2023 Fellows


Business and Design & Technology Fellows | Journalism and Law Fellows | Medical and Seminary Fellows


JOURNALISM

Jesús Chapa Malacara is a New York-based journalist, producer and technologist. He reports on and edits civics, politics and economics stories that help audiences understand the systemic forces swirling around us all.  He is also a multimedia art producer, software developer and former professional dancer. He was born in Monterrey, Mexico and grew up in Kansas City.  He received a B.A. in political science from Yale and an M.A. in bilingual journalism (Spanish/English) from the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Asta Kongsted is a journalist, currently pursuing a master's degree at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. A former editor at the Danish media Føljeton, she writes about climate, health, and the intersection of politics and culture.

Nejra Kravic is a freelance journalist born and raised in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She graduated from Scripps College in 2021 with honors in Media Studies, studied abroad in Morocco through a unique journalism and new media program, won the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics in 2021, and is a current Witness Fellow, a program intended for emerging leaders focused on Elie Wiesel’s life’s work. She has held a number of competitive editorial fellowships and internships and is currently completing the Alice Rowan Swanson Fellowship in Morocco, a highly selective grant given to an outstanding SIT alum to return to their program country and pursue further development projects benefiting human rights in the region.

Adrian Lee is an editor in the Opinion section of The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, and the host of City Space, The Globe's podcast about the future of cities. Since graduating from University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a degree in journalism and contemporary philosophy studies, he has written about a wide range of topics for a variety of publications. This includes, among others: politics, tech and current affairs features for Maclean's, Canada's national magazine; opinion essays about the Chinese diaspora and the noble potato, for The Globe and Mail; music criticism for The Coast alt-weekly; local news hits on TV and radio; and stringing for Agence France-Presse during Rob Ford's troubled Toronto mayoralty.

Britta Lokting is an independent journalist in New York with a focus on magazine and longform feature writing. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The New Republic, VICE, and elsewhere. Her stories have covered national issues such as wildlife, climate change, anti-government groups, and public lands disputes. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 2015 and served on the board of the Newswomen's Club of New York for six years.

Pete McKenzie is a freelance journalist from New Zealand. He writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, among others. He focuses on politics, human rights, and the environment throughout the Pacific. At New Zealand’s 2022 media awards, he was named Feature Writer of the Year (Longform): the country’s most prestigious feature-writing prize. He is completing an MA in Journalism at Columbia Journalism School in New York, which he is attending on a Fulbright Scholarship. He is a qualified attorney and has previously served as a platoon commander in the New Zealand Army Reserve.

Nick McMillan is a data journalist with NPR's Investigations Unit. He utilizes data driven techniques, video and motion graphics to tell stories. Previously, McMillan worked at Newsy on investigative documentaries where he contributed to stories uncovering white supremacists in the U.S. military and the aftermath of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rican school children. McMillan has a bachelor's in Statistics from Rice University and a master's in Journalism from the University of Maryland. In his free time he enjoys swimming, running, reading and photography.

Malone Mullin is an award-winning reporter with CBC News in St. John's, Newfoundland. She covers social justice issues, women's rights, court and policing. She previously worked in Vancouver and Toronto, and has a master's degree from the University of British Columbia and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Toronto. In her spare time she hikes, travels, and enthusiastically loses at pub trivia.  

Katia Patin is a multimedia journalist based between Washington, D.C. and Istanbul. She is the producer of Generation Gulag, a documentary series uncovering the impact of Russia’s campaign to rewrite the history of Gulag survivors, shortlisted for the One World Media Award in 2020. Her journalism has appeared in TIME Magazine, The Guardian, NBC, The Atlantic among other publications.

Juan Pablo Pérez-Burgos is a Colombian writer and journalist, currently pursuing a master's at UC Berkeley's School of Journalism. He has covered environment, politics, conflict, and transitional justice mostly for La Silla Vacía, Colombia's first independent media outlet.

Michelle Recinos (San Salvador, 1997) is a Central American journalist and writer based in El Salvador. Currently covers enviromental justice topics, but has also worked women's rights, violence and justice. Has experience working with the Pulitzer Center and the International Women's Media Foundation as a grantee.

Elana Spivack is a science journalist in New York City. She covers longevity, food science, and more for Inverse. She received her masters from NYU's Science Health Environmental Reporting Program. When not on deadline, she writes satire, rides her bike, and plays with her tuxedo cat, Stanley.

Zak Vescera started reporting when he was 15 years old and hasn't successfully quit. He grew up in Vancouver, B.C. and studied international relations at the University of British Columbia and Sciences Po Paris. He has been nominated for some of Canada's highest journalism honours for his reporting on Canada's toxic drug crisis, mass murders and the COVID-19 pandemic. Today he covers labour for The Tyee, a non-profit publication in Vancouver. In his spare time he enjoys running, reading trashy detective novels and playing Dungeons and Dragons.


LAW

Fréderique Beerkens is a Dutch corporate lawyer, working in the arbitration practice of De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek N.V. Fréderique also holds prior experience in M&A, focusing predominantly on healthcare private equity deals.

