern in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office where she assisted with criminal cases, and at the Latino Issues Forum, a non-profit organization in San Francisco, where she analyzed energy bills that affected low-income communities in California. In January of 2000, she gave a brief presentation to the California Public Utilities Commission on Energy Bill No. 1893 that set out to strengthen the relationship between consumers, community-based organizations and the public utilities. In the summer of 2000, Priscilla was selected as a Public Policy and International Affairs Junior Institute Fellow at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy where she will begin the Masters program in 2002. She did statistical and economic analysis and wrote policy memorandums on issues such as welfare aid, income credit, and rent control. During her senior year, Priscilla served as a tutor and mentor to students in the East Bay Asian Youth Center R.I.S.E program at Berkeley High School. Passionate about housing discrimination and educational policy issues, Priscilla would like to take a leading role in both the non-profit sector and eventually as a California State Senator. As a John Gardner Fellow, she works at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, California.

Dana Kaplan '01 graduated from UC Berkeley in History with a minor in Ethnic Studies. As a freshman, she was campus volunteer coordinator for the Equal Educational Opportunity Initiative, an attempt to place affirmative action in education on the California ballot. Dana also did community organizing around issues of campus diversity, bilingual education and the campaign to end sweatshop production of UC merchandise. In her sophomore year, she participated in the successful student campaign to defend funding of the Ethnic Studies Department, create a Multicultural Student Center and develop a Race and Gender Resource Center. She dedicated time to low income youth in the Bay Area, working initially as a volunteer tutor for the STEP Tutorial Program and as a writing instructor for Upward Bound. During her junior year, Dana spent a semester in Cuba studying its model of economic development in multiracial communities and assisting with a weekly seminar program in Havana that allowed Cuban and American youth to discuss contemporary social and political issues.

Currently, Dana's primary interest is reform of the American criminal justice system. She worked at the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2000, where she co-authored and researched a report entitled "Texas Tough: An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in the Lone Star State." She also has been the facilitator of a men's support group at the San Francisco County Jail. Dana is originally from New York City. She returns there to spend her fellowship year with the Prison Moratorium Project, founded in 1995 to educate the public about criminal justice issues and to give youth and communities a greater voice in criminal justice debates. Her mentor is Kate Rhee, Director of the organization.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Kori Kelley '01 graduated with high honors from UC Berkeley. She majored in Political Science with a minor in African American Studies. Kori maintained a commitment to research and service in low-income and minority communities throughout her undergraduate years. As a McNair Scholar, she studied leadership conflict within the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), focusing on the emerging role of black female welfare recipients on the organization's national staff. Her senior thesis compared the national welfare rights movement of the 1960's and 70's to efforts by contemporary Bay Area welfare rights advocates to organize around the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. In 1999, Kori interned at the District Office of Congresswoman Barbara Lee in Oakland and in the Section of Dispute Resolution at the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C. While on exchange at Howard University, Washington, D.C., she worked as a research assistant at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Kori also worked on digital divide issues in west Oakland as a Neighborhood Improvement Initiative Intern for the Institute of Urban and Regional Development and tutored in elementary school programs in Berkeley, Oakland, and Washington, D.C. Kori's Gardner Fellowship placement is with DC Agenda, a nonprofit, civic organization that supports community leadership to address the challenges and opportunities facing the District of Columbia. Carrie Thornhill, Vice President of Community Outreach, is her mentor. Kori is originally from Pittsburg, California.

Stanford's Gardner Fellows:

During her four years at Stanford, Jennie Berry '01 pursued a self-designed major in Information Economics and Policy and a co-terminal Masters in Sociology with an Organizational Studies concentration. She stayed busy outside the classroom, too, in a variety of leadership roles. As a sophomore, she was Senior News Editor of The Stanford Daily, and in her junior and senior year, she was administrative coordinator (and co-founder) of the Stanford Voter Project. Most recently, as a senior, Jennie served as Vice Chair for operations and strategic planning of Stanford in Government. She is also familiar with legislative and political processes, having worked for a summer as a congressional intern and a research assistant in Washington, D.C. Jennie has worked extensively in the media, writing stories for Stanford Magazine and producing news shows for an ABC affiliate in her home town of Bowling Green, Kentucky. While at Stanford, her focus shifted from reporting the news to policymaking that affects the news media. Jennie's work in traditional news organizations sparked an interest in how government and media organizations construct a policy environment for journalists. More recently, her experience in the Summer Management Program at telecommunications conglomerate SBC Communications familiarized her with information technology policies yet to come. Jennie is particularly interested now in the evolving field of telecommunications regulation. She will be spending her Fellowship at the FCC offices in Washington, D.C.

