Alumni Directory Display

Fellow Bio:

Sarah Hammitt ‘04 received her B.A. in Geosciences, with a Certificate in Environmental Studies. Originally from Madison, NJ, Sarah is passionate about creating healthy, sustainable and happy communities both domestically and abroad. During her PiAf year, she will serve as a Grant Writer for the International Rescue Committee, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As an undergraduate, she studied abroad in Dunedin, New Zealand, and traveled to Cyprus and South Africa with the EEB and Geosciences departments. It was during this trip to South Africa in 2003 that Sarah was first exposed to the dire needs of communities in Africa and vowed to return. Since graduating in 2004, she has worked in environmental consulting in NJ and environmental education in PA, NC, OR and ME. In her spare time she volunteers in her Maine community in a senior citizens home, with the ambulance corps, at the local college running leadership and group dynamics clinics, and promoting healthy lifestyles on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Planning Committee. She also loves biking, baking anything with wild Maine blueberries, gardening and studying sustainable agriculture, water rights, and international planning policy.

Nora Hammond is a graduate of the University of California – Berkeley where she studied political science and minored in human rights and Middle Eastern studies.  While there, she studied abroad at the American University in Cairo and took graduate-level classes from the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies. Outside of class, she observed the after effects of the Egyptian revolution and taught English to refugees. Since graduation she has lived in Washington, D.C. where she has most recently worked as a proposal manager for an international development and research institution.  She earned the President’s Volunteer Service Award at the Gold Level, the highest level available, for her extracurricular community service as an AmeriCorps volunteer. In addition, she has had program management and research internships, including with a member of the US Congress.

Emily is from Duxbury, Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard University in 2016 with an A.B. in Neurobiology and a citation in French. While there she wrote her senior thesis on the role of the environment in the development of the face recognition system in macaques. Outside of the lab, Emily took advantage of as many chances as she could to travel. She spent a summer studying evolutionary biology at a Harvard program in Oxford, a semester studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, and a summer running an HIV/AIDS education campaign in a rural village outside of Arusha, Tanzania. On campus she served as a director for several different service groups, running after-school science clubs for underserved young girls and directing a “buddy” program to address the social and emotional isolation experienced by Alzheimer’s patients. She has long been interested in the field of public health and is excited to throw herself into this interest during her fellowship year working for Hope Through Health in Kara, Togo.

Mikaila Harper graduated from The George Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in international affairs concentrating in International Development. During her undergrad years, Mikaila created a mentorship for young women of color at the middle school level. Her GWU Chapter of Women Everywhere Believe served local DC communities teaching lessons of cultural competency, professional skills, and body positivity. During the Fall of 2020, Mikaila interned at Safe Project, a nonprofit fighting the addiction epidemic in the United States and at the Society for International Development, a network of professionals dedicated to sustainable economic, social and political development. In the Spring she began her internship at Women for Women International, a nonprofit helping women survivors of war and conflict learn the skills they need to rebuild their families and communities. Additionally, during the 2020-2021 year Mikaila completed a yearlong research project with the United States Agency of International Development. The project was a comprehensive analysis of seven different social movements from around the world. At the culmination of the report, Mikaila was able to provide multiple recommendations to USAID officials on how to help advance the seven social movements. Since graduating Mikaila serves as an Americorp Vista researching racial disparities in Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability studies.

Alumni Update:

Shaquilla is currently a fourth-year PhD student in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She was recently awarded one of the inaugural Penn Presidential PhD Fellowships to support her research on nonprofit decision-making and identity in East Africa. She currently serves as a general board member for the PiAf Alumni Board and is chair of the PiAf Anti-Racism Committee.

Fellow Bio:

Shaquilla graduated from Harvard University in May 2016 with a degree in Social Studies and focused on African-American women in the media. Shaquilla is passionate about journalism and public service, and her undergraduate experiences combined both passions. At Harvard, Shaquilla was the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Independent, a weekly newspaper, and an officer for three years at the Phillips Brooks House Association, an umbrella non-profit with over 80 programs serving people in Boston and Cambridge. Shaquilla also served as a senior staffer for Harvard Model Congress, an organization that runs government simulations for high school age students around the world. This past March, Shaquilla completed her senior honors thesis entitled “‘The Pulse of Black America:’ Ebony Magazine’s Creation and Reflection of Black Female Identity from 1980 to 2015.” While working at the World Agroforestry Centre’s AWARD program that provides scholarships and leadership training for African women scientists, Shaquilla hopes to learn Kiswahili, go on a safari, and learn a few traditional Kenyan dances.

