The University of Georgia and the Schwarzman Scholars program are both celebrating big achievements this year: UGA set a record with three Schwarzman Scholars in a single year, and the Schwarzman Scholars program announced its 10th class of recipients.
The UGA recipients are seniors Aryan Thakur of Cumming and Amanda Whylie of Kingston, Jamaica, and alumnus Garrett Williams of Atlanta. The prestigious award will allow them to pursue a one-year master’s degree in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, starting this August.
“As is true of most of the opportunities afforded to us, they are as good as the people within them,” Thakur said. “The Schwarzman program is about people from all around the world coming together with common interests.”
Schwarzman Scholars are taught by leading international faculty and study a core curriculum focused on leadership, global affairs and China, helping them learn to navigate the complexities of an evolving global landscape.
“It is a global group of students, and I’ve never been in a group of people that diverse before, so I’m really excited to see what I can learn and talk about in that space,” Whylie said.
The 150 scholars in the incoming Schwarzman Class of 2026 were selected from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants, the most ever to apply. The scholars represent 38 countries and 105 universities. Ten classes of Schwarzman Scholars have been named since the highly competitive program opened to applicants in 2015.
“You are a function of the people you spend time with, and I can think of no better way to spend my time than with 150 of some of the most interesting, ambitious and diverse twenty-somethings in the world through the Schwarzman program,” Williams said.
The addition of Thakur, Whylie and Williams brings UGA’s total number of Schwarzman Scholars to 11.
“The University of Georgia is thrilled to have three Schwarzman Scholars in one year for the first time in our institution’s history,” said President Jere W. Morehead. “They represent a variety of academic and career interests while sharing the pursuit of excellence that unites all of us in the UGA community.”
Aryan Thakur (Photo by Stephanie Schupska)
Thakur, a Foundation Fellow in the Morehead Honors College, is earning bachelor’s degrees in genetics and mathematics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
He is actively involved the design of digital health tools as an artificial intelligence development intern with the Atlanta-based startup AllaiHealth, a patient medical history platform. His goal as a Schwarzman Scholar is to learn from China’s digital health system to build digital health tools that meet the specific needs of different groups of people. Ultimately, Thakur wants to use technology to advance global health equity.
“I am really interested in how health tech can extend quality health care to as many people as possible,” Thakur said. “One thing I’m excited to learn about as a Schwarzman Scholar is figuring out how cutting-edge health technology is designed for Chinese populations, how the health-seeking behaviors of Chinese people are reflected in their tools, and how that can inform tools I help to develop in the future.”
Thakur is an accomplished artist. He brought the Inside Out Project, a global participatory art project, to Athens and co-founded Treehouse Zine, an art magazine.
He conducted research at the Emory University Global Diabetes Research Center on environmental pollutants and chronic kidney disease outcomes. He also worked with Bob Schmitz, UGA Foundation Professor in Plant Sciences, using digital tools to study gene expression in soybean plants.
Thakur was a partner and head of operations for the Georgia Kickstart Fund and policy writer for the Arch Policy Institute, a student-led think tank. He studied public health at the National University of Singapore in spring 2024 and biomedical ethics at the University of Oxford in May 2022.
Amanda Whylie (Photo by Stephanie Schupska)
Whylie, a Foundation Fellow in the Morehead Honors College, is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in entertainment and media studies in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and a minor in Spanish in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
As a Schwarzman Scholar, Whylie plans to use her passions for service, story and travel to advance her leadership impact as she works to extend Caribbean partnerships with China.
“China has one of the world’s largest entertainment and media industries, and coming from Jamaica, I really want to understand how China uses their culture, films and TV as pioneers of that culture and how they empower people through film and TV,” she said.
Whylie has researched media imperialism and film market sustainability, earning UGA’s Building Bridges Scholarship for her diversity efforts. At UGA, she supports aspiring filmmakers and investigates the cultural preservation of Kichwa — the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas — through film with the Latin American and Caribbean Studies institute. She conducts her work with Chad Howe, a professor in romance languages and linguistics. She has directed seven films addressing issues such as discrimination and ethnocentrism.
Whylie was a media planning intern with OMG23 Omnicom Media Group on the Searchlight Pictures team through the Grady LA Field Study and Internship Program, a digital communications intern with the UGA Alumni Association, and vice president of the UGA Entertainment Media Industries Club. She is a choreographer for the Caribbean Student Association and outreach leader for the Jamaica Film and Television Association. She studied abroad in Quito, Ecuador, and Oxford, England.
Garrett Williams (Photo by Stephanie Schupska)
Williams, who was a Ramsey Honors Scholar in the Morehead Honors College, graduated from UGA in 2022 with bachelor’s degrees in economics and finance with a certificate in personal and organizational leadership from the Terry College of Business and a minor in communication studies from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
As a Schwarzman Scholar, he plans to further examine how media is produced, consumed and monetized under different cultural contexts. He hopes to play a role in ensuring technological progress amplifies, rather than undermines, the power of human creativity to connect others.
“China’s entertainment and technology industries have grown over the last 20 to 30 years independent of Western influence because they have protected their domestic industries,” Williams explained. “That’s resulted in technological developments, innovations and consumer behavior different than the Western world, and I’m interested in learning how it’s evolved and how the global ecosystem could potentially be further integrated.”
Williams is a senior associate consultant at Bain & Company in Atlanta, where he advises clients in the media, consumer and technology industries. He spent a six-month externship in Los Angeles leading corporate strategy and business development efforts at AGBO, the independent studio led by the Russo Brothers with recent films including “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Extraction,” “The Gray Man” and Netflix’s upcoming film “The Electric State.”
While an undergraduate at UGA, he was a managing partner of the Georgia Kickstart Fund, co-president of the UGA Economics Society, leadership fellow through the Institute for Leadership Advancement, and treasurer of Model United Nations. He was a Deer Run Fellow, a high school national speech and debate champion, and a member of Phi Kappa Phi and the Blue Key Honor Society. He pursued public policy research at the American Enterprise Institute and taught speech and debate through LearningLeaders in Shanghai.
Williams also recently completed a 100-kilometer ultramarathon across Patagonia.
“Aryan, Amanda and Garrett are each very dedicated to advancing their fields in positive and necessary ways,” said Meg Amstutz, dean of the Morehead Honors College. “Their global mindsets make them terrific fits for the Schwarzman Scholarship. The education and mentoring they have received from UGA faculty and staff will serve them well as they work to make a positive impact abroad and at home.”
UGA’s previous Schwarzman Scholars include alumni Torre Lavelle (Schwarzman Class of 2017), Elizabeth Hardister and Gabrielle Pierre (Class of 2019), Swapnil Agrawal (Class of 2020), Shaun Kleber (Class of 2021), Zakiyya Ellington (Class of 2022), Elise Karinshak (Class of 2024) and Ashni Patel (Class of 2025).
UGA’s major scholarships office, housed in the Morehead Honors College, works closely with all students across campus as they apply for national, high-level scholarships. For more information, contact Jessica Hunt at jhunt@uga.edu.
For more information on Schwarzman Scholars, visit www.schwarzmanscholars.org.
