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The Braden Storytelling Grant is one of the ways that the Stanford Storytelling Project helps students become audio storytellers.

Congratulations to our 2024 Braden Grant Winners!

Our 2024 cohort will complete research in Ethiopia, Peru, Guam, and the United States. Read more about their projects here:

Fadie Arabo

Fadie Arabo is a sophomore studying biology and education. He wants to share his experience as one of the only Chaldean-Americans on Stanford’s campus to research this unheard of community to many. Come on a journey with him as he explores who Chaldeans are, their place of community, and their unique culture from Iraq to the USA.

Langston Buddington

Langston is a junior majoring in Urban Studies and pursuing a coterminal master’s degree in public policy. Born and raised in Oakland, California, he is passionate about advancing equity through policy and urbanism –– and now, storytelling. Langston has cherished podcasts since middle school, and he’s excited to create his own that investigates urban change –– specifically in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia –– chronicling conflict, growth, and resilience in the built world and its people.

Natasha Zia Charfauros

As a Chamoru and Filipina woman majoring in Human Biology and minoring in Economics, Natasha Zia (she/her/ziya) is interested in understanding how to create sustainable economic systems for human health and culture and loves learning about culture, language, and food systems. This is the story of her oldest ancestors, Pontain, Fo’na, and Guåhan (Americanized the Guam). The U.S. territory has a far more magical and insidious history that displays the true reach of the American empire in the wider Pacific Ocean.

Viva Donohoe

Viva Donohoe is a junior studying American Studies with a concentration in Silicon Valley, Digital Culture, and the American Experience. She was raised in San Francisco and studies the city’s history through archival research and alternative histories alike. Through this project, she’ll investigate how in the early 1900s, San Francisco’s historic ban on burials led to a mass relocation of the deceased from the city to the town of Colma, California. How has Colma—a functional Necropolis since 1924—evolved over the past century? What can this tell us about how San Francisco treats its dead?

Jenny Duan

Jenny Duan (she/her) studies Symbolic Systems and Data Science. Her fascination with understanding Chinatowns began during high school, when she started filming video documentaries sharing the stories of Chinatown residents in her hometown, Portland, Oregon. She looks for a Chinatown in every city she visits. Through the lens of food and Lima’s “Chifa” cuisine, this audio project explores how Lima’s Chinatown has influenced the development of a unique Chinese-Peruvian identity and its place in the wider (South American) Chinese diaspora.

Arusha Patil

Arusha (she/her) is a junior majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Public Health, interested in how technology can increase health equity. Outside of her academic interests, she’s an avid climber/dancer, aspiring ukeleleist, and a “snapper” (her favorite podcast is Snap Judgment with Glynn Washington). Her project explores how diversity in clinical trials has evolved (and stagnated) since the 1990 NIH Revitalization Act. She asks who were the people left behind in the race for FDA approval, and who are the people being left behind in the modern precision medicine revolution.

Cassie Shaw

Cassie Shaw is a junior majoring in English, Creative Writing, which acts as an umbrella to explore poetry, screen and fiction writing, comic creation, and audio storytelling. This junior’s passion for creation stems from a desire to develop a space for digestible social commentaries and an opportunity for people to learn about different lands, cultures, and experiences — especially Korea (which she studies as an E.A.S. minor to cultivate deeper ties to her heritage). In this project we will hear from elite school dropouts about what pushed them to leave, and might just dispel myths about academic burnout and entrepreneurship in the process. 

Priyanka Shrestha

Priyanka Shrestha (she/her) is a senior studying computer science on the biocomputation track with a minor in creative writing. Priyanka’s father is an infectious disease physician, and through spending a lot of time in and around hospitals with him in her childhood, she nurtured an early fascination for science and medicine. Now, as an aspiring physician herself, Priyanka seeks to better understand how we can best leverage technology to improve medical knowledge and practice without sacrificing the human connection that is at its core.

Alex Strong

Alex Strong is a Designer – storyteller, craftsman, tinkerer – at Stanford University. He believes in curious methodical exploration of whatever issue is at hand. He loves making things and is always excited to talk about plants and anything else in the outdoors. His project is about how climbers added safer permeant climbing equipment to natural spaces and the enormous fallout from the community around this issue. Ultimately the story will investigate the seemingly contradictory values of access and safety in outdoor recreation with impact on and respect for those same natural spaces.


Questions? Contact SSP Managing Editor Laura Joyce Davis.

Listen to previous Braden grant projects  (coming soon)   Get details about applying