Joslin Team Award Recipients

Nia Sampson

Nia Sampson (she/her) is a senior graduating with an A.B. in English and literary arts. She was a Bonner Fellow, Guiliano Global Fellow and a former John Hay Library Research Fellow. She found community and joy through being a gender and sexuality peer counselor in her sophomore and senior year, and has worked at the John D. Rockefeller Library for all four years at Brown. 

As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, she completed an English honors thesis on young adult novels, the Bildungsroman and Black girls’ bodily vulnerability. She also completed an honors thesis in literary arts, which culminated in a novel. With her love for literature, she was an arts and culture writer for the Black Star Journal and an editor for XO magazine. Additionally, in her sophomore year she led a five-week creative workshop in the Sarah Doyle Center for LGBTQIA+ students of color.

As someone interested in multiple perspectives, she also participated in the Tougaloo-Brown exchange program, studying in Mississippi for a semester. In January 2025, she was able to visit Barbados and lead a creative writing workshop for Black girls ages 11-18 through an organization called I Am A Girl. 

Meleah Neely

Meleah Neely (she/her) is from Boston, Massachusetts, receiving an A.B. in Classics on the Latin track with honors and an A.B. in political science. With a focus in political thought and intellectual history, her academic work aims to explore the intricacies of identity, agency and collective memory, nuancing the ethics of political theory as tools for empowerment and liberation through different frameworks.

Neely’s work primarily revolves around cultivating communities of care. She worked for the past three years with the Gender and Sexuality Peer Counselor Program, serving as a co-coordinator for two years. In this role, she mentored a cohort of nine student leaders between the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender and the LGBTQ Center as they developed meaningful student-centered programs, often bringing an educational focus to their work. 

Neely also planned events focusing on the Black Queer experience at Brown in collaboration with other organizations. She also facilitated workshops on gender-based harm and harassment as a sexual assault prevention educator. Additionally, Neely worked for the Rhode Island Center for Justice as an Undergraduate Legal Criminal Justice intern and worked with other various criminal justice based clubs and organizations on campus throughout her time as an undergraduate.

Neely is also deeply engaged with the Classics Department at Brown. For the last two years, she has served as one of the departmental undergraduate group leaders. In this role, she planned programming aimed at connecting students with information about the academic department, offering access to campus and community resources. Neely also serves as an editor and contributor to the Brown Classical Journal. All of the experiences empower her to foster interdependent spaces on campus where students can authentically invest in one another’s growth, forming self-determinant communities that honor care and love.

After Brown, Neely plans to move to her home state and return to education and facilitation work as a teacher at an independent school. She remains eternally grateful for all the professors, mentors and communities who have believed in her, inspiring her to continue envisioning and building toward freer futures.

Melinda Zhang

Melinda Zhang (she/her) is from Andover, Massachusetts, and will be graduating from Brown with a Sc.B. in computational biology. Her academic work has focused on human health and technology, examined both as distinct fields and through an interdisciplinary lens.

With a passion for community building and mentorship, Zhang aims to foster meaningful connections that allow individuals to feel supported and empowered in their identities and aspirations. For the past three years, she has been a part of the Gender and Sexuality Peer Counselor (GSPC) Program cohort, developing programs through the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender and the LGBTQ Center. In this role, she facilitated conversations on topics related to gender and sexuality, created intentional spaces for dialogue and peer connection and helped connect students with campus resources and support systems. In her senior year, Zhang served as a co-coordinator for the GSPC program, drawing on her experience to support a cohort of nine peer counselors in event planning and collaborative teamwork.

Zhang was also involved in the Department of Computer Science, working as a teaching assistant for three years and a head teaching assistant for two. She primarily worked with first-year students in an introductory computer science course, many of whom were new to the subject. Through office hours, workshops and labs, she helped students strengthen their conceptual understanding by tailoring her teaching approach to fit each individual’s learning style. As a head teaching assistant (TA), she co-led a team of TAs, helping to develop course materials, gather and incorporate feedback and ensure the teaching team felt confident and well-prepared in their roles as educators.

