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December 9, 2024
Four Northwestern students have been named recipients of the prestigious Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service, known as the Voyager Scholarship.
Jason Chen, Addison Feldman, Jun Park and Ally Peek were named part of the 2024-2026 scholarship cohort. Chen and Park are third-years in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and Feldman and Peek are third-years in the School of Education and Social Policy.
Created by former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, along with Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, the award enables young scholars to create meaningful change in the world.
The two-year scholarship program provides rising third-years with up to $25,000 a year in financial aid and a $10,000 stipend and free Airbnb housing to pursue a summer work-travel experience between their third and fourth year of college. In addition to their travels, the Voyagers are invited to a fall summit and an ongoing speaker series to inspire their public service journey.
After graduation, students receive a $2,000 Airbnb travel credit every year for 10 years, allowing them to continue to broaden their horizons throughout their public service careers.
The 2024-2026 cohort consists of 100 students from 44 states and territories, representing 88 colleges and universities across the United States.
Meet Northwestern’s 2024-2026 Voyagers
Jason Chen is majoring in data science and global health and on the pre-med track. His focus is on improving health equity by exploring the structure and delivery of an effective K-12 health literacy curriculum. Chen’s involvement in community health education in his hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich., as well as in Evanston and Chicago, showed him how knowledge about health can empower people to better care for themselves and others.
He hopes to travel to countries with universal health curricula and then bring his new insights to Healthy Chicago Public Schools, an initiative to provide schools with guidance and resources on health and wellness.
Addison Feldman is a social policy and international studies major. With the support of the Voyager Scholarship, she plans to identify the best strategies to support refugees and their communities, as well as how they can be scaled up to address the global refugee crisis.
Her project was inspired by her experiences volunteering for Forging Opportunities for Refugees in America, a Chicago nonprofit dedicated to supporting refugee children previously denied access to an education.
Jun Park is majoring in political science and international studies with a minor in environmental policy and culture. He plans to use the scholarship to support his research on different cities’ transportation policies, and how they can create injustices or be a force for rectifying them by giving members of disadvantaged communities mobility.
He spent this summer working on a project comparing the transit policy of Singapore and Chicago, and he plans to use his Voyager Scholarship to scale up the project to include more cities.
Ally Peek is studying social policy and neuroscience. After her own experience being diagnosed and treated for cancer at 12 years old, Peek became passionate about healthcare access and differences in quality of care in different locations. Combining her story and her academic interests, her project will explore how other countries approach mental health care and how these strategies could help bridge care gaps.
Learn more about the Voyager Scholarship and other opportunities by contacting Northwestern’s Office of Fellowships.
