Harvard Business School (HBS) has announced the 2021 recipients of its Horace W. Goldsmith Fellowships. Established in 1988 by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and Richard L. Menschel (MBA 1959), a former director of the Foundation and a limited partner at Goldman Sachs, to encourage students from the nonprofit and public sector to attend HBS, these fellowships enable the School to award $10,000 to a select number of incoming MBA students.

Beginning with the Class of 1990, 236 incoming students have received the fellowship. Recipients of the award have served in leadership roles in nonprofit and public sector organizations and demonstrate a strong commitment to continued career paths in these areas. New recipients are invited to participate in events with current and former recipients as well as local social enterprise leaders in an effort to create a network of individuals committed to working in social enterprise.

Among the 2021 Goldsmith Fellows are:

Monami Chakraborty. Monami has spent the last four years at Dasra, India’s leading strategic philanthropy foundation that has improved development outcomes for over 30 million Indians. She focused on diligence and capacity building to help leaders scale their operations, working in the founder’s office to develop Dasra’s strategy, and to scale safe and inclusive sanitation solutions in urban India. Monami said “By choosing to continue in a career in development post HBS, I hope to steer strategic, gender-focused investments that yield real social impact.

Nikita Ramanujam. Nikita spent four years as a fourth-grade teacher in the Oakland Unified School District. With a commitment to use public education as a vehicle for economic mobility, she built her school’s first data driven framework for allocating academic and mental health services. During Covid, she led plans across the district for digital learning for 15,000 students and safety plans for students to receive learning materials and food. She said, “My career aspirations leverage a multi-faceted approach across social systems, and HBS will allow me to benefit from the prowess, feedback, and support of current students and alumni.”

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