Stephen Paul Mizwa, Stefan Piotr Mierzwa (November 12, 1892, Rakszawa – January, 1971, Houston[1]) was the founder and long-time president of the Kosciuszko Foundation, a Polish-American scholarly and cultural institution headquartered in New York City.
His first goal was to reach Northampton, Massachusetts, where an earlier Polish immigrant, Joseph Stonina, lived.
In 1920 he graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and the following year he received a master's degree from Harvard University.
Five of the first eight students sponsored by the program came to the United States to study business administration and economics at prestigious American universities.
The Polish American Scholarship Committee was the embryo of the Kosciuszko Foundation subsequently established in 1925, a scholarly and cultural institution that Mizwa would head for several decades.