by Kelly Gray, Administrative Assistant
Each year the Institute for Educational Advancement (IEA) awards the Caroline D. Bradley Scholarship (CDB) to approximately 30 highly-gifted students. The scholarship provides funding to attend a high school best suited to meet their unique intellectual and personal needs as well as individual support, educational advocacy, and access to a network of like-minded peers. The program, which began in 2002 and is generously funded by The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, is the only merit-based, need-blind scholarship of its kind in the U.S. To date, IEA has awarded 235 scholarships and our alumni are already making their mark on the world.
Several alumni are currently volunteering their time and talents in support of IEA:
Byron Lichtenstein
As member of the CDB Class of 2002, Byron was one of the program’s very first scholars. He attended the Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco and then Harvard College. Byron is also an alumni of Apprenticeship and Yunasa.
Byron is presently a Vice President at Insight Venture Partners, a venture capital and growth equity firm based in New York. He focuses his time at Insight on new software investments as well as on strategy and operations within their portfolio of companies. Prior to this position, he worked at Bain & Company as a management consultant and also at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of their Global Health Discovery team.
Coming full circle, in January 2017 Byron became a member of the IEA Board of Directors, where he has already made significant contributions as a member of the Audit Committee. Byron says, “I owe a lot to the IEA community as they have been there at every major step in my life and I am looking forward to the opportunity to give back. “
Jianna Lieberman
As a 2004 CDB scholar, Jianna attended Riverdale Country School in Bronx, New York for high school, where she thrived in the liberal arts program. She went on to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art, earning a BFA in Graphic Design. Of the CDB program, Jianna says, “Riverdale taught me so much in the way of humanities that I could take the time to cultivate the creative side of my brain, and that wouldn’t have been the case without the Caroline D. Bradley Scholarship.”
Jianna currently works in advertising where she focuses on web and app design, social media content design and calendaring, and overall digital marketing strategies. She is also in the process of applying to graduate school where she will pursue an MBA. In wanting to give back to IEA, she served on the 2017 CDB West Coast Selection Committee and is lending her expertise to further IEA’s marketing efforts.
Paul Cresanta
2008 CDB scholar Paul Cresanta is from Colorado, but found that The Thatcher School in Ojai, CA was the best match for his high school experience. After Thatcher, he enrolled in Pomona College where he double majored in Russian and European Studies and Linguistics. In May he earned his B.A. from Pomona and is currently spending the summer interning with IEA before he begins his career as a language analyst at the Department of Defense.
At IEA, Paul is assisting in the 2017 CDB finalists’ interviews. Since he has been on the other end of the process, he helps put the students at ease and is able to answer questions from the point of view of a program scholar. He is also lending support to the Yunasa program as a coordinator and counselor. Paul says the CDB scholarship was “Life Changing- with a capital L,” and that is why he wanted to do his part to give back to IEA. “I, like so many of my fellow alumni, want to use what I have been given to make a positive impact.”
IEA is so thankful for Byron, Jianna, and Paul as well as all of our alumni who are making contributions to their communities and the world!
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