Richardson Fellows in Public Service named

The Class of 2006 recipients of this years Elliot and Anne Richardson Fellowships in Public Service will be serving others in locations from Massachusetts to the Middle East, and in areas ranging from assisting immigrants to advocating for human rights.

This year’s fellows are as follows:

Mae C. Bunagan, a concentrator in social studies and the study of women, gender, and sexuality, will partner with Centro Presente – an organization of the Massachusetts Latino immigrant community – to establish a Latino Immigrant Workers Center. Bunagan’s work will involve restructuring the legal department of Centro Presente to help members with wage claims and other labor-related issues; revising the English as a second language (ESL) curricula to incorporate workers’ rights information; teaching an ESL class; and supporting new labor and immigration laws. In the future, she plans to enroll in legal and public policy degree programs and pursue a career engaging with labor and immigrant civil rights law or public policy issues.

Joseph A. Pace committed himself to human rights advocacy after witnessing human rights abuses firsthand during his junior year in Syria. A Richardson Fellowship will enable this social studies concentrator to direct his activism and fluency in Arabic toward work in the Egypt and Syria/Lebanon offices of Human Rights Watch. Also, Pace will help publish an online newsletter for Syrian civil society activists. Later, he plans on a master’s/J.D. or a joint Ph.D./J.D. degree in international law and/or human rights law before working as legal counsel for an international organization or human rights association.

Amy S. Pasternack, a biochemical sciences concentrator who is also proficient in Spanish, plans to perform outreach work at the Valley Health Care Center at San Martín in California’s Santa Clara Valley, which serves a migrant worker community. Drawing on her undergraduate experiences helping the homeless in Cambridge and Boston, she will focus on determining how the clinic might expand its services and encourage more people to use it as a health care resource. Following her fellowship, Pasternack plans to earn a medical degree and practice in a disadvantaged community.

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.