The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, a merit-based graduate school program for distinguished immigrants and children of immigrants, announced its class of 2024 Fellows that includes a winner with Dunwoody connections.
According to a release from the organization, 30 applicants, selected from a pool of more than 2,300 applicants, have been awarded up to $90,000 in funding to support their studies at the nation’s top institutions.
Ananya Agustin Malhotra, who grew up in Cumming and Dunwoody and attended the Marist School, was one of the 30 winners announced on April 17.
“I’m humbled and grateful to be a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow, and I’m thrilled to join an amazing community honoring the contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants to our country,” Malhotra said. “I am especially proud and thankful to call Atlanta my hometown, as the relationships and support from my family, friends, and teachers in Atlanta have made me who I am today.”
Malhotra is the daughter of immigrants from Obando, Bulacan, Philippines and New Delhi, India. Raised in a bi-cultural and interfaith household, Malhotra said she is deeply motivated by her mother and father’s family histories to advocate for a more just and peaceful future United States foreign policy.
She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University with a concentration in the School of Public and International Affairs.
As a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, Malhotra earned an MPhil in modern European history with distinction, studying the histories of empire and anticolonialism in shaping international order. For the last four years, she has advocated for nuclear disarmament and risk reduction through her research, scholarship, and public commentary. Malhotra has worked in Washington, DC at the Nuclear Threat Initiative and at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft to advance policies aimed at fostering a safer and more peaceful world.
While her viewpoint in her studies and her work are global, Malhotra said she is grateful for the Atlanta community where she was raised.
“I am continuously reflecting on how my background and upbringing as the child of immigrants from the Philippines and India in Atlanta, a city with such rich and diverse cultural traditions, has shaped me and my conceptions of community and service to others,” she said.
According to the release, Malhotra will use the funds to continue her studies at Yale University.
Founded by Hungarian immigrants and American philanthropists Daisy M. Soros and her late husband Paul Soros in 1998, the program has provided more than $80 million in funding and awarded more than 800 fellows from 105 countries to pursue the graduate degrees of their choosing.
