We are thrilled to introduce our nine 2014 AEF Scholars!  Thanks to the generous contributions of supporters like you, our Advisory Council, CUNY, and the Indiegogo Community, these nine scholars will receive a total of $63,000 in college scholarships, which includes $30,000 raised through our Indiegogo Campaign.

We would like to thank our Selection Committee for reading over 340 applications, and interviewing 22 finalists before selecting 2% of our applicants as the 2014 AEF Scholars.

Our nine 2014 Scholars exemplify the diverse immigrant community in New York City and represent Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, India, Mexico, South Korea, Tibet and Burma.  Take a moment to read each of their extraordinary stories.

We are in the process of matching our scholars with mentors.  If you would like to join our mentorship program, please contact us at ascendfundny@gmail.com 

A Tibetan refugee who immigrated from India three years ago and whose journey to the United States has been nothing short of remarkable.  At the again of six, his family embarked on a trek across the Himalayas to Nepal to escape his homeland of Tibet.  He was subsequently sent by his family to India, where he was educated by monks.  Reunited with his family, he is now an avid break dancer with a passion for robotics.  This Scholar’s good nature and endless optimism are palpable when you are in his presence.  This fall he will attend Binghamton University, majoring in Astrophysics.  This Indiegogo Community Scholarship recipient dreams of being part of a NASA mission.

A young man who immigrated from Bangladesh at the age of 4 and now lives in Brooklyn.  This Arthur Li Distinguished Rising Star Award recipient is headed to Cornell University and his long-term goal is to become the CEO of his own open-source software company.  He has endured extreme poverty and helps to care for his young nephew, doing homework late at night when his duties are done.  In his words, his dream is to be a “lifelong scholar.”

A young woman who immigrated from Ecuador and now lives in Inwood.  This Danaus Awesome Achievement Award recipient is in the top 2% of her graduating class. Inspired by her own scoliosis diagnosis and her mother’s stomach cancer, her long-term dream is to become a pediatrician.  She will major in Forensic Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice this fall. She is active in the community and led a campaign to raise funds and awareness for children in African who cannot afford shoes.  In her words, the struggles of an immigrant is what motivated her to keep moving forward.

A young man who immigrated from Mexico and is graduating from one of the top high schools in the nation.  He received a score of 3 and above on 5 AP exams.  This CUNY Excellence Award recipient will be attending Baruch College.  He promotes the values of hard work and perseverance to those around him through the Big Brother/Big sister program at his high school.  Through success in education and business, he hopes to promote social change and improve his community.  He believes it is the youth’s responsibility to change any negative stigmas associated with the immigrant community.

A young woman who immigrated from the Dominican Republic three years ago, leaving her mother and two siblings behind. Following tremendous hardship, she finally feels a sense of safety and calm in her fourth foster home, and is proud to say her struggles have not stopped her.  She actively gives back to the immigrant community by mentoring students to improve their basic literacy skills, and educates immigrants about their rights with Community Voices Heard.  She will attend Bard College this fall and plans to pursue a degree in a social science.

A South Korean young man whose family left everything behind to give him a chance of obtaining a better education.  His internship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center was cut short due to his status, but he did not give up and successfully campaigned with the director to re-instate his position.   His courage and resilience earned him admission to Harvard, where he will major in Biology.  This Arthur Li Distinguished Rising Star Award recipient plans to pursue a career in medicine and research.  In his own words, his status empowers him to work harder and to always lend a helping hand to those who are struggling.

A young woman whose parents immigrated from Mexico.  She is passionate about science and improving human health.  She has successfully maintained an A average while also working part-time in the evening cleaning medical facilities.  She has contributed 360 hours of community service during her high school career, highlighted by a trip to Mali in West Africa with buildOn. In addition, she spends significant hours conducting lab work and is proud to have earned Second Place in the Bronx Science and Engineering Fair at Lehman College.  She will attend Union College and plans to pursue biomedical engineering.

