Two from HLS awarded 2014 Soros Fellowships for New Americans

Two Harvard Law School students, Alexander Chen ’15 and Bianca Tylek ’16, were selected from a field of more than 1,200 applicants to receive the Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellowship. Thirty scholars, all of whom are immigrants or children of immigrants, will receive $90,000 grants each to pursue graduate studies at U.S. universities.

Chen, who was born in Colorado, is the son of Chinese immigrants. He holds a B.A. in English literature from Oxford University and an M.A. from Columbia University. He hopes to focus his legal career in civil rights advocacy, combining litigation, policy work, and academic research to advance civil rights for trans people.

Chen interned with the ACLU’s LGBT & AIDS Project cases during the summer of 2013, and he will be working at the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and at the National Center for Transgender Equality this summer.

The child of a Polish father and Ecuadorian mother, Tylek was born in New York and grew up in New Jersey, raised by non-English speaking relatives. After graduating from Columbia University, she pursued a career in investment banking. She later worked in growth strategy for Teach for America, and developed College Pathways, an innovative program that prepares inmates at Rikers Island for college-level education.

She is a member of Harvard Defenders, the Prison Legal Assistance Project, and the Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review. She hopes to pursue a career focused on reducing prisoner recidivism.