David Bonderman, 1942–2024, had the ability to change lives
Bonderman’s all-expenses-paid travel fellowships enable UW students to broaden their cultural horizons.
Bonderman loved to receive postcards from UW students during their travels. Photo courtesy Seattle Kraken.
I do not say this lightly, but David Bonderman changed my life. Were it not for the Bonderman Travel Fellowship, I would not live where I live, do what I do for a living or have the same vision and goals, burning so brightly as they do.
I met Bonderman twice: first, at a reception for new and recently returned travel fellows, and again a year or so later, at a meeting to share feedback on how to make the fellowship more impactful. Both times, I did my best to convey the life-altering nature of his gift, but I’m sure my words were never as elegant as I had hoped.
How does one thank a person for even imagining the Bonderman Fellowship, never mind funding it with absolute generosity and only the slenderest of strings attached: a postcard describing one’s travels, sent back to Seattle from wherever, for him to read and enjoy.
I remember a moment in my interview when I knew without anyone saying so that I had won the award. I was describing how I had started my graduate program full of excitement to study globalization, but, a few years in, the spark was gone.
But when I was writing my Bonderman application, the thought of traveling as a cocoa bean did (I’d proposed to follow chocolate, my favorite food, around the world), from port to port, continent to continent, farm to factory, had reignited that spark. Suddenly, I was energized again!
Those months of Bonderman travels not only reignited my passion, they gave me chance after chance to fling myself at the world, and learn what I was made of.
If I could thank David Bonderman again, I would tell him that in so many ways, I feel like my fellowship never ended. I would say that his imagination and generosity opened a door onto possibility and gave me exactly the right push to walk through. Even today, I’m still on the journey.—Kristy Leissle, ’04, ’08, a scholar of the global cocoa and chocolate industries, teaches at UW Bothell.
From the time David Bonderman, a UW alumnus, created the Bonderman Travel Fellowship in 1995, more than 300 University of Washington students have enjoyed the coveted opportunity to independently travel the world and expand their minds. The fellowships are administered by the UW Office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs and the Graduate School and cover all expenses for travel.
To ensure that their world adventures are independent, Bonderman fellows may not participate in a program or organization, engage in formal study at a foreign university, conduct research or other academic projects or travel with an organized group. Bonderman Fellowships are intended to introduce students to cultures, peoples and areas of the world with which they are not familiar.
Bonderman, who earned his undergraduate degree in Russian from the UW in 1963, learned firsthand about the impact of international travel when he received a Sheldon Fellowship after graduating from Harvard Law School. It allowed him to travel outside of the U.S. and changed his life. To extend the program’s ability to provide these experiences to more UW students, Bonderman created a $10 million endowment for the program in 2017. Students who have benefited from Bonderman Fellowships come from such disciplines as applied and computational mathematics, environmental and forest sciences, information management and marine affairs. Students from any discipline are encouraged to apply.
Bonderman, an American billionaire businessman who was the co-founder and co-owner of the Seattle Kraken, died Dec. 11 in Los Angeles at the age of 82.—Jon Marmor