Bhutanese Gates Scholarship Recipients

Overview

The Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) Program, established in 1999 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and administered by the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) with partner organisations including APIA Scholars, awarded full-ride scholarships to 1,000 high-achieving minority students nationwide each year. Since its inception, the programme awarded more than $614 million to over 20,000 students.^[1] (The programme closed to new applicants and was succeeded by The Gates Scholarship.)

Among the recipients are several Bhutanese Americans — former refugees who were born in refugee camps in Nepal after their families were expelled from Bhutan during the ethnic cleansing of the Lhotshampa in the early 1990s. Their stories represent one of the most powerful narratives of the Third-Country Resettlement Programme’s impact: from statelessness to Ivy League and top-tier university education within a single generation.

Known Bhutanese Recipients

Ram Siwakoti (2011) — Georgia

Ram Siwakoti was just nine months old when his family and approximately 100,000 other Lhotshampa were expelled from Bhutan. He grew up in a refugee camp in eastern Nepal before arriving in the United States in 2009 and enrolling at Clarkston High School in metro Atlanta, Georgia. In 2011, he received the Gates Millennium Scholarship and was accepted to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he studied engineering.^[2]

Ram’s success was supported by mentors including his English teacher Clarkson Friend, who helped him navigate the American education system. Metro Atlanta became a major destination for Bhutanese refugees, welcoming approximately 4,800 since 2008.^[2]

Lila Siwakoti (2013) — Georgia

Lila Siwakoti, Ram’s younger brother, also received the Gates Millennium Scholarship in 2013 — making the Siwakoti brothers the first known Bhutanese sibling pair to both win the award. Lila graduated from Clarkston High School with a 3.9 GPA and was active in community volunteer work. Born in a refugee camp in Nepal, he immigrated to the United States in 2009 with the sponsorship of the International Rescue Committee.^[3]

Lila chose to attend Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, drawn by its small class sizes, where he considered majoring in computer science with a minor in economics. His Gates Millennium Scholarship covers tuition through the PhD level.^[3]

Divesh Rizal (2013) — Maryland

Divesh Rizal graduated from Parkdale High School in Prince George’s County, Maryland in 2013, having arrived in the United States less than two years earlier with his father and two younger sisters — all refugees from Bhutan. He was one of six students in Prince George’s County and one of 1,000 minority students nationwide to receive the Gates Millennium Scholarship.^[4]

Rizal enrolled at Middlebury College in Vermont with aspirations of becoming a genetic researcher. He credited Liberty’s Promise, an after-school programme at Parkdale that helps immigrant students learn about their community and new country, with helping him overcome the isolation he initially felt. “I was lost; I had no friends,” he later recalled of his early days at the school.^[4]

At Middlebury, Rizal shifted his focus to technology, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Theater. He also completed entrepreneurial studies at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and participated in the MiddCORE summer programme. As of 2024, Rizal works as a Senior Software Engineer at Bitly, having previously served as a System Architect at Pegasystems (2017–2022) where he collaborated with clients including the FDA and the US Census Bureau.^[5]

Ganesh Sharma (c. 2013) — Location Unconfirmed

Ganesh Sharma, a Bhutanese refugee who came to the United States in 2009, was selected for the Gates Millennium Scholarship to pursue a four-year undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering. He was 19 years old at the time of his selection and was described as “a hardworking student” who “always knew education was the key to success.”^[6]

Note: The specific state, high school, and university Sharma attended have not been confirmed in available sources. The Nepali Times reported his achievement but did not include these details.

Indra Acharya (2014) — Vermont

Indra Acharya, born and raised in a Bhutanese refugee camp in Nepal, moved to Winooski, Vermont in 2012. He graduated from Winooski High School and the Vermont Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) programme, becoming the second Vermonter ever to receive the Gates Millennium Scholarship in 2014.^[7]

Acharya attended Georgetown University on a full ride, where he studied law and politics. In addition to the Gates scholarship, he received Georgetown’s 1789 Scholarship and was enrolled in the Community Scholars Programme.^[7]

His parents were among the approximately 100,000 ethnic Nepalis expelled from southern Bhutan under the “One Nation, One People” policy, and they spent roughly two decades in a refugee camp before resettlement.^[8]

Acharya co-founded the Forum of Bhutanese Students in Vermont and held leadership roles in the Multicultural Club at Vermont Tech and the Bhutanese American College Students’ Association.^[7] After graduating from Georgetown, Acharya earned a Master of Education (M.Ed.) from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and now serves as an Academic Coach in the Office of Student Affairs at Harvard GSE.^[9]

Lila and Chandra Chamlagai (2015) — Massachusetts

Siblings Lila Chamlagai and Chandra Chamlagai, seniors at Central High School in Springfield, Massachusetts, were both awarded the Gates Millennium Scholarship in 2015 — making them the second known Bhutanese sibling pair to receive the scholarship (after the Siwakoti brothers).^[10]

