What was the process in applying for this scholarship?
I started this process when I was a senior, and Dean Lassonde suggested that I apply for the Rhodes and the Marshall. I applied to both last year. I had been out of college for one year then. I was a finalist in New York for the Rhodes, but I was not selected as a winner.
This year, I applied to the Marshall Scholarship again, and I went up to Boston to the (British) Consulate General. Whereas the Rhodes Scholarship interview was a big to-do, the Marshall interview was very simple. It was a five-person interview panel. They asked me about my academic history and my professional history. Actually, most questions were about my long-distance backpacking experiences.
They called me the next day and told me I was going to England.
What did you do in the interim between graduating and applying for the scholarship?
As soon as I graduated, I left to do a two-month backpacking trip - from Pawling, N.Y., to Mt. Katahdin, Maine, which was about 800 miles. I came back to Providence and spent a year doing some of my own independent research in economics. I was an affiliated scholar in the Pembroke Seminar. I taught AP Economics at the Wheeler School.
After the 2010-11 school year, I went on a backpacking trip on the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada in California. After that, I moved to Brooklyn, where I work as an investigative analyst in the major economic crimes bureau of the Manhattan District Attorney's office.
What will your work focus on? Where are you choosing to study?
I'm doing a one-year master's in economics at University College London. One year master's in management and regulation of risk at LSE.
What is the plan after the Marshall Scholarship?
I'll probably go to law school. I'd like to be a financial crimes prosecutor and eventually a regulator working to reform our financial markets. I'm interested in reforming our financial markets to promote greater economic equality and more stable economic growth. I'm feeling pretty excited. I didn't study any economics at Brown, so I'm hoping that this scholarship will afford me the opportunity to be as technologically sophisticated in financial markets as the people who work in those markets - so that as a regulator, I can promote our common interests in having a more fair and stable economic system.
ADVERTISEMENT
