Soros ‘New Americans’ Diversely Talented

MORE ON MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE

Johnny Lin. Courtesy photo

Soros fellows Johnny Lin and Alice Corsello are part of that same community that Shah can’t say enough good things about. They feel the same way. Lin was a member of the 2012 cohort, and Corsello, nee Yang, was a 2008 fellow.

Lin, who was born in Taiwan and moved to Los Angeles with his family as a teenager, is currently working on a new social venture in Oakland, California, after graduating from Stanford University with a dual MBA-MA in Education in 2014. He remembers meeting the Soros family once during his fellowship, at an event they hosted at their home, and recalls they were “kind and gracious.”

While an undergrad at Brown University, Lin founded Strait Talk, a program that brings together young leaders from China, Taiwan, and the U.S. in an effort to create dialogue and build a lasting peace between Taiwan and China. So he appreciated the experience of sharing a cohort with 29 others with similar designs on bettering the world.

“Soros is a really powerful resource, both because of the financial support but also the cohort of kindred spirits,” Lin says. “I would say that without the Soros Fellowship funding, going to graduate school would have been really difficult for me as someone who worked in social impact before and hopes to continue to do so post-graduate school. And it was also amazing to have a cohort of other similar background folks who all want to make the world a better place.”

AN INVALUABLE CONNECTION

Alice Corsello. Courtesy photo

Corsello, too, was born in Taiwan, but she spent a chunk of her childhood in the Netherlands before immigrating to Long Island, New York — an experience that gave her an awareness of the realities of school systems on three continents and “a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunities I’ve been afforded.” She earned a bachelor’s degree in biological anthropology from Harvard College, then, in 2011, an MBA/MPP from Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government. In graduate school she was not only a Soros fellow but a Zuckerman Fellow and a George Fellow, as well.

“Prior to graduate school I was working in global health and international development, and really my whole lifeI had never really considered business school or the business wold as an area that I would focus on,” Corsello tells Poets&Quants. “But in my work I saw the important force that business played in advancing society and improving the lives of the worse-off. And the Soros Fellowship really helped me stay connected to my roots as an outsider to this country — and being accepted into a community of people across a variety of disciplines who were passionate about their field and truly remarkable people both personally and professionally, that really helped remind me why I started this journey to begin with: to improve the well-being for less fortunate people in the world.”

Some help the world through the arts. Some through medicine, or academia. And some do it through business. The Soros Fellowship has members in every group, Corsello says.

“That was really powerful,” she says. “The fellowship itself was such a powerful experience because of the community that it focuses on building, both during the course of the fellowship as well as subsequently. It’s a really strong alumni network, with some really remarkable members.”

SEE ALSO MBA SCHOLARSHIPS AT TOP BUSINESS SCHOOLS and THE MBA FOR THE ANTI-MBA CROWD