Tag Archives: 2020 Senior Awards

Virtual Celebration

Ashley Lum

Ashley Lum is a History major and Anthropology minor. Currently, she works as a curatorial and education intern at the Lehman College Art Gallery where she started in the Fall of 2018. She was the co-president of Macaulay Art Tank, a student arts initiative that showcases student creativity every spring at the Macaulay building. In 2019-2020, she served as the senior Lehman representative on the Scholars Council and a member of the Student Life Committee. She is also a recipient of the Benjamin A. Gilman scholarship and Meyers Scholarship which funded her summer study abroad program in Greece.

During her undergraduate career, she was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta (2018) and Phi Beta Kappa (2019), academic honors societies for history and the liberal arts & sciences respectively. She will be attending the CUNY Graduate Center as a student of the History Ph.D. program with a five-year tuition fellowship and a first-year stipend from the History Department in the Fall of 2020.

Virtual Celebration

Miriam Fried

Miriam Fried is an Anthropology major, and has minors in Art History and Business & Liberal Arts Honors. During her junior and senior years, Miriam served as president of the QC Anthro Society, the only anthropology club at Queens College. In recognition of her academic and leadership achievements, she has received prestigious awards from the QC Anthropology Department, including the Most Promising Student Award, and the Service Award. She is also a recipient of the Brownstein/McDermott Scholarship in the Humanities, and the Raymond Taylor QC Scholars Endowment Fund.

To complement her coursework, Miriam has amassed valuable experience outside the classroom. In Summer 2018, she joined an archaeological excavation at the site of Khirbet el-Rai in Israel. In Summer 2019, she interned in the North American Archaeology Lab at the American Museum of Natural History. Coronavirus-permitting, she will rejoin the lab in Summer 2020. Miriam is excited to begin her doctoral studies in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center; she was accepted for Fall 2020 with a Graduate Center Fellowship.

Virtual Celebration

Angela Chi

Angela Chi is an Economics and Chinese double major. She is part of Hunter’s Chinese Flagship Program, a rigorous language program of study in Chinese language and culture. She is also a Leon Cooperman scholar. This summer she will be interning with Onrout, an e-commerce delivery optimization start-up.

She was the Hunter Class of 2020 Macaulay Scholars Council student representative for two years and served as VP of Community Service. In 2016, she was also the Macaulay Service Initiative’s Director of Public Relations and built partnerships with several NYC nonprofits. In 2017, she was awarded Hunter’s Green Initiative Fund grant and co-founded Eco Fashion Expo (EFE). The same year, she co-founded the Macaulay Green Initiative, an initiative promoting environmentalism on campus. In the summer of 2019, she interned on the Global Trade and Customs Compliance team at Tapestry. This past semester she studied abroad in China. She hopes to combine her diverse background to create a global lifestyle brand to inspire people to live life to the fullest while cheering on each other.

Virtual Celebration

Riya Kaushal

Riya Kaushal is majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Biology, Chemistry, Cities and Social Medicine, and Honors in Math and Natural Sciences. She is a Co-Research Coordinator at the Stress in Pregnancy Study where she started in Summer 2017 as a research assistant. Riya earned the Thomas E. Frumkes Award for Excellence in Psychological Research.

Riya has been an AmeriCorps Jumpstart volunteer for two years, providing support to preschools in underserved NYC communities. She has been volunteering at Cohen Children’s Medical Center since 2016. During her first semester of college, she joined the SAHDI club, spreading awareness about respiratory diseases in Sri Lanka. She became president of the Hindu Student’s Association club in 2017. Riya was a summer Research and Policy Intern for Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), where she worked with government officials to decriminalize marijuana. She studied abroad in South Africa during Winter 2019. After graduation, Riya will be applying to medical schools while continuing her research and community service activities.

Virtual Celebration

Natalia Sandor

Natalia Sandor is a Business Management major with a minor in English Writing. Currently, she is the owner of Sand Bars Handcrafted, an ice cream sandwich company she founded in 2017. She also was the founder and president of the Sustainable Student Organization and sat on CSI’s Sustainability Committee. In 2018, she was selected to go on the Macaulay Service Trip to Puerto Rico to help with post Hurricane Maria recovery.

As a student, Natalia held internships at: Omnibuild Construction doing risk management, Warby Parker running a technical team, The Department of Economic Development working on a project team and at The Office for the Associate Vice Chancellor at CUNY running social media for the Women in Technology initiative (WiTNY). She also participated in the WiTNY summer guild at Microsoft and was a dedicated member and captain of the women’s soccer team at CSI. More recently, she participated in RLab at ShoP Architects where she built out an augmented reality application. After graduation, Natalia plans to run her business while working on a second start up.

Virtual Celebration

Jessica Jiang

Jessica Jiang is a Business Administration and Communications double major with minors in Business Law, and Television and Radio, and a concentration in Marketing. During her time as an undergraduate, she participated in The Lorraine Laighold Summer Leadership Academy in 2018. She became Director of Marketing for Macaulay Service Initiative early 2018 maintaining their Instagram and Facebook pages.

She landed a winter internship with Citi Ventures in January 2018, through Break Through Tech New York. In Fall 2019, she interned at NBCUniversal as their Market Research Intern, learning Nielsen applications and more about the entertainment industry. She is a finalist for the International Radio & Television Society Foundation (IRTS) Summer Fellowship. Upon graduation, she hopes to continue paving her way through the entertainment industry and obtain a Masters of Science in Business Analytics.

Virtual Celebration

Katherine Dorovitsine

Katherine Dorovitsine is a graduating senior in the Macaulay program at Baruch, studying Finance with minors in International Business and New York City Studies. She was a member of the Macaulay Business Club for nearly 3 years, and later collaborated with a few friends to start the Macaulay Innovation Club, which aimed to give students with an interest in entrepreneurship, an environment in which they could brainstorm with likeminded individuals. At Baruch, she has worked as an Honors Program Ambassador, where she served as a resource to prospective students and families looking to familiarize themselves with Baruch and the honors program. She also worked as a first-year seminar peer mentor for a group of Macaulay students. In the past two summers, Katherine had the opportunity to intern at Goldman Sachs where she collaborated with the firm and Macaulay to conduct an interview of a Macaulay/Baruch alumna, which was later published on the Macaulay Honors College website. In August, she will be joining Goldman Sachs as a first-year analyst within Prime Brokerage.

Virtual Celebration

Ryan Seerattan

Ryan Seerattan is a Neuroscience-Biology major with minors in Chemistry and Psychology. Currently, he works in the Choi Research Laboratory at Queens College as a Research Assistant. His work focuses on the design and synthesis of small molecule inhibitors that target an enzyme implicated in cancer. Ryan is also a peer mentor in the HSI-STEM program at Queens College, where he assists students in the subject of Physics.

In December 2017, he became a New York State certified Emergency Medical Technician-Basic and has since began volunteering at the Wantagh-Levittown Volunteer Ambulance Corps. He has also volunteered as an Emergency Department Ambassador at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset since February 2018. Ryan was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society in May 2019. In January 2020, he went to Florence, Italy on a Macaulay-funded study abroad program to study nutrition. Following graduation, Ryan plans to apply to medical school while continuing his research and volunteer work.

Virtual Celebration

Vinila Varghese

Vinila Varghese, through the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies program, created her two majors: Race and Criminal Justice, and Philosophy and Law. She received the CUNY BA/BS Distinguished Scholar Award in May 2020. She is a former Thomas W. Smith for Academic Achievement fellow. Currently, as part of the Pinkerton Fellowship (Summer 2019-May 2020), she is placed at the Legal Aid Society’s Community Justice Unit (CJU). She is currently a projectBasta fellow.

Prior to this, Vinila worked as a Fatherhood Engagement intern at the Midtown Community Court, a Peer Ambassador at John Jay, and a tutor at the Mexican American Students’ Alliance in the South Bronx. She was the co-captain of a Quidditch team (the Macaulay Marauders), and John Jay Honors Peer Leader, and the president and founder of the John Jay Chapter of “Leading Womxn of Tomorrow.” In January 2019, she went to Florence, Italy to study abroad. After graduation, Vinila plans to go to law school and fulfill her life goal of becoming a social justice advocate after taking a gap year.

Virtual Celebration

Paul Menestrier

Paul Menestrier is a Financial Mathematics major at Baruch College. During his undergraduate years, Paul served many different roles. At Baruch College, he worked in the Mathematics department, served as a peer-mentor for incoming students, and was the latest Teaching Assistant for the Financial Leadership Program. Paul was also an integral member of the Investment Management Group, a club managing part of Baruch’s endowment. In his final roles as Chief Investment and Chief Operating Officers, he managed over $400k and secured an additional $150k in funding. Paul was also nominated to be on the Baruch Presidential Search Committee, playing a role in the selection of Baruch’s incoming president.

Paul’s undergraduate years would be incomplete without mention of his community service. For the past 7 years, Paul has served at the Whitestone Volunteer Ambulance Service. Climbing up the ranks to his current role as senior-EMT and Membership Committee Chair, Paul has directly served his community on hundreds of free emergency calls and looks forward to continuing his service after graduation.