‘You can be something more’: Former Hutton Settlement student awarded fellowship to top university in China

At 13, Parker Ritzmann found himself bounced to Spokane’s Hutton Settlement after growing up in Kentucky and Ethiopia, where he was born. Clashing cultures with his adoptive family in the U.S. would lead to him being rehomed across the country, but it didn’t sit well with him at first.

“When I first got to the children’s home, I was getting into quite a bit of trouble, and in that time period, it was more so just out of anger and resentment towards this whole idea of ‘Why the hell am I here?’ ” Ritzmann said. “Like, this idea of being adopted from a developing country and then only to be sent back to, like, a modern orphanage, almost.”

But after getting straightened out by a mentor and channeling his energy to entrepreneurship by way of a coffee shop, Ritzmann found out life could be so much more.

Now, the former West Valley High School student behind HOPE Neighborhood Roasters was selected as one of more than 5,800 applicants around the world for a fully funded master’s fellowship at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University.

Ritzmann, 22, was one of 150 students selected for this year’s cohort of Schwartzman Scholars. Graduates in the program spend a year in Beijing, China, to attend Tsinghua – the top ranked university in the country and eleventh ranked in the world – studying global affairs.

“What I’m really excited for is the people that I’m going to be around and meeting. I think I’ve always craved to be around individuals who are ambitious and also intellectually curious, and from different walks of life,” he said, adding that the program is essentially bringing “some of the most extraordinary young people in the world” together to network and learn. “I just know that I’m going to thrive in that environment, because that’s kind of what I’ve always felt like I was doing.”

Currently a business student at the University of Washington, Ritzmann remembers the drizzly Seattle day he got the acceptance call.

“I pretty much just threw my phone, starting jumping up and down, and I was sprinting in the rain,” he said.

Ritzmann’s longtime mentor, Dave Milliken, vouched for his story.

“I mean, he called me just, like, bouncing off the walls, he was so excited,” Milliken said. “I mean really, tearfully, just a moment of joy, and yet – not surprised. I mean this kid, to me – I’m jut so amazed at how he seeks these opportunities that are very challenging. These are not easy pathways.”

Ritzmann and Milliken met around nine years ago, when Ritzmann joined Spokane’s Hutton Settlement.

Milliken was the director of Hutton at the time, and when he caught wind that the teenage Ritzmann was selling “paraphernalia” at school, he gave him an ultimatum: keep doing what he was doing and leave Hutton, or stop and see how the place could support him.

“That was really the biggest shift in my life. It was like the first time I felt I had a choice. I could choose my destiny,” Ritzmann said. “And historically, my whole life has been the absence of choice, the lack of ability to choose. And so from there, that was a pretty big inflection point.”

Soon after, the coronavirus pandemic began. Coffee shops shut down, but Hutton was deemed an essential business, so students and staff remained.

“And I was like, well, they still need coffee, because coffee is pretty crucial in a lot of people’s lives today,” Ritzmann said.

So he opened Oasis Cafe. Milliken, who was by then working as the campus program director, remembers seeing Ritzmann hauling coffees across the cafeteria during lunchtime. He had asked for a loan from his house parent to buy an espresso machine.

“So I think, you know, early on, it was pretty evident that this kid had this entrepreneurial slant,” Milliken said. “And of course, I ordered a coffee from him.”

Soon after, Ritzmann won a cornhole tournament with the prize being dinner with the executive director, Chud Wendle. Riding to dinner together, Ritzmann and Milliken decided to pitch the idea of a coffee roasting business.

Wendle gave them the green light and Oasis morphed into HOPE Neighborhood Roasters, spearheaded by Ritzmann and two other Hutton residents.

Ritzmann’s innovation and success in beginning a business has inspired other kids, Wendle said. When he drafted HOPE, it was really intended to be a mentorship program in addition to a roastery.

“We are now in the fifth generation of those aspiring to be Parker,” Wendle said of the HOPE management team. “They call him grandfather Parker.”

To watch Ritzmann turn his life around, graduate from high school, get into the University of Washington and now be accepted into the Schwarzman Scholar program is a “big deal” for kids in the foster system, Wendle said.

“It’s sort of breaking that glass ceiling.”

Sixteen-year-old Isaac Hendrickson has lived at the Hutton settlement for around four years. He shared the same cottage as Ritzmann before he moved to the west side and worked at the roastery under his guidance. The coffee program is one of a few on campus with a “pretty big hype” surrounding it, Hendrickson said, and he had moved up through other positions to work there.

“Parker was a big advocate for me to be not one just to follow in his footsteps, but also to – ‘You can be something more,’ ” Hendrickson said. “I guess he kind of helped push me to grow outside of what I already know.”

When Ritzmann went to college, he was accepted on a full-ride scholarship. During his four years of business studies, he has traveled to more than 30 countries and five continents.

Ritzmann acknowledges his upbringing was far from perfect. When he was at a crossroads, he said finding a mentor helped him the most.

“David was this figure in my life, like a mentor who I sought out and who I wanted to build a relationship with, who believed in me before I believed in myself,” he said. “That relationship with another human, I think, is very important.”

He harkened back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and their musings on self-reliance and actualization.

“You have to believe in yourself and you have to trust in yourself, and if you don’t have that – especially coming from the places that young people like me come from – it’s gonna be a hard path,” he said. “You’re always gonna be seeking outside for affirmation and belief. But the reality is, you have to build it within yourself.”

Curiosity is another area to focus on, Ritzmann said – especially for folks from backgrounds “at the margins of society.”

“There’s so much out there in the world, and I think that a lot of people operate on assumptions,” he said. “And this idea that things are just the way they are – like this is how it’s gonna be, and this is how it should be – I think that if you continue to live your entire life like that you miss out on, like, ‘What’s on the other side?’ ”

Like Ritzmann, Hendrickson was adopted from Ethiopia. The two keep in touch, often talking about career paths.

“I do base a lot of things I do off of Parker, which is why I keep in touch,” Hendrickson said. “It was actually funny, he sent me a text the other day. He was talking about, ‘Oh, you can be the next Schwarzman Scholar from Washington.’ And I was like, yeah, that would be fun.”

Becoming a lawyer is the current career goal for Hendrickson. Ritzmann’s acceptance to Tsinghua University makes that feel even more possible.

“It makes me think like, ‘Oh my gosh, if he can do it, so can I,’ ” he said. “It makes it so – you don’t doubt yourself so much, and you see how many paths there are and how much opportunity there is if you take advantage of it.”

The future is wide open for Ritzmann.

“I’m interested in supply chains and global development, especially in emerging markets,” he said of what he plans to study. “But I’m going into this program with this mindset of just exploring, exploring, exploring.”