About this Program

This annual Award is given in honor of EPIIC's wonderful student Boryana Damyanova of Bulgaria (1983-2005), whose passion and professional aspirations centered around the complex issues of capitalism, integrity, and corporate citizenship and accountability. Boryana Damyanova was an international student at Tufts University from Sofia, Bulgaria. Born and raised in Bulgaria, she studied at the Sofia Math School for two years prior to attending The American College of Sofia - a private high school, a hybrid of Bulgarian and American educational systems. At Tufts, she was a double major in international Relations and Economics. Inspired by her participation in the 2003-2004 EPIIC program, Boryana conducted research on a number of topics. Her independent research project "US Economic Sanctions - Success or Failure?" was published in the Tufts annual magazine Hempisheres 2004. She also conducted reserach for Prof. Bruce Hitchner on economic reconstruction in Bosnia and Kosovo. Boryana's independent research project for the EPIIC class, "The Role of MNC's in the Middle East" was an extensive endeavor, which studied advertising strategies and their effect on the local culture. It included a ten-day trip to Dubai and introduced her and her partner, Thomas Singer, to business representatives of US corporations in the Middle East. In the summer of 2004, Boryana worked as an intern in the Investment Management Office at Century Bank. later that summer, she worked with senior producers of NBC News at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Boryana spend the fall 2004 semester in Washington, DC where she interned with General Electric, International Law and Policy Division. She also continued to pursue her research interests by completing an independent research project, "Transatlantic and Intra-European Relations: The US of Aid in Eastern Europe." Boryana was in her senior year at Tufts and had accepted an offer from JP Morgan Chase when she was killed in a traffic accident.