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 Funds Student “Bridges” Projects

Eight new initiatives to build community on campus will get underway early next year. 

Harvard Football: Villanova 52, Harvard 7

The Crimson’s inaugural playoff appearance is nasty, brutish, and short.

Harvard Football: Yale 45, Harvard 28

A wild weekend: a debacle in The Game, then a berth in the playoffs.

Most popular

Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

Historian Alexander Keyssar on why the unpopular institution has prevailed 

Explore More From Current Issue

A silhouette of a person stands before glowing domes in a red, rocky landscape at sunset.

Getting to Mars (for Real)

Humans have been dreaming of living on the Red Planet for decades. Harvard researchers are on the case.

Four young people sitting around a table playing a card game, with a chalkboard in the background.

On Weekends, These Harvard Math Professors Teach the Smaller Set

At Cambridge Math Circle, faculty and alumni share puzzles, riddles, and joy.

Lawrence H. Summers, looking serious while speaking at a podium with a microphone.

Harvard in the News

Grade inflation, Epstein files fallout, University database breach