After graduation, Zhang will work as a medical assistant at a clinic near her hometown, taking the next step toward her goal of attending medical school and becoming a physician committed to patient-centered care.

Gabriel Herrera

Gabriel Herrera (he/him) is a first-generation college student from Ripon, California. He is the grandchild of Osbelia Bautista, Anselmo and Rosa Herrera, who have tended the rich agricultural land of the San Joaquin Valley he calls home. He is the son of Horacio and Susie Herrera, and a brother to Aiyana, Elias, Lorenzo and Karina Herrera, who is also celebrating her kindergarten graduation this month.

Herrera is the first QuestBridge Scholar from his hometown to attend an Ivy League university. Since he was welcomed into Brown as part of the First-Generation, Low-Income Scholars Program (now Kessler Scholars) cohort, Herrera has committed himself to building community with other first-generation, low-income students on campus. As a sophomore, he was on the team of the first ever cohort of peer counselors at the Undocumented, First-Generation College and Low-Income (U-FLi) Student Center. He has been involved ever since, serving this year as peer counselor coordinator. Herrera is most proud of being able to bridge his personal interests and questions about college life into the programs he created, from a community dinner conversation about home and family to “What If I Fall? My Darling, What If U-FLi?: A Conversation about Impostor Syndrome.”

In 2024, Herrera co-chaired the 10th anniversary of the 1vyG Conference at Brown University, the nation’s largest student-led conference for first-generation college students. For his commitment to the first-generation student community, Herrera, along with his friends and collaborators Jenn Tran and Michael Ochoa, are recipients of this year’s Office of Student Life Joslin Award for Service.

The U-FLi Center and community have been a home for Herrera since he first arrived on this unfamiliar coast. He is especially grateful to his mentees and mentors who have shown him what unconditional support and care look like and feel like in practice. He is graduating with a degree in architecture and Latin American and Caribbean studies. After graduation, he is excited to return to California to be closer to his sisters, brothers, parents, friends and family. 

Michael Ochoa

Michael Ochoa (he/him) is a senior from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, graduating with a bachelor’s in international and public affairs on the security track. Ochoa is a proud student leader in the Undocumented, First-Generation College and Low-Income (U-FLi) community alongside Jenn Tran and Gabriel Herrera. Inside the U-FLi Center, he was a member of the FLi Scholars Program (now Kessler Scholars) and an inaugural peer counselor. In that time, he instituted flagship events like the Imposter Syndrome Workshop, Holiday Party, U-FLi Tiny Desk Talent Show and End-of-Year Picnic. As special projects coordinator, he aided in reviewing and redesigning the peer counselor program, which has since improved peer counselor outcomes.

Outside his center capacities, Ochoa has worked on the Brown QuestBridge Chapter executive board since freshman year, emceed College Day at Brown for two years, and served as finance chair for the 10th Anniversary of 1vyG, the largest first-generation conference in the country. As an active member of the Latino community, Ochoa co-founded the Colombian Students Association, participated in planning the inaugural Feria Festival and served on the Latinx Program House executive board for two years, including as co-president. Throughout all of these endeavors, Ochoa has strived to empower marginalized students to thrive at Brown through community, learning and advocacy because he sees education as liberation.

Ochoa’s experience in representing the communities he cares for has inspired him to represent the nation abroad. On his hopeful journey to diplomacy, Ochoa has refined his command over Spanish and French, started learning Arabic, conducted international relations research through Watson and pursued various social impact internships. This includes bilingual tutoring in elementary school, organizing farmers’ markets in Providence and facilitating high-level diplomacy in the U.S. Department of State. There, Ochoa found it incredibly gratifying to surprise heads of government and public officials with his puffy afro, bronze skin and unconventional upbringing as he engaged them in halls of power. 