An Indian-Bengali young woman who dreams of becoming a chemical engineer to help identify a cure for cancer.  She took it upon herself to research mentors in cancer research and has worked under a Chemistry Professor at CUNY’s York College. A survivor of domestic violence, she strives to be independent in order to achieve her dreams and find her true purpose in life.  She holds several part-time jobs to contribute to her family’s finances.  She will be attending Penn State this fall.

A Burmese immigrant who moved to the US at the age of 8 and currently resides in Woodside with his family. He will be attending Princeton and studying Economics. He was a straight A high school student and achieved the highest possible score on every AP exam, despite struggling with English when he first moved to America. His interests and experiences are diverse. He enjoys extemporaneous speaking and competed with his school, while also founding his school’s Woodworking Club and Eco-Design Club. He is also a Set Design Director and manages crew members to build theater sets. In 2013, he had lunch with Michelle Obama for the National Design Awards. His dream is to continue to develop his leader skills and ultimately have an impact in developing the future of Burma.

Our initial goal for 2014 was to award $50,000, and instead, thanks to your support, we are awarding 97% more than we were able to award in 2013!

Thank you for all your contributions, including your time and financial commitments. Together, we are significantly improving these young person’s lives.  We look forward to changing many more lives in years to come.

Sincerely,

Adrienne, Celeste, Diana, Erika, Julissa & Rob

AEF Board of Directors

Young Bankers Seek ‘Good Yield’ With Their Own Nonprofits
By Max Abelson – Feb 4, 2014
Bloomberg News

The founders of the Resolution Project don’t dwell on generosity or charity when they describe why their nonprofit mentors and funds young leaders. They favor the language of finance.

“We get good yield,” said Andrew Harris, the group’s 31-year-old vice chairman, who advises private-equity firms at Forum Capital Partners in New York. “We think it’s very different and, to use a Wall Street term, very differentiated.”

Without deserting careers, a new wave of young bankers is starting nonprofits to help orphans, immigrants, veterans and students. They say they’re moved to mend the world using capitalism’s wisdom, not because of its shortcomings, preaching the power of dividends, due diligence, leverage and efficient allocation of resources. Some see themselves setting a new mold for post-crisis Wall Street philanthropy by not waiting to give away their money or leaving for full-time charity work.

“Among this generation — our generation — is a deep passion and interest in learning, earning and returning simultaneously,” said Andrew Klaber, 32, an analyst at hedge fund Paulson & Co. whose nonprofit Even Ground provides education and care to African children affected by AIDS. “You just see an unmet need in your research, and research is what we do on Wall Street.”

‘Made It’
Even Ground, which has given out more than $800,000 according to Internal Revenue Service filings, received early funding from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Three founders of Ascend Educational Fund, which throws its inaugural gala in New York’s Prince George Ballroom Feb. 8, have worked at that bank.

“Our target audience is a very under-covered market,” said Adrienne Serrato, 27, an Ascend co-founder who now works for Houston-based investment firm WindAcre Partnership. Her group, which grants scholarships regardless of immigration status, awarded $32,000 in 2013, its first full year.

Another Ascend co-founder, Julissa Arce, develops derivatives for Merrill Lynch clients at Bank of America Corp.

“The first time I felt like I made it wasn’t when I made director,” said Arce, 30, a University of Texas graduate. “I felt like I made it when I launched this fund.”

Lessons from capital markets aren’t the only inspirations. Others described being shaken by the 2008 financial crisis, even if they don’t see bankers as villains.

System Meltdowns
“There’s been a cultural humility that’s come out of the financial crisis,” said Tim Kleiman, 30, an analyst for New York-based asset manager Golub Capital. He’s working on a project to fund higher education in Africa that may aim for profit. “When you’re confronted with these really humbling events, where you see the meltdown of these systems and the sad human costs of that — that were not necessarily the result of anyone’s intention — for me it galvanized my thinking.”

Kleiman, a Yale University graduate who worked for McKinsey & Co. and hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. before Golub, said he doesn’t want to wait for his career to hit its high point before undertaking meaningful projects.

“That world that I’m imagining, where I’m a partner and I’ve made all my money, who knows what that world’s going to look like?” he said. “So why not try something now?”

