Alumni Spotlight: Ileana Pirozzi '18

I came to the U.S. as a young scientist believing that here, and perhaps only here, I could turn bold ideas into real-world impact. I chose Brown because of its can-do attitude - the sense that if you had an idea, you could try to build it. And because, crucially, Brown was one of the few institutions that offered need-blind admissions for international students, with generous scholarships that made this journey possible for someone like me.

Brown made me a scientist. Early on, I joined the lab of (Professor) Anubhav Tripathi who taught me the value of applied science and real-world impact. He believed in working on big ideas — ideas that mattered beyond the lab.  I worked on early cancer detection technology for low-resource settings, backed by Brown and a major American company. It was my first glimpse of how this country brings together academia, industry, and government to solve global challenges thousands of miles away. 

Professor Tripathi emphasized starting not with a technology, but with an unmet need. 

That philosophy ensured that innovation was driven by human and societal value, not just scientific novelty. He encouraged me to apply that mindset broadly, which surely shaped my choice of pursuing graduate studies at Stanford. At 19, Brown professors believed in me enough to help me start a company based on tech I developed on College Hill. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the company itself was not a success, but it changed my life track towards entrepreneurship and venture capital.  I graduated from Brown with patents, publications, and opportunities I never imagined possible.

Before Stanford, I spent time at NASA, working on bioengineering systems for space exploration and life beyond earth. It was a surreal experience – everyone told me I would never be able to work at NASA as a foreign national. But I found a loophole. I was made to wear a red visitor badge labeled ALIEN, and for months, I had to be escorted everywhere by a U.S. citizen - and I mean everywhere! The irony wasn’t lost on me. But it also underscored the privilege of participating in a country that still dares to tackle problems that span decades and planets — and that, however imperfectly, still opens its doors to outsiders with something to contribute.

Stanford built on that experience and gave it scale. I arrived as part of the first cohort of Knight-Hennessy Scholars — a community of people chosen for their aspirations and leadership skills, and who believed deeply in possibility. I became increasingly drawn to systems-level questions: not just how to engineer biology, but how to translate it into meaningful change — across healthcare, planetary health, and beyond.

It was also where I met my husband — another believer in the power of technology to improve lives — and where I began to see that the most urgent problems couldn’t be solved in isolation. That realization ultimately led me to venture capital. Today, whether I’m evaluating a startup or mentoring a founder, I still find myself chasing the same question that animated me in the lab and at NASA: What needs to exist in the world — and how do we help bring it to life?

Becoming a citizen marked the close of a chapter that began more than a decade ago, defined by distance, sacrifice, and belief. Like many immigrants, I came to the U.S. not just for what it was, but for what it made possible: the freedom to imagine, to build, and to belong.

But this story isn’t just mine. In 2021, nearly 20% of the U.S. STEM workforce was foreign-born. Among Ph.D.-level scientists and engineers, that figure rose to 55%. Over half of U.S. unicorn founders were born outside this country. These aren’t outliers — they’re evidence of a system that, at its best, acts as a magnet for talent and a launchpad for impact.

That’s America’s advantage: its ability to attract those who believe they can change the world, and to give them the chance to actually do it. Not just ideas, but the willingness to bet on the people behind them — even when those people speak with an accent, hold a red passport, or come from a small town most Americans will never visit.

What makes this country exceptional isn’t that it guarantees success. It’s that it allows someone like me to take real risks — scientific, entrepreneurial, personal — and to be met not with suspicion, but with support. That is both rare and worth protecting.

It was an emotional moment. I thought about the years I spent far from my family, the holidays missed, the friends I made, the mentors who helped shape me. I thought about the people who were natural-born citizens and still had to fight to be seen and heard. And I thought about my younger self, and everything that made me who I am today.

But taking the oath didn’t feel like closure. It felt like a beginning — a responsibility to help defend the very ideals that made my story possible. Freedom. Progress. And the people who power both.

Today, I’m proud to be American. And I hope my future kids grow up knowing what I’ve come to believe: That sacrifice creates meaning. That greatness isn’t where you start, but what you dare to do with what you’re given. And that they should move through the world with purpose, grit, grace — and an unshakable belief in progress and possibility.