USC Graduates Shine In the Classroom and Out

Almost 14,000 degrees will be awarded at USC’s commencement ceremonies on May 11. Among the outstanding graduates:

Genevieve Hoffman (Valedictorian)
A double-major in international relations and economics, Hoffman finished her degree summa cum laude in just three-and-a-half years, writing a scholarly journal article on military commissions and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa along the way. Hoffman, who is also an avid photographer and musician, will start law school at the University of Virginia in the fall and plans to work within the arena of government and politics.

Sonam Kapadia (Salutatorian)
Kapadia, who was chosen as a Renaissance Scholar for “breadth with depth” in her studies, double-majored in health promotion disease prevention studies at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and biological sciences with a minor in sociology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Her experiences shadowing a physician on Skid Row with the JWCH Center for Community Health inspired her to start the SC Homelessness Initiative, a student organization that develops and presents preventive health workshops for homeless women.

Jeffrey Ryan Hill (Salutatorian)
A knee injury helped that Hill sustained while playing varsity basketball in high school led him to his chosen career path. Hill had already wanted to go into medicine, but the surgery to repair his knee — which allowed him to continue playing basketball — inspired him to study orthopaedic surgery. He turned down a basketball scholarship at University of California, San Diego, to attend USC. Hill will graduate with bachelor’s degrees in kinesiology and biological sciences, and though he hasn’t decided yet where he wants to study medicine, he has already gone through the rigorous Baccalaureate/M.D. program that guarantees admission into the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

James, Molly and Paul Peterson
These triplets—all three set to graduate this year—are part of a truly Trojan family. After graduating high school in the LA area, the close-knit siblings were each accepted to USC, where their mother had earned a degree in Occupational Therapy and one of their older sisters has earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The Peterson family will be arriving en masse on Friday to watch proudly as Paul receives a degree in political science, Molly a degree in accounting, and James a degree in business.

Emily Allen
Allen was the first straight “ally” to be the executive director of the USC Queer and Ally Student Assembly. Around the same time that national columnist Dan Savage started the It Gets Better Project, she started the Ally Project, in which people come out as allies by posting photos of themselves declaring their support for the LGBT community. Dan Savage mentioned the campaign and linked to it on his blog. Allen, who studied psychology and creative writing at USC, has volunteered as a camp counselor at Troy Camp and taught creative writing to grade school students this semester at 32nd Street School though the USC Dornsife “Writer in the Community” course.

Augusto Alonso
Alonso is a football player with an education in engineering and a desire to help people. Raised by a Costa Rican mother and Cuban father in Omaha, Nebraska, Spanish is Alonso’s first language — which has helped tremendously as he traveled to Honduras five times during his college career. Alonso was a project leader with Engineers Without Borders, working on a water-delivery project to bring clean water to a village of 350 people. He will head back to Honduras for a sixth time the day after commencement with the goal of completing the project. Alonso has both brains and brawn; he walked-on to the varsity football team in the spring of his sophomore year and two full seasons on the team as an outside linebacker, appearing in two games during this past season. He will graduate this year with his bachelor’s in biomedical engineering, and is enrolled to pursue a master’s degree at Duke University.

Nancy Padron de Mendez
Growing up in Mexico City, Padron de Mendez hadn’t even considered going to college. After moving to the United States at age 9, her eyes were opened to the possibility of a university degree by a seventh-grade teacher and mentor. She spent a year at East Los Angeles College (ELAC) before transferring to USC. She will graduate with a degree in business administration and is dedicated to paving a brighter future for herself and others, including her 8-year-old daughter. After coming to USC, Padron de Mendez did not forget her roots at ELAC and joined the SCholars Program, where she mentored and tutored students attending community colleges around the city with the hopes that one day they too would follow her path to a four-year university.

Ali Al Saffar, Fahad Al Ghanem, Hadyan Alajmi, Noha Najem and Nadia Alzeabot
These five students are the first Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) employees to receive their graduate degrees at USC under an agreement between the Viterbi School of Engineering and KOC that allows the students to complete their classwork from Kuwait via the school’s Distance Education Network. The opportunity allowed the students to further their education without being away from their families or work responsibilities. They will travel to Los Angeles to receive their degrees, arriving in town a week before commencement to attend classes in person that they previously had been viewing via video transmission.

Gita Advani
Advani will earn two degrees this year from USC, one from the Marshall School of Business and the other from the Leventhal School of Accounting. A native of Singapore, Advani has traveled around the world to New Zealand and Singapore to represent USC in international case competitions, where students solve real business problems under simulated business conditions. She also flew to Santiago, Chile, to participate in Marshall’s Learning About International Commerce program. After graduation, Advani will work for the firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Contact: Robert Perkins at (213) 740-9226 or perkinsr@usc.edu