“I’m not coming from a background where my entire family is doing finance,” he said. But some of the other students, he noticed, had been exposed to the fields of corporate banking and hedge funds because of their families’ experience in the field.

So Li, an international student originally from Shanghai, decided to learn everything he could from his classmates—from etiquette to insight into how financial markets work. Many of them, he said, began interning as early as freshman year.

“They had their part-time career, part-time jobs—and I was kind of jealous, honestly,” he said. “So that really pressured me a little bit, but at the same time, it encouraged me to do a better job.”

He continued applying throughout sophomore year, and landed an internship at Aflac. Around that time, he also began working with Jennifer O’Neil, associate director of career advising in the Gabelli School’s’s Personal and Professional Development office, who helped him improve his resume and tell his own story better.

“Before he even came to see me, he had gotten his first internship at Aflac and he did a great job of [not just]taking…an internship but leveraging his foreign language skills and coming up with an idea to penetrate the Chinese business community for [Aflac’s] products,” O’Neil said. “He’s just always thinking outside the box.”

This thinking allowed him not just to add an internship to his resume, O’Neil said, but “add value to Aflac in a way that another intern couldn’t.”

O’Neil said that her biggest role was helping Li take the skills he had acquired from Aflac, his work in school, and other hobbies and showcase them on his resume to highlight his unique interests, which extended beyond finance and academics. His first year on campus, he auditioned for the Fordham University Choir.

“When I went to the audition, I did not expect that it would be for this formal University choir,” he said with a laugh. “I thought it was a club, somewhere that could give you some kind of lesson—Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, something like that.”

Li said that he was the only one who hadn’t been singing since high school or middle school, but after the director took a chance on him, he decided to stick with it for all four years.

“I learn very quickly. I think that’s one of the things the director [saw in]me” he said.

It’s that dedication that helped him land a summer internship his junior year with Bank of America as a fulfillment, service, and operations analyst.

“I was lucky enough to get a return offer from them,” he said.

After Li graduates, he’ll be starting as a full-time corporate banking analyst at their headquarters in Shanghai.

“I will be covering multinational corporations’ subsidiaries that are operating in Asia, in China, who have a revenue of $2 billion and above as well as some local corporations,” he said.

O’Neil said, often international students have to work hard to overcome some of the challenges they face, such as language barriers or lack of familiarity with the country. Li was a great example of how that hard work can pay off, she said.

“I tell a lot of the international students—get on the treadmill next to your American counterparts and put the incline on 10 and put the speed about two miles per hour faster than them, because that’s how much harder you’re going to have to work,” she said. “And he did it.”

Li said that he was grateful for the support from Fordham faculty and staff, like O’Neil, as well as the unique education Fordham offers.

“Studying in the city at Fordham Gabelli, you’re able to talk to people from all over the world; being able to emerge from such an environment has definitely broadened my horizons and given me more insight from different people of different backgrounds.”

“A lot of people with Ph.D.s don’t look like me, or sound like me, or have a name like mine,” said Rodríguez, a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of Education who will be the first in her family to have a Ph.D. “I want people to know that just because I’m this little girl from East Harlem with a family that isn’t the most educated doesn’t mean that I don’t belong.” 

In the Neighborhood

For Rodríguez, East Harlem has always been home. In the summers, she spent her weekly allowance on snacks from a little blue truck near her building that sold microwaveable cheeseburgers and juices for a quarter. Sometimes, the local Icee man gave her free ice pops. 

When Rodríguez was a little girl, she wanted to be a medical doctor. Her parents aren’t technically immigrants—her mother, previously a substance abuse counselor, and her father, a construction worker, were born in Puerto Rico—but her family held onto the “immigrant dream” and hoped to see their daughter get a medical degree one day, she said. Little did her mother know that she was inspiring her daughter to become a different kind of doctor.

For many years, Rodríguez’s mother worked as a substance abuse counselor at Rikers Island. Her clients were imprisoned for drug possession, scamming, theft—sometimes worse. When they were released from Rikers, they often ran into Rodríguez and her mother in their neighborhood.

“I remember seeing how happy they were to see my mom and give her updates on how they’re doing well and how they’re committed to their programs [to stay sober], and now they’re clean,” Rodríguez said. “I remember just feeling so impressed by that—how much of an impact my mom had on them and feeling like I wanted to be in a similar position.” 