He is on track to join the U.S. Foreign Service after completing his master’s at Johns Hopkins as a 2025 Pickering Fellow. His dream is to continue uplifting others by advancing U.S. efforts to promote global peace and prosperity. 

Jennifer Tran

Jennifer Tran (she/her) is a first-generation college student from Gilbert, Arizona, graduating with a degree in computer science and social analysis and research. Tran was a first-year scholar in the First-Generation, Low-Income Scholars Program (now Kessler Scholars Program), which ultimately began her involvement with Brown’s Undocumented, First-Generation College and Low-Income (U-FLi) Student Center.

Along with Gabriel Herrera ’25, Michael Ochoa ’25 and Jennora Blair ’24, Tran was a part of the inaugural cohort of U-FLi peer counselors. She continued in this position all the way up until her senior year and was able to increase student outreach, engagement and belonging among the U-FLi community. Her work with the U-FLi community culminated in her senior year, where she served as co-chair for the 10th annual 1vyG Conference at Brown. Through this, she helped bring together hundreds of first-generation college students from peer institutions all over the U.S. to build community and mobilize for increased support for U-FLi students at their respective campuses. As a result, 1vyG has continued to be the largest conference for first-generation college students in the nation.

Outside of her work at the U-FLi center, Tran serves as a wellness peer educator with BWell for the last two years of her time at Brown. Through this role, she helps BWell continue their mission by collaborating with students and clubs on campus to share different wellness practices to the greater campus community.

Beyond her work with campus life, Tran is an active member of the Brown Market Shares Program and Brown-RISD Vietnamese Student Association. She is also a research assistant for the Sociotechnical Systems Wellbeing Research Lab, where she examines how designers and technologists can build safe and impactful technology.

Throughout all her work in and outside of the classroom, Tran is supported by her family, friends and mentors at Brown. 

Joslin Individual Award Recipients

Anthony Boss

Anthony Boss (he/him) is from Exeter, Rhode Island, and is graduating with a B.A. in Philosophy. He will be attending Simmons University to pursue a Master of Library Science in hopes of becoming an archivist. Originally a transfer student from the University of Rhode Island, he has focused on archiving the LGBTQ Center’s history and increasing awareness of queer history. As the LGBTQ Center’s archivist, Boss has catalogued their collection, wrote an archival policy for continuously documenting the center's history and created a finding aid for the collection at the John Hay Library.

Boss has worked to spread LGBTQ history among students and alumni, in large part through the LGBTQ Center’s historic journals exhibit. Along with two master’s of American studies students, Boss helped create displays from the center's historic commonplace journals showing Brown's history of queer community and activism. He also helped interview alumni who were involved with the journals and has facilitated alumni tours of the exhibit. Queer students and alumni have expressed gratitude for seeing that their community has a history here.

He continues to expand his archival work and LGBTQ community-building in other areas of his life, including his volunteering work at the LGBTQ homeless shelter Haus of Codec. Currently he is working on a project recreating Brown’s historic pink triangle exhibit for the class U.S. AIDS + HIV Activism. Boss is grateful for all the support and opportunities provided to him by faculty, staff and students at Brown, and would not be where he is today without them. He hopes to carry these lessons and experiences with him to build community outside of Brown and to keep sharing queer history.

Kelly Wei

Kelly Wei (she/her) is a first-generation college student from Washington Township, New Jersey, graduating with a Sc.B. in Computer Science and a certificate in entrepreneurship. She is honored to be an Asian Pacific Islander American Scholar, a Horatio Alger Association Scholar and a QuestBridge finalist. During her time at Brown, Wei’s contributions have centered around building community and fostering a sense of belonging.

Wei served as the Class Coordinating Board (CCB) co-president, the branch of student government that promotes social engagement through diverse event offerings. In this role, she has been a strong advocate for intentional collaborations with student organizations to uplift and highlight the unique experiences of her peers and share them with the rest of the community. Additionally, she has also focused on accessibility, especially at campus-wide events, to ensure that all students are able to participate with enjoyment. Under her leadership, CCB has continued to uphold beloved traditions while finding new and unique ways to celebrate the diversity of Brown students.

