Stanford students, alumni receive Schwarzman Scholarships
Five Stanford affiliates are among the recipients of the 2021 Schwarzman Scholarships. Each will pursue one-year master’s degrees in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
One Stanford undergraduate, two graduate students and two recent alumni are among the members of the Schwarzman Scholars Class of 2021. Through the fellowship, each will pursue a master’s degree at Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
A total of 145 scholars – selected this year from more than 4,700 applicants – will begin their graduate studies in August 2020. They will earn a one-year master’s degree in global affairs with a concentration in public policy, economics and business, or international studies. As scholars, each will explore economic, political and cultural factors that have contributed to China’s increasing importance as a global power. They will join a network of scholars committed to meeting the geopolitical challenges of the 21st century.
Stanford’s 2021 Schwarzman Scholars are:
Fangzhou Jiang (Image credit: Courtesy Schwarzman Scholars Program)
Fangzhou Jiang is originally from China and attended high school in New Zealand before completing his undergraduate studies at the Australian National University in 2017. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in management science and engineering at Stanford.
Jiang has worked for Datacom, New Zealand Assets Management and Goldman Sachs. He is also the co-founder and senior vice president of the ed-tech startup Crimson Education, which provides such personalized educational services as academic tutoring and career mentoring. After completing his education, Jiang intends to continue to build his business and advance education through technology and personalization. He is also interested in working with governments to explore ways to improve educational systems globally, and to one day teaching at the university level.
Jiang hopes that the Schwarzman Scholarship will help him reintegrate into China and meet like-minded, diverse people from around the globe. As a manager of diverse teams, he looks forward to developing his leadership skills, as well as sharing his entrepreneurial experience with other students interested in pursuing their own ventures.
Lakshmi Prakash (Image credit: Courtesy Schwarzman Scholars Program)
Lakshmi Prakash, of Charlotte, N.C., graduated from Stanford in 2019 with a degree in management science and engineering and a minor in Chinese. At Stanford, she took a range of courses, from Leading Organizational Change to Classical Chinese, and found educational significance in connecting seemingly disparate disciplines. Prakash was also involved with student government, led philanthropic efforts in support of Silicon Valley’s Court Appointed Special Advocates and served as a teaching assistant for the course Introduction to Matrix Methods.
Prakash lives in New York, where she works for the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Her work there has helped her gain an appreciation for the connections between business innovation and global affairs.
As a Schwarzman Scholar, she hopes to understand the implications of capital investments on large-scale private and public sector innovation projects. She also hopes to learn from China’s success at translating high-level strategic goals into real-world projects that shape the global landscape.
Ravi Veriah Jacques (Image credit: Courtesy Schwarzman Scholars Program)
Ravi Veriah Jacques is a senior who grew up in London and is of English and Indian-Malaysian descent. An accomplished violinist, he studied under Royal College of Music Professor Maciej Rakowski. He is also a member of Chineke!, the first European orchestra comprising black and minority ethnic musicians.
A history major, Veriah Jacques’ honors thesis is titled “The Indian Mutiny of 1857 in the British Racial Imagination.” He was also recently named a Hume Undergraduate Honors Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center.
He is perhaps best known at Stanford as the founder and former editor-in-chief of The Stanford Sphere, a newspaper that aims to diversify campus discourse from a progressive standpoint. Veriah Jacques also spent his frosh summer working for the Shanghai-based online publication Guancha, where he wrote op-eds. Through this work, Veriah Jacques developed an interest in the rise of China, which he realized would play an integral role in his career.
As a Schwarzman Scholar, Veriah Jacques hopes to become better acquainted with China’s history, culture, politics and language, as well as to engage with the way the country’s rise will shape the Western world order.
Wenqi Xiang (Image credit: Courtesy Schwarzman Scholars Program)
Wenqi Xiang, who is from China, graduated from Stanford with a master’s degree in electrical engineering. She also graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Biomedical Engineering.
Xiang is passionate about using technology and entrepreneurship to solve real-world problems. As a software engineer at Oracle, she focused on database and cloud engineering. She has also worked in product management and venture capital.
In 2017, she participated in the Stanford Graduate School of Business Ignite Program, where she co-founded a startup that helps people gain stable employment in the hospitality sector.
Anqi Xu (Image credit: Courtesy Schwarzman Scholars Program)
Anqi Xu, who is from Beijing, is a master’s candidate in East Asian Studies at Stanford, focusing on the intersection of art and technology. She previously studied art history and comparative literature at New York University.
Xu has worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asia Society in New York, as a project manager for artist Cai Guo-Qiang and is the editorial director of art at Huasheng Media.
At Stanford, Xu participated in the 2018 summit for the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange (FACES), which promotes dialogue and fosters long-lasting relationships among future leaders in U.S.-China affairs. She is also a 2019 recipient of the Center for East Asian Studies Summer Grant, which supported her research into artificial holidays in the digital age, such as “Singles Day” in China.
Although educated in the United States, Xu hopes to connect with and learn from Chinese students at Tsinghua University. As a Schwarzman Scholar, Xu wants to focus her studies on science and management, and hopes this opportunity will provide a solid foundation for a career in China.
International scholarships
Stanford students interested in overseas scholarships and Stanford faculty interested in nominating students for such awards should contact Diane Murk, manager of the Overseas Resource Center at dmurk@stanford.edu, of the Bechtel International Center.