From White Plains, New York, Alicia Johnson '01 graduated from Stanford in Public Policy, completing her senior thesis through the Stanford University School of Education Honors Program. Before attending college, her work with children in low-income settings and the resulting frustration of dealing with the public school system led to an interest in policy as a vehicle for supporting more far-reaching change in the lives of "her kids." During her freshman year, Alicia joined Stanford Advocates for Children (SAC), the campus's only student group dedicated to youth advocacy and policy issues; she went on to become co-director of SAC when she was a senior. Alicia also explored her policy interests through a research position with Stanford's Center for Research on Teaching in her sophomore and junior year. She worked as a Government Scholar with the New York City Administration for Children's Services during the summer of 1999 and as an Eben Tisdale Public Policy Fellow with Agilent Technologies in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2000. Alicia balanced her policy interests and work with direct service to youth. In 2000, she received the Donald A. Strauss Scholarship in Public Service, part of which she used to finance the GIRLS (Growth, Integrity, Respect, Learning and Self- Esteem) Program for middle school girls in the Ravenswood School District run through the East Palo Alto Girls Club. Additionally, she tutored elementary school students with Ravenswood Reads and worked with children in other volunteer capacities. Alicia's placement is with the Institute for Youth, Education & Families, established as part of the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C, to implement an expanded program of research, technical assistance and service to local governments. Clifford Johnson, Executive Director, serves as her mentor.

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2000-2001 Gardner Fellows

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The 2000-2001 Gardner Fellows from U.C. Berkeley are Romi Bhatia, Catherine Fernandez, and Charlotte Lee. The new Gardner Fellows from Stanford University are J. Azania Andrews, Oeindrila Dube, and Antonia Welch.

UC Berkeley's Gardner Fellows:

Romi Bhatia will be graduating from U.C. Berkeley in summer 2000 with a bachelor's degree in Political Economy of Industrial Societies (PEIS). He is completing his senior thesis on the topic of microenterprise programs as a strategy for poverty alleviation in the United States. During the spring of his junior year, Romi was selected as a Public Policy and International Affairs Fellow at the Daniel Evans School for Public Affairs at the University of Washington. As a PPIA fellow, he spent the summer taking a rigorous schedule of statistics, economics, and policy analysis classes. Outside the classroom, Romi has undertaken a host of leadership roles and volunteer service activities. As Co-Chair of the Sikh Students Association, he initiated a College Planning Day to assist high school students prepare for college and organized Big Brother/Big Sister programs for Sikh youth in neighboring cities. During fall semester 1999, Romi worked as an intern for the Berkeley Alliance, where he implemented a Job Shadow Program for approximately 140 teachers/staff at Berkeley High School. Throughout the course of his public service, Romi's commitment to working on issues of educational reform and in low-income communities has remained steadfast. As a Gardner Fellow, Romi seeks to further his professional development by working at an organization that focuses on implementing microenterprise programs in low-income communities in the United States.

Catherine (Kay) Fernandez graduated from U.C. Berkeley in December 1999 with a major in Social Welfare and a minor in Business Administration. From the beginning of her college experience, Kay has been committed to issues of educational equality, youth empowerment, and community development. She served on the Academic Senate Committee on Admissions and Enrollment, played a leadership role in the Bridges Multicultural Recruitment and Retention Center, and mentored high school students from diverse backgrounds in Project Pull Academy, a college preparatory program for disadvantaged youth. As a researcher and community organizer, she has worked on projects concerning affirmative action and educational reform with several organizations, including the Greenlining Institute, the Oakland Unified School District, and the Institute for the Study of Social Change. In the summer of 1999, Kay was selected as a Public Policy and International Affairs Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. At Princeton, she honed her research skills, taking classes in statistics, economics, and public policy analysis. Currently, she holds the position of Research Analyst on Youth Initiatives at Everett Middle School in San Francisco and also serves as a Youth Development Coordinator for Oakland Unified School District. For her Gardner Fellowship, Kay seeks a placement with an organization or governmental agency that deals with educational reform in urban areas.

