About Lina

Hometown:
Forest Hills, NY

University Partner:
Harvard College

Degree:
A.B. in Economics, 2007

Grant Partner:
Facing History and Ourselves

Senior Mentor:
Dennis Barr, Director of Program Evaluation

"It's very rare to go into an experience thinking that it will be life changing, but it is even rarer to actually have those high expectations met. I knew that something special would happen to me during the Steamboat summer. What I did not realize is that I would be joining a community that will support and guide me through the course of the rest of my life."

Scholar Background

Lina emigrated from Moscow to New York in 1991 with her mother, who believed that America was the land of equal opportunity and dedicated herself to creating a secure and happy life for her daughter. Not wanting her mother’s hard work and sacrifice to go to waste, Lina has made the most of her opportunities. Having attained the elusive 1600 on her SATs and the National Merit Scholarship in high school, Lina graduated from Harvard magna cum laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors. A recipient of the Arthur Liman Public Interest Law Fellowship, Lina has seized various academic and extracurricular opportunities to engage with subjects at the intersection of human rights and legal policy. Lina’s involvement with the Harvard International Relations Council as a member of its Board of Directors has helped educate thousands of high school and college students from all over the world about pressing global issues. In furtherance of her commitment to due process, she participated in a criminal law internship at the Forensic Panel and worked toward the creation of a racially and socio-economically blind instrument to help eliminate arbitrariness in sentencing decisions concerning questions of depravity. She completed an economics senior honors thesis about the misunderstood relationship between minimum legal drinking age laws and traffic fatalities, which has been cited in magazines including The Atlantic Monthly and Reason.

Internship Highlight

A member of the program evaluation team at Facing History and Ourselves, Lina assessed the progress of several initiatives in bringing about civic and moral learning. She synthesized the comments of students, parents, teachers, and administrators to gauge the effect of Facing History curricula on school climate. In addition, Lina collaborated with Harvard faculty to create an instrument testing Facing History students’ historical understanding and immersed herself in primary accounts of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian genocide. At Facing History “Institutes,” where teachers worldwide learn how to inspire their students to connect history to moral questions, Lina joined in lively discussions about history, ethics, and identity. Lina relished the dynamics among the Facing History staff and interns, whom she found to be among the most inspiring people she has ever encountered.

Where are they now?

Lina is currently attending Yale Law School.

She was selected as one of 30 Soros Fellows in 2008. The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships are for graduate study in the professional and academic disciplines at any institution of higher education in the United States.