Rodríguez, now 27, wants to be a psychologist for children and their families. She will graduate this May with her Ph.D. in school psychology from the Graduate School of Education, where she also earned her master’s degree in the psychology of bilingual students in 2019. 

She came to Fordham because she wanted to work with Giselle Esquivel, professor emeritus of the Graduate School of Education, who was known for her work in bilingual psychology. 

“Unfortunately, she was very sick by the time I got into Fordham, and she actually passed away,” said Rodríguez. “But I remember feeling how Fordham really emphasized culture and language and practiced what they preached.” 

In Rodríguez, Equivel’s work carried on. 

A Hard Pill to Swallow

Over the next six years, Rodríguez served as a psychology intern and extern in organizations across New York City, including the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx and the Harlem Child Development Center. She has provided therapy and conducted psychological evaluations for many clients, from infants to adults, with neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and ADHD. 

Sometimes, the possibility of a diagnosis is a hard pill to swallow. There was one mother, recalled Rodríguez, who refused to accept her son might be autistic. Her oldest son is nonverbal and autistic, but because her younger son could speak, she believed he couldn’t be autistic, too. 

“To accept the fact that your child is on the spectrum, in some ways, is like mourning the potential of your child,” said Rodríguez. “Every parent has a dream or vision of how their children are going to be. And I think her defensiveness was really because she wasn’t open or ready to accept that her other child also is on the spectrum—and what does that mean about maybe her as a parent, or what does that mean about this child’s opportunities and the child’s potential?” 

After a year of working together, the mother allowed Rodríguez to refer the boy for a psychological evaluation. Rodríguez’s supervisor later confirmed that he had autism, she said. 

“Not knowing is so difficult. Not understanding why their children are behaving the way they are. And when they have an answer and they have more information, I’ve noticed—sometimes, not always—they feel a little comforted or reassured by that,” Rodríguez said.  

Some days are emotionally taxing. But Rodríguez says it’s rewarding to see people make gains and better understand themselves—especially clients of color. 

“I really love working with people of color and seeing them feel less stigmatized by their diagnoses. There’s a lot of misinformation and stigma behind mental illness. I think that’s a global problem, but it’s even bigger for people of color,” said Rodríguez. “Especially working with Latino populations, I’ve heard a lot of myths and misconceptions and hesitations around therapy. I hope to show people that a lot of those misconceptions are incorrect and that therapy is not for crazy people—therapy is useful for everyone.” 

‘Her First Time’ Presenting

Through Fordham, Rodríguez also traveled to Kenya in 2019 and mentored children. She was accompanied by several students and a longtime mentor, Diane Rodriguez, Ph.D., professor in curriculum and teaching at GSE (to whom she shares no familial relation). For several years, Ashley served as Diane’s graduate assistant. They co-authored a peer-reviewed article in the journal Insights into Learning Disabilities in 2017. That year, they were supposed to co-present their research at the New York State Association for Bilingual Education’s 40th anniversary conference in Westchester County—the first professional presentation for the younger Rodríguez. Diane was unable to attend the conference because her father became very ill, so Ashley presented alone. 

“It was her first time, and I wasn’t there with her to support and guide her … But then my colleagues who went to see both of us were sending me these fantastic, raving emails about how wonderful my graduate assistant was at presenting the data,” said Diane. “As faculty, what you want to see is how your students grow and become these outstanding professionals and do the job better than you. She’s one of those people.”

After graduation, Rodríguez said, she will become an adjunct instructor in bilingual assessment at GSE. She will also continue to work at New Alternatives for Children, a child welfare agency in New York City, where she currently serves as a paid psychology intern. Next year, her title will change to postdoctoral psychologist and she will earn a salary instead of a stipend. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has switched the therapy sessions she does there from in-person to virtual, and it’s not the same—especially for her young clients. 

“I’m hoping that my clients see that even through a pandemic, I’m still there for them,” she said. 

Fulfilling a Promise

When Rodríguez receives her Ph.D. in a few weeks, there’s one person who won’t be around to witness it: her abuela. Rodríguez was close to her grandmother, a woman named Petra Soto, since she was born. Soto was a homemaker who went to school until second grade, when her mother became paralyzed and required constant care. But Rodríguez said she always told her abuela she would receive her doctorate, and her grandmother knew she would become a doctor before passing away three years ago at age 99. 

