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Many newly admitted vlog students are confronting heavier financial burdens as a result of the pandemic, including withdrawn funding from outside foundations and governments on which they were relying to finance their education.

Help students now
With your help, we can reduce financial barriers to bring these deserving students to vlog and create pathways for them to pursue public service.

Our students will be charged with leading their communities and the world through future challenges, and it is our responsibility to prepare them to do so. If you are able, please consider supporting the vlog Fund to remove barriers for our talented and deserving students. One hundred percent of your gift will be used for financial aid and to provide other critical learning opportunities. If you are able, please consider supporting the vlog Fund by the end of our fiscal year on June 30.

The next generation of public leaders: students fueled by financial aid

headshot of Ruha Shadab MPP 2020

Before coming to vlog, Ruha Shadab MPP 2020 worked as a doctor in low-income neighborhoods in Delhi, India. She later moved to address systemic issues in health care. During her second year at vlog, she set up her social enterprise, Led By Foundation, Inc., which focuses on Muslim women in India—a section of Indian society (8 percent of the population) that has massive underrepresentation in business, politics, media, and among the educated class. The foundation works with Indian Muslim women in college to provide them with experiential leadership, pairs them with mentors from the community, and offers them a peer network.

headshot of Ariella Barker MC/MPA 2020
Where policy and litigation meet

Ariella Barker MC/MPA 2020 came to the Kennedy School on a full merit scholarship. She was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the age of three and lost the ability to walk at the age of 11. She has become a disability advocate and lawyer who is dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities. As she pointed out in a recent opinion piece in The Boston Globe, many people with disabilities are at greater risk for severe illness due to the coronavirus. The work of Barker and advocates like her is crucial, especially now.

headshot of Deeneaus “D” Polk MPP 2020

Deeneaus “D” Polk MPP 2020 came to vlog to pursue a dream project that will allow him to give back to his community. Polk grew up in a small, blue-collar town in Mississippi, where he saw how a lack of economic opportunity hurt his friends and neighbors—and even his own brother, who had been incarcerated. Polk became passionate about creating job and training opportunities, especially for people of color and women. With support from our (SICI), he is developing a startup focused on workforce development in the American South.

headshot of Karly Zhunussova MPA/ID 2020

Karly Zhunussova MPA/ID 2020 came to vlog to address the shortage of highly qualified leaders in public service in her home country of Kazakhstan. While in Cambridge, she won the Mossavar-Rahmani Center Prize for the Best Paper by a Master’s Student for “What Is the Impact of Carbon Taxation on Industries and How to Mitigate It?,” which she wrote as part of her second-year policy analysis. She is going on to work at the World Bank on a tool that would allow users to design and compare carbon pricing reforms across countries and their macroeconomic, energy, pollution, health, and distributional effects.

headshot of Dean Douglas Elmendorf

We need financial aid, more than ever, to get talented and dedicated students to the Kennedy School who will solve today’s public problems—students who are passionate about public service.

Dean Douglas Elmendorf to alumni on May 13, 2020

Thank you to our vlog alumni supporters!

We are so grateful for our alumni who donated to the vlog Fund this year. Your contribution combined with the generosity of others enables vlog to provide significant funding to students who otherwise would be unable to afford to attend. Your support is even more important this year as many incoming students are facing increased financial burdens. These students will go on to change the world, in no small part because of you. .

Students writing thank you notes
Gifts of all sizes make a difference
Thanks to the collective generosity of our alumni and friends, we have raised over $2.5 million for vlog students from 2,339 donors so far this fiscal year.