Our Challenge

In the last two decades, the capital region has emerged as one of the nation’s fastest-growing and most diverse immigrant gateways. The foreign-born population in the District of Columbia metropolitan area has nearly quadrupled since 1980, jumping from 6% to 20% of the total population. Today, one million immigrants call the capital region home.

This immigrant population faces a severe education deficit. Immigrants in the area are three times more likely to lack a high school diploma than their native-born peers, and 50 percent more likely to have never gone to college. This education gap creates a serious economic disparity. Foreign-born families in the capital region are nearly twice as likely to be poor as native-born families. Immigrants in the capital region need access to higher education, and to the opportunities and leaders that higher education forges and provides.

Our Strategy

We offer (1) local immigrant students and students born of two immigrant parents; (2) who are seniors in District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia high schools; (3) $5,000 and $10,000 scholarships; (4) to attend public (e.g. “state”) colleges and universities. There are many scholarships in the capital region. Here’s what makes ours special:

  • Our scholarships are financed by the communities we serve. Many scholarships rely on corporate sponsorships or private endowments. We raise our funds from individuals, businesses and institutions in the capital region itself.
  • We make long-term, capital- and time-intensive investments in our students. Most scholarships provide smaller awards of $250 to $2,500 and have no further contact with recipients. We award $5,000 for two-year degrees and $10,000 for four-year degrees, and enroll all Esperanza Scholars into an intensive academic and professional Mentorship Program.
  • We serve all immigrant students regardless of national origin, ethnicity, and immigration status.   The most prestigious scholarships open to immigrant students, e.g. the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and the Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarships Fund, typically limit their awards on the basis of ethnicity and immigration status. We target and serve all immigrants, from Bolivian to Japanese, from citizen to non-citizen.

Our effectiveness is multiplied by our absence of overhead—we are an all-volunteer organization with no offices. This means that more of each dollar donated goes to our students.

Our Accomplishments

We have had a tremendous inaugural year. On March 20, we launched our organization at a television studio in the District of Columbia. Bolstered by co-sponsorships from 11 local immigrant organizations—from the Mongolian School of the National Capital Region to Ivorian Hope to the Latin American Youth Center—the evening both highlighted the art and culture of our diverse immigrant community and allowed us to kick-start our fundraising. By June, we were able to raise and award $50,000 in scholarships to six extraordinary immigrant students.

Our six scholars, selected from 250 applicants and 30 interviewees, are truly the cream of the crop. They live in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, hail from around the world, and include a budding civil rights activist, a future doctor, a math prodigy, a young community health advocate, a future entrepreneur, and an engineer.

Our Leadership

The Esperanza Education Fund is operated by a diverse group of volunteers. Our members are as diverse as our scholarship recipients: we are lawyers, economists, documentary filmmakers, entrepreneurs, designers, consultants and educators.

Board of Directors

Alice Wang, Chair, is an appellate attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Her parents are immigrants from Taiwan. Originally from Houston, Alice graduated from The University of Texas at Austin, where she triple-majored in English, Economics, and Plan II, a liberal arts honors program. She then worked as an assistant editor at Foreign Affairs magazine in New York City before attending Harvard Law School. During law school, Alice served as an Executive Editor on the Harvard Law Review and worked at the Immigration Unit of Greater Boston Legal Services. In 2003, she received the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Following graduation from law school, Alice clerked for Judge Judith W. Rogers on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She currently resides in the District of Columbia with her husband Andrew Felton.

Alex Lin, Secretary, is an Associate at Hassett-Willis and Company, a small management consulting firm. His parents emigrated from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Originally from upstate New York, Alex graduated from Princeton University with a BSE in Electrical Engineering. During college, he worked in hardware design at IBM and then joined BAE Systems after graduation. After receiving a full fellowship to Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Alex obtained an MA in English Literature and taught both writing and literature courses. Following graduation, Alex joined Detica, a homeland security policy and technology consulting firm, as a Business Analyst. He currently resides in the District of Columbia.

Andrew Felton, Treasurer, is a financial analyst for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He has a B.A. in English from Carleton College, an M.A. in economics from Tufts University, and is working on a Ph.D in public policy at the University of Maryland. Before the Federal Reserve, Andrew worked at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on insurance pricing and at the Brookings Institution on international development issues. He currently resides in the District of Columbia with his wife Alice Wang.

Julissa Arce, Board Member, is originally from Mexico, and immigrated to San Antonio Texas at the age of ten. She is co-founder and chief product officer of Common Equity, a financial technology firm that is focused on creating wealth in local communities. Prior to co-founding Common Equity, she was a Vice-President at Goldman Sachs in the Private Wealth Management Structured Products Business where she lead the Latin America effort. Julissa is a contributing writer for Tech Cocktail, a Media company focused on start-ups, innovation and technology. She is also an active blogger on travel and college football. Julissa attended the University of Texas at Austin where she graduated Cum Laude with a degree in Finance.

Committee Leadership

  • Alice Yao, Chair of Mentorship Committee
  • Marie Scott, Chair of Scholarship Committee
  • Alex Lin, Chair of Development Committee

Board of Advisors

  • Claire Alexander
  • Fern Barrueta
  • Alvaro Bedoya
  • Ashley Evans
  • Jorge Figueredo
  • Carol Graham
  • Brian Greene
  • Jean C. Han
  • Sergio Oehninger
  • Tom Olson
  • Peter Skiff

Media & Communications

  • Cheryl Aguilar

Website & Design

  • Celeste H.G. Boyd
  • Paul Kittredge

For more information on how you can support our cause—as a donor, member, or both—please click here.

; ?>