About Southern California’s Phi Beta Kappa Alumni Alpha Association

A partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, LLP, since 2012, Deborah Festa is a member of its Alternative Investments Group. Additionally, Deborah Festa has served as a board member of the Phi Beta Kappa Alumni in Southern California’s Alpha Association for 10 years and is a past president of its board of councilors.

Established in 1918, the Alpha Association is dedicated to sponsoring student scholarships and lifelong learning opportunities for its members throughout the Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties. With its variety of special programs, speakers, and events during the year, the association helps its members stay connected to each other and show their commitment to liberal arts education. Recent events include a multimedia presentation on the life of Ella Fitzgerald and a discussion presented by five superior court judges.

The Alpha Association’s scholarship programs are open to both international students pursing graduate studies in Southern California and new area Phi Beta Kappa members who are attending graduate school. Since the association’s founding, the programs have awarded almost $1.5 million in scholarships.                            

Phi Beta Kappa Book Awards

Throughout her career in the alternative investments sector, Deborah Festa has established herself as an industry leader in the Los Angeles area. Aside from her professional activities, Deborah Festa remains active in Phi Beta Kappa, a widely recognized academic honor society in the United States and beyond. Every December, Phi Beta Kappa gives out a number of book awards, which honor outstanding scholarly works in the U.S.

Typically drawn from fields such as social science, the natural sciences, mathematics, and the humanities, Phi Beta Kappa Book Award winners must be accessible to the general reader. First offered in 1959, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science recognizes the contributions of scientists to the literary field. Winners of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award typically submit interpretations of the cultural and intellectual condition of humanity. In the same vein, the Christian Gauss Award recognizes lscholars and critics who submit literary biographies with predominantly critical emphases.