Haya Chehada

Haya Chehada is one of 72 recipients of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s prestigious Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship, a highly competitive national scholarship that will provide Haya with up to $40,000 a year to complete her bachelor’s degree. Originally from Syria, Haya migrated to the United States in 2016 and started working at 7-Eleven to help her family. Despite the difficulties she faced as a recent immigrant, she did not give up her dream of pursuing a degree and enrolled at Cerritos College in spring 2018. Haya transferred to USC this fall and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration with an accounting concentration. Next summer, she will begin an internship with Ernst & Young, one of the Big Four global accounting firms. Her career goal is to earn a Certified Public Accountant license and work at a large public accounting firm.