Every month this year Semester at Sea will be highlighting one member of its alumni community for their contributions to the program and continued commitment to the future of shipboard education, starting in January with Mr. Shelby Davis.
Mr. Davis has had a long and successful career in banking and investment, first at the Bank of New York (where he was the youngest Vice President since Alexander Hamilton) and then as founder and senior advisor to the mutual fund management company Davis Selected Advisers, L.P. Mr. Davis first sailed with Semester at Sea on the Summer 2013 Voyage, and has sailed five times since, most recently in the fall of 2019.
Mr. Davis is also a noted philanthropist, having co-founded the Davis United World College Scholars Program in 2000. Starting in the spring of 2016, a cohort of students on each voyage from around the world have received the full cost of their voyage tuition covered as by the Davis UWC Scholarship.
“Semester at Sea is an introduction to the world. It gives you the courage to go out and see countries where you don’t know the language, you don’t know the customs, you learn along the way. We are in an interconnected global world now and you’ve got to make a start somewhere. Semester at Sea is a perfect introduction,” said Mr. Davis from the MV World Odyssey during the Fall 2019 Voyage. “You don’t have to see 100 countries to get courage. But once you have courage to travel, it becomes a desire and makes you a more well-rounded person.”
“My goal is to have an informed way of discovering the world, of discovering how life can be in different places, and from there to make a more informed and intentional for my life, how I should lead it to be a better global citizen,” said Fall 2019 Davis Scholar Thi Hoang from Middlebury College.
“Receiving the scholarship firstly means that someone believes in the fact I could take this opportunity to learn to make myself a better person and in turn to contribute back into the world and make it a better place. Thank you so much, Mr. Shelby Davis, for putting trust in us.”
Learn more about the Davis UWC Scholarship here.
