Our Team
Tara Kane Prendergast, Co-Founder and Executive Director
While a student at Brown University Tara worked with the Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment (BRYTE) programas a tutor and head-coordinator. She was awarded a C.V. Starr Fellowship to develop BRYTE’s institutional memory and community partnerships. Coming from a low-income rural community, Tara is committed to addressing issues of educational inequity. She believes in the power of relationships, dreams, and youth. Tara graduated with an honors degree in history from Brown University in 2012. She was a finalist for the Truman Scholarship and a student speaker at her graduation. Her speech was about what is most important to her: Alice (her BRYTE tutee), social justice, and compassion.
Julia Schuster, Co-Founder and Director of Programming
Julia comes to ARYSE with the vision of improving educational opportunity for resettled refugee youth through integrated participation between resettled refugee youth, university volunteers, and community members. As a student at Brown University, Julia volunteered with and co-led Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment (BRYTE) and was awarded the C.V. Starr Fellowship to formalize training procedures for student volunteers. She graduated with a degree in International Development Studies having written her honors thesis on the barriers to integration for foreign-born professionals in Providence, RI. Upon graduating, Julia researched environmental movements in Peru and later worked as an English language teacher at an international school in Boston. Currently, she is the AmeriCorps member at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy (MIRA) Coalition working on the Citizenship Program.
Ryan Gayman, Director of Finance and Operations
Ryan graduated with a BA in Urban Studies and Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in the spring of 2012. Throughout his undergraduate years, Ryan worked as a tutor and board member of Keep It Real, a student-driven organization that tutors and mentors Somali Bantu youth throughout the city of Pittsburgh. His academic career focused on identify formation among African-born resettled refugee youth who now reside in the US as well as studying American refugee resettlement policy in urban America. He was also the Executive Intern with the Pittsburgh-based Amizade Global Service-Learning where he participated in the planning and facilitated the operations of service-learning courses. Ryan currently works as the Community Engagement Advisor for the University Honors College at the University of Pittsburgh. He is responsible for connecting students’ academic interests to related internships, fellowships, programs, student organizations, research, and other opportunities that address social issues and positively impact their communities.
Cathy Huang, Fellowship Director
Cathy Huang is a student at Yale University studying Economics and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. She coordinates the Yale Refugee Project, which has paired hundreds of Yalies with New Haven area refugee families to foster friendships and educational exchange. While at Yale, she has traveled to China, Turkey, and Chile to report on global economy and maternal health issues, and recently returned from a term in San Francisco collecting the oral histories of immigrants detained on Angel Island in the early 1900′s. She has also worked for the Asian American Cultural Center on campus and Dwight Hall, Yale’s Center for Public Service and Social Justice. She hopes to dedicate her life to social justice causes and is so excited to work alongside the inaugural class of ARYSE Fellows during the summer of 2013!
Beth Goldberg, Resource Coordinator
Beth is motivated to work with ARYSE after teaching refugee youth from Somalia, Ethiopia, the DRC, and Sudan while living in Kenya. Many of her former students have subsequently been resettled in Europe and the United States, and she is passionate about providing them with quality educational opportunities and equal rights. As a student at Georgetown University, Beth studied conflict-generated migration and diaspora networks with a degree in International Politics and African Studies. Upon graduating in 2012, Beth was awarded the Humanity in Action Fellowship to live in Berlin and study barriers facing Muslim migrants in Germany. Today, she is a program officer with Haffert Global, LLC designing more inclusive international gender policies with the United Nations for women and girls in developing countries.
Sean Hauze, Web Developer
Sean creates, updates, and manages online content. Sean is also a technology and design teacher, as well as the Technology Coordinator at The Grauer School in Encinitas, California. In addition to teaching and managing technology at the school, Sean often engages in humanitarian trips around the world with students, facilitating community service expeditions and student-to-student outreach.
Jenna Baron, Communications Coordinator
Jenna was inspired to work with ARYSE while a student at the University of Pittsburgh where she was the Community Engagement board member for Keep it Real—a student-led organization providing after-school tutoring, mentoring, and adult ESL help to Somali Bantu refugee families. As a senior at Pitt, her work with the Somali Bantu community gave her the experience to be hired with the Allegheny County Department of Human Services’ Immigrants and Internationals Initiative, where she led the Children and Youth Committee. Her passion for education and enthusiasm to work with ARYSE stems from her dedication to providing immigrant and refugee youth with quality education access in fostering their sense of self and identity. She’s a finalist for the Fulbright Research Scholarship, and hopes to return to Kenya, where she will investigate issues surrounding educational access for persons with disabilities.