Several founders, including some of the young bankers, warned that the work demands more than passion and pluck. Nancy Lublin, who started Dress for Success, which gives unemployed women suits for job interviews, said she cautions aspiring philanthropists even while admiring their intensity.

‘Root Canal’
“I’ve never run a hedge fund, and they’ve never run a not-for-profit,” said Lublin, 42, now chief executive officer of Do Something, an organization that runs national campaigns about bullying, the environment and other causes to engage teenagers. “I brush my teeth every day, twice a day, that doesn’t mean I’m ready to perform a root canal on somebody.”

Some Wall Street nonprofit founders described hitting logistical and financial snags trickier than expected.

Kelly Peeler, a co-founder of Business Across Borders, said she had a hard time planning entrepreneur competitions in Iraq while working as a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst in New York.

“It’s a lot to juggle,” said Peeler, 26, who left the biggest U.S. bank last year to be a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation global scholar.

Ahmad Zubair Sahar Mahjoor, 37, struggled to raise funds for his Afghan Education Peace Foundation, which aimed to bring students from Afghanistan to the U.S. for schooling. The partner at Latin Markets, a New York firm that organizes forums for investors, said he’s winding down the group after six years.

“You can’t lead a cavalry charge if you think you’ll look funny on a horse,” Sahar Mahjoor said.

Marathon Man
Others are undaunted. New York Needs You, which mentors students who are the first in their families to attend college, raised almost $1.4 million at a Jan. 23 gala, according to a press release. Robert Reffkin, a former chief of staff to Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, started the group in 2009 while working at the New York-based firm. The fundraiser honored Adebayo Ogunlesi, a member of the bank’s board.

“There is a subculture of young Wall Street people starting nonprofits,” said Reffkin, who left the bank to co-found Urban Compass, a real estate startup that says it’s using technology to improve housing searches for New Yorkers.

The firm and the nonprofit aren’t his only creations. The 34-year-old Columbia University graduate helped start a Success Academy charter school in the Bronx, began a Lazard Freres & Co. minority internship program and ran 50 marathons in 50 states over six years, ending in New York in November.

‘Let’s Go’
Reffkin, raised by a single mother, was one of the founders who described being driven by life experience and personality.

“I’m a starter of things,” said Oliver Libby, another co-founder of the Resolution Project, which will hold competitions for student social ventures at the United Nations Youth Assembly this month and the Clinton Global Initiative University in Phoenix in March. “I just have fun with it. So there’s a certain aspect of me that just is like, yeah, sure, let’s get that started, let’s go.”

Libby, 32, a managing director at New York-based advisory firm Hatzimemos Partners LLC, started a Harvard University a cappella group and was included in a Harvard Crimson story about students who wanted to be president of the U.S. Another Resolution co-founder, Howard Levine, is a colleague of Arce’s at Bank of America, where he works on a special-situations team.

“You can have your cake and eat it too — there doesn’t need to be a tension between Wall Street and nonprofit,” said Harris, who went to high school in Westchester with Levine. “And we’re proving that.”

Scalability, Mitigation
The language of banking shapes their group, with Resolution judging pitches on market demand, scalability, risk mitigation and returns. Winners get as much as $3,000 of seed funding and mentoring from volunteers who work at firms including New York-based Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan.

Resolution “is an allocator,” Libby said. “In a sense, we’re angel investors.”

There are limits to what the vocabulary and methodology of banking can do for nonprofits, according to Andrew Hahn, who directs the Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy at Brandeis University.

“Often it works out, and I call that a magical outcome, but sometimes it doesn’t,” Hahn said, adding that metrics Wall Street relies on for risk management can be harder to find in philanthropy. “Sometimes the Wall Street people bring their culture into the nonprofit arena and expect too much.”

‘Doing Good’
Most of the young Wall Street philanthropists promote their efforts on the resumes they post online. Some share abundant details. The LinkedIn page for Alliance for Veteran Support co-founder Omar Itum, 29, a Johns Hopkins University graduate, describes the group’s press coverage, partnerships, contacts and goals, detailing a fundraiser that was “one of the largest charity events in the financial-services industry.”

