Strauss Scholar Spotlight

Zuhairah Scott

In the Business of Doing Good

Identify a problem, then go to work on a solution.

That general idea motivates every Strauss Scholar, and the career of Zuhairah Scott is a notable example. "Being an empathetic person who was often confronted with poverty, crime and other social ills growing up," she says, "I felt a need to do something about it."

Leaving her home in Newark, New Jersey, to attend UCLA, Zuhairah was drawn to a fledgling program called SHAPE (Students Heightening Academic Performance

SCHOOL DEADLINES APPROACH

Proposals from students are submited to their campus' selection committee. Up to three will be sent on to the Strauss Foundation by March 5, 2010.

Process Yields Unexpected Results

Lorena Chavez, Assistant Director for Community Engagement at Loyola Marymount University, reports that two students who applied last year but didn't receive a Strauss Award, accomplished their projects anyway. In both cases, the outside organization that the student contacted for their Strauss proposal, liked their idea enough to help them .

BRIEFLY...

Jamie Zimmerman (Strauss 2007, pictured left), let us know that as an outgrowth of her Strauss project, Heart of Africa: Using Film To Bring Refugees' Stories To An American Audience - which hit some cultural and ethical bumps on the road to film fruition - she and her colleagues did complete a short documentary. Entitled "Far From Gone," the film relates the stories of two refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The documentary was selected to be be screened at the International Documentary Association's DocuWeek festival held last summer at the ArcLight Theatre in Hollywood... Matt Spence (1999, pictured below) fills us in on some of what he's done in the decade since he was a Strauss Scholar: After graduating Yale Law School, he clerked for a federal appeals court judge in Chicago, followed by working for the Obama campaign - specifically, for Susan Rice. He moved to Washington DC, in the employ of the Obama transition team, and on Inauguration Day, he began work at the White House on the National Security Council. His office is in the West Wing, where he reports to National Security Advisor General James Jones and his deputy, Tom Donilon...... Leah Katz (1998)is living in Oakland and working as the Grants Manager for Sustainable Conservation (http://suscon.org/), a California-based non-profit organization that believes that protecting the environment can also be good for business. "As for other great news," she adds, "I'm getting married this fall"...