Emerson Collective
Fellowship
Emerson Collective
Fellowship
Emerson Collective
Fellowship
Encouraging individuals of exceptional talent and creativity to advance bold new projects in education, immigration, the environment, social justice, media, and health.
Current Fellows
Visionary individuals from across disciplines pursuing bold new projects.

Reem Assil is a Palestinian-Syrian chef, and the owner of Reem’s California, an Arab bakery in the San Francisco Bay Area, inspired by street-corner bakeries in Damascus and Beirut, and the vibrant communities that surround them. Previously, Assil worked for more than a decade as a labor and community organizer.

Camille A. Brown is an acclaimed choreographer, and founder and artistic director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers. Her work, which invites audiences into dialogues about race, culture, and identity, has appeared on Broadway, and has been commissioned by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Metropolitan Opera, and many other organizations.

Mona Chalabi is a data journalist and artist who uses handmade illustrations and graphics to bring a human, moral perspective to complex data and information. She is currently the data editor for the Guardian US.

Mónica Feliú-Mójer is a neurobiologist by training and a science communication expert using culturally relevant storytelling to make critical scientific information more engaging and accessible to historically marginalized communities.

Anita Ho is a bioethicist and researcher, focusing on the intersection of technology and systemic inequities in health care. She is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and at the University of California, San Francisco, and a regional director of ethics for Providence St. Joseph Health.

An accomplished cellist, Andrew Janss is the founding member of the Escher Quartet, and the co-artistic director of the nonprofit Project: Music Heals Us, which brings live-music performances and interactive programming to communities across the U.S.

Nia Johnson is a lawyer, bioethicist, and health policy doctoral candidate at Harvard University, where she uses data analysis and survey methods to tell the stories of people impacted by systemic inequities in health care.

Adam Perez is a photographer and filmmaker whose intimate work across portraiture, reportage, and documentary film, explores themes of systemic poverty, migration, and climate change.

Brie Williams is a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and the director of Amend, a program focused on transforming the dehumanizing culture of mass incarceration.

Seema Yasmin is a physician, epidemiologist, and journalist. She is the director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative, an interdisciplinary effort pioneering effective ways to discuss complex medical issues and address the spread of health and science misinformation and disinformation.

As the Technical Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Renée DiResta studies how misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories spread online.

Valeria Luiselli is an author and writer who explores themes of immigration, migration, mass incarceration, and violence through fiction and nonfiction writing.

Paul Hawken is an author and leading voice on sustainability who founds ecological businesses and advises heads of state and business leaders on environmentally friendly practices. His 2017 book, “Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever to Reverse Global Warming,” is a New York Times bestseller.

Ernest Moniz is a nuclear physicist, an energy and climate change expert, and the CEO of the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative. From 2013 to January 2017, he served as the United States Secretary of Energy under President Obama.
Overview
At Emerson Collective, we believe that individuals have the power to untangle hard problems with ingenuity, to excavate human truths through art, to bring justice to our most calcified systems. We believe that an individual voice can inspire us, unite us, and show us the way forward.
We also believe that such individual innovation requires both support and freedom to flourish — so that individuals can follow their creative instincts, take risks and make big bets, and set off on paths with unknown destinations.
Emerson Collective supports visionary individuals to pursue such intellectual, creative, and professional ambitions through the Emerson Collective Fellowship. Each Fellow’s work and projects advance the public understanding in Emerson Collective’s priority areas, creating new avenues for progress.
Often structured as one year of direct support, the Emerson Collective Fellowship is designed to help a remarkable individual advance a new project. With minimal ongoing programming, the fellowship gives individuals the autonomy to advance their current work, pursue exciting new chapters with unknown destinations, and make lasting breakthroughs. Emerson also works directly with Fellows to help their work reach greater exposure and impact.
Fellows are selected through an invitation-only application process. We select Fellows based on an established track record of excellence and originality; a deep engagement in education, immigration, social justice, the environment, and health; and the potential to pursue vital new work with the support of a fellowship.