Tag Archives: 2020 Senior Awards

Ashley Sealy

Ashley Sealy is majoring in Human Biology, with a double minor in Public Health and Public Policy. Throughout her undergraduate career, she has worked part-time as a gymnastics coach. This past academic year, she has also served as Co-President of the Macaulay Diversity Initiative, which advocates for Macaulay Honors College’s underrepresented racial/ethnic minority groups.

Since Fall 2018, Ashley has volunteered for Peer Health Exchange and has facilitated weekly health education lessons in an under-resourced high school. In Summer 2019, she interned with the Greater New York Hospital Association and Mount Sinai Health System, where she assisted in lowering the health system’s total supply costs. In Fall 2019, she was awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, which funded her study abroad trip to Sydney, Australia in January 2020. This fall, she will attend the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health on a half-tuition merit scholarship. She will be studying Health Policy and Management, and working toward a Master of Health Administration degree.

Egor Semeniak

Egor Semeniak, a Computer Science major with Cybersecurity Specialization, currently works as an Information Security Administrator at New Visions for Public Schools. At Macaulay, he participated in 20+ national programming challenges, achieving victories in 13 and co-founded MHC++, a club dedicated to technology & sciences where he helped to organize the CUNY-wide Hackathon. As an IT Specialist at CSI, he provided support and training to 18k+ students and employees. In 2018, the National Science Foundation & Department of Defense chose Egor to further research in HPC Mathematics and Jeanensis offered him a Technology Fellowship integrating Blockchain POCs. In 2019, he joined the NYU VR Lab developing sonification technologies, and IBM’s Cybersecurity Team as a Vulnerability Management Intern, assuming a leadership position in the Intern Organizing Committee. Code developed by Egor & his team is being used by over 350,000 users. In the future, he plans to further his career in cybersecurity & promote tech in the community by presenting his research at DefCon, a national hacker convention.

Abirami Rajeev

Abirami Rajeev is a Mathematics major and Human Rights and Peace Studies minor. Currently, she works as a math tutor and a technology assistant at Lehman College. She is the Co-Director of the Feminist Society as well as an avid participant in Habitat for Humanity. She has received honors such as the Kenan Fellowship, Induction to the Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society, the Meyers Scholarship, and a Presidential Scholar.

Over her four years, she has worked as a Grassroots Canvasser, as a volunteer in Puerto Rico to aid with the hurricane relief efforts, and as a teacher in Thailand for children in danger of being trafficked. Through all these experiences, she discovered her passion for data science and humanitarian work. She plans to work for the Peace Corps and then continue her studies of mathematics, computer science, and human rights.

Caroline Zuba

Caroline Zuba is a Comparative Labor Studies major at CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies at Macaulay Honors College. She is a Macaulay Hertog Scholar and Thomas W. Smith Fellow. She has been involved in TEDxCUNY since her freshman year, originally as the Director of Communications and Media and, for the last three years, as its Lead Organizer/Licensee. At Macaulay, Caroline has served as a Peer Mentor / Orientation Leader, as well as Treasurer of the Peer Mentors, and serves on the Scholars Council as the Brooklyn College Representative for the Class of 2020, previously as the Vice President of Campus Affairs.

In addition to studying abroad in Italy, she has explored her passion for socioeconomic justice through community organizing, research, and courthouse navigation positions. After a gap year, she plans to apply for a combined J.D/Ph.D program.

Jordan Williams

Jordan Williams is a Political Science and Economics double major and Spanish minor. She is guided by her interests in public policy and global development. Jordan served as the Co-Coordinator of Peer Health Exchange at Brooklyn College and the Director of Speakers and Programming at TEDxCUNY. In the fall of 2017, Jordan began interning with the New York State Legislature as part of the Edward T. Rogowsky Internship Program in Government and Public Affairs. Later that year, she was selected as a William R. Kenan Scholar. As a Kenan Scholar, she traveled to Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Ecuador to complete service-learning projects centered on environmental protection and youth development. In the spring of 2019, she became a Program Development Intern for Latin America at Trickle Up. Jordan spent the summer of 2019 interning at the Economic Policy Research Institute in Cape Town, South Africa where she contributed to large-scale impact evaluations of social protection schemes. Jordan is interested in applying to law school in the near future.

