Samuel Thorpe, from Washington DC, graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in Economics. He graduated summa cum laude and is the recipient of the the Carl Van Dunye Prize for best undergraduate thesis in Economics. Samuel is an active musician and composer, and served on the board of the Williams radio station and as the president of an R&B and soul acapella group. After graduating, he researched tax policy at the University of Chicago while working as an antipoverty activist and a departmental organizer for the UChicago Graduate Student Union. He is currently a senior research assistant at the Brookings Institution, focusing on federal fiscal policy and inequality in the United States, and continues to volunteer with antipoverty organizations around DC. 

As a Marshall Scholar, Samuel will pursue a M.A. in Political Economy at the University of Manchester and MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He hopes to spend his career fighting poverty and regional inequality in the US and UK.