“The laws exist,” said Giselle Schmitz, GSAS ’22, “but the economics really drive these races for resources.”

The conservation-minded researcher arrived in Bali, Indonesia, in August to work with the Coral Triangle Center, a nonprofit that connects governments, corporations, and local groups to help strengthen marine resource management in the region. Two big questions drive her work, she said: “How can a community be supported in the management of their own resources, and how can we reduce the outside stressors on those resources coming from countries that may have an exploitative interest?”

Schmitz was placed at the Coral Triangle Center after earning a Luce Scholarship, a prestigious award that gives early-career leaders an immersive professional experience in Asia. It marked the second fellowship she’s earned since graduating from Fordham’s international political economy and development (IPED) master’s degree program in 2022.

Finding a ‘Perfect Fit’ at Fordham

A California native and longtime scuba diver, Schmitz said protecting the oceans has always been a key part of her career goals. After majoring in English and minoring in biology at Walla Walla University in Washington, she earned a law degree at the University of Oregon, where she studied with Professor Richard Hildreth, who had been instrumental in passing several key environmental protections in the U.S.

After law school, she joined the Peace Corps to gain the kind of global experience she felt would be essential to environmental work, especially as rising sea levels and other effects of climate change permeate international borders. She was teaching at Gansu University of Political Science and Law in Lanzhou, China, in February 2020 when the COVID-19 outbreak cut short her time there.

That’s when Schmitz discovered the Fordham graduate program. She had been looking for a way to continue her global education in the U.S., and the IPED program was a “perfect fit,” she said, not only because it participates in the Paul D. Coverdell Fellows program, which provides financial assistant to returning Peace Corps volunteers, but also because it equips students—with classes like Econometrics and Development Economics—to work on complex issues in the face of competing interests.

Global Fellowships and Local Action

Schmitz said another highlight of her Fordham experience was working with the Office of Prestigious Fellowships, which helps students and alumni apply for funding and scholarships like the Fulbright and Truman. These prestigious fellowships allow them to pursue research and find innovative solutions to complex societal challenges, from marine resource management to subway accessibility.

With the support of the prestigious fellowships office—plus IPED program director Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., and program manager Donna Odra—Schmitz applied for and earned a John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship in 2022, the year she completed the Fordham program. She worked in the Office of Science and Technology at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. For a year, she studied how community-based research can help the government manage fisheries “in a way that makes sense for the ecosystem, including the [people] that depend on it.”

And while her research has brought her across the world to promote sustainable development, Schmitz believes that we can all find inspiration and take action closer to home.

“Finding those pieces to continue to be inspired by is so important, because otherwise, climate looks like a monumental challenge,” Schmitz said. “I think keeping hope active comes from those small actions, those tangible steps you can take.”

“The fact that we each have a different background and story is precisely what makes us such a strong community,” he said in a statement to the Soros Fellowship program. “It means that we are often in the front lines of the struggle for justice, seeking to improve and uplift the many communities of which we are part. Being a New American means to celebrate the richness of the American experience while also working to enhance and improve it for everyone.”

Oktaba is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, where he is studying comparative literature with a focus on narratives of trauma, paranoia, and genocide.

As the son of a single mother who came to the United States seeking both opportunity and safety after helping to overthrow the Communist regime in her native Poland, the issue of trauma is personally compelling to him, he said. He was born in New York City and grew up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where his greatest solace was his neighborhood’s small public library; he’d carry a stack of borrowed books along when he helped his mother in her job as a cleaning woman, reading in whatever moments of respite he could find.

At Fordham, Oktaba studied classics, exploring the ways in which they continue to inform discussions of identity and selfhood. With the help of Fordham’s Office of Prestigious Fellowships, he earned a Beinecke Scholarship and a Gates Cambridge Scholarship during his senior year. The latter scholarship took him to the University of Cambridge, where he earned a Master of Philosophy degree.

In 2018, he was named a Luce Scholar, which enabled him to travel to Asia and continue studying trauma. Focusing on Himalayan Buddhism, he explored storytelling and other forms of witnessing in post-traumatic survival, as well as historical medical approaches toward trauma treatment.

Anne Golomb Hoffman, Ph.D., professor of English at Fordham, taught Oktaba when he was an undergraduate and has continued to support him through each fellowship application process, most recently penning a letter of support for his Soros application.

“It’s been my great pleasure to have been in conversation with Nikolas over recent years and to see the development of his interests over time, in ways that derive from work he did as an undergraduate,” she said. “In fact, knowing the importance of libraries and reading to Nikolas’ development, I’d say those interests have been there, developing since childhood: Nikolas is someone who takes what life hands him and makes it the occasion for productive inquiry.”

Now, as a doctoral candidate at Yale, he’s seeking to combine scholarly research and writing with activism, identifying possible ways to address trauma, holistically and empathetically, beyond the academy.

“My sense now is that Nikolas has fully merged his interests in his program of graduate studies at Yale,” Hoffman said. “Through his experiences in England and his Luce year as well, Nikolas now understands trauma and narrative in broader historical contexts, including genocide. That’s become the larger focus of his work and it will be truly exciting to see where it takes him.”

Founded by Hungarian immigrants Daisy M. Soros and her husband, Paul Soros, the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans program honors the contributions of continuing generations of immigrants in the United States.