Richardson Fellows named

The Class of 2005 recipients of this year’s Elliot and Anne Richardson Fellowships in Public Service will be serving others in locales from Arizona to India, and in fields ranging from mentoring young women to helping refugees.

Following are this year’s fellows:

Jie Hae (Jessica) Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, and has lived all over the world. She brings a combined concentration in social anthropology and economics to her interest in human rights in general and North Korean refugee resettlement in particular. During her Richardson Fellowship year, she will be working with a nongovernmental organization and exploring how education can be used for large-scale advocacy.

Luz Gonzalez, a psychology concentrator, plans to return to her hometown of Yuma, Ariz., to establish a program for girls in the third to fifth grades from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Her “Wisdom Exchange” will pair program participants with teenagers who will serve as mentors and role models for their younger charges.

Danielle Li concentrated in mathematics and history and science while an undergraduate. The daughter of a health economist who conducted extensive public health efforts in Nigeria, she will spend a year in Rajasthan, India, analyzing the effectiveness of several different public health interventions.

The Richardson Fellowships are designed to encourage and enhance the pursuit of careers in public service, to emphasize Harvard’s commitment to the value of such endeavors, and to pay tribute to Elliot and Anne Richardson, who as individuals and as a team embodied the highest ideals of public service. Elliot Richardson held three successive Cabinet posts during the Nixon administration, as well as an ambassadorship and another Cabinet post in the Ford administration. Anne Richardson joined the national efforts of Reading Is Fundamental during its infancy and served as its chair from 1981 to 1996. Both enjoyed long and diverse records of service at Harvard and remain the only husband and wife to have been members of Harvard’s Board of Overseers.