Awardee Database

Awardees

Marion Salvanet

Marion Salvanet is a Public Engagement Specialist at Africa Regional Services at the U. S. Embassy in Paris. She provides vital public diplomacy support to 27 French- and Portuguese-speaking posts in Africa. Over her 20-year career, she has recruited U.S. speakers and performing artists, managed press and digital engagement, and trained and mentored generations of PD staff, FSOs, and LES alike. Marion’s exceptional program design skills, extensive networks, and innovative approaches such as her widely emulated virtual programming during the pandemic have strengthened missions across the region. As her nominator notes, her expertise, mentorship, and unwavering dedication exemplify the highest standards of public diplomacy and make her an indispensable asset for the team.

Mathias Tientcheu

Mathias Tientcheu, Public Engagement Specialist at Embassy Yaoundé, has for over two decades been a cornerstone of U.S. public diplomacy in Cameroon, exemplifying creativity, cultural fluency, mentorship, and lasting impact. As an Established Opinion Leaders Specialist, he has led IVLP, Fulbright, university partnerships, and cultural programs including AFCP, while transforming American Corners in Buea and Garoua to extend U.S. outreach into Cameroon’s English-speaking Southwest and Muslim-majority North. From serving as official interpreter at the 2005 New Embassy Compound inauguration to spearheading Cameroon’s Cultural Property Agreement with the U.S., Mathias combines exceptional diplomacy, vision, and innovation. As his nominator notes, his programming, mentorship, and unwavering dedication have left an indelible mark on colleagues, communities, and institutions.

Serafina Kennedy

A graduate of Rutgers University, artist Serafina is collaborating with the Glass Factory in Boda Glasbruk to master Graal, a traditional Swedish glassblowing technique. Her project, “The Natural World through Allemansrätten, Graal, and Drawing,” is inspired by Sweden’s landscapes and the “Freedom to Roam” law (Allemansrätten). She is creating an extraordinary series of ink drawings and Graal sculptures, which will be showcased at the Glass Factory in June 2025 and at Rutgers University in the fall of 2025. The award will support her in acquiring materials and supplies essential for creating her Graal work and installing these stunning exhibitions in both Sweden and the U.S.

Yassin Adnan & Alexander Elinson

For the 2025 Arabic Literature Tour, Moroccan author Yassin Adnan and US translator Alexander Elinson present the novel Hot Maroc, longlisted for the IPAF in 2017 and published in translation by Syracuse University Press in 2021. Darkly comedic, Hot Maroc is told through the eyes of the hapless Rahhal Laâouina, aka the Squirrel. Painfully shy, not that bright, and not all that popular, Rahhal somehow imagines himself a hero. With a useless degree in ancient Arabic poetry, he finds his calling in the online world, where he discovers email, YouTube, Facebook, and the news site Hot Maroc. The novel gives a vital portrait of the challenges faced by today’s Moroccans in a repressive society, where adherence to traditional cultural icons both anchors and stifles creative production.

Yassin Adnan —poet, fiction writer, editor and TV presenter— is the author of 6 poetry collections, 3 short-story collections, a novel and a book about travel. He serves as president of the Marrakech English Book Festival and is the founder of two literary magazines. The host of cultural TV programs, a radio show and a podcast, he has also edited various titles, including the anthology Marrakech Noir (2018), and participated in a range of international programs, including in the U.S.

Alexander Elinson teaches Arabic Language & Literature at Hunter College/CUNY and directs their Summer Arabic Program. His research interests include Arabic and Hebrew literature from the pre-Islamic to the modern period. His current book project, Looking Back: The Poetics of Loss and Nostalgia in Muslim Spain, examines the intersection between literary convention and poetic subjectivity; his current research and translation projects include looking at Moroccan prison writing.

