A Desi Daughter From San Francisco, Sonia Banker Wins the Carnegie Endowment Fellowship

Sonia Banker, a San Francisco born political science senior at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C., one of only 18 students selected nationally for the highly competitive one year fellowship. She is just the fourth Penn student to receive this distinction in the programme's 30 year history.

Banker will join Carnegie's Democracy, Conflict and Governance programme, where she will assist senior scholars with research and editing across areas including nuclear nonproliferation, foreign policy, economics, technology and democratic governance, while also participating in meetings with high level officials and contributing to books, reports and Congressional testimony.

Her record at Penn is exceptional by any measure. She served as Editor in Chief of the Penn Political Review, was a research assistant in Penn's Political Science department, a Henry A. Wallace Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, and led two successful education policy campaigns to increase public school funding in Philadelphia and California, the latter of which was featured in the 2024 book "Don't Wait: Three Girls Who Fought for Change and Won."

Concentrating in comparative politics with a minor in English, Banker previously interned in the office of US Senator Dianne Feinstein and at the ACLU Southern California. At a moment when the role of American diplomacy is under intense scrutiny, the Carnegie Endowment has selected exactly the kind of fearless, policy minded voice it needs