Mary Ann Arizaga ’25 recently received the Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) Future Leaders Scholarship, which provides support to Black and Latino students who want to pursue a career in finance through continued education. 

“I received a call on a Friday when I was in an Uber in New York returning back from a conference at Deutsche Bank and I started crying,” says Arizaga, a political science and economics major from Talara, Peru. “It was a mix of emotions, because I was struggling to manage my time between school work and jobs/internship preparation. I video-called my mom and my brother, and we were all really excited. I was not at all expecting to be chosen.”

The program provides a $20,000 scholarship to students who demonstrate potential to excel as leaders and embody PIMCO’s core values of  collaboration, openness, responsibility, and excellence in a career in finance.

In her interviews for the program, Arizaga focused on the social impact work she has done in Peru, including the creation of a nonprofit organization that served students from elementary school during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also discussed her role in facilitating leadership and social impact camps with the Latin American Leadership Academy (LALA), the early-insight finance programs in which she has participated, and her network of support within the finance industry, she said.

At Swarthmore, Arizaga is a career peer advisor and serves on the Student Budget Committee and the Petey Greene Program Leadership Executive Board. She is interested in working in asset and wealth management after graduation, but also has experience in the nonprofit sector and leading social impact projects through the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.

In the classroom, Arizaga’s strengths include her willingness to take risks.

“The course she is currently taking from me is very challenging if the student does not have a statistics background, which Mary Ann does not,” says Professor of Economics Mark Kuperberg. “But she was interested in the subject and decided that the reward was greater than the risk.”

Arizaga and other recipients will be honored at an awards ceremony in May in Newport Beach, Calif. The trip is intended to be an immersive learning environment and allow honorees to enjoy SoCal activities.

“This scholarship recognizes my potential to succeed in the financial services industry,” says Arizaga, “and will give me a network of people — the other scholarship recipients and amazing mentors from the firm who I can get advice from — who are driven and goal-oriented.”