Sayda Martinez-Alvarado, 2022 Liman Summer Fellow, Awarded Rhodes Scholarship

Sayda Martinez-Alvarado, a 2022 Liman summer fellow at All Our Kin, has received a 2025 Rhodes scholarship, which provides funding for study in England at the University of Oxford. Martinez-Alvarado will do her graduate work in education and research methods for evaluating social interventions and policies.    

Martinez-Alvarado, a 2023 Yale College graduate, majored in psychology and was in the Education Studies Program. Since graduation, she has been working as a senior policy analyst at EdTrust, a national nonprofit that works to enhance access to education for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.

Based in New Haven, All Our Kin is a national nonprofit that trains, supports, and sustains family childcare providers. During her Liman summer, Martinez-Alvarado created resources on childcare and COVID-19 for families in Connecticut and New York City.

“Sayda is an extraordinary student, scholar, and human being,” said Jessica Sager ’99, co-founder of All Our Kin and a 1999 Liman Fellow. “Throughout my interactions with her, I have been struck by her intellectual ability, her rigor, and her generosity of spirit. I have seen, again and again, her deep commitment to education as a way to create pathways out of poverty and enable individuals to reach their full potential. Her proposed course of study will give her the tools to make her vision a reality. I believe that she can be a mighty force for good in the world.”  

Liman Professor and Founding Director Judith Resnik calls Sager herself a “force for good in the world.” Sager used her Liman Fellowship in the late 1990s to create All Our Kin, which enables parents to train as professional care providers while being with their children. Sager’s innovations in remaking family childcare were recognized this fall with an award from the Heinz Family Foundation. The subsequent award of a Rhodes Scholarship to Martinez-Alvarado is, Resnik said, a “wonderful marker of the importance of intergenerational cooperative endeavors to enable families and communities to thrive.”