Northeastern graduates Su Cizem and Debbie Madueke are no strangers to globetrotting for their education. Cizem graduated from Northeastern University London with her master’s degree in artificial intelligence and ethics in 2024. Madueke — who graduated from Northeastern with her bachelor’s in economics and business administration in 2019 — is currently working on her master’s degree at the University of Oxford. But the next stop for both of them starts in the fall: China. Cizem and Madueke have been named Schwarzman Scholars and will partake in an international graduate program based in Beijing for young leaders hoping to make a global impact.
Established in 2013 by American financier and philanthropist Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Schwarzman Scholars program was created to help strengthen geopolitical ties between China and the rest of the globe through education and relationship building. Every year, up to 200 students from an application pool of more than 5,000 are selected to partake in the Schwarzman Scholars master’s program in global affairs based in Beijing’s Tsinghua University — considered one of China’s most elite research institutions.