Meet the Schwarzman Scholars who are off to China
Northeastern grads Sue Cizem and Debbie Madueke have been named Schwarzman Scholars for a fellowship based in one of China’s most elite research institutions.
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.
For Cizem, who now works as an international AI policy researcher at the nonprofit organization The Future Society, she said she plans to use the opportunity to better understand the country’s policies and economic outlook on the emerging technology.
Cizem’s interest in policy work began while she was pursuing her master’s degree in London, right around the launch of the AI chatbot ChatGPT.
At the time, she was also working part-time as a research assistant on an international relations project at Northeastern focused on cyber governance policy for the United States, China, and other countries.
From that project, she came to a concerning realization — no country seemed to have the robust policies in place to adequately regulate AI.
“AI is this huge thing that is coming in, and I think cyber governance policies are super outdated,” she recalled thinking.
After graduating from Northeastern with first-class honors, Cizem started working as an AI analyst at the French Center for AI Safety, an independent nonprofit think tank that advances policy research.
From there, she did a stint as a policy fellow at the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy before transitioning into her current full time role at the Future Society, which works to advance responsible AI practices in Europe and the United States.
Studying at Tsinghua University was a great next step, Cizem said, because it is considered, through its Institute for AI International Governance, a homebase for China’s AI policy work. “A lot of people who work in the Schwarzman network work directly in or adjacent to AI policy,” she said.
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With a background in finance, Madueke’s path at Tsinghua University will look a little different. Nor will this be her first time in China. While an undergraduate at Northeastern, she studied abroad in Hong Kong and wrote up a report on China’s investments in other countries.
While she initially joined Northeastern as a pharmacy major, she quickly pivoted to finance and economics because she was interested in understanding how to improve the economy in developing countries, most notably in Nigeria, her home country.
“Why are some countries rich and some countries poor, and how can we get the poor country richer, and what does that look like?,” Madueke remembers thinking.
“That helped streamline my interest, which has always been in the development space, which is why I decided to pursue economics and finance,” she said.
Once she graduated, she did a stint as analyst at J.P. Morgan and worked for five years at Google as a financial analyst, and at Oxford, is finishing up.
Throughout her career, Madeuke said she’s been trying to view her work through a global lens. So being able to pursue degrees in the United States, Europe, and Asia, has been a dream for Madeuke.
She hopes to one day use the knowledge she obtained through her various degrees to help bring more economic prosperity to her home country. And what she’s most looking forward to from the Schwarzman Scholars program is being able to widen her understanding of China’s culture.
“I’m excited to tap into Tsinghua’s strong links to China’s innovation ecosystem and better understand how innovation is fostered and scaled within that environment,” she said. “I’m also interested in how China approaches its relationships with other countries, particularly across the Global South.”