Born and raised in Goldhap refugee camp in Nepal, they resettled in Springfield in 2011. Their parents were originally from Danabari, Bhutan, where they had been subsistence farmers.^[10]

Lila maintained an above-average GPA while taking AP Chemistry, Calculus, Statistics, World History, and Anatomy & Physiology. He was active in the Bhutanese Society of Western Massachusetts, American Red Cross, Pioneer Valley Area Health Education Center, Health Occupations Students of America, National Honor Society, and National Math Society.^[10]

Both siblings enrolled at Elmira College, choosing the same school to stay close to each other. Lila planned to major in biology and pursue gastroenterology, while Chandra planned to study biochemistry to become a physician assistant.^[10]

Lila subsequently earned a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Brown University on a full scholarship and was awarded a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation fellowship in 2022 — a prestigious award covering his doctoral studies — to pursue his PhD in Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown, focusing on global mental health and refugee communities. He went on to found Helping Hands America, a humanitarian healthcare organisation.^[11]

Samir Kadariya (2022) — Pennsylvania

Samir Kadariya, a senior at Brentwood High School in the Pittsburgh area, received The Gates Scholarship (the successor to the GMS programme) in 2022. Born in a Bhutanese refugee camp, Kadariya was described as a “math savant” by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to study Applied Mathematics with Computer Science.^[12]

At MIT, Kadariya has served as an Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Department of Political Science. His personal experiences with displacement have shaped his work in human rights and diplomacy. He has also worked as a Quantitative Research Analyst Intern at SESCO Enterprises.^[13]

Muna Bhandari — Ohio

Muna Bhandari, born in a refugee camp in Nepal, came to the United States at age 16 and settled in Chicago with her family. Despite arriving with limited English, she achieved a 4.0 GPA in high school and was awarded a Gates Millennium Scholarship through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for her undergraduate studies at Northeastern Illinois University.^[15]

Bhandari later transferred to the University of Cincinnati, where she earned a degree in biomedical studies. She subsequently completed a Master’s in Public Health from the University of New England and a Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. She worked as a Refugee Youth Mentoring Coordinator at Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio, helping Bhutanese and other refugees navigate education and employment in Cincinnati. As of 2026, she practices as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Cincinnati, Ohio, specialising in trauma recovery.^[15]

Her grandfather, Balaraam Poudyal, authored Bhutan Behind the Curtain, a memoir documenting the political history of Bhutan and the oppression of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese — experiences her family has endured across generations.^[15]

Note: The specific year of Bhandari’s Gates Millennium Scholarship and the name of her Chicago-area high school have not been confirmed in available sources. A reader tip suggested Bhandari may also be known as “Sulochana Bhandari,” but BhutanWiki has been unable to verify this connection.

Unidentified Recipient — New Hampshire

The Bhutanese Community of New Hampshire (BCNH) reported in 2014 that a male student who participated in a community-sponsored SAT-prep class was awarded a Gates Millennium Scholarship — one of 1,000 nationwide. The NH Charitable Foundation noted this achievement as evidence of the community’s investment in educational advancement.^[14]

Note: A reader has suggested this recipient may be Ganesh Dahal of New Hampshire; however, BhutanWiki has been unable to verify this identification through publicly available sources. The original NH Charitable Foundation article and other published accounts do not name the individual. We welcome the community’s help in confirming and properly documenting this recipient’s story.

Significance

The Gates Scholarship recipients from the Bhutanese refugee community illustrate a remarkable trajectory: from stateless refugees in Nepali camps to some of America’s most prestigious universities — Georgia Tech, Middlebury, Georgetown, Harvard, Brown, MIT, the University of Cincinnati — within a single generation. Their achievements reflect both the determination of individual students and families and the support structures built by Bhutanese community organisations across the United States, including SAT-prep programmes, mentoring, and cultural associations that help navigate the American education system.^[14]

With at least ten confirmed recipients (Ram Siwakoti, Lila Siwakoti, Divesh Rizal, Ganesh Sharma, Indra Acharya, Lila Chamlagai, Chandra Chamlagai, the unidentified New Hampshire recipient, Samir Kadariya, and Muna Bhandari), the Bhutanese community has produced a notable concentration of Gates Scholars relative to its small population in the United States. The programme was particularly significant for Bhutanese Americans because it was open to Asian Pacific Islander Americans through the APIA Scholars partnership, providing a pathway for refugees from a small, lesser-known community to access fully-funded higher education.^[1]

Related Scholarship Programmes

Bhutanese Hindu American Scholarship — offered by the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), sponsored by the Gummakonda Reddy Foundation. The 2022 recipient was Aakriti Bhattarai, a computer science major at Duke University.^[16]
University of Akron Bhutanese-Nepali Scholarships — eight scholarships established specifically for members of the Bhutanese-Nepali refugee community.^[17]

BhutanWiki recognises that this list may be incomplete. We encourage members of the Bhutanese community to contribute the names and stories of additional Gates Scholarship recipients not yet documented here.