“I know she was really proud that I’ll be able to serve our community,” said Rodríguez.

“Growing up, I was consistently faced with situations where we had less than my peers had or where systems at school were set up so that you had to pay for particular activities, and they had very few students [like us]who couldn’t pay,” she said.

“I had access to a lot of privileged stuff, but at the same time, I think that early experience prepared me for an interest in advocating for people who not at the top of the food chain.”

After high school Chamberlain went to Barnard College, where she earned an undergraduate degree in anthropology in 2012. She worked as a paralegal at a firm before landing a position in 2015 with the Legal Aid Society’s health law unit. Working with clients who were sorting out issues related to Medicaid changed her view of what law can do for people, she said.

“Pretty much every client I had would call and say, ‘Thank you for dealing with this issue. I’m also having a problem with my food stamps.’ Or ‘I’m also having an issue with my apartment.’ Or ‘I’m having an immigration problem, can you help?’ It was really incredible to be able to say, ‘Yes, we actually do that too,’” she said.

She enrolled in Fordham Law two years later, and this spring, she will graduate as one of the school’s prestigious Stein Scholars. Pending her passing of the New York State Bar Exam, she will return to the Legal Aid Society in the fall to work in the organization’s housing rights unit.

“I wanted to stay in New York City, and I wanted to do something that would really make an immediate impact in people’s lives, so housing law actually stood out as a realm where you can do that as a brand new law grad,” she said, noting parallels to her work with Medicaid recipients.

“It ended up being a logical conclusion to this path that I’d taken, because even though it’s not health related, it is in a way, right? Because if you’re not healthy, it’s harder to find a place to live.”

During her time at Fordham Law, Chamberlain worked for the Legislative and Policy Advocacy Clinic and for the first-year legal writing program as a teaching assistant. She also did a summer internship at for the Center for Reproductive Rights. In an article published last year in the Fordham Law Review, she argued for repealing a 2017 anti-sex-trafficking law called the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. In addition to failing to protect victims of sex trafficking, she argued that it punishes adults seeking to engage in consensual sex work.

“It’s a really interesting issue because it does implicate a group of people that have been pretty consistently maligned by society. In my opinion, everyone deserves certain fundamental rights, and everyone deserves basic dignity,” she said.

Aisha Baruni, director of counseling and public interest scholars, said Chamberlain has had a tremendous impact on the Stein Scholars program since she started. Most recently, she created a guide that rising 2L students in the program can consult to get a better sense of what to expect.

“She didn’t just come and tell me, ‘This needs to be done, and you should do it.’ She just did it and distributed it among her classmates. If it were on Yelp, it would get five stars. It got raves,” she said.

“It’s just an incredible thing to do—to see something that would be helpful only to others, and wasn’t something that she needed at all, and to gather information from upper class Stein Scholars to try to make the experience better for 1Ls and 2Ls.”

Housing rights are human rights, Baruni noted, and Chamberlain’s dedication to improving life for those in underserved communities is particularly relevant in New York City.

“The work she’s going to be doing is absolutely essential to help ensure that families living in affordable housing can remain in that housing,” she said.

“The Legal Aid Society is really fortunate to have her, because she’s is so deeply committed to this work. It’s not a trend, it’s her purpose.”

In some ways, the pandemic that threw the worldwide economy into an unprecedented tailspin has made Chamberlain feel like her work is more relevant than ever. She’s hopeful that there will be changes on a systemic level with respect to how we take care of each other as a society and what the government is meant to provide to people.

“I do think that one of the things COVID-19 has done is force the whole country to contend with the reality that poverty is caused by a whole confluence of interconnected things, rather than just being something that’s an individual’s fault. My hope is that out of this we can get a better, more compassionate, and realistic social system. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to be part of that movement and help, in a small way, shepherd it through,” she said.

“I’m really excited to be starting work, but at the same time there’s some trepidation too. What is the world going to be like in September? We don’t really know. It’s scary, but I think there’s also a lot of opportunity.”

At a certain point though, he realized he needed more training if he was going to continue with the type of work he was called to. He found what he wanted in Fordham’s Graduate Program in International Political and Economy and Development (IPED), which is administered by the Graduate School in Arts and Sciences. This year, he will earn two masters degrees, in IPED, and economics.

