Two Northwestern graduate students have won the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, which is given to immigrants and children of immigrants, according to a news release.

Julissa Muñiz, a human development and social policy doctoral student in the School of Education and Social Policy, and Benjamin Chou, a JD/MBA student in the Pritzker School of Law and Kellogg School of Management, were chosen from a pool of 1,775 applicants. The fellows, both children of immigrants, will receive up to $90,000 in funding for their graduate studies. They were chosen for their potential to strengthen American society, culture or their academic field, according to the release.

Muñiz’s parents are Mexican immigrants, and as a child, she crossed the border every day to attend school, the release said. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school, the first teenage mother to return to class at her school and the first student from her high school to be accepted to the University of California, Berkeley.

At Berkeley and in her later studies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and at SESP, Muñiz studied carceral spaces, according to the release.

Chou’s parents are Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants, the release said. After graduating from Rice University, Chou served as a fellow for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a policy adviser to the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and the leader of former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s political action committee.

After graduate school, Chou said he plans to return to Texas and continue to work in politics.

“I plan to continue to work in electoral politics and government to ensure that all people are treated equally and have the economic opportunities to succeed,” Chou said in the release.

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