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Heinz Fellowship

H.J. Heinz Company Foundation Fellowship

About the Fellowship

The Heinz Fellowship was established in 1982 by an endowment from the H. J. Heinz Company Foundation to the University of Pittsburgh's (“Pitt”) University Center for International Studies (UCIS). The Fellowship is offered annually and is managed by the Global Studies Center (GSC) at the UCIS. Pitt is one of the leading research universities in the United States with 16 professional schools, 28 departments in the humanities and social and natural sciences, 3,400 faculty members, 27,000 students, and library holdings of over 6.1 million volumes. Pitt is located in an urban center of cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity.

Heinz Fellowships are granted to individuals from developing countries who demonstrate potential as future leaders in the public, government, non-profit, or private sectors. The goal is to improve, early in a career, a Fellow’s capacity to contribute to the development of their country and to enhance their understanding of the U.S. The Fellowship has been restructured beginning with the 2012-13 academic year to align with specific Master’s programs of Pitt professional schools. The GSC no longer directly accepts Heinz applications. If you are interested in applying for the Fellowship, please contact the professional school you applied to after receipt of your acceptance. University of Pittsburgh professional schools with potential Heinz support include the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) and the School of Nursing.

Fellows will receive one to two years of support in the form of a living stipend of $19,200 (paid in monthly installments) and a $1,000 program and professional activities fund. Please note that if the Fellow comes from a country that does not have a tax treaty with the U.S., the Fellow must pay U.S. taxes amounting to 14% of the stipend. No transportation costs, living or other allowances, services or insurance funds are provided for dependents, whether or not they accompany the Fellow.

Eligibility

The competition for a Heinz Fellowship is open to men and women from developing countries whose record of accomplishment early in their career indicates strong potential for leadership and achievement in business, government, public services, or other relevant professions.

  1. Applicants must have been accepted to a Master’s program beginning the academic year for which they seek the Heinz Fellowship by the GSPH, the GSPIA or the School of Nursing.
  2. Applicants must have completed a university degree.
  3. Applicants must be proficient in speaking, reading and writing English.
  4. Preference will be given to those applicants at the early or mid-stages of their career.
  5. The Fellowship is intended for individuals in the practitioner and policy domains. It is not awarded for basic academic research, academic sabbaticals or medical research.

Fellow Obligations

During the residency, the Fellow is expected to give at least one presentation on a subject related to his or her professional experience to members of the University. In addition, the Fellow is strongly encouraged to participate in community outreach activities in the region by lecturing about his or her home country to an audience of high school students or interested adults.

Acceptance of the grant by the candidate constitutes an agreement between the grantee and the University. It is expected that, barring unforeseen emergencies, grantees will remain for the full tenure of the award. A grantee who leaves the U.S. or terminates the grant at a date earlier than that specified in the grant authorization, without consent of the University, will be required to reimburse the University for any expenditures made by the University on the grantee’s behalf.

Upon completion of the Heinz Fellowship program, Fellows are required to submit a final report describing and evaluating the full range of their activities and experiences during the Fellowship, as well as their plans for applying the Fellowship upon return to their home country. These reports are subsequently distributed to program officials at the University of Pittsburgh and to representatives at the H.J. Heinz Company Foundation. These reports will also be used as references for incoming Fellowship recipients. Upon acceptance of their final report, Fellows will receive a Heinz Program certificate from the UCIS.

Timeline

  • Master’s program application deadline: Please check the deadline for the school and academic year you intend to apply.
  • May 2013: Winner notified
  • May 2013: Winners announced on Web site
  • August 1, 2013: Fellowship year begins
  • July 31, 2014: Fellowship year ends

Application Process

When submitting your Master’s program application, please indicate that you would like to be considered for the Heinz Fellows Program.

Current Heinz Fellows

Current Fellows 2012-13

Ms. Dewi Astuti is a native of Indonesia and is a graduate of Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta. Her field was Political Science with a major in International Relations. While a student, she provided Indonesian language instruction and cross-cultural activities for foreign students in the Indonesian Language and Culture Learning Service at UGM. Upon completion of her studies, she taught English at the firm Technigroup Indonesia. Ms. Astuti is currently an economic journalist at the Macro and Global Economy desk of the Bisnis Indonesia, a business and economics focused newspaper. Her work at the paper includes reporting and writing daily stories for the print and online editions on the macroeconomic performance of Indonesia and other countries, including budget and fiscal policies, economic and monetary indicators, trade policy, the political economy aspects of foreign policy and a wide range of development issues.
 
