10 women earn scholarships in 2013

Charu Arora has studied and worked in India and visited parts of Europe 
including London, France, Belgium and Luxemburg. She now wants to 
explore the other side of the Atlantic and has decided to obtain her second 
masters in the United States. She is studying in the MFE program at the Haas School of Business. She earned her first masters from the India 
Institute of Technology and is currently working at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. Over time she wants to set up a fund and make investment decisions based on innovative models. She aspires to help people better manage and plan their finances.

Victoria Beasley is pursuing her MBA at the Stanford School of Business 
this fall. Victoria’s ultimate goal is to combine the experience she has obtained as the Director of Finance at a solar panel manufacturer and as an investment banking analyst to solve one of the biggest challenges of our day, infrastructure development in emerging markets through environmentally and socially responsible means. She supports the belief that infrastructure is essential for better healthcare, better education and in turn a better world and she hopes to combine her experience with her education to become the CEO of a leading cleantech company to help develop this infrastructure.

Cortnie Chenoweth aspires to a career with the FBI as a special agent in 
forensic accounting. She completed the first part of the process of becoming 
a competitive applicant for the FBI position she desires. Graduating with highest available honors from Dominican University, she is now completing her MBA in Global Management; she will graduate in December 2013. She is also currently studying for all four parts of the CPA exam this current semester. Upon graduating and obtaining her CPA license, she will then be working alongside a CPA to satisfy her license experience requirement. Once she completes this requirement, she will then apply for the FBI position. Cortnie has also performed relevant volunteer work in the Bay Area with Tax-Aid, a nonprofit that provides tax prep services to low-income families. 

Marina Kostioutchenko is a native of post-USSR Belarus and has immigrated to the U.S. in pursuit of the education needed to achieve her career goal. Ultimately, Marina is positioning herself to work in international development in Eastern Europe, leading teams to bring capital to the region, to create jobs, and to provide more professional opportunities for women. She is currently pursuing her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and previously attended college in Canada, where she served as Co-President of her 
university’s Economics Students Association (whose membership she 
increased from 20 to 250+). While supporting not only herself but her parents upon immigrating to Russia and Canada, she has excelled academically, while simultaneously holding various leadership positions in community groups, such as Director of Fundraising of Desna Ukrainian Dance Company. 

After ten very successful years in the banking field, primarily as a 
relationship management expert (and later the Vice President of Business Development for the HSBC USA’s South Asia Banking Unit) Aarti 
acknowledged her growing admiration and passion for a wide array of 
accounting practices. Her passion and fascination with accounting, led her to a career change; she is now very close to finishing her graduate degree in accounting through Golden Gate University as well as obtaining her CPA certification. She has already been offered a full time associate position at BDO — one of the world’s largest public accounting firms, hailed as a best place to work for working mothers. 

Janeth Medina moved from Mexico to the US when she was six years old. She will graduate from Mills College this fall earning an MBA with a 
concentration in finance. She has discovered that it is important to align one’s career goals with one’s passion. She wants to pursue a career in financial services to support women who want to start small businesses. She would also like to start an initiative that would support undocumented people in their efforts to improve their socioeconomic status.  

Jessica Ross is currently pursuing her MBA from The Wharton School 
(SF Campus) in order to achieve her career goal of becoming a senior finance leader at Kaiser. Jessica came into her current role at Kaiser, after over seven years in her previous management roles first at Arthur Anderson and then Deloitte. These rolls provided her the hard-learned lesson of the necessity of work-life balance. Earlier in her career, she achieved Senior Management status as an expert in the consumer business space with a particular talent in managing key client relationships. In 2010, Jessica joined Kaiser Permanente, and was quickly chosen to participate in KP’s High Potential Finance Leaders Program, which led to her promotion as Managing Director of the program. Jessica was also an undergraduate FWSF Scholarship winner in 1997.

Soma Roy earned her undergraduate degree from Calcutta University, India. She is now pursuing a Masters in Accountancy from Golden Gate University and eventually strives to become a CPA. Her ultimate goal 
is to better understand and serve the accounting/finance profession, in 
particular, and the entire community as a whole. While involved in her 
bachelors program she founded a non-profit organization, which offered cultural activities to the children of the community. The ultimate goal was to collaborate with a charitable foundation and help educate the poor children in some of the developing countries. With the help of a few volunteers, they were able to secure 200 enrollments within a year, with revenues of over $100K. She was able to apply her theoretical knowledge to develop the 
business model and at the same time got involved in community service to get the best of both worlds.

Meghan Nelson is an undergraduate at Dominican University with a 
double major in Business Administration, focused in Finance, and Political Science, focused in International Political Economies with a minor in 
Math. Her double major has allowed her to tie her business education to community involvement. She realized that she could use her working 
financial knowledge to help others whether in personal life planning or between countries, helping various populations of people. Meghan graduates in May 2015 and hopes to establish multiple doors of opportunity, with the goal of integrating her finance skills and global economic knowledge to solve major global problems.

Sherry Jiang hopes to bring impact investing and social enterprises to the forefront, which targets financial resources towards lifting up the bottom of the economic pyramid. She found her passion for finance and investment banking at her various professional experiences, including Harvey and 
Company and Summit Global Management. Sherry’s education at Haas School of Business fits her life and career goals because it gives her both 
the hard and soft skills necessary to succeed. Sherry will be an investment 
banking intern with Goldman Sachs this summer.