After she suffered a traumatic brain injury playing soccer as a sophomore at Belmont High School, Anya Button’s parents worried their daughter would never be the same.
She was forced to take a year off from school to recover.
“We didn’t know what the end of it would be,” said her father, Don.
Fast forward, and Button isn’t only a senior at Duke University — where she is a sociology student with a focus on markets and management — but she’s also heading to one of the world’s most prestigious graduate fellowship programs.
Button was selected to join the 10th class of Schwarzman Scholars — a one-year, fully funded master’s degree program in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The program is designed to prepare the next generation of global leaders. She is one of 150 incoming scholars from 38 countries selected from a pool of nearly 5,000 candidates.
Wyatt Bruton, the associate director of admissions for Schwarzman Scholars, is part of the team that identifies and selects emerging leaders from around the world. Selecting Button was easy for Bruton and the rest of the admissions team, as “she’s an obvious leader.”
“It was very obvious to us as a selection committee that Anya is on the path to impact, she’s on the path to leadership, and we need her to come join this mission that we’re working on because she’s going to make waves,” Bruton said.
Staying Involved
Button was told she wouldn’t be able to play contact sports again after her injury, but wanted to stay involved, and she loved photography.
She often attended Boston Breakers games, the city’s former professional women’s soccer team, as both a fan and a photographer. Attending so many games, she noticed something.
“There was a significant gap in media,” said Button, 22. “There wasn’t a lot of coverage of women’s sports — there weren’t any formalized outlets.”
Intrigued by the relationship between athletics and global economic development, and envisioning creating new sustainable business models that empower women globally through sports, Button founded Victress FC.
Victress FC sells and licenses photos covering the top levels of women’s sports, particularly soccer, to media outlets that don’t have full-time staff photographers. It also provides mentorship opportunities for women looking to break into the sports industry.
“Whether it’s shadowing or providing credentials for games, we provide that umbrella and get them their first step into the industry,” Button said.
She worked with Football Australia in its bidding campaign to jointly host the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup with New Zealand. Her photos were used in social media posts around Australia to garner support for the bid. She was also the national team’s photographer for its Tournament of Nations in 2018.
“It was a really great introduction to what it looks like when women’s sports become mainstream,” she said. “Being a part of that around the world was really powerful.”
Her experience doesn’t stop there. She has also had stints with Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Serena Ventures — the Serena Williams-backed VC Fund.
Schwarzman Scholars
Button first heard about Schwarzman Scholars through her orientation leader at Duke. She was intrigued for two reasons. One, the program is tied to Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of the Blackstone Group, an investment management company, and two, the opportunity to immerse herself in China and other parts of Asia.
After submitting her application last September, Button went through a rigorous interview process. In the final five minutes of the interview, she was asked “random global affairs questions.” Every day in the lead-up to the interview, she would listen to the BBC’s daily global podcast and read The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.
“It wasn’t questions about the state of American politics or the state of America, but it could be about Brazil and their approach to X or otherwise,” Button said.
Initially, she didn’t tell her parents exactly what she was applying for.
“She said, ‘I’m doing something. I want to try for something big, but I don’t want to jinx it by telling you what it is,’” her father said.
Eventually, she told her parents, and they looked up the program, but they didn’t truly understand the magnitude of the opportunity until she was chosen.
The yearlong program begins in August, and Button is excited for the academic experience, but also the conversations that await her. Since the program is free, the door is opened for a wide variety of people and backgrounds.
“The college itself functions as a space for civil discourse,” she said. “You can really get a person to person perspective to a lot of the world conflicts and things going on.”
This story is part of a partnership between the Belmont Voice and the Boston University Department of Journalism.