Graduates are ready to serve and engage at home and abroad
Members of Penn’s 269th graduating class will channel their expertise and passions to serve and work in Philadelphia and around the world, from teaching to research, poultry farming, and basketball.
4 min. read
Some will serve communities in rural South Carolina, rural Oregon, and Alaska; others will expand on their military service to state and foreign policy work, and as a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps. Others are a poultry veterinarian, a K-12 educator in Mexico and Latin America, and a portrait photographer. One hopes to shoot hoops professionally in Europe. Their commonality is on May 19th, they are marking Penn’s 269th Commencement as Class of 2025 graduates.
Penn Today has featured more than two dozen undergraduate and graduate profiles of the Class of 2025 from all 12 Schools. Each profile highlights the hard work and vision the students applied on the road to graduation, their plan for the future, and the ways Penn supported, and sometimes changed, their direction and goals.
Bryan Suh received a scholarship through the NROTC program, volunteering with the Marine Corps. As the eldest child “I had this ‘have-to-be-mature-and-responsible’ thing going on,” Suh says. “I wanted to give back to my parents.” After finishing a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics, Suh will become a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps.
Next steps for Navy veteran and SP2 graduate Alice Wu are twofold—with the first phase involving continued Yellow Ribbon support. Post-graduation, Wu will continue her education with the Master of Public Administration program offered by the Fels Institute of Government in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies. Then, equipped with an MSW and MPA, Wu envisions starting a career in state government with the long-term goal of effecting international change.
Penn Carey Law and SP2 graduate Christina Bartzokis worked as a Child Protective Services case worker for three years in rural Oregon. Now she’s set her sights on Louisiana, where she’ll serve as a public defender. “I wanted to set myself up for an education that would allow me to meet the broadest range of needs that the clients I was working with in Burns had expressed to me,” she says.
Chip Chambers, an M.D./M.B.A. graduate in the Perelman School of Medicine and Wharton School, will apply his knowledge of the American health care system and his clinical training as a family physician in Greenwood, South Carolina. “My faith is a huge motivator of everything that I do. I just believe that I’ve been blessed with a lot of things that I didn’t earn and that I have a responsibility to steward those for the good of other people and not for myself,” Chambers says.
After finishing a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics in the School of Arts & Sciences, Bryan Suh is becoming a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps, while Navy veteran and School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2) graduate Alice Wu reflects on how the financial support from the Yellow Ribbon Program was essential to her education. Before Penn Carey Law and SP2 graduate came to Penn, Christina Bartzokis worked as a child protective services case worker in rural Oregon. Now, she’s headed to the Baton Rouge public defender’s office upon passing the bar. Wharton School and Perelman School of Medicine graduate Chip Chambers will use his knowledge of the American health care system along with his clinical training as a family physician in Greenwood, South Carolina.
Lorea Peterson Redondo, a graduate student in the Wharton School and the Graduate School of Education, hopes that she can share her knowledge to improve the lives of students and educators in Mexico and across Latin America. Her family, based in Mexico City, carries a deep legacy in education.
Penn Dental Medicine graduate Kendra Domotor studied vocal performance to become a classically trained opera singer as an undergraduate. But as she worked her way through her science-forward curriculum, she realized that she was more interested in the anatomy and physiology of the voice. Medical school became career option two, and she gravitated towards otorhinolaryngology—ear, nose, and throat. But shadowing made her realize that while ENT was not for her; dental school became career option three.
Graduating students at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine gathered with friends and family for the annual Match Day celebration on March 21. Sydney Chambule from Mozambique matched at Penn for urology. “It was hard for me to see the limitations of my country’s health care system,” he said. Chambule plans to go back to Mozambique to practice. “I want to have a global health impact,” he said.
“I’ve definitely heard some strange replies, like, ‘What, are you going to have a chicken walk into your vet hospital and tell you that her back hurts or something?’” says Dana Bubka, a Class of 2025 graduate of Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine who will focus on poultry medicine. Bubka received Penn Vet’s full-tuition One Health scholarship, which she does not take it lightly. “I honestly think about it every single day,” she says, “because of how much of an impact it’s had on me.”
School of Nursing graduate Charlotte Brown plans to move to Washington, D.C. “to keep my toes in the policy world a little bit.” Long term, she wants to move into a community health role in her home state of Alaska. “There are a lot of really lovely things about my community, but there are also a lot of things that are hard,” she says. Food is expensive, she says, and most Alaskans must travel to Seattle if they have serious health issues. She observed these issues growing up, but Penn taught her about social determinants and made her realize that health care access issues in Alaska are not universal experiences.
Connor Nakamura, a history, urban studies, and creative writing graduate, delved into the life, work, and legacy of Bayard Rustin. “His ideas remain highly relevant today, with a focus on creating economic opportunity,” he says. Rustin represents “a path not taken within the Civil Rights Movement. He was really concerned about bringing more people into the movement and reducing alienation.”
Stina Almqvist, a Wharton School graduate from Sweden played guard in the Swedish Pro Basketball League before coming to Penn. “I definitely want to keep playing basketball, so I’m not really taking the normal Penn route that other Wharton people do. … I’m trying to play somewhere in Europe.”
Whether taking pictures of strangers on the street in Portugal—where she traveled through Penn Abroad’s Global Research & Internship Program—or family and friends, sociology graduate Théa Kerekes loves portraiture. “Photography and sociology complement each other,” says Kerekes. “Sociology examines human behavior and societal structures while photography brings these observations into focus, inviting an audience to see, feel, and engage.”
School of Nursing graduate Charlotte Brown’s long-term goal is to move into a community health role in her home state of Alaska. Connor Nakamura, a history, urban studies, and creative writing graduate in SAS, found a legacy in Bayard Rustin that resonates today. Wharton graduate Stina Almqvist has her sights set on professional basketball in Europe. And SAS graduate Théa Kerekes found a powerful connection between portrait photography and sociology, uniting her studies and her visual eye.
Read more profiles of graduates from the Class of 2025.
Griffin Pitt, right, works with two other student researchers to test the conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and temperature of water below a sand dam in Kenya.
Griffin Pitt’s upbringing made her passionate about water access and pollution, and Penn has given her the opportunity to explore these issues back home in North Carolina and abroad.
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Penn Engineers, NASA, and five other universities tested robotic systems designed to help unmanned explorers cooperate in the dunes of White Sands, New Mexico, paving the way for Moon and Mars exploration.
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