Hunter's 2015 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows

On April 14, The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants, announced their 2015 recipients. The thirty recipients, called "Fellows", were selected for their potential to make significant contributions to US society, culture, or their academic field, and were selected from a pool of 1,200 applicants. Three Hunter College students, including two Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College students, were awarded fellowships.

Amal Elbakhar, BA '11
Award to support work toward a JD at Harvard Law School

Amal has had one foot rooted in Arab immigrant culture and the other in the classroom of social justice since her family immigrated to New York City from Morocco when she was nine years old. Overcoming cultural barriers, Amal was the first in her family to graduate from both high school and college. Soon she will be the first to obtain a graduate degree.

As a student at Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College, Amal dedicated her free time to the Emergency Department at Bellevue Hospital, challenging her family’s understanding of how she should prioritize her time. Amal also worked at the Center for Reproductive Rights, an organization with incongruous views with those of her own conservative upbringing. Unafraid of the differences, Amal pursued the similarities in her religious beliefs and emerging consciousness of gender equality through her academic schoolwork. She wrote an award-winning honors thesis on Iran’s healthcare laws for women, and a second thesis on the current legal status of reproductive rights in the United States.

Upon graduating from college, Amal was awarded the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs, an experiential leadership-training program that prepares individuals for effective and ethical leadership in the public affairs arena.

As a student and campus leader at Harvard Law School, Amal continues to focus on women’s issues. As a future lawyer-advocate, she hopes to represent individuals facing adversities while promoting the principles of civil rights that underlie our social infrastructure.

Evgeniya Kim, BA '10
Award to support work toward an MBA at the Yale School of Management

Evgeniya’s heritage lies in four generations of border crossings. Born in what is now North Korea, Evgeniya’s ancestors moved to Russia’s Far East in search of a better life. Falling victim to Stalin’s repression, they were exiled to Central Asia and settled in Uzbekistan, where they faced marginalization. Evgeniya, fourteen at the time, and her family, fled Uzbekistan for the United States in 2002, where they fell victim to a visa scam and were forced to spend eight months in a family shelter in Leesport, Pennsylvania before receiving asylum.

Evgeniya was determined to succeed academically and convinced a principal of a school an hour and a half away from her home to admit her into their gifted program. Socially, she felt her Korean face and Russian culture questioned by her classmates, but on the tennis court, she saw the pressures of her life dissipate. She had represented Uzbekistan as a member of the national junior tennis team, and was able to use those skills in the United States to earn money for family.

Aware of her unique background, Evgeniya was always interested in the interplay of culture, politics, and social change. As a student at Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College in New York City, she pursued international relations and interned at the Open Society Foundations, helping to address the very human rights issues that her family faced in Uzbekistan. She supplemented her studies with real world experiences by volunteering abroad and traveling to more than 30 countries around the world.

Seeing that behind most social issues lie tangible business problems, Evgeniya joined the Soros Economic Development Fund, where she analyzed the social impact of the fund’s investments on 21.4 million people across 20 countries. Evgeniya is currently pursuing her MBA at the Yale School of Management.

Julie Zhu, MFA '17
Award to support work toward an MFA in painting at Hunter College

Julie’s parents were part of the first class of students to graduate from college in China after the Cultural Revolution, during which time universities had closed their doors for more than a decade. Both mathematicians, Julie’s parents came to the United States to pursue graduate school.

Like her parents, Julie’s first passion was math, but as she grew up she felt increasingly drawn to the arts. She cartooned for The Washington Post, and her paintings were exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery after she was named a Presidential Scholar in both academics and visual art.

Julie went on to Yale University, where she double-majored in mathematics and art, enjoying the freedom to pursue both fields simultaneously. As a freshman, she added to these lifelong devotions the carillon, the world’s heaviest musical instrument—a tower of hanging bells played by a wooden keyboard. After graduating, she pursued advanced carillon studies at the Royal Carillon School in Belgium, while also painting and exhibiting her work abroad.

Julie has since given numerous recitals around the world as a professional carillonneur. She is also the carillonneur for St. Thomas Church in Manhattan. Her artistic work today sits at the intersection of music, mathematics and visual representation. In 2012, Julie co-founded the Sitka Fellows Program, a poly-disciplinary residency in Alaska that celebrates the meeting of disparate fields, now in its fourth year.

Julie currently studies painting at Hunter College and teaches art in Alaska during the summer.