Charlotte Lee will be graduating in Spring 2000 as a double major in Political Economy of Industrial Societies and Asian Studies, with an emphasis on Chinese history. As a freshman, she took a leadership position with the Inspire Youth Mentorship Program, a student group that matches university students with Oakland high school students. During her third year, she studied abroad at Beijing University and interned with the United States Information Technology Office while taking time to travel extensively throughout China, teach English to a group of government satellite engineers, and organize a student clothes drive. After returning to UC Berkeley, Charlotte joined Professor Beth Simmons' international law compliance research project. Currently, she remains involved with Inspire and also tutors elementary school students for Oakland Asian Students Educational Services. Past extracurricular activities include volunteering to file income tax returns for Oakland Chinatown residents and representing undergraduate students on the International and Area Studies dean search committee. Last summer, Charlotte interned at the Smithsonian Institution, an experience that piqued her interest in museum studies, material history, exhibit development, and issues of representation. For her Gardner Fellowship, Charlotte will pursue a placement site related to museum policy.

Stanford's Gardner Fellows:

Jewel Azania Andrews '00 of Miami, Florida, is majoring in Urban Studies with a concentration in community organizations. During her time at Stanford Azania has served in several leadership roles including co-director of the Stanford Community Carnival, Peer Advisor at the Haas Center, and this year as Student Coordinator for the Center's new Urban Fellowships/Internships program. Each of these experiences has reaffirmed Azania'a commitment to service and to educating other students about ways to incorporate service into their lives. Through several service-learning courses and an internship at the National Urban League Headquarters in New York, Azania developed a strong interest in non-profit organizations, particularly those that serve the African-American community. Having worked in small and large non-profits, Azania became very frustrated at the lack of support for organizational structure and financial independence among these organizations. She plans to use the Gardner Fellowship to explore the field of social entrepreneurship in hopes that it will provide insights into ways that relationships between service-providers and grantmaking organizations can use business models to create an environment where non-profits are not only effectively serving their clients but are also able to develop a long term plan for financial independence and staff stability.

Oeindrila Dubé '00, of Syracuse, New York, is completing a degree in Public Policy, with a focus on development studies. Through her affiliation with economic justice organizations, and as a founder and coordinator of the National Student Labor Alliance, Oeindrila has been dedicated to workers' rights and other issues that affect low-income communities. She has worked on health care policy as an intern at the Office of Management and Budget, and on welfare reform as a Congressional intern. Both these experiences have given her insight into the role of government in poverty alleviation and social service provision. Research for her honors thesis, which assesses the impact of international trade on unionism in the United States, combines her international and domestic policy interests. Oeindrila will use the Gardner fellowship to work at an organization that focuses on development and trade issues, as a part of her continued commitment to understanding international economic integration and its global effects.

Antonia Welch will be graduating from Stanford University in June 2000 with a degree in Latin American Studies with a focus on international health. Her secondary major is Spanish and Portuguese. Prior to coming to Stanford, Antonia volunteered as a Spanish-speaking medical interpreter at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston. She also lived in Bogotá, Colombia, where she volunteered in pediatric hospice before beginning her Stanford career in the fall of 1996. During her studies at Stanford, Antonia managed a free, urgent-care clinic for residents of East Palo Alto for three years, training Stanford students as medical interpreters and health advocates. She held a Haas Center for Public Service Summer Fellowship after her sophomore year in order to develop a bilingual health education program. Antonia's senior thesis focused on reproductive health issues for at-risk youth in Quito, Ecuador. She hopes to use her Gardner Fellowship in an organization dedicated to health research and advocacy at the international level, particularly in Latin America and among Latin American immigrant issues in the United States.

