Please follow the instructions below when writing your bio for your scholarship application. If you are awarded a scholarship, your bio will be used on our website and in the program at the Scholarship event, so we are trying to make the bios more consistent from the start.
(Name of Scholarship Recipient) is a/an (undergraduate/graduate at school name). If you are a graduate student, please add your undergraduate degree and institution. Describe briefly your major, field of study, specific certificates and/or credentials awarded, and any additional minors to be achieved. If appropriate and relevant, please add your country of origin (especially if you are an international student.)
Please describe any clubs in which you participate or relevant honors that you have been awarded, leadership experiences, and community outreach you have performed. For graduate students, please add any work experience between undergrad and graduate programs and your post-graduate intentions.
Please also describe your expected path post-graduation.
Qurat Ul Ain Syeda
San Jose State University
Qurat is a first-generation college student at San Jose State University pursuing a degree in accounting. On campus, she assists students and faculty as an instructional student assistant, is the national reporting secretary for Beta Alpha Psi, and is a highly selective Sbona Honors Program member. As part of this program, she has led her team’s marketing project with an EdTech company and spearheaded a research project for BPM LLP. Qurat is passionate about contributing to the future of fintech and blockchain. For now, she is excited to have accepted an internship with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Qurat also hopes to light the path and serve as a role model for young Muslim women who want to have a career in accounting.
Maria Ortega
University of California, Berkeley
Maria is an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, double majoring in business administration and environmental economics. Maria grew up in a rural town in Mexico where the highest education offered was middle school. She embraced the educational opportunity she found when she moved to California. At UC Berkeley, she consults nonprofits through the Association for Socially Responsible Business and mentors high school students through their college application process. Maria has also served as the executive administrator for the Latino Business Student Association and is committed to increasing Latino representation in businesses. For the past two summers, Maria has interned at Deloitte, where she developed her interest in the financial services industry. Her goal is to combine this with her passion for environmental sustainability.
Swati Chopra
Wharton San Francisco
Swati earned her undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Delhi, India. She began her career as a day trader and eventually transitioned into cybersecurity at SonicWall and Cisco. Then, she found her passion for blending technology with finance and started to find solutions to secure financial institutions from the most vulnerable of breaches. Currently, she is a director of customer success at Bitglass, a company that secures confidential data for major financial institutions in the cloud. Swati is pursuing a Wharton Executive MBA with a focus on finance, entrepreneurship, VC funding, and corporate valuation. She is also passionate about women’s empowerment and upliftment. She aims to set up an organization focusing on increasing employability for underprivileged women to help them become financially independent.
Lauren Fu
University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business
Lauren is a first-year MBA student at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is also a consultant at Blockchain, VP of Academics at the Haas Fintech Club, and an academic cohort representative. Before Haas Business School, Lauren worked in securitization origination for CIBC Capital Markets, where she structured and executed over $20bn in transaction volume, managed client relationships, and oversaw the entire transaction process. Lauren is so passionate about fintech and VC investing that she founded a firm hoping to redesign the securitization ecosystem using blockchain technology.