Alumni Update:

Following her fellowship in Uganda, Emily spent another six years living in Kenya, DRC, Nigeria, Cambodia, and Liberia working on a series of global health initiatives for Population Services International, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and Liberia’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. After graduating with an MBA from the Yale School of Management this spring, she will be moving to Minneapolis, MN to work for Medtronic, a global medical device innovation company, where she will focus on emerging markets strategy and technology for cardiac care initiatives.

Alumni Update:

After Sandra’s fellowship, Sandra went on to get an MA at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, followed by work in Haiti post-earthquake for the UN World Food Programme and Fonkoze, Haiti’s largest microfinance insitution. All this was followed by a great wedding celebration in Dominican Republic in early 2013, and departure on a round-the-world honeymoon trip, before being called in by WFP to work in the Philippines in her current position as Regional Coordinator for the UN Food Security and Agriculture Cluster, Typhoon Haiyan Emergency Response.

All this will end in May 2014, with a great opportunity on May 24th at the Latin American Studies International Congress in Chicago, where Sandra will be sitting on a panel titled “Women, Gender and Feminism in Contemporary Haiti: History, Paradigms and Perspectives” to present on her MA thesis work, a critical perspective on issues that arose around women-only food distributions following the 2010 earthquake, the gendering of food assistance and social fragility of the post-disaster context, and other issues between the humanitarian community and women’s associations in Haiti that surfaced as a result.

Fellow Bio:

Sandra Hart ‘06 is an anthropology major who grew up overseas (mostly in Africa). Her nationality is American/Rwandan. During her fellowship she will serve as a junior professional officer at the United Nations World Food Program in Nouakchott, Mauritania. She has traveled extensively, is bilingual, and hopes to pursue a career in international humanitarian law. She enjoys art, music, and film.

Alumni Update:

In the year since his fellowship, Nabil has been working in Washington, DC as a research assistant at the Center for Global Development, an independent think tank that focuses on issues in international development. His work at CGD is concentrated on migration, aid effectiveness, and international financial institutions.

Fellow Bio:

Nabil is from Simsbury, CT and graduated with a degree in International Political Economy and a certificate in International Development. While at Georgetown, he helped start Compass Partners, a nonprofit organization that works with college freshmen around the country to launch their own social enterprises. Since graduating he has been working full-time to bring Compass to more schools in the US and abroad. In his free time, he enjoys running, reading, and making his own ice cream. While in Gabon next year with Olam International, Nabil looks forward to learning more about the role for-profit companies can play in development, eating fresh mangos, and getting to know new people and a new country.

Nima recently graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Sociology. While in college, she explored interests in development, economic inequality, and global trends in race and racism. This year she will be working with Population Services International’s East Africa office, based in Nairobi. The fact that some of the world’s citizens live decades longer and healthier lives than others is one of her biggest concerns, so she is very excited about starting work at PSI. She’s looking forward to applying both new methods (like mobile delivery of health services and social marketing) and more familiar ones (social science research) towards that end. During her fellowship, she hopes to explore the Nairobi food scene, improve her Somali (the language of her cultural heritage) and eat way more nyama choma than is wise.

A Southern California native, Khadija Hassanali graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. As an undergraduate, Khadija returned to her mother’s home country of Tanzania to work with the Asante Africa Foundation, an NGO that administers programs to increase the accessibility and quality of education in East Africa. During her sophomore and senior year, she competed in the Hult Prize Competition, in which she developed social enterprise solutions to tackle the issues of Early Childhood Education and the Refugee Crisis. Inspired by the intersection of business, technology, and social innovation, Khadija interned with Tectonica Studios, a start-up in Buenos Aires, Argentina that creates websites for political campaigns and NGOs. The fall of her junior year, Khadija studied in Granada, Spain, where she honed her Spanish language skills and studied the history of the Andalucia. Most recently, she interned with Deloitte Consulting, where she worked with a major healthcare client in the Bay Area. Khadija is looking forward to developing her interests in technology innovation as a Data Analyst and Project Manager at mSurvey in Kenya. Climbing shoes packed, she is eager to scramble around Nairobi and learn about the city her parents immigrated from.