For Ariela Asllani ’26, an interest in migration began with the stories she grew up hearing in Kukës, Albania, near the Kosovo border, where her parents and neighbors once laid mattresses on their kitchen floors to shelter refugees fleeing the Kosovo War. Though she was born after the conflict, she was raised in a community still affected by its aftermath. “My hometown taught me that humanity, not politics, defines who we are,” she said.

At Cornell, Asllani — a public policy major in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy — has translated those early lessons into a body of study, research and service that earned her this year’s Class of 1964 John F. Kennedy Memorial Award.

Established by the Class of 1964 in their senior year and administered by the Einhorn Center for Community Engagement, the award is given annually to a graduating Cornell senior launching a career in public service.

“As a first-generation college student, I see education as the greatest inheritance that has opened opportunities my ancestors could never have imagined,” said Asllani — a perspective that has shaped her commitment to local service work.

In conversations with refugee high school students, she learned about barriers they faced, including cultural exclusion, misplacement in remedial programs and a lack of resources common to low-income families. In response, she collaborated with nonprofit Ithaca Welcomes Refugees (IWR) to found Refugee Scholars, secure $10,000 in cumulative funding — including a 2024 Robinson-Appel Humanitarian Award from the Einhorn Center — and provide laptops, school supply kits, test-prep books and a video-based college-preparatory curriculum.

When refugee arrivals slowed after the 2025 change in federal policy, Asllani collaborated to form an on-campus student coalition to reimagine the project’s role and expand IWR’s regional visibility, helping sustain the work during a period of uncertainty.

“There is a beauty in improving spaces and leaving them in better condition than how you found them,” Asllani reflected. Locally, she has also done so as a volunteer firefighter with the Cayuga Heights Fire Department; nationally and internationally, as a border aid volunteer at the U.S.-Mexico border, an intern with an educational nonprofit in Nepal and a field apprentice studying peacebuilding in Israel and Palestine.

Asllani has complemented that work through roles in law and government. She has interned at the White House under the Biden-Harris administration, in the U.S. Senate and in the federal government’s intelligence sector, while also serving as a research assistant at Cornell Law School.

“In more than a decade of university teaching, I have encountered very few students whose academic distinction and commitment to public service are as clear and compelling as Ariela’s,” said Julie Ficarra, associate teaching professor at the Brooks School. “Her analytical abilities are already operating at a level typical of graduate study.”

Asllani plans to use the $15,000 JFK Award to support the next step of her academic trajectory — earning an M.Sc. in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at the University of Oxford. She hopes to later pursue a Ph.D. and build a career focused on migration policy and smuggling networks, with the long-term goal of working in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

For Asllani, that future work remains grounded in the same commitment to human dignity and expanding access to opportunity that first drew her to the field. “I may have defied the odds, but I strive to build a world where the odds no longer need to be broken,” she said.

In addition to Asllani, two finalists for the JFK Award each received $500 honoraria in recognition of their commitment to service. Rebecca Herzberg ’26 plans to work in federal health care policy before moving into government work as a regulatory lawyer, while Tae Kyu Lee ’26 plans to earn a graduate degree in criminology and build a legal career focused on prison education and criminal justice reform.