Ms. Astuti’s honors and achievements include the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Journalism Fellowship in 2010. She was one of only 20 economic journalists from Asia, Africa and Europe selected from that competition. Ms. Astuti has interviewed many public officials within and outside Indonesia including Robert B. Zoellick, World Bank President; Barry P. Bosworth, Senior Fellow Brookings Institution; Stephen Smith, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade; Naoyuki Shinohara, IMF Deputy Managing Director; Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former IMF Managing Director; and Sri Mulyani Indrawati, World Bank Managing Director, and former Indonesian Finance Minister.
 
Ms. Astuti will be one of three Heinz Fellows selected for the fall 2012 cohort and will be collaborating with the Global Studies Center to develop our programming.  She will be a Master’s student in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
 
 
Mr. Robert Maina is a native of Kenya and is a graduate of Moi University in Eldoret and the Kenya School of Law in Nairobi. His field as an undergraduate was Law with a focus on commercial and international law. While a student at Moi University, Mr. Maina was Secretary General of the Law Students' Union and the Legal Affairs Secretary of the East African Students Union, a group that represents all students in East Africa including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. After completion of his studies, Mr. Maina entered a career in commercial and international legal affairs, having become a member of the Kenyan bar. He is currently a consultant, Chartered Certified Accountant and Certified Public Secretary (CPS) with PricewaterhousCoopers (PwC) Kenya. Mr. Maina’s work at PwC focuses on corporate, international, indirect and personal taxes; transfer pricing; and corporate and immigration law. His tenure at PwC has included being seconded to PwC South Africa.
 
Mr. Maina’s honors and achievements include being admitted as an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. His performance on various CPS examinations resulted in two awards from the Kenya Accountants and Secretaries National Examinations Board for being the best overall student in Kenya and one award for being the best student in Financial Accounting. The United Nations designated him as the International law Student of the Year in 2007 as a result of his exemplary performance at the Annual International Court of Justice Moot Court Competition at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi.
 
Mr. Maina’s career plans include teaching law at Moi University so that he can have a positive impact on Kenya’s future lawyers and enhance the University’s curriculum. His research interests include intellectual property, taxation and oil and gas law.  Mr. Maina also plans to take an active role in public policy debates in Kenya relative to international licensing of transactions, transfer pricing, and oil and gas in the wake of Kenya’s recent adoption (2010) of a new constitution.  In order to achieve these goals, he plans to study various U.S. models in the areas of federal taxation policies and approaches to transfer pricing, as well as state-level taxation policies.
 
Mr. Maina will be one of three Heinz Fellows selected for the fall 2012 cohort and will be collaborating with the Global Studies Center to develop our programming.  He will be an LLM student in the School of Law.
 
Ms. Sun Ran is a native of China and is a graduate of Capital Medical University’s School of Nursing. While a student, she worked in a research program focusing on educating high-risk HIV/AIDS groups on the dangers involved with certain behaviors and on reducing discrimination and fear toward those living with AIDS. She also served as an intern team leader at the Capital Institute of Pediatrics and the Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, helping other interns and assisting with the distribution of information on birth control methods and care of those with chronic diseases. In addition to her studies and internship, Ms. Ran became very engaged as a volunteer in several diverse projects including water conservation, hepatitis prevention and treatment, and the creation of publicity for her School and University.
 
Ms. Ran’s honors and achievements are based in academics, arts and athletics, including the Won College Outstanding Class Award three successive years at her college and the Beijing Excellent Class Award twice. She also received the Won Social Work Award and second prize in the Beijing Academician Art Performance Award.
 
Ms. Ran will be one of three Heinz Fellows entering Pitt in the fall of 2012 and will be collaborating with the Global Studies Center to develop our programming. She will be a Master’s student in the School of Nursing.

 

Past Heinz Fellows

For a listing of past Heinz fellows, please visit this link.

 

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