The New Crew

The 2023-24 Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows. 

Aden Barton and Isabella Cho

Photograph by Stu Rosner

Harvard Magazine welcomes Aden Barton ’24 and Isabella Cho ’24 to its editorial staff as the 2023-2024 Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows. Starting in the November-December issue, they will alternate as authors of the “Undergraduate” column, contributing articles in print and online about aspects of Harvard life.

Barton, of Nashville, is concentrating in economics with a minor in history. He’s served as a Crimson editor, columnist, and editorial board member, and in fall 2022 wrote a series of columns called “Harvard in Numbers,” exploring ideas about the University and higher education such as grade inflation and the societal significance of elite institutions versus community colleges. He has worked as a research assistant to Jason Furman, Aetna professor in the practice of economic policy, and previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute’s poverty studies department and in the office of Tennessee Congressman Jim Cooper. Since April 2022, he has been a writing and editing intern for the political newsletter Full Stack Economics. This past summer, he was an investment associate intern at Bridgewater Associates.

Cho, of Wilmette, Illinois, is an English literature concentrator with interests that straddle the humanities, arts, law, and technology. She has served as a Crimson reporter, editor, and news executive, covering Harvard’s central administration and writing investigations and personal essays for Fifteen Minutes, the Crimson’s magazine. She was on the Harvard Advocate’s poetry and executive boards and has earned Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Radcliffe Institute arts fellowships. She’s held leadership positions in The Policy Program, an undergraduate-run think tank, and in the Phillips Brooks House Association’s Small Claims Advisory Service. Cho spent the summer as a multimedia journalism fellow in the Asian American Journalists Association’s VOICES program.

The fellowships are supported by Jonathan J. Ledecky ’79, M.B.A. ’83, and named in honor of his late mother. For updates on past Ledecky Fellows and links to their work, see harvardmag.com/ledecky.

Related topics

You might also like

Harvard Plans Contingencies for International Students

The Kennedy School and School of Public Health are developing online options.

Stand-Up to Simmer Down

In comedy groups, students find ways to be absurd, present, and a little less self-conscious.

Most popular

“Do You Find That Reasonable?” Harvard Undergraduates Discuss a Changing University

A student panel grapples—civilly—with shifting policies and differing opinions.

The Professor Who Quantified Democracy

Erica Chenoweth’s data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.

Harvard Adopts Reforms as Higher Ed Turmoil Continues

University creates new “interfaith engagement” role; Columbia, Brown settle with the government.

Explore More From Current Issue

alt text here

Harvard passes a test of its values, yet challenges loom.

Four Harvard Medal recipients shown in a side-by-side portrait collage, smiling and dressed in formal or casual attire.

Four people honored for exceptional service to the University

An illustration of a green leaf being hit by a beam of light and bouncing off the leaf and then becoming a color prisim

Light-based analysis of botanical collections link plants to Earth’s changing climate.