“I was frustrated that I wasn’t able to move forward in this field and I wasn’t able to contribute as much as I had wanted to,” said Ferraro, a native of Armonk, New York.

“The IPED program really seemed like the best of all worlds in terms of practicality and theory.”

While pursuing his master’s, Ferraro conducted research on a little-understood but potentially large problem: cattle lead poisoning in India. After traveling to India and Bangladesh in the summer on a GSAS-funded fellowship he began working on a project titled Lead and Livestock: Estimating India’s Bovine Lead Exposure. The paper for the project, which he will present at the Northeast Agriculture and Resource Economics Association’s conference this June, uses Indian government data from 2010 to create a machine-learning model that tries to predict the total livestock fatalities due to lead exposure there.

“When I was at the site, people kept talking about how their livestock had been perishing very quickly with these very severe symptoms. After further research, I came to realize that it is a phenomenon, but it’s something that’s not really well-documented,” he said.

The problem stems from two realities of contemporary life in rural India. Livestock, which are in many cases the only form of capital poor families possess, are free to roam as they please, while lead battery recycling plants are poorly regulated. No one knows exactly how big the problem is though; Ferraro hopes that his paper can get the issue on the radar of the Indian government.

“I’m estimating that just due to car battery recycling, India lost millions of dollars in livestock assets, and the people who are most affected are poor rural farmers,” he said.

Ferraro is also the co-author of a meta-analysis study of all the research that’s been done on lead exposure in low and middle-income countries. The purpose of the study is to try to develop a “background,” or baseline level of lead exposure that a person can expect to have based on where they live. The study is being conducted in partnership with Pure Earth, an environmental research organization where Ferraro has been a research assistant since January 2019.

“It’s been a really great experience, and I think the meta-analysis especially is going to be meaningful when it comes out. It was nice to work with a team, and I gained a lot of the statistics knowledge,” he said.

Andrew Simons, Ph.D., an assistant professor of economics who taught Ferraro in his Econometrics and Agriculture and Development classes and supervised his research for the India lead study, said his dedication to a cause like this isn’t surprising, given his drive and initiative.

“Very often Greg would hang around after class and have some question that was probably a little bit more advanced than what we were talking about in class, and I would give him some answer about that and then the next week, he would have gone and read about it or thought more about it,” he said.

“Professors really appreciate that kind of self-driven inquiry and self-driven initiative, which he definitely has a lot of.”

Upon graduation, Ferraro will be traveling to Cote d’Ivoire on a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship. Working with the country’s agriculture ministry, he hopes to use his expertise on data collection to help officials use low-cost, open-source software to create computer models for problems such as child labor and deforestation.

“There’s a lot of money that gets invested into trying to reduce child labor, and we’re not even sure if it’s effective or not. Obviously, I’m not going to resolve this issue on my own, but I think that even governments with low budgets should be able to start their own data management collection,” he said.

“Just being there and starting it, I think could have an impact.”

The trip has been delayed until January 1 due to the coronavirus pandemic. But as an Ironman Triathlete, Ferraro is used to taking the long view.

“I grew up in a more privileged background, and I had a lot at my disposal and was never in need. So, I’ve been motivated to perform work that I know has a positive social effect,” he said.

He’s also motivated by past failures, including times when he didn’t have the skills he needed.

“For all the things I have done well, I’ve had projects blow up,” he said, noting that past plans for both law school and doctoral studies have both fallen through.

“These are just some examples just to press the point that it’s not exactly a linear path, and I think I actually enjoyed that. Because for every step of the way, I’ve learned something, and it forces me to really sit down and work hard to get whatever it is. At the end of the day, I think I’m better for it.”

“That career dream turned into becoming a surgeon,” said Krisch, a February 2020 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill. She is heading to medical school this fall. 

Body Cells, Dry Ice, and Dissections

Krisch has lived on Long Island her whole life. She grew up in Glen Cove with her mother, a high school anatomy and chemistry teacher; her father, an IT worker; and two older brothers, an accountant and an aspiring police officer. 