Juliana Merullo

Juliana Merullo, a recent Brown University graduate, is collaborating with Universidad de la República to document voices and perspectives of Uruguayan cattle farmers in an oral history archive. She hopes to capture their experiences of the current transition and change to the tradition of cattle grazing as a result of the recent governments’ efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

With the help of the 2025 Project Support Award Uruguay, she will be able to expand on her online archive to publish interviews on Uruguayan radio stations and American podcasts. As Juliana notes, “I am excited about the prospect of bringing more attention – within Uruguay and beyond – to the stories of these rural cattle farmers and their families, overcoming language barriers and cultural divides in the process.”

Derek Russell

Derek graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree in Architecture, and is undertaking architectural design research in Ecuador. His project, Cañ & Ara: Mending Climates with Vernacular Cosmovisions, aims to convene a 2-day Plurinational Craft Council that would include artisans and craftspeople from various indigenous nations to share architectural knowledge of indigenous construction.

Funding for this project by the Lois Roth Foundation will go towards covering the costs of artisan attendance and presentation of their work, event materials, as well as a donation of gratitude to the Seikoya community hosting the event. 

Through his research, Derek hopes to gain ancestral and community knowledge on sustainable building for disaster mitigation, integrating some of this knowledge into sustainable architectural design. 

Malvika Narayan

Malvika’s research is rooted in dialogue—between clinicians and researchers, between institutions and public health systems, and between nations. A PhD candidate at Texas Tech University, she  is undertaking a Fulbright in collaboration with the University of the Sunshine Coast with the goal of evaluating the Be Well Plan, an anti-burnout intervention for mental health clinicians. Through running synchronized control trials in the US and Australia, Malvika is able to investigate how the same intervention can be useful in starkly different healthcare systems. Funds from the Roth foundation will allow her to host a virtual symposium convening Australian and American stakeholders to share findings from parallel studies, reflect on cross-cultural insights, and strengthen binational strategies for improving mental health clinician wellbeing.

Upon returning to the US, Malvika intends to pilot the Be Well Plan program at Texas Tech University and advocate to  local governmental representatives for policies mitigating burnout.

Marielle Buxbaum

Marielle Buxbaum’s Theatre for Youth Futures: Engaging Ecuadorian Urban Teens explores the social concerns of Ecuadorian youth. Marielle’s playwriting-for-social-change program looks to address difficult experiences of youth from Loja, including bullying, suicide, intra-family violence and drug abuse through plays written and performed by participating teens. Her theatre program engages with the therapeutic value of working with teens’ creative imaginations to process their own stories and work towards community change.

Support from the Lois Roth Foundation will fund the purchase of costumes and props for the theatre project, which can be used for future groups and productions. Purchased items, kept by the high school arts teachers, would allow those teachers freedom to continue the project for years to come.

Marielle plans to work with local artists to ensure that the new playwriting program lives on after her return to the U.S., and also hopes to publish her research, providing insights into how various local art forms foster youth storytelling when integrated into theatrical writing.

Paul Reitter

In its 18th edition, the MLA-Roth Award for a Translation of a Literary Work went to Paul Reitter (Ohio State) for his translation of of Karl Marx’s Capital: Critique of Political Economy (Princeton UP, 2024). The first new English translation in fifty years and the only one based on the last German edition, revised by Marx himself—it captures the momentous scale and sweep of Marx’s thought while recovering the elegance and humor of the original. This critical edition features extensive original commentary and a foreword by acclaimed political theorist Wendy Brown.

Jen Shaneberger

Jen Shaneberger is conducting research for her PhD in International Relations/Comparative Politics with the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. This award will support her research on how political rhetoric impacts migrants’ ability to find and maintain employment in association with Linköping University. She plans to defend her dissertation in November 2024 and submit a chapter for publication in the Journal of International Migration and Integration. Her ultimate career goal is to become a Foreign Service Officer.

Leah Balter

Leah Balter won the 2024 Norway Project Support Award. She will use the award to support her case study on Norway’s overlapping Covid-19 pandemic and Ukrainian refugee crisis responses at the University of Bergen. Leah earned her BA in Human Biology from Stanford University with Honors. After completing her Fulbright, she plans to attend medical school and envisions a career as a physician-activist specializing in refugee health.