She has also served as a family head for the Chinese Student Association, a pod mentor for Women in Computer Science and a buddy for QuestBridge. In these spaces and sharing similar experiences with them, she has mentored over 25 students in the first and second years at Brown and served as a resource as they adjusted to life at Brown, just as others had done for her before and knowing firsthand how difficult it can be to adjust to a new environment.

Outside the realm of extracurricular activities, Wei has been a community coordinator for the Office of Residential Life for 2.5 years. In this role, she strove to create a sense of home away from home for her residents through programming and has prioritized being a resource to help them thrive.  

After graduation, Wei will be entering the workforce and seeking opportunities to continue to build community beyond the Brown bubble. With a heart filled with joy and gratitude, her time at Brown has allowed her to grow, and these learnings in tow, she’s excited to take them with her on this new chapter.

Keyona Tartt

Keyona Tartt (she/her), from Olympia, Washington, will receive her Bachelor of Arts in Africana Studies. Tartt’s academic interests are centered around the historical and sociological constructions of race and gender, the legal system, and human behavior to understand histories of persistence and resistance within Black communities across the diaspora. 

Since 2023, Tartt has been a departmental undergraduate group leader for Africana Studies. In this position, she has spread awareness about the breadth and depth of the Africana concentration and co-hosted study hours for students to foster community and learning with one another. After graduation, Tartt will work with Young Voices in downtown Providence. As the organization’s program coordinator, she will create after-school programs for high school students and facilitate workshops to bolster the students’ leadership skills.

Her academic interests are intimately connected to her engagement with sexual assault prevention education on campus for the last three and a half years. As a community engagement coordinator, she has facilitated dozens of workshops to student groups focused on consent education, bystander engagement and supporting survivors to cultivate community and individual practices rooted in respect for one another. Facilitating workshops, implementing campus-wide programming and learning alongside her co-coordinators and advisors has greatly shaped her perspective on how addressing systemic issues can positively impact a community’s ability to grow.

For the 2022-23 school year, Tartt was the treasurer of the Black Pre-Law Association and thoroughly enjoyed the community of ambitious, determined people she met. She successfully co-coordinated a trip to the 18th annual National Black Pre-Law Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a trip to visit law schools in New York City.

Across her engagements on and off campus, Tartt enjoyed spending time with the communities she was a part of and spreading kindness no matter where she went. She is immensely grateful for her friends, family, advisors and peers for shaping her into the aspirational person she is today. In her future, she hopes to intentionally build community with people advocating for social justice and equitable futures far beyond Brown’s gates.

Mya Collins

Mya Collins (she/her) is a graduating senior from Dallas, Texas, earning her bachelor’s in neuroscience. While at Brown, Collins has centered her undergraduate experience on community empowerment, educational equity and cultural celebration. From the moment she arrived on campus, she sought out leadership opportunities that fostered community, support and advocacy for Black students. She has held leadership positions in various organizations, including the Black Student Union (BSU), the Brown Center for Students of Color (BCSC), the National Society of Black Engineers and Health Career Advising.

As BSU president, Collins has focused on strengthening community traditions that provide Black students and families with a sense of belonging at Brown. During her years in BSU, she has been able to spearhead a plethora of events including concerts, teach-ins, conferences, protests, parties, community conversations and panels. She has also been deeply involved in the BCSC, serving as the Black Heritage Series coordinator and multimedia specialist.

After earning the Careers in the Common Good Scholarship, she helped develop a trauma-informed garden education primer that incorporated multilingual and multicultural approaches to classroom management in southern California. Through the same venture, she helped establish guidelines and initiatives to integrate more Black and Latino culture into the curriculum in the San Diego school district. She also acted as in-house relief manager at the Ronald McDonald House Charities of New England, where she provided direct support to families navigating pediatric illness. These experiences further shaped her commitment to addressing structural inequities in healthcare.

