Alana Okonkwo receives the Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service
Alana Okonkwo, a rising junior majoring in archaeology and African and African American Studies at Stanford, has been selected for the 2024-2026 cohort of the Voyager Scholarship, the Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service.
The prestigious two-year leadership development and scholarship program identifies third-year undergraduate students across the country who have a proven passion for public service. Voyagers develop their leadership skills and receive mentorship and financial support to explore public service experiences domestically or internationally on a summer voyage. Alana’s cohort consists of 100 students from 44 states and territories, representing 88 colleges and universities across the United States.
Growing up in Southern California with parents who were both elementary school teachers, Alana became interested in public service at a young age. Seeing inequities at school kindled a passion for educational justice and other social justice issues, which led her to use her playwriting talent in middle school to address challenges such as climate change and present a vision of a better future.
Alana expressed that her biggest inspiration is her younger brother, who has autism. “He is so creative and brilliant, yet has had to overcome so many challenges,” she said. “Largely because of him, I grew up very empathetic towards people who have differences or need extra support.”
In high school, Alana became chairperson of the youth advisory council at the mayor’s office of Fontana, California, helping to train high school and middle school students in leadership skills such as public speaking as well as how to make change through local government. She wrote fundraising grants for nonprofits, and promoted local government resources for the community.
Alana was drawn to Stanford’s emphasis on interdisciplinary education and the opportunities it presented to study a variety of subjects. During her freshman year, she lived in Otero, the public service themed dorm, and became a Frosh Service Liaison at the Haas Center for Public Service. These experiences helped her to explore how she could integrate her service education into a future career.
Through her undergraduate studies, Alana became interested in archaeology and cultural heritage restitution, recognizing its impact on how communities remember their histories and connect to their culture. Cultural heritage restitution is the act of returning a lost or stolen object of historical or cultural significance to its country or community of origin, and is often discussed in the context of museum collections and the long-lasting effects of colonialism on indigenous and marginalized communities. Inspired by her studies and her own family heritage, Alana seeks to become a cultural heritage restitution lawyer to make systemic change through law and policy work.
“My family is from Nigeria, and my studies have focused on West African cultural heritage,” Alana said. “I see cultural heritage return as a global issue, and there are a ton of regions and areas where this needs to happen on an international scale.”
Alana heard about the Voyager Scholarship through the Haas Center student newsletter. The scholarship was created by Michelle and Barack Obama with Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, who believe that exposure to new places and experiences generates understanding, empathy, and cooperation, equipping the next generation to create meaningful change.
As a Voyager, Alana is excited about the ability to help her family pay for college and to go on the summer voyage to learn about public service through different perspectives around the world. She would like to use her summer voyage to work with a nonprofit organization involved in cultural heritage restitution, or with a community trying to retrieve their artifacts.
Alana plans to pursue a career in public service to help people who are harmed by systemic issues and processes. She is planning eventually to visit the African continent to work on art and antiquity restitution in West Africa.
“I just can’t be complacent in situations where I know there are wrongs,” she said. “Since I study history and archaeology, I am very aware of how these historical processes are constantly recurring under the lens of colonialism. We need to stop cycles of oppression, especially in the niche of cultural heritage restitution.”
