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The 2025 LEDA Annual Celebration was one for the record books! Thank you to all who joined us on Tuesday, May 6th at the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers as we celebrated the amazing accomplishments of our LEDA Scholars, Alumni and Career Fellows, including Alumni Honoree Jennifer Oyedele; recognized our incredible partners including Standard Chartered, represented by CEO for US and Americas Mandy DeFilippo, and raised an unprecedented $200,000 during our pledge drive! By the end of the evening, our generous supporters had raised nearly $1.1 million to ensure our life changing programs – the Summer Institute, College Success, the Career Institute, LEDA Legal, and more – continue to thrive! Thank you!

You can still support the LEDA Annual Celebration! Donations can be made via secure link.

2025 Honorees

We are proud to announce our corporate honoree for this year, Standard Chartered.

Standard Chartered has been a generous partner of LEDA’s since 2020, and they are deeply committed to providing LEDA Scholars, Fellows and Alumni with leadership skills and career opportunities to excel in the workplace and in their communities. Through internship opportunities, upskilling workshops, mentorship programs, volunteerism and more, Standard Chartered and its employees have embodied the LEDA values throughout the duration of their partnership with LEDA and we are thrilled to recognize their support at our 2025 Annual Celebration.

We are honored to recognize Jennifer Oyedele (Cohort 4) as our Alumni Honoree this year!

Jennifer is a seasoned tech professional, artificial intelligence researcher, investor, and philanthropist dedicated to community impact. As a Research Scholar at OpenAI, Jennifer researched scaling laws for transformer variants, a subset of natural language algorithms. She was a technical contributor for machine learning and artificial intelligence products at IBM and served as the AI Director of iConnections, where she led teams in testing and developing new AI products. Before her innate technical curiosity led her to AI, Jennifer worked in management consulting — a role that leveraged her ability to blend technology and strategy. She began her career in software engineering, exploring technology at the intersection of non-technical industries such as consumer goods, beauty, and finance. Beyond her professional endeavors, Jennifer is dedicated to community impact. She champions science education as a board member of Science is Elementary and continues to make strides in technology and community alike as an active investor. Jennifer earned her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University.

2025 Sponsors

Thank you to our generous supporters for making this event possible (list as of 5/5/2025)!