The three siblings were surrounded by science, thanks to their mother, who carried her classroom home. Once she scraped the inside of her children’s cheeks with a toothpick and showed them the structure of their cells under a microscope. Another day, she brought home dry ice and explained the science behind sublimation, the transformation from solid to gas. One summer, after Krisch helped her mother clean her classroom, the two of them dissected a fetal pig. For the first time in her life, Krisch saw an animal heart and “spaghetti” intestines up close. 

“I remember thinking, wow, everything in here is a lot gooier than I thought it was, but also a lot larger and complex,” said Krisch. “From a very young age, [my mother]instilled a passion for science in me.” 

In high school, she found a field that combined the two passions she had honed throughout her childhood: orthopedic surgery. 

“Bones. Musculoskeletal systems. Joint replacements, broken bones, traumas—all of that,” Krisch explained. “They call it the carpentry of medicine because there’s a lot of power tools involved.” 

For almost eight months in 2015, Krisch shadowed a local orthopedic surgeon in Great Neck, New York, and saw him diagnose and treat many patients. She recalled a man with osteoarthritis who couldn’t walk when he first arrived at the clinic. 

“By the end of my time shadowing Dr. Simonson, that same patient was shooting hoops with his grandchildren,” said Krisch. “I was like, wow, I want to be able to do that. That’s a miracle in medicine.” 

A Future Doctor at Fordham

In 2016, she graduated as valedictorian of Glen Cove High School. For the next three-and-a-half years, she studied biology on the pre-health track at Fordham College at Rose Hill. She mentored first-year students as an undergraduate assistant for the ASPIRES Scholars Program, served at-risk high school students through the Fordham chapter of Strive for College, and taught review sessions as teaching assistant coordinator for the Fordham chemistry department. 

“She is, at her core, a teacher, which is why she’ll be such a phenomenal physician,” said Ellen Watts, assistant dean for pre-health advising. “She has the natural ability to see when others need help and be able to guide them through what they need to move forward—not just to give them answers, but to help them learn.” 

At Fordham, Krisch took classes in medieval history and ancient philosophy—things that don’t necessarily go with biology, but can help her connect with patients from many backgrounds, she said. 

“Surgeons get the bad rap of being impersonal; they’re only interested in science, they can [only]talk about their profession. Fordham offers that great, well-rounded liberal arts education that enables you to talk about more than your major,” said Krisch. 

In her first month at Fordham, she began serving as an emergency medical technician with Fordham University Emergency Medical Services. Throughout various roles, from crew chief to captain to head of day staff, she provided patient care to both members of the Fordham and Bronx community until December 2019—her final month as an undergraduate. 

Krisch said she graduated a semester early to help her save money for medical school and give her brain a much-needed break. This spring semester, she’s worked as a full-time tutor for high school and college students and visited the Rose Hill campus several times to co-present workshops to juniors and seniors preparing to apply to medical school. Krisch said she has been accepted to two medical schools in New York state, but is waiting to hear back from several more; she will make her final decision by July. 

‘It’ll Be Maria Who’s Helping Them Be Their Best’

Becoming a physician in orthopedic surgery, a male-dominated field, will be a little challenging, said Krisch. More than 84% of orthopedic surgery resident physicians are men, according to the American Medical Association. But Krisch says she’s ready. 

“I’m excited to be able to make those dramatic life-changing transformations. I’m excited for the unpredictability of the job. No broken bone is the same,” she said. 

Krisch is becoming a doctor amid one of the worst health catastrophes to hit the world: the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the U.S. health care system didn’t lack the proper training to handle the pandemic, but it suffered from a shortage of ventilators and personal protective equipment. After things settle down, she said, it will be important to review what we did right and wrong. Her initial thoughts include returning the manufacturing of medical equipment/supplies/pharmaceuticals back to the U.S. and addressing socioeconomic disparities in health care. 

“In medicine, it’s absolutely important to be proactive, but it’s equally important to be flexible and reactionary when a Black Swan event such as COVID-19 comes about,” she said. 

Ten years from now, Krisch envisions herself as an orthopedic surgeon, a medical school professor, and an overall mentor. It’s a desire that stems from her science-driven upbringing and her mentoring experiences from high school to college, she said. 

Krisch isn’t a physician yet, but her mentor said she can already see her future. 

“She’s not even there yet,” said Watts. “But you can see that these little kids who are 5, 6, 7 years old who think they want to be a doctor 20 years from now—it’ll be Maria who’s helping them be their best.”