It includes little about his job as head trader for Charter Bridge Capital Management LP, an investment manager.

Joseph Weilgus, 36, who started Project Sunshine in 1998 to entertain hospitalized children, doesn’t question the motives that drive Wall Street’s new philanthropists.

“At the end of the day, if they’re doing good, that’s great,” said Weilgus, the CEO of investment adviser New Legacy Group LLC. “You don’t have to question people’s intentions if they’re doing good.”

The current wave of bankers starting nonprofits isn’t the first to wash over Wall Street. Even young founders who described trying to create a new model of banker philanthropy paused to offer praise for predecessors.

Klaber, whose group Even Ground was previously known as Orphans Against AIDS, applauded the generosity of John Paulson, his New York-based hedge fund’s billionaire owner, and cited former Goldman Sachs heads John Whitehead, Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson as “tri-sector athletes” who’ve thrived in business, charity and politics.

“Perfection is the aspiration,” Klaber said. “I just try to do the best that I can.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Max Abelson in New York at mabelson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Eichenbaum at peichenbaum@bloomberg.net

To read the original article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-04/young-bankers-seek-good-yield-with-their-own-nonprofits.html

Ascend Educational Fund to Award a Minimum of $20,000 in Scholarships to the NYC Immigrant Community in 2013

New York, NY- January 14, 2013- Ascend Educational Fund, Inc. a new community-funded scholarship program for immigrant students in the New York City area, has launched and will open its application period for Fall 2013 scholarships beginning this February. “We are extremely excited to begin the inaugural application process for Ascend Educational Fund in New York City.  As the epicenter of the immigrant community in the U.S., we look forward to awarding annual scholarships to support higher education within the immigrant community,” stated Julissa Arce, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Co-Chair of the Development Committee.  Arce added, “We are tremendously inspired by what the Esperanza Education Fund is doing for the immigrant community in D.C.”

Beginning this May, Ascend will award scholarships ranging from $2,500-$20,000, based on need, to immigrant high school students, regardless of ethnicity, national origin, or immigration status, living in the five boroughs of New York City- Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.  Students are eligible for the 2013 scholarship if they: (1) were born outside the United States or have two parents born outside the United States, (2) are graduating seniors at a high school in New York City, and (3) intend to enroll full-time at an accredited public or private college or university for the 2013-2014 academic year.  Applicants must demonstrate a history of academic success and perseverance.  With these criteria, Ascend Educational Fund intends to help bridge the gap for students who are high achieving and perseverant, but may not have the resources necessary to pursue higher education.

“With 60% of New York City students being immigrants or children of immigrants, we want to create a platform for these individuals to pursue higher education and achieve their dreams.  And with one out of every five New York City residents living in poverty, and 30% of children 18 and younger living in poverty, we can’t think of a better way to support our community than to help provide access to higher education opportunities,” stated Adrienne Serrato, Chair of the Mentorship Committee.

New York City is one of the most diverse immigrant communities in the nation, with individuals hailing from China, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guyana, Mexico, Ecuador, Russia, Korea, India, Colombia, and the Ukraine, to name a few, according to the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.

The Ascend Educational Fund, Inc. was founded by a diverse group of young professionals from New York City, with roots stemming from Mexico to the Philippines.  Arce added, “We are united for one cause- to ensure that more students from the immigrant community are not hindered from pursuing the American dream due to lack of financial aid.”

For further information contact ascendfundny@gmail.com.  For application materials, visit www.ascendfundny.org.  Applications must be submitted by April 1^st, 2013.

About Ascend Educational Fund, Inc.

Ascend Education Fund, Inc. was established in 2012 to help high school students of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education. Ascend Educational Fund focuses in particular on students that were born outside the United States or have two parents born outside the United States and have a history of academic success and perseverance.  Scholarship recipients are selected based on qualities traditionally valued and demonstrated by the immigrant community including hard work, resourcefulness, perseverance, academic achievement, leadership, and commitment to one’s community. 

Our mission is straightforward- to enable and encourage higher education and professional achievement for immigrant children and children of immigrant families.

For more information, visit www.ascendfundny.org.