Sydney Erlikh

Sydney Erlikh is a PhD candidate in disability studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She will use the 2024 Finland Roth-Thomas Award to support her project on the culture and artistic process of dancers with intellectual disability in collaboration with the University of the Arts’ Theatre Academy and the Kaaos Dance Company in Helsinki. Upon her return to the United States, she will directly apply the pedagogical and performance tools she learn to her dissertation and to the inclusive dance group she co-founded out of Access Living in Chicago.

Laura Chang

Laura Chang won the 2024 Project Support Award for Ecuador. She will use the Award to support her project on the Integration of Kichwa and Western Medicines. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Biology with a minor in Latin American Studies and Spanish from Cornell University. Her career goal is to become a medical anthropologist. In Fall 2024, she will undertake a joint MD/PhD program in Anthropology.

Samantha Ruth Brown

Samantha Ruth Brown, a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Oregon, won the 2024 Project Support Award for Denmark. She will use the award to support her dissertation research project on “Fermented Foods, Fresh Perspectives: Prioritizing Inuit Food Sovereignty in a Changing Arctic”. Samantha’s project will explore how Greenlandic Inuit perceive the potential export of iginneq, fermented seal blubber, and other traditional foods in fine dining restaurants. She aims to unravel how the use (or rejection of the use) of iginneq resists, disrupts, or replicates colonial logics. She will collaborate with Greenlandic Inuit scholars and communities to generate an interactive story map of traditional Inuit fermentation practices and write a series of academic and popular media articles focused on traditional Inuit foodways in her exploration of what has made Inuit communities more food insecure than other Indigenous Peoples.

Dr. Fareed Zakaria

Dr. Fareed Zakaria is the 2024 speaker for the Distinguished Fulbright Lecture. He is the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post, and a bestselling author. He has been nominated for several Emmys for his television work and has won one, along with the prestigious Peabody Award for his weekly CNN show. Since the debut of his show in 2008, it has featured interviews with several prominent figures including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Emmanuel Macron. Zakaria has authored five highly-regarded New York Times bestselling books: Age of Revolutions (2024), The Post-American World (2008), The Future of Freedom (2003), Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World (2020), and In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015). Before his tenure at CNN, Zakaria served as an editor of Newsweek International, a managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a columnist for Time, an analyst for ABC News, and the host of Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. Zakaria holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a doctorate in political science from Harvard University, and many numerous honorary degrees.

Samuel Nevins

Samuel Nevins, in collaboration with Universidad de la República, is investigating the social determinants of mental illness in Uruguayan adolescents through participant data collection.  With the help of the 2024 Project Support Award Uruguay, Sam will be able to provide fiscal incentives for participation in his project, increasing the likelihood of a representative sample of data to better inform psychosocial treatment and policy decisions.

Sam is a recent graduate of Brown University. Following this research, he hopes to pursue a PhD in neuropsychology, with a focus on applying scientific findings to public policy.

Cassandra Alvariño

Cassandra Alvariño will use this award to support her research on Sweden’s bid to join NATO in association with the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg as part of her dual Master’s degree in European Studies and Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She plans to pursue a career in diplomacy as a Foreign Service Officer.

Emily Zhao

Emily Zhao, a graduate of Duke University, is the recipient of the 2024 Project Support Award Australia for her research in flexible smart home electrification. Emily will spend a year analyzing and collecting data, in collaboration with the University of New South Wales to determine network and household incentives and barriers to implementing flexible demand technologies. This supplemental support from the Lois Roth Foundation will allow Emily to expand the scope of her research to emphasize barriers to entry in flexible energy technology adoption within underserved and low-income communities. Emily will explore incentives to promote flexible energy technologies that align with the economic realities of indigenous and low-income households and complement existing lifestyles. 

According to Emily, this valuable research opportunity, exclusive to Australia due to their leadership in solar energy, can provide invaluable insights to help the U.S in overcoming its own solar adoption challenges.

