Daily Guerrero '17 Awarded Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans

New York, April 19, 2016—Daily Guerrero ’17 has been named a 2016 recipient of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, a national merit fellowship that annually supports immigrants and children of immigrants who are pursing graduate school in the United States.

 

Guerrero was one of 30 fellows selected from a pool of over 1,400 applicants. Fellows are chosen for their potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture, or academics, and each receive up to $90,000 toward their graduate education.

 

When she was six years old, Guerrero and her mother emigrated from the Dominican Republic to New York City; four years later they moved upstate to a city with the fourth largest concentration of refugees in the United States. Growing up in Utica, NY shaped Guerrero’s worldview, and engendered a deep appreciation for the many challenges immigrants face when acclimating to a new country.

 

"My favorite part about the fellowship is that it celebrates the contributions immigrants make to U.S. society and rewards students who are deeply involved in helping communities in need,” she said. “I am grateful for all of the support I received from Columbia while I was applying for the fellowship: Professor Elora Mukherjee took the time to draft a highly personalized letter of recommendation and Madeleine Kurtz from SJI connected me with Professor Bert Huang, another Columbia Paul & Daisy Soros fellow." 

 

While a student at Harvard University, Guerrero became active in community organizing, and founded the Harvard College Dominican Students' Association. As conference chair of the 8th National Dominican Student Conference, she brought together more than 500 Dominican students and professionals for three days of community building.

 

After earning a B.A. in 2014, Guerrero began law school—and once again threw herself fully into academics and the life of the School. She became an active member of the Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic as a student-attorney during the Fall 2015 semester, working alongside her clinic partner, Chris Mendez '17, to represent a political asylum seeker from Burundi being held in a detention center in Elizabeth, NJ, and helping him win his case in just a month and a half. She also served as a Spanish interpreter and later as a teaching assistant.

 

Upon learning that Guerrero had been chosen, Professor Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic, called Guerrero’s award “an amazing achievement for an incredibly hardworking and talented young woman.”

 

Guerrero is a member of the Columbia Law Review, is currently interning for the Honorable Denny Chin on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and will be interning at Human Rights First during the summer of 2016.  After receiving her J.D. in May 2017 she will continue her passion for public-interest law, with a focus on immigration and human rights.