Two Fil-Ams get elite fellowship

MANILA, Philippines –  Two outstanding children of Filipino immigrants will each get up to $90,000 in funds as they join 29 others in the Class of 2010 of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.

As Soros fellows, Jonah Lalas and Philip Tañedo, both children of California-based Filipino immigrant parents, will have two years of tuition and other educational and living expenses covered. They can study in any degree-granting program in any field at any university in the United States.

The fellows were selected on the basis of merit – the criteria emphasize creativity, originality, initiative and sustained accomplishment – in annual national competitions. At the time of the selection, fellows must be college seniors or early in the graduate programs for which they request support.

Recipients must have demonstrated an original idea or talent; must have accomplished something requiring a sustained effort; and must have participated in government or another forum dedicated to freedoms prescribed in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

The program does not depend on recommendations from universities or regional screening and all candidates apply directly. Neither financial need nor distributive considerations were taken into account in the selection process.

Philanthropists Paul and Daisy started the foundation to lighten the burden of immigrants and children of immigrants who want to pursue graduate studies.

Lalas graduated summa cum laude with election to Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Los Angeles where he was the student speaker at his commencement ceremony. He did summer internships with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. and the UCLA Labor Center, where he organized Filipino healthcare workers.

Upon graduation he joined the Service Employees International Union in Los Angeles. He then moved to Texas where, as organizing director, he led the effort to organize the 13,000 city employees in Houston. The campaign resulted in a historic first contract that included improved wages and benefits and established a $10/hr minimum wage. He is now pursuing a law degree at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall).

Tañedo, as an undergraduate at Stanford, won a Goldwater scholarship, graduated with majors in physics and mathematics, and was awarded a British Marshall Scholarship. Under Marshall auspices, he earned a master’s degree in physics from Durham University and a Certificate of Advanced Study (with merit in mathematics) from Cambridge University. As a teenager, Tañedo had been largely unsuccessful in trying to find Asian-American – and particularly Filipino-American – role models, according to his bio published by the Soros Fellowship Program. As a result, he has worked hard to serve as an active role model for Filipino-American youth who are interested in science and mathematics. Now at Cornell University, he is pursuing a PhD in physics with support from the National Science Foundation. He blogs on his life and research via the Large Hadron Collider website.

Paul and Daisy Margaret Soros, Hungarian immigrants and American philanthropists, established their fellowship program for New Americans in December 1997 with a charitable trust of $50 million. Among other things, the couple wished to “give back to the country that had afforded them and their children such great opportunities.” They also felt that assisting young New Americans at a critical point in their education was an unmet need, as they wished to signal to all Americans that the contributions of New Americans to the quality of life in the country have been manifold.

Paul Soros, a former athlete and the 84-year-old older brother of hedge-fund manager George Soros, first arrived in Manhattan with a pittance, having defected while traveling to Switzerland with the 1948 Hungarian Olympic ski team. He saw that trip as his chance to escape his Communist-controlled homeland after World War II, he says.

He wanted to study engineering in a top graduate program, but he couldn’t afford Ivy League schools. Instead he chose the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, struggling to pay for meals and cheap housing near Prospect Park.

Mr. Soros’s master’s degree from Brooklyn served him well: He went on to run a global engineering firm and eventually owned interests in shipping. In the 1980s and 1990s, he also helped his brother George’s firm select industrial investments for the famous Quantum family of funds.

Still, Paul Soros never forgot arriving in the U.S. with boundless educational ambitions but limited options.

In 1998, when the Soroses were considering how to distribute their endowment, which started with $50 million, he wanted to focus on lightening the burden for immigrants and children of immigrants aiming to pursue graduate degrees.

“Having a building with our name on it doesn’t appeal to me,” Soros says.

“We didn’t know how to start,” the 80-year-old Mrs. Soros says.

Mrs. Soros grew up in Hungary and graduated from Ecole Hotelier in Lausanne, Switzerland. She came to the U.S. on a student visa, enrolling at Columbia University. She later attended New York School of Interior Design, studied at New York University School of Social Work, and worked extensively as a counselor to terminally ill patients and their families. She is currently a member of the board of various notable civic, art and medical institutions.

In 2010, the couple contributed an additional $25 million to their yearly fellowship that honors and supports the graduate educations of 30 New Americans – permanent residents or naturalized citizens if born abroad, otherwise children of naturalized citizen parents.

Soros says he and his wife increased the endowment to recognize more contributions by immigrants to business, arts, science, education, government, courts, nonprofits and other areas, amid efforts they view as increasingly anti-immigrant.

Since the founding of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, approximately 11,500 applications have been received and processed, and 13 classes of fellows have been selected, beginning in 1998, with a total of 384 fellows appointed so far.