2023 Fellows
Business and Design & Technology Fellows | Journalism and Law Fellows | Medical and Seminary Fellows
BUSINESS
Michaella Baker is in Northwestern’s JD-MBA program to build her expertise as a mental health advocate – combining policy, innovation, and public health epidemiology. While at Northwestern, she focused her time on international human rights and spent her last semester as a CDC Public Health Law Program Fellow. A graduate of Yale College and Yale School of Public Health, she began her career at Global Health Strategies, an NYC-based global health advocacy and policy firm. She takes pride in building the company’s mental health client portfolio externally, advocating for mental health benefits internally, and scoping out the best NYC lox bagel.
Amanda Fritz is a second year student at Columbia Business School, where she is Co-President of the Gourmet Club. Prior to Columbia, Amanda worked at abrdn on its US Private Equity Team, where she invested into lower middle market primaries, co-investments and secondaries. She began her career at Goldman Sachs in Private Wealth Management. Amanda graduated from Dartmouth College with an AB in Mathematics. She currently sits on the alumnae board of her high school, Oak Knoll. Amanda is an avid NY Giants fan and in her spare time enjoys going to the Jersey Shore, skiing, baking and exploring the NYC dining scene.
Daniel Giambrone is a first year MBA student at MIT Sloan on the entrepreneurship & innovation track. He is the president of the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition club at Sloan and a cofounder in the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund program. Prior to business school, Dan worked as a credit analyst at S&P Global, where he rotated through teams that covered financial institutions, corporates, REITs and local governments. Dan completed his undergraduate studies in finance and economics at Binghamton University, and is a CFA Charterholder.
Chad Gruzin is an MBA candidate at Harvard Business School. Chad aspires to use technology to create scalable, sustainable, positive change. Prior to his MBA, Chad worked full time in various roles supporting the US Federal Government’s enterprise software. He also co-founded EarlyAdmit, an organization whose mission is to provide free and low cost resources to underrepresented college students applying to graduate school. Chad is an alumnus of the University of Maryland and was raised in Rockville, MD. His grandfather, Edward Gruzin was a survivor of Concentration Camp Dachau.
Ilana Hamer is a first-year MBA student at the Yale School of Management, with a focus on social impact and ethical leadership. She completed her Bachelor's degree in Psychology at Tufts University before embarking on her career at HubSpot, where she consulted for companies on their business goals. Later, she joined the Strategic Partnerships team, where she managed HubSpot's relationship with Google. With her passion for understanding and helping people, Ilana is excited to join the FASPE Business Fellowship and gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be an ethical leader in today's world.
Although he grew up in Hong Kong, Jeffrey Ho has been in the United States since high school. He studied biochemistry as an undergraduate and was the co-author for several oncology papers. Prior to pursuing his MBA, he co-founded a food start-up in Boston. His hobbies include playing squash, tennis, and badminton. He is an avid fan of board games, hiking, and cooking, including baking. He spent some time helping Ace NextGen, an organization that supports Asian entrepreneurs. He hopes to apply his learnings from the fellowship to facilitate conversations centered on business ethics at PwC and Carnegie Mellon University.
Meredith Rie Maimoni is an MBA/MS Sustainable Systems candidate at University of Michigan. Meredith specializes in sustainable operations, transforming supply chains to be more efficient and environmentally and socially just. This builds on Meredith’s six years of experience in nonprofit fundraising and community engagement. On campus, Meredith serves as President of Michigan Business Women. In the community, Meredith was recognized as an Emerging Leader by the U.S.-Japan Council and has years of volunteer service with organizations like Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics and Little Tokyo Service Center. After school, Meredith will join Boston Consulting Group.
Michael O’Gorman is a second year MBA student at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Prior to his MBA, Michael spent nearly ten years in public service as a teacher, school leader, and strategist with the New York City Department of Education. During his tenure at the Department of Education he and his team were responsible for increasing student access to high-quality seats through new school openings, mergers, and rezonings. Michael holds a B.A. in Political Science from Moravian University, a M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from George Mason University, and is an alumnus of AmeriCorps and Teach for America.
Having grown up in South Africa, the Netherlands and Singapore, and further educated in the UAE, the US, China and the UK, Mohammed Omar has always considered himself a nomad. He was part of NYU Abu Dhabi’s first cohort, double-majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics; he then completed an MSc. in Mechanical Engineering from NYU, a Master's in Global Affairs from the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua and an MBA from the University of Oxford. He is currently a Project Leader at BCG's Boston office, where he has worked on projects in the United States, Australia, Brazil and the Middle East with a focus on Infrastructure and Mobility.
Misha Palla is currently Chief of Staff at SAP advising corporations on how best to use technology to meet their business objectives. Misha holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Economics from Emory University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Through her participation in FASPE, she hopes to develop a heightened understanding of ethical challenges in the 21st century and to build her capability to design procedures and processes that produce ethical outcomes in the field of business and technology.
Baoying Tong is a 1st year MBA student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Chartered Professional Engineer. Prior to his study, he worked in design/construction and policy/legislative analysis with AECOM and Engineers Australia. He is passionate about the intersection of technology and the built environment and will join JLL Spark for his summer internship in venture capital. He is an active volunteer, including representing Australia on the Diversity Advisory Committee at the International Electrotechnical Commission. He graduated with bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering (Honors Class I) and a master's degree in management.
DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY
Monica Chan is a UX Researcher at Amazon Alexa. Her work focuses on humans' perceptions and interactions with Alexa's personalization and proactivity features. Previously, she conducted doctoral research in K-12 STEAM/maker education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has taught multiple K-12 afterschool programs on creative technologies and social impact, and graduate-level courses in cognitive sciences and design of learning technologies. Monica earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering and MA in Learning, Design & Technology, both at Stanford University. Outside of the tech and academic worlds, Monica enjoys learning new languages and is an avid traveler always looking to explore many more countries on her bucket list.
Yo Deshpande is the Technologist for the Public Realm in the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, the City of Boston’s civic research and design team. His work explores community empowerment and co-design, surveillance technology accountability, and how technology can make cities more connected and caring without compromising people’s freedoms. A graduate of Bentley University’s Human Factors in Information Design program, Yo practices Vipassana meditation and roots for the Celtics. Both are beloved rollercoasters.
Daniella DiPaola is a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab, where she studies ethics and children’s rights in the age of artificial intelligence and personal robots. Daniella graduated from Tufts University in 2016 with a degree in Engineering Psychology. After Tufts, she was a UX Researcher at Jibo, Inc., where she helped design and research the world’s first social robot for the home.
Spencer Doyle is a physics Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University. His research is in the field of condensed matter physics, where he studies novel functional materials for technological applications in areas like data storage and energy transmission. He gained a passion for science policy during his graduate studies and hopes to become a policy advisor for the federal government on the topic of energy infrastructure when he graduates. Outside the lab, Spencer loves rock climbing and playing the drums.
Leah Kaplan is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at the George Washington University and a Fellow with GWU’s Co-Design of Trustworthy AI Systems Program. Leah's research focuses on the potential impacts of automated vehicles, with an emphasis on equity and labor impacts. Through her research, Leah aims to understand how we can leverage emerging transportation technologies for the benefit of, rather than detriment to, society.
Kristy Liao is a software engineer based in New York City. Previously, she spent several years working at Twitter, where she was a senior software engineer on the developer platform team and helped build new endpoints and features on Twitter's public API. Prior to that, she served as a Civic Digital Fellow at the U.S. Department of State and earned a BA in Computer Science from Cornell University. She loves classical music and enjoys playing violin.
Emilia Mazzolenis is a Data Science Master’s student at Harvard University who pursued her Bachelor’s degree at UNC Chapel Hill. Her academic background and interests are diverse, spanning Economics, Psychology, and Machine Learning. Emilia has worked with companies such as General Electric, IBM, and Lenovo and has research experience in Economics, Psychology, Public Health, and Human-Computer Interaction. As an Argentinean-Italian-American, Emilia is passionate about diversifying Data Science educational pipelines and broadening access to the benefits of technology for marginalized communities. At Harvard, Emilia is the co-leader of the GAC, the student organization representing Master's students at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences dedicated to EDIB, data science ethics, and community building.
Emma Pan (she/her) is a software engineer and designer who is passionate about infusing care and inclusivity into todays socio-technical systems. She currently works on Seeing AI, Microsoft’s assistive app for people with visual impairments. She recently graduated from Olin College of Engineering, where she cofounded a student-run public interest technology project team called PInT. She is also an alumna of the Civic Digital Fellowship, where she researched social determinants of health at the Department of Health and Human Services. In her free time, you are likely to find Emma crocheting while listening to an audiobook.
William Partin is a Doctoral Candidate in Communication at the University of North Carolina a Research Affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life; and a policy manager for hate speech at YouTube. His scholarship has been published in journals such as New Media & Society, American Behavioral Scientist, and Social Media + Society, while his public-facing writing on digital culture has appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone.
Jessica Rosenfield is a software engineer focused on solving technology problems with the potential for large-scale social impact. At Pavilion, she focuses on improving the public spending process in local governments across the US to empower public servants to deliver better, faster public services. Before Pavilion, Jessica worked on cancer detection at GRAIL and held internships at notable tech companies while earning her bachelor's degree in Computer Science at Georgia Tech. Aside from mission-driven tech, she enjoys solo travel, skiing, and performing in long-form improv.
Ornella Tchoumie is a second-year graduate student pursuing her Master of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Ornella's career focus is Product Management, and her research focuses on ethical and inclusive products. Ornella received her bachelor's at Saint Mary's College of California (SMC), where she studied the Integral Liberal Arts Program, a curriculum based on a tradition of liberal arts and conversational inquiry. At SMC, she became intrigued with the importance of storytelling; she learned how stories could influence our ethics and future. A fun fact about Ornella is she used to have a small baking business where she taught baking classes and sold baked goods at farmers' markets.
Sarah Vernovsky is thrilled to be joining the 2023 FASPE Design & Technology cohort. Since graduating from Brandeis University in December 2021 with degrees in Biology and Health: Science, Society, and Policy, she has been working as a research assistant developing a cell therapy discovery platform at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Sarah loves to spend her free time rock climbing, reading, and out in nature. She often thinks about human motivations and behavior, the components that constitute well-being, implications and applications of scientific and technological innovations, and anything to do with philosophy and anthropology.