Alumni Directory Display

Alumni Update:

Toni is in Toronto, Canada, where she is from, living close to her aging parents and family and friend. She still longs to work abroad again. She is working in human rights in Canada (what Americans call ‘civil rights’) and she is the Director of Human Rights at a major university. She works on issues of discrimination and harassment as well as sexual violence. She is a human rights lawyer. She is also completing her PhD (hopefully this year!) at the University of Toronto and she is looking at interviewing and when we say “Toni is a perfect fit for PiAf!”, what we mean by fit. She is asking “who fits?” and “who doesn’t?”

Fellow Bio:

Libby is a politics major with a focus on international relations. At Princeton, she played squash and tutored in Trenton. She wrote her thesis on the Millennium Challenge Corporation—a new foreign aid agency created by President Bush—exploring the question of politicization of aid disbursement. Libby is spending the summer oyster farming in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She looks forward to working at the Kucetekela Foundation, tutoring Zambian students, and visiting Victoria Falls next year.

Margaret is from Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) with a degree in International Affairs and an emphasis in human rights. Throughout college she worked in international development by interning with a variety of NGOs, and most recently worked at CARE USA. Margaret is a “travel-aholic”; having volunteered and worked abroad in China, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the Philippines, she is excited to learn more about voluntourism and project development. In her free time, Margaret loves to read, travel, predict the next Bachelor winner, and is currently teaching herself how to use her DSLR camera. Having never been to Africa, Margaret is excited to explore the continent