MacArthur Foundation announces 2012 Fellows with $500,000 support - Congratulations to Maurice Lim Miller and An-My Le

Congratulations to Maurice Lim Miller, and An-My Le. Both have been selected as 2012 MacArthur Fellows which carries a $500,000 no-strings-attached support.

MacArthur Foundation announced today 23 new MacArthur Fellows for 2012. The recipients learned, through a phone call out of the blue from the Foundation, that they will each receive $500,000 in no-strings-attached support over the next five years.

One of the recipients is Oakland, California's Maurice Lim Miller, 66, a leader in the development of services and systems designed to break the cycle of economic dependency for low-income families across the United States.  

Frustrated by the frequent recidivism into poverty he witnessed during his two decades with Asian Neighborhood Design, an agency focused on tenant rights, job training, and youth development, Lim Miller founded the Family Independence Initiative (FII) in 2001 with the goal of helping low-income working families—who often struggle in isolated circumstances or without clear direction—build their own pathways to self-sufficiency. FII has evolved into a national model that taps into the initiative and capability of low-income households to maximize their own networks and resources and guide themselves out of poverty.

An-My Le, 52, from Annandale-on-Hudson, New York also received a phone call that she is a new 2012 MacArthur Fellow. She is a photographer approaching the subjects of war and landscape from ew perspectives to create images that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction and are rich with layers of meaning. Read more about the twenty-three MacArthur Fellows online at: http://www.macfound.org/fellows/class/2012/

Working across a broad spectrum of endeavors, the Fellows include a pediatric neurosurgeon, a marine ecologist, a journalist, a photographer, an optical physicist and astronomer, a stringed-instrument bow maker, a geochemist, a fiction writer, and an arts entrepreneur. All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.

MacArthur Fellowships come without stipulations or reporting requirements and offer Fellows unprecedented freedom and opportunity to reflect, create, and explore. The unusual level of independence afforded to Fellows underscores the spirit of freedom intrinsic to creative endeavors. The work of MacArthur Fellows knows neither boundaries nor the constraints of age, place, and endeavor.

"These extraordinary individuals demonstrate the power of creativity," said MacArthur President Robert Gallucci. "The MacArthur Fellowship is not only a recognition of their impressive past accomplishments but also, more importantly, an investment in their potential for the future. We believe in their creative instincts and hope the freedom the Fellowship provides will enable them to pursue unfettered their insights and ideas for the benefit of the world."