Port Orchard’s Alexandra Piccio has earned a spot in the third cohort of Voyager Scholarship for Public Service recipients as announced Aug. 27 by former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama and Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky.
The two-year program was created to provide a jumpstart for U.S. college juniors seeking to launch careers in public service.
Piccio moved to Port Orchard from the Philippines at age six and attended South Colby Elementary before attending middle and high schools outside of the South Kitsap School District. Now a junior and Global Liberal Studies major at New York University, she is one of 100 students from 88 colleges across 44 states and territories to receive a spot in the 2024-26 cohort.
“I didn’t even tell anyone (other than family) that I had applied for this,” Piccio said. “This is a very unique opportunity that not that many people get.”
The scholarship provides students with up to $50,000 in financial aid, which Piccio said will help cover the remaining costs of her NYU tuition.
It also will offer a $10,000 stipend and free Airbnb housing for a summer work-travel experience between the students’ junior and senior years of college and access to mentorship through a network of Obama Foundation leaders. Following the program’s completion, recipients will also receive a $2,000 Airbnb stipend annually for a decade.
“When Michelle, Brian, and I launched the Voyager Scholarship in 2022, we were excited to see what young people with a passion for public service could do when given the right support,” Barack Obama says in a news release. “The past two cohorts have shown tremendous passion, curiosity and collaboration.”
Piccio is now tasked with building her own Summer Voyage, which will be focused on studying food systems around the world in efforts to shift farming methods towards sustainability and ethicality. “Specifically factory farming and animal agriculture.”
Piccio said she has some ideas on where to go for her experience. “Sweden particularly because it’s one of the top countries in terms of sustainable agriculture, so I wanted to investigate what they were doing differently.”
