In November Stephen Danley C’07, a 24-year-old Penn alumnus from Germantown, Maryland, became the University’s sixth Marshall scholar in the last seven years and only the eighth in its history.
After graduating last May, Danley remained in town as a Philly Fellow. He has been working as youth coordinator for the Neighborhood Interfaith Movement, a community organizer that works with 53 congregations and groups across various faiths. “There are lots of people who are trying to make good things happen,” he says about the experience, “and it’s very difficult to do that.”
The challenge of helping Philadelphia’s troubled young people is what drove him to pursue the Marshall. He will use the award to get a master’s in comparative social policy at the University of Oxford. “I need to have a skill set that walks across the non-profit sector, the political world, the media world, and starts to pool things together,” he says.
Those who knew Danley at Penn have high hopes for him. “Steve never ceases to amaze me with the broad spectrum of his interests,” says Dr. Harriet Joseph, interim director of Penn’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, which helps students through the application process. During his time at Penn, Danley co-captained a three-time Ivy League championship-winning basketball team, served on the student leadership council of the Penn Newman Center, and wrote occasional sports articles for The New York Times.
“I can’t help but think that his leadership skills will be put to very good use,” Joseph adds, “either politically or in some other form of the public arena in the future.”
—Yashas Vaidya C’09
