Graduates from all 12 Schools are taking their degrees and expertise and heading out into the world as graduate students, postdocs, residents, entrepreneurs, startup execs, policy workers, and more, with the interdisciplinary groundwork of a Penn degree in tow.
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Penn’s 270th graduating class is going places; D.C., Oxford, and North Philly among them. They will seek advanced degrees, helm new startups, and seek solutions to the great challenges of the current time.
(Top row, from left) Match Day Penn Med Students and Carly Oniki. (Bottom row, from left) Maya Gomberg, Prithvi Parthasarathy, and Florence Onyiuke.
For the graduating class at the Perelman School of Medicine, the next steps are revealed at an annual Match Day celebration, with family and faculty joining the soon-to-be residents at Penn, across the country, and abroad. For gymnast Carly Oniki, her graduation earns a perfect 10 for achieving her childhood dream of graduating from her dream school, “the only school I applied to,” she said.
Thanks to a Penn Carey Law School Clinical Defense Clinic, Maya Gomberg learned how to navigate both misdemeanor and felony courtrooms, and nuanced interactions with judges and their clients. Following a Center for the Advanced Study of IndiaSummer Travel Funds program where Prithvi Parthasarathy worked in rural India on an AI-triage tool for hospitals, the School of Engineering and Applied Science graduate will focus on applying to medical school, with a future career centered on strengthening healthcare infrastructure through clinical insight and research. And Anisha Vanka will bring her knowledge of education policy from Penn’s Graduate School of Education and her work in West Philly elementary schools to her role as a Congressional Fellow with the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies. “Working at these schools motivated me to become involved in making differences at a structural level,” she said.
(Top row, from left) Mikhaidia Miller and Jana Dweek. (Bottom row, from left) Harisa Martinos, Melanie Contreras, and Anisha Vanka.
Studies at the Wharton School--along with a financial aid boost from the Quaker Commitment--allowed Gabrielle Fine to blend her passion for the environment and interest in nature with a business degree, complemented with minors in environmental studies and French and Francophone studies. Simone Sawyer built a masterful performance on court as a guard on the women’s basketball team, alongside an architecture and psychology degree, and founded Mo Mind Matters, which supports mental, emotional, and physical wellness.
Amanda Watkins’ post-grad plans also benefits from the interwoven nature of Penn’s Schools; she plans to publish her dissertation results and then focus on grant writing, continuing to draw on the mentoring she received through her CiPD NIDCR T90 fellowship that spans Penn Dental Medicine, the School of Veterinary Medicine, and Penn Engineering. Anthropology and communications graduate Kara Butler will pursue her master’s in education, culture, and society from the Graduate School of Education, examining the role of museums as vehicles for public education. Through anthropology, she found that classes at the Annenberg School for Communication “have given her the tools to communicate anthropological findings accessible to non-experts who visit museums.”
With a degree in MSSP+DA from the School of Social Policy & Practice, Nature Hu hopes to work in public sector governance or policy research, focusing on community development and social services. “I’m especially interested in how technology can improve local governance and how policies can adapt to demographic changes,” she said. “SP2 has given me a structured way to think about these challenges.”
(Top row, from left) Gabrielle Fine and Simone Sawyer. (Bottom row, from left) Amanda Watkins, Kara Butler, and Nature Hu.
(Top row, from left) Margaret Zhu and Nhlanhla Mavuso. (Bottom row, from left) Eric Lee, Justin Wang, and Janine Haros; Darlene Leohansson, Chloe Chang, and Connie Ni.
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