Four Georgetown University students received this year’s Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service, better known as the Voyager Scholarship.
Ranee Brady (SFS ’26), Matlock Grossman (SFS ’26), Lela Tolajian (SFS ’26) and Aria Nimmagadda (CAS ’26) are members of the 2024-26 cohort, joining a group of 100 juniors from 44 states and territories and 88 colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Full disclosure: Ranee Brady is a News Writer at The Hoya. She previously served as a GUSA Desk Editor in Fall 2023 and as the Development Director in Spring 2024.
The program, created by former President Barack Obama, former First Lady Michelle Obama and Airbnb Co-Founder and CEO Brian Chesky, offers its recipients travel exposure and policy experiences for students with a passion for making global change.
In addition to joining a network of other students and global leaders, Voyagers, as the program calls recipients, obtain up to $50,000 in financial aid, as well as a $10,000 stipend for travel and free Airbnb housing for their summer work project and travel experience. Furthermore, Airbnb provides scholars with a 10-year travel stipend worth $2,000 annually. This is the third iteration of the scholarship, originally founded in 2022.
This group of four scholars is the largest in Georgetown’s history, joining last year’s recipient Isabella Stratta (SFS ’25) as fellow Voyagers.
When Brady learned she would be a Voyager via email, she said she immediately called her mom in celebration, albeit a quiet one.
“I had to read it at least 10 times to make sure it was real, but it was really just an amazing moment and fascinating moment,” Brady told The Hoya. “It was so funny because I was working in a cubicle and I couldn’t talk because I would bother my coworkers, so I literally sat under the desk at work and called my mom.”
Tolajian said this combination of financial aid, travel and scholarship was appealing.
“I was beyond elated to discover I had been chosen as a Voyager Scholar, as the financial aid provided — as well as the opportunity to pursue an experience abroad and join such an accomplished network — is life-changing,” Tolajian wrote to The Hoya.
Tolajian intends to pursue a project at the intersection of journalism, labor rights and human rights advocacy.
For Grossman, the scholarship’s focus on public policy drew him to apply.
“I have been working in public service since I was 11, working on transportation policy in Los Angeles,” Grossman wrote to The Hoya. “Being able to see the physical impacts of the work I was doing and the effect it had on my community was so meaningful, and finding a program like this, with a similar emphasis on public service, was really compelling to me.”
In addition, Grossman said he is looking forward to meeting other Voyagers at the program’s upcoming Fall Summit.
“I am most excited to engage with other Voyagers from an incredibly diverse background,” Grossman wrote. “Being able to hear the wide range of experiences that other Voyagers have had will better inform all of our public service careers.”
Although Grossman is still deciding where to spend his summer voyage, he is thinking about conducting research in the Middle East or domestically on the spread of extremist ideologies.
Nimmagadda is the first Georgetown student in the College of Arts & Sciences to be named a Voyager and plans to focus on enhancing food security and public health by improving farm animal welfare.
For her summer voyage, Brady is still undetermined, but is leaning toward a trip to Brazil to focus on government transparency and freedom of the press as well as how press systems can be used to hold governments accountable.
Brady said she was guided toward the Voyager Scholarship because of her parents’ experiences as public servants — her mom, an attorney who defends prisoners in a federal court in Alabama, and her dad, a civil engineer for their local government.
“I’ve really seen and really been inspired by their sacrifices to work in public service, but I can see how their work is really rewarding, and how they constantly don’t have two days that look the same, and can constantly interact with new people,” Brady said.
“So that’s something that has always interested me, and I saw that really written in the language of applications for the Voyager Scholarship. I think public service and making real-world change is also something that resonates with the Obama Foundation and Brian Chesky,” Brady added.