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1999-2000 Gardner Fellows

The 1999-2000 Gardner fellows from U.C. Berkeley are Grant Harris, Anupama Menon, Elizabeth Pianca, Smriti Rana, and Carlos Romo, and Anthony Solana, Jr.

UC Berkeley's Gardner Fellows:

Grant Harris graduated from U.C. Berkeley in December 1998 with a bachelor's degree with honors in Political Science, focusing on international relations and women's studies. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, he graduated with Highest Honors and a 3.93 grade point average. Harris was one of only eighty-eight national finalists for the Rhodes Scholarship. In nonacademic work at Berkeley, he formed a new student political party and was elected Student Body President of Berkeley's 30,000 students during his sophomore year. Harris also studied in the Universidad Complutense in Madrid for a year, spent a summer teaching English to ten-year-old Ethiopian immigrants in Israel, and has spent months traveling throughout Western and Eastern Europe, Israel and other countries. His interest in international areas of conflict has led him to travel through Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, the West Bank and Bosnia. These experiences helped shape his desire to become a diplomat and enter the field of conflict resolution. As a Gardner Fellow, Grant is working on African affairs in the office of Richard Holbrooke, United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

Smriti Rana graduated from U.C. Berkeley in May 1999 with a degree in Development Studies, with a focus on development in Latin America. During her junior year, she studied abroad in a unique program studying social changes first hand in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador. In addition to her academic pursuits, Rana acted on campus through Students Organizing for Justice in the Americas and was a founding member of the University Coalition Against Sweatshops. She has worked on immigrant rights, labor rights, and initiated a campaign against the use of sweatshops in making university apparel. This campaign resulted in the strengthening of the University's labor standards regarding its licensed apparel products, as well as the creation of an advisory board with student representation to work on the implementation and monitoring of those standards. Rana has also interned at immigrants' rights organizations, working with immigrants on issues of work permits, legalization issues and INS issues. She also served as an after-school tutor and as a mentor to low-income students of color. As a Gardner Fellow, Smriti is working at Public Citizen, a group that is concerned with unfair labor practices in developing countries.

Anthony Solana, Jr. graduated in May 1999 from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in History, with honors, and Political Science. He also participated in the Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship Program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University during the summer of 1998. On the U.C. Berkeley campus, Solana served in many roles in the student Senate, was the Alumni Chairperson for Hermanos Unidos, and received numerous awards from the University for leadership and community involvement. As a progressive student leader, Solana committed himself primarily to protecting affirmative action and to increasing the University's minority recruitment efforts. In the Oakland community, he was the primary historian for a community-based legal aid center and researched how community-based organizations can substantively help indigent communities. Solana has entensive experience in law enforcement and criminal justice policy analysis, at the UC Police Deparment, at the Institute for Law and Policy Planning, and as an assistant to a court-appointed special master in the Coleman case. Anthony's placement as a Gardner Fellow is at Los Angeles Councilman Nick Pacheco's office.

Stanford's Gardner Fellows:

Anupama Menon '99 of North Hills, CA, majored in Anthropology and minored in Latin American Studies. Through internships at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva and at the Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos in Santiago, Anu came to realize that her goal is to work in the field of human rights. Anu is spending her ten months as a Gardner Fellow at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

An Urban Studies major, Elizabeth Pianca '99 of Palo Alto, CA, served in several leadership capacities in Stanford In Government, rising her senior year to become Chair of SIG. Service-learning courses gave Elizabeth the opportunity to pursue internships with the City of East Palo Alto sophomore year and with Joint Venture Silicon Valley junior year, re-affirming her lifelong commitment to service at the local and regional level. Elizabeth's placement as a Gardner Fellow is at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, examining issues of urban planning and community development at the state and the national level.

Carlos Romo '99 of Austin, Texas, completed a joint degree in Public Policy and International Relations at Stanford University. Frustrated by the inequitable access to information that handicaps low income communities seeking to solve systemic problems, Carlos interned last summer at The Society for International Development in Washington, D.C. There, his honors thesis research interest in the negative impacts of European fiscal federalism on poorer nations converged with new, personal, insights into the nature of urban problems in the U.S. As a Gardner Fellow, Carlos is working at the Enterprise Foundation on issues of how to close the gap between low-income and high-income communities.

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