After graduation, Collins will travel to the Bronx, New York, to participate in the BronxCare Summer Research Fellowship in Orthopaedic Surgery. She will then begin her gap year as a clinical research coordinator at Massachusetts General Hospital, focusing on maternal-fetal medicine.

Nishitha Chaayanath

Nishitha Chaayanath (she/her), who has called Atlanta, Toronto and Hyderabad home, will receive her Sc.B. in biochemistry and classics from Brown University. From falling in love with science at a young age to deepening her roots through Bharatanatyam and Sanskrit poetry, Chaayanath has embraced the complexity of her story and worked to help others do the same.

Her path toward cultural reconciliation began with dance. As a member of Brown Abhinaya and Badmaash, she used movement to tell stories steeped in classical Indian tradition and contemporary South Asian experience. Her study of Sanskrit added new layers of meaning to her choreography, enabling her to present classical mythology with linguistic and emotional depth. For Chaayanath, dance has been both a personal refuge and a powerful platform for cultural storytelling.

Beyond the stage, Chaayanath has been a steadfast advocate for community and belonging. As a senior coordinator for the Global Brown Center and a mentor in the International Mentoring Program, she created spaces for international students to explore identity, language and the meaning of home. She helped organize Brown’s first identity conference for international students, where she led conversations on self-definition and cultural resilience. Whether advising new students or working with a multicultural team from over six countries, Chaayanath has consistently fostered inclusion and empathy. She took forth these same conversations in her work with first year students as a Meiklejohn peer advisor.

Her passion for supporting others also extended into Providence classrooms through the Brown Elementary Afterschool Mentoring program, in which she designed tailored science and enrichment activities for first graders. More than just aiming for fun or academic content, she focused on helping young children feel seen and heard — sparking curiosity while honoring their individuality and voice.

In the clinical and scientific realms, she has worked extensively as a medical scribe at Sunshine Pediatrics and the Rhode Island Free Clinic, witnessing firsthand the importance of attentive, human-centered care. In the DeLong Lab, she conducted genetic research on PP2A proteins in Arabidopsis, bringing the same curiosity and discipline to the bench that she brings to every other facet of her life.

Sudy Qin

Sudy Qin (she/her) is a Chinese American student from Dallas, Texas, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in economics and education studies. Her impact at Brown can best be characterized by her passion for accessibility, inclusion and building a strong community.

As co-president of the Chinese Students Association (CSA), Qin successfully transitioned two of their largest events from ticketed to free, removing financial barriers to access. In her three years serving on board, she has directly coordinated over 50 events for CSA. Her favorite event was the 2023 Lunar New Year banquet, which was awarded Event of the Year by SAO.

In Women in Business (WIB), Qin oversaw the diversity and inclusion committee and worked with them to launch WIB Closet, a resource for members to borrow professional attire as needed. During her time in WIB, she worked closely with four other committees to oversee over 40 events.

Qin has found different ways to get involved on and off campus. You may have seen her peeking her head out from backstage at Alumnae or Salomon, where she has stage managed 13 dance shows. Qin has been working backstage since middle school, and she is sad to leave behind the theater as she graduates. As a 2022 iProv Fellow, Qin worked with local nonprofit DownCity Design to run their summer programs for high school students. Through the Swearer Center’s Community Corps program, she has also worked with the Refugee Dream Center. Her dedication to excellence extends to academics as well, where she has worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant and research assistant in both the economics and education departments.

Some of her favorite memories at Brown include sitting on the Main Green on a perfect sunny day, late night Jo’s runs, and every shared moment of laughter with her friends. She would like to thank her parents for all their unconditional love and support. She will miss Brown dearly, and she wants to thank everyone who has supported her in making Brown a dream come true.