Alumni Directory Display

Alumni Update:

In Fall 2019, Sofia began a Masters in Teaching at the University of Chicago as a part of the Urban Teachers Education Program (UTEP). During her fellowship year, she had the opportunity to focus on school management at the primary level and she is thrilled to have the opportunity to focus on educational equity in the United States over the next five years.

Fellow Bio:

Sofía, a native of Chicago, graduated from New York University, Abu Dhabi with a double major in Theater and Political Science with a concentration in Social Research & Public Policy. Sofia completed her final two years of high school at the United World College of Southern Africa. During her time at NYUAD, Sofia co-founded the Girls’ Education Network (GEN), a leadership development program for middle and high school girls in Abu Dhabi. Throughout her undergraduate career, Sofia held a variety of internships related to education, public service, and human rights. She has interned at the Human Rights Advocacy Centre in Accra, Ghana. At NYUAD, Sofia worked in the Office of Community Outreach and Office of Spiritual Life and Intercultural Education. Sofia has received numerous awards including the Associate Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence, NYU President’s Service Award, NYUAD’s Campus Life Community Service Award, and the Dalai Lama Fellowship. She is firmly committed to her values of empathy, humility, and hard work and believes that the first step when entering a new community is to listen.

Sally is from Montclair, NJ and majored in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a certificate in Environmental Studies. During her time at Princeton, she had the opportunity to spend a summer in Cochabamba, Bolivia, working for an organization specializing in clean cooking technologies. Before her senior year, Sally spent the summer in Nanyuki, Kenya doing research on water use and governance and collecting data for her senior thesis on groundwater development. At Princeton, Sally was also a member of the women’s varsity crew team. She is looking forward to learning more about conservation while surrounded by African animals at Mpala and also hopes to climb Mount Kenya and work on her Swahili.

Alumni Update:

Meg is in her second year at Columbia Law School, where she is focusing on international human rights and criminal law. Last summer she interned at AdvocAid, a holistic defense organization for incarcerated women in Sierra Leone.

Fellow Bio:

Meg is from Memphis, Tennessee and graduated from the University of Virginia in 2015 with degrees in Global Development Studies and French. She lived and studied one summer in Rabat, Morocco, and spent a semester in France studying the French language and working in an international arbitration law firm. She studied Francophone geopolitics, history, and immigration while in both countries, and her senior thesis joined these interests through an exploration of cultural identity, legal rights, and the intersection of race, religion, and politics within France. She interned in the Special Victims Unit of the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, seeing a localized perspective on the US criminal justice system. While at UVA, Meg was the student member of the University’s Board of Visitors, providing a student voice on issues ranging from financial aid to issues of racial and gender equity. She was also an elected representative to the school’s Honor Committee and served as co-editor of a weekly civic engagement newsletter.

Fellow Bio:

Brittany is from Lexington, MA and graduated with a degree in International Studies. At Kenyon, she worked in the Writing Center, volunteered in a Head Start preschool classroom, and advocated for diversity on campus as a chair of the Discrimination Advisors. She spent a semester studying abroad in Dakar, Senegal. Brittany has interned at a refugee resettlement agency in Boston and conducted summer research on the challenges facing Mauritanian asylum-seekers in Columbus, Ohio. While in Malawi next year, Brittany is excited about broadening her knowledge of humanitarian aid, picking up some Chichewa, and exploring southern Africa.

Katie is a 2012 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a major in Political Science and minor in Global Poverty and Practice. After graduation, she worked in Washington, D.C. with the Department of Justice focusing on foreign corruption cases. She is passionate about disaster response and protection of displaced populations, with experience as a Disaster Assistance Team responder with the American Red Cross and as an intern with the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Katie is excited to broaden her knowledge of work in the humanitarian assistance field as a PiAf Fellow with the UN World Food Programme in Malawi, and looks forward to exploring the local music scene in Lilongwe, diving in Lake Malawi, and meeting new friends in “the Warm Heart of Africa.”

Ben grew up in Durango, CO (Go Broncos!) and graduated from American University’s School of Public Affairs with an interdisciplinary degree in Communications, Law, Economics, and Government. During college, Ben interned at several private organizations and government agencies while also working at AU’s Student Veterans Office. During his junior year, Ben studied for eight months in Nairobi, Kenya, and interned with Sisi ni Amani, a local peacebuilding organization that used targeted text messages to monitor violence and encourage peace during the run up to Kenya’s 2013 election. Ben also served as an official election observer at Kenya’s election headquarters during the week of voting. After graduating, Ben worked for the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He also served as the president of the Congressional African Staff Association, a bipartisan and bicameral group of congressional staffers who organize events on African issues and promote the continent on Capitol Hill. Ben is very excited to head back to Nairobi, where he hopes to add to the IRC’s incredible work, build on his Swahili, explore more of the continent with other Fellows, and experience another election.

she/her/hers

Hannah Greene graduated from New York University Abu Dhabi after completing the pre-medical track and a degree in Social Research & Public Policy. In between semesters, she’s worked on five farms around the world, starting in Kenya, learning the arts of shepherding goats, pickaxing, and harvesting crops on these permaculture farms. While studying abroad in Accra, Ghana, she worked in an immunology laboratory and did field research for her senior thesis, which focused on the use of antibiotics and antimalarials in community health. Through visits to 83 community medicine vendors, she sought to identify the public health challenges reported by shopkeepers and predict the emergence of antimicrobial resistance at the neighborhood level. Launched by an exchange program scholarship to live in Malaysia in high school, she’s taken every opportunity to backpack around the world and learn from new contexts. She’s an enthusiast of anything outdoors, including going camping throughout the Emirates and training for triathlons and a marathon. In Abu Dhabi, she created a number of environmental sustainability initiatives on campus targeting resource consumption and fast fashion and led community engagement and appreciation programs for migrant workers in Abu Dhabi. Over the last four years, she’s worked with interdisciplinary research laboratories focused on engineering, healthcare sustainability, demography and public health, and social biases in the publication of academic literature. She plans to attend medical school in France and work as a physician of emergency medicine following this fellowship. Originally from Baltimore, USA, she’s driven to build equity in health care worldwide.