| Johnny Madrid,
an urban studies major, has worked steadily
to improve conditions for youth in foster care. He drafted
language for the Foster Child Bill of Rights, which
became law in 2001. He has trained social workers and
given speeches nationally on foster care. He has facilitated
focus groups for research aimed at teaching college
administrators how to get foster children to campus
and support them once they’ve arrived. And as
winner of a prestigious Harry S. Truman Scholarship,
he now has $26,000 to use on graduate study that can
help prepare him for a career in government, advocacy
or education.
Madrid, ’03, is a native of Bell Gardens, Calif.
After his mother was killed by a drunken driver when
he was 11, he lived in 19 different homes, including
14 foster-care placements, before arriving at Stanford.
He’s previously been a Civil Rights Fellow in
Washington, D.C., and is interning this summer with
the investment firm Goldman Sachs.
This year’s 77 Truman winners were selected from
stiff competition. Madrid jokes that the scholarship
application “is so long that it takes away from
the stuff you’d do to win it.”
The scholars attended a week of leadership training
in May at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. The
group broke into teams to study public-policy quandaries;
Madrid’s group studied ways to make the states
more accountable for the $7 billion spent on foster
care. Law school deans came to court the scholarship
recipients and, Madrid says, “Michael Dukakis
ate lunch with us and sat around talking. It was good
times.” |