Bao Kham Chau is a Cofounder/Director at Cornell Law Xenophobia Meter Project, a Visiting Fellow at CornellTech, and an Advisor at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center’s Institute for Rebooting Social Media. He is interested in pursuing two related strands of research at the intersection of law and technology. Broadly speaking, he seeks to explore how the changing technological landscape affects the current legal regulatory frameworks (e.g., Internet and Artificial Intelligence governance). At the same time, Bao also investigates how to use computational text analysis techniques to help derive novel insights into the judiciary of developed, developing, and authoritarian states.

Before entering legal private practice at Fish & Richardson, P.C., Bao worked as a (senior) software engineer for three successful startups in the Silicon Valley. He received his B.A. in Computer Science, History (honors), and Political Science from UC Berkeley, an A.M. in Regional Studies, East Asia from Harvard University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Samantha Franks is an attorney specializing in international trade, including sanctions designations, forced labor prevention, and national security law. She is currently serving as a Dean Acheson legal fellow at the European Court of Justice. Previously, she obtained a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, a Master of Science in International Conflict Prevention from Durham University as a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar, and degrees in English and Political Science from the University of Missouri.

Kevin Frazier will join the Benjamin L. Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University as an Assistant Professor starting Academic Year 2023. He will teach Constitutional Law and Civil Procedure. He currently clerks for the Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court. Kevin graduated from the UC Berkeley School of Law and Harvard Kennedy School in 2022. Given his scholarly focus on constitutional design and the rule of law, Kevin seeks out opportunities to learn from past governing structures and democratic norms. In his free time, you'll find him running, swimming, or hiking somewhere in Montana.

Bianca Herlitz-Ferguson is currently a Staff Attorney at Children’s Rights, where she works on federal class-action litigation to hold governments accountable for respecting the constitutional and civil rights of children and their families. Bianca received her B.A. in Government & Philosophy from Cornell University in 2015 and her J.D. in 2021 from Yale Law School, where she served as an Executive Editor on the Yale Law Journal and co-founded the Youth Justice Project.

Trevor Kirby is a third-year law student and First Generation Professional Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. As a law student, he has served as Managing Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, a Content Editor on The Regulatory Review, and a student legal counselor in the Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic. This semester, Trevor is interning with the Democratic Staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. In 2016, Trevor graduated from Kenyon College with honors and distinction in Philosophy. He then taught for two years in Eastern North Carolina with Teach for America. Following graduation, Trevor will join the law firm of Arnold & Porter in the fall.

Andrew Lang-Reyes was born and raised in Southern California and earned a B.A. in Politics from Hillsdale College in 2018. After graduating from Hillsdale, he spent two years substitute teaching in California and served on his hometown’s Board of Administrative Appeals. Currently, he is finishing his last year at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law where he was a board member of the Black Law Students Association and the Federalist Society. After graduation, he will clerk for Chief Judge Lavenski R. Smith on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and then begin work as an attorney in Washington D.C.

Sebastian Marotta is an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling LLP. Sebastian’s practice covers a broad range of transactional and corporate matters, including mergers and acquisitions, capital markets transactions, corporate governance, and securities advisory matters. Sebastian received his J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 2019, where he served as Notes Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal.  Sebastian received his A.B. in public and international affairs, cum laude, from Princeton University in 2016. Originally from Toronto, Sebastian’s hobbies include ceramics and Korean food.

Donald “Max" McCullough III is an aspiring labor lawyer, a third-generation unionist, and the son of an artist and a firefighter. Before entering the legal field, he served for seven years as a high school history teacher in Boston. Deeply committed to the liberating potentials of education and solidarity, he looks forward to representing working people and their organizations in the struggle for a just society.

Alicen Rodolph is a Project Attorney at the Human Trafficking Institute (HTI) and William & Mary Law School’s 2022-23 Drapers’ Scholar. At HTI, she assists in the development and publication of the Federal Human Trafficking Report by collecting and analyzing data and identifying current trends in human trafficking cases. As the 2022-23 Drapers’ Scholar she attends Queen Mary University of London and is expected to earn her LL.M. (Master of Laws) in Human Rights Law in 2023. She is an alumna of William & Mary Law School, Southern New Hampshire University, and Fayetteville Technical Community College.

Etty Singer is a first-generation JD student at Boston University School of Law. Before attending law school, Etty graduated cum laude from Smith College. In the summer of 2022, Etty interned at the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts with the Honorable Judge Denise Casper. As a second-year law student, Etty is a staff editor for the American Journal of Law and Medicine and a student attorney with the Boston University Criminal Law Clinic.

Hamee Yong is a rising 3L at USC Gould School of Law. She grew up in New York, Seoul, Los Angeles, and Singapore. Prior to law school, she worked in finance in New York. At USC Gould, Hamee is part of the International Human Rights Clinic and leads public interest and refugee rights focused student organizations. Hamee received her B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2017. Following FASPE, Hamee will spend her summer in New York with Brooklyn Defender Services in their indigent criminal defense practice.