Hunter’s latest Urban Fellow is already hard at work serving her fellow New Yorkers.
Frances Macalimbon Hamed ’25, a Macaulay Honors student, works as a constituent-services intern in the office of Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens), where she provides case-management services to District 36 residents, including for unemployment and housing concerns.
The Bronx resident will spend 2025–26 as an Urban Fellow, during which she will work full time in a mayoral or city agencies while participating in a seminar series and volunteer events.
“I am incredibly grateful and honored to have been selected as a 2025–26 Urban Fellow,” Macalimbon Hamed said. “I look forward to working full-time at one of the many mayoral or city agencies.”
Macalimbon Hamed said that she is eyeing the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs or the Mayor’s Office of Asylum-Seeker Operations, and that she hopes to connect with a cohort of other changemakers.
“The Urban Fellows program will be the first of many steps toward my goal of becoming a lawyer in service to the people of New York City,” Macalimbon Hamed said.
Macalimbon Hamed is one of only about 25 graduating seniors nationally who earned the Urban Fellowship, which puts fellows on the fast track for permanent city jobs. Fifteen Hunter students have won since 2016-17.
The award exemplifies Hunter’s commitment as an anchor institution to providing high-impact opportunities for young change-makers. Inspired by the varied life experiences students bring to the classroom, Hunter’s faculty and staff invest deeply in student success. For more than 150 years, Hunter has been one of the nation’s most diverse higher education institutions and one of its most effective engines of social mobility. It has contributed hundreds of thousands of professionals to New York City agencies.
An urban-studies major enrolled in the Roosevelt House Public Policy Certificate Program, Macalimbon Hamed stands out as a young urban leader. Her public service began in her freshman year at Hunter, when she began volunteering for a youth-led mutual-aid organization in Western Queens. In her sophomore year, she won the Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship, which led to several urban-focused internships.
In the summer of 2022, she engaged in research at a New York City think tank, the Center for an Urban Future. She later worked as an organizer at Woodside on the Move, a tenant and community organization serving the communities of Woodside and Western Queens.
Last summer, she was a Summer Policy Fellow at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network in Oakland, Calif., where she supported research and planning helping California’s Asian immigrant and refugee communities. This summer, she will be traveling to México City to intern at the Institute for Women in Migration.
Hunter’s Office of Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships has a stellar record of accomplishment in preparing students for competitive scholarships and fellowships. In recent years, the college has produced two Rhodes, three Marshall, seven Schwarzman, five Luce, eight Goldwater, and 39 Fulbright Scholars among many other prestigious awardees.
