Congratulations to Ashwin Joshi (’28, Interdisciplinary Studies), who has been named as a recipient of the Obama-Chesky Voyager Scholarship for Public Service. The “Voyager” Scholarship is a two-year leadership development and scholarship program. Ashwin is the seventh Berkeley undergraduate to receive this honor since the Voyager Scholarship was launched in 2022.
Ashwin, who is from Kennneick, WA, is interested in ownership transparency in healthcare real estate. At UC Berkeley, his Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) research mapped corporate ownership across all 2,192 Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing facilities in California, Florida, Washington, and Arizona, producing an open-access dataset published on Dryad. He extends this research into public discourse through his podcast, Architecture of the Inevitable, which features economists, operators, and capital allocators in senior housing and long-term-care finance. Ashwin is now building on this work in an honors thesis about how ownership structure should be regulated. He also founded All Teens Financial Academy, which serves students globally, and testified before the Washington State Legislature, where his research supported unanimous House passage of financial literacy policy HB 1915, work that has since informed the state’s FutureReady graduation requirements.
The Voyager Scholarship program accepts applications from students in their second year of undergraduate studies. Over the course of next two years, it offers programming that facilitates opportunities for recipients to refine their values-based leadership approach, build bridges across communities, and nurture their sense of curiosity as they deepen their commitment to pursuing public service careers. The scholarship provides “last-dollar” scholarships of up to $50,000 to help shape 100 young leaders who can bridge divides and help solve our biggest challenges by giving college students financial aid to alleviate the burden of college debt, meaningful travel experiences to expand their horizons, and a network of mentors and leaders to support them in their public service careers. Recipients will also receive a $10,000 stipend and free Airbnb housing to pursue a summer work-travel experience between their junior and senior year of college, as well as a $2,000 travel credit for the next ten years.
The next application deadline for the Voyager Scholarship will be in March 2027. Prospective applicants should check the eligibility requirements described on Berkeley’s National Scholarships website and make an individual appointment with Keila Diehl, the campus advisor for the Voyager Scholarship.