Chelsea Wong

Chelsea Wong is the recipient of the 2024 Robin and Avril Winks Award. A second generation Chinese-New Zealander, she has noticed a limited representation and understanding of Asian New Zealander experiences in the arts and is eager to connect hearts and minds through arts to make a collective change. After nearly ten years working as an arts administrator, lawyer and policy maker, she is pursuing her master’s degree in American studies and Public Humanities at the Rutgers University in New Jersey. She will use the Robin and Avril Winks Award to support her research on Asian diaspora experiences in the arts.

After her Fulbright program, she hopes to return to New Zealand and contribute to the body of critical discussion about diaspora arts in Aotearoa, influence policy and programming in arts and culture, and make systemic change. Her long-term goal is to return to the public sector to devise a national Asian Aotearoa Arts strategy as a partnership project between Creative New Zealand, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and the Ministry for Ethnic Communities.

Jeff Barrus

Jeff received the 2024 Lois Roth Award honorable mention for, as Deputy Chief of Mission Emily Fleckner lauds, his success working in one of the most restrictive operating environments in the world. As the Public Affairs Officer for the U.S. Embassy Bandar Seri Begawan, he is recognized for his implementation of an exceptionally creative ECA Sports Diplomacy program to break a decades-long taboo against women playing soccer in Brunei Darussalam. He is also recognized for exceptional advancement of U.S. foreign policy through other cultural and educational initiatives focused on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, including empowering a severely marginalized LGBTQI+ community and creating the first interfaith Iftar in Brunei’s history. The programs Jeff created and led changed lives for the better in Brunei. 

Sarah Ziebell

The 2024 Lois Roth Award for excellence in cultural diplomacy goes to Sarah Ziebell, Regional Public Engagement Specialist for the Balkans.

Sarah is recognized for her ability to see interesting and unexpected program opportunities and her practical skills to get things done. Colleagues see Sarah as a smart manager, a thoughtful innovator, and a strategic thinker who is, at the same time, capable, creative and collaborative. She has devised ways to address the unique challenges each Balkan country faces, particularly regarding disinformation, such as with the Digital Literacy Forum program. IN addition to managing 60+ American spaces, she launched the first-ever program to engage the Russian war diaspora in Serbia. In 2025, thanks to her leadership, Serbia will inaugurate the first major American Resource Center to open in Europe in a decade.

Alison Moylan

The 2024 Ilchman-Richardson award goes to Alison Moylan, Deputy Director, Office of International Visitors, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), U.S. State Department, Washington, DC. 

To paraphrase from Alison’s nomination by Amy Storrow: In the twenty-five years that Alison has served the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, she has modeled patience, wisdom and generosity in her interactions with tens of thousands of exchange program visitors and hundreds of ECA employees. 

Alison has created an inclusive workplace where employees feel valued – as evidenced by IVLP’s exceptional retention rate of Department staff – and her versatile skill set allows her to liaise at the highest levels within the Department, host prominent visitors in her home, and help staff manage the smallest details of their projects at all hours, making her a consummate public diplomacy leader in both words and deeds.

Thank you, Alison, for exemplifying the legacies of former Assistant Secretaries Alice Ilchman and John Richardson.

Diler Hamad

Diler’s breadth of work at the U.S. Consulate General Erbil includes supervising the entire cultural, educational, outreach, and grants unit, advancing issues as diverse and critical as women’s rights, climate change, educational reform, economic development, civil society training, and much more. In 2024, As the Public Engagement Specialist, Diler supercharged the English language programs, won a complicated multi-year grant competition to help Kurdish universities counter Chinese influence and served as a trusted, compassionate advisor and advocate on human rights. In these and many other ways Diler clearly, measurably advanced U.S. policy while making a positive difference in the lives of many people in Iraqi Kurdistan.

*The Prix Coindreau Prize, The Jeanne Varnay Pleasants Prize for Language Teaching, and the CASVA-Henry & Judith Millon Award are currently inactive.