The Thalles DeSouza Yale scholarship, valued at more than $194,500, began not in a university admissions office but in a Wendy’s restaurant on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where two franchise owners decided to set aside money based on the hours a teenage immigrant worked his shifts. DeSouza, now 23, starts at Yale this autumn, studying political science with a minor in human rights.
The road from Brazil to New Haven was neither short nor straightforward. DeSouza grew up near Rio de Janeiro, lost both parents, and spent time living on the streets. In 2016, a shootout inside his own home nearly killed him. ‘In 2016, after nearly being killed in a shootout inside my own home, my mother decided to give up everything and come to the United States,’ he wrote in an Instagram video, translated from Portuguese, documenting the moment he received his acceptance news. ‘I was just another statistic unlikely to make it. But God had the final word.’
From shift manager to student body president
DeSouza and his family settled in Massachusetts, and he began working at a local Wendy’s while still in high school. He impressed the franchise owners, Usama El-Sehrawey and the late Ernest Smily, sufficiently to be promoted to shift manager in his senior year. Their response went further than a promotion. According to Yahoo Lifestyle, El-Sehrawey and Smily offered to help fund his education by setting aside money based on the hours he worked, eventually contributing to three years of tuition at Cape Cod Community College.
‘College to me was something really far from my reach,’ DeSouza said. ‘It changed my whole perspective and it changed the way I saw life. I understood that someone was betting on me, so it was now my time to do my part. And that’s what I did.’
What he did was considerable. At Cape Cod Community College, DeSouza earned straight A’s, founded a campus religious club, and served as student body president for two years. He then spent a further year at Bunker Hill Community College before assembling his application to more selective universities. Yale accepted him this May with a full-ride scholarship covering his entire tuition.
The Thalles DeSouza Yale scholarship and what it cost to get there
The scholarship is worth more than $194,500, equivalent to more than 1 million Brazilian reais, according to the Times of India. For a young man who described college as something ‘really far from my reach’ only a few years ago, the figure is a measure of distance travelled rather than simply money received.
The culture that made the original Wendy’s support possible has a specific lineage. Terry Smily, Ernest’s son, connected the family’s generosity to the company’s founding ethos. ‘That’s definitely Wendy’s culture,’ he said. ‘We really live by Dave Thomas’s values. Dave always said, “Give something back.”‘ Thomas, who founded Wendy’s, was himself adopted as a child and made adoption and giving a central part of his philanthropy.
None of this erases how hard the journey was. Learning English, navigating an unfamiliar education system, moving between two community colleges across several years, each step required DeSouza to perform at a level that left no margin for the ordinary difficulties that stop many students. Straight A’s and two years leading a student body are not incidental details; they are the evidence that the investment El-Sehrawey and Smily made was met in full.
On the four-year anniversary of his scholarship, DeSouza posted on Facebook, tagging his bosses and Wendy’s. ‘At the time, I had no idea how much that opportunity would change my life,’ he wrote. ‘Thank you for believing in me. Your generosity opened a door that changed my life, and I will always be grateful. Sometimes all it takes is one person who believes in you. I’m living proof of that.’
‘Where you come from does not determine where you can go,’ he added. ‘Sometimes, the most impossible journeys take us to places we never imagined reaching.’
DeSouza begins at Yale this autumn, with plans to study political science and human rights and an intention to qualify as a lawyer. The Thalles DeSouza Yale scholarship that makes it possible was funded, in its earliest form, by a wage-linked arrangement at a fast-food counter in Massachusetts, a detail worth keeping in mind when the story gets retold as pure inspiration.