Joseph Gurbo

Joseph V. Gurbo is a Film Major with a concentration in Screenwriting with double minors in Acting and Television and Radio. In the summer of 2019, he interned at City Lore, a not-for-profit gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that is dedicated to fostering New York City’s and America’s living cultural heritage through education and public programs. He worked as a photographer and videographer documenting the Urban Explorers Program, a program designed to encourage New York City high school students to express themselves through dance, theatre, art, and film.

In the Spring of 2020, Gurbo was a general production intern with The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. This was a multifaceted internship that provided a working understanding of how a contemporary late-night talk show is written, produced, and broadcast within the same day. Over the course of this internship, working in many different departments, Gurbo gained experience in the rigorous undertakings of producing a show that is filmed daily before a live studio audience.

Mia Chin

Mia Chin graduates with a dual degree in Biology and Anthropology. During her undergraduate career, she co-founded a campus-wide civic engagement initiative “Humanizing Homelessness,” whose primary goal is to provide resources to the homeless of New York City while encouraging local volunteerism. In the fall of 2017, Mia was named an S Jay Levy Fellow in honor of her outstanding academic performance and leadership potential. Following her sophomore year, Mia began work as a research assistant at NYU Langone Headache Center under the supervision of Dr. Mia Minen. As part of her role, she facilitated the implementation of several neurological research studies and co-piloted the Headache and Arts program. This past Summer, Mia volunteered for the United to Benefit Ecuadorian Children International Foundation in Quito, Ecuador, and the Intercultural Outreach Initiative in the Galapagos Islands with her William Kenan Scholar cohort. In May, she begins her postgraduate studies at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health, where she pursues an MPH in Health Policy and Management.

Destany Batista

Destany Batista is an Urban Studies major with a minor in Classical Studies. She currently serves as the Communications Coordinator at the Office of Assemblymember Daniel Rosenthal, where she focuses on community organization initiatives and policy research. She has also interned at Friedman LLP and the offices of Comptroller Scott S. Stringer and Councilmember Paul Vallone.

During her time at Macaulay, she spent three years on the Scholar’s Council where she served as Vice President of Student Life for the 2017-2018 school year. She was also a 2019 recipient of the Meyer Scholarship, which enabled her to study abroad in Florence, Italy. She credits her 2018 Macaulay service trip to Puerto Rico as the most rewarding experience of her college career and hopes to participate in future service trips. After graduating, she will continue to engage in government and politics and intends to apply to law school within two years.

Nanami Kubota

Nanami Kubota is a Biology major and worked as an undergraduate research assistant in two research labs during her four years at Macaulay Honors College. She started in Dr. Anadón’s lab at Queens College as a high school student back in 2014 and continued her independent project on the global drivers of beta diversity in birds throughout her undergraduate studies. During her freshman year at Queens College, she also joined a virus ecology and evolution lab, Dr. Dennehy’s lab, and did her honors thesis and completed her Concentration in Science Honors on the mutations and selection in Erwinia amylovora phages adapting to their host’s codon usage patterns.

Nanami presented her work at the SEA-PHAGES Symposium at Mount Saint Mary College and won second place for her poster in 2018. She also received a travel grant in 2019 to present at the American Society for Virology conference hosted by the University of Minnesota. Nanami will be attending the University of Pittsburgh Program in Microbiology and Immunology in the fall where she will be pursuing a Ph.D.

Christian Ralph Buonamassa

Christian Ralph Buonamassa is an Accounting major and Computer Applications in Business minor at Baruch College.

He represented the Baruch Class of 2020 in the Macaulay Scholars Council for four years, serving as the VP of Finance & VP of Campus Affairs. Christian was the President of the Baruch Chapter of the Macaulay Business Club, and Co-Founder of the Macaulay Italian Cultural Society.

Christian recently completed an Assurance Internship with PwC in their Alternative Investments Division. He will be interning with Deloitte this summer as well. Over the past four years he’s also interned at Macaulay, Capstone Capital, C&K LLP, EY, & Goldman Sachs.

Through his studies at Baruch College, Christian has earned the Nathan Glassman Award, the Philip Zimmerman Prize Scholarship, and the NYSSCPA’s “Excellence in Accounting” Scholarship. He also received the Susan A. Locke Award from the Baruch Honors Program, and the NYC Mayoral Service Award.

Christian plans to begin his career in Audit with one of the aforementioned Big Four Accounting firms, and intends to become a CPA.