Jonathan Schmidt, a promising young attorney with an extensive record of community service, died Feb. 25, 2010, of prostate cancer. He was 36.
Schmidt graduated from Yale in 1996, and earned a master’s degree in 2001 from the Woodrow Wilson School, where he received the Donald E. Stokes ’51 *52 prize for academic achievement and public service. In 2006, he earned a law degree from Yale. He then joined the Philadelphia firm of Ballard Spahr.
In 1992, as his high school’s valedictorian, he prophetically stated that his goal was “to use every opportunity to give others the chance to realize their potential.” In 1996, after Yale, Schmidt was a Fulbright Fellow in Peru, where he studied micro-enterprise lending. From 1997-98, he worked for the American Association for Cancer Research. For the City of Philadelphia, he worked for the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.
In 2006, Schmidt founded and then remained active with the Southeastern Pennsylvania First Suburbs Project, a coalition of groups addressing common problems of older suburbs around Philadelphia. Additionally, he had had short stints of public service in Mexico, California, Connecticut, Georgia, and Detroit.
He is survived by his wife, Andrea; son, Thaddeus; and parents, Thomas and Roberta.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.