This Year's Recipients
2026 Recipients
Karl Burns is pursuing the Advanced Accounting program with the long-term professional goal of becoming a CPA and ultimately working for a regulatory agency. He works as a financial analyst at Northwestern’s facilities management. His interest in working for a government oversight body is rooted in a strong belief that honesty and transparency in financial reporting are essential to protecting the public. The next major step in his career is sitting the four CPA exams. He is committed to community involvement through the Fisher’s of Men ministry in the Joliet Diocese, where he serves meals at the Daybreak Shelter, as well as through volunteer shifts at Feed My Starving Children in Aurora.
Kelsey Creamer is pursuing her Master of Public Policy and Administration and works as a Program Administrator at the Golub Capital Board Fellows Program at the Kellogg School of Management. Her long-term goal is to strengthen nonprofit organizations that serve under-resourced communities. Through the MPPA program, she hopes to develop the analytical and leadership skills necessary to design and evaluate programs that improve educational access and community-based services throughout Illinois. Her volunteer work has included many roles with Amigos de las Americas, an international youth development organization, and vice president of the Association for Northwestern University Women.
Alyssa Gorkin is a Research Study Coordinator at the Lab for Scalable Mental Health at the Feinberg School of Medicine. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in data science. She completed her undergraduate degree in psychology at Reed College in 2024, with minors in music and economics, while supporting herself throughout her studies. Her academic and professional goal is to leverage data science to improve access to effective, scalable mental health care for underrepresented populations. Prior to joining the Lab for Scalable Mental Health, she worked with a range of underrepresented communities, including families of children with developmental differences, adults under guardianship, unhoused youth, and survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence. Following completion of the MSDS program, she plans to apply to Clinical Psychology PhD programs to further develop her clinical and research training in support of equitable mental health care access.
Miguel Montero is a Research Study Coordinator in Neurology at the Feinberg School of Medicine. He is working on the Master of Science in Data Science. He has worked in clinical research for more than five years, including close to three of those with Northwestern’s Stroke and Neurocritical Care Research Collaborative (SNC2RC). Working on investigator-initiated studies to clinical trials he learned that large gaps exist in long term stroke recovery. His goal is to gain advanced skills in data science and AI so he can help close those gaps. To accomplish this, he is developing skills in Natural Language Processing, Large Language Models, and predictive analytics. He has also been a contributing author to many abstracts at major conferences and has completed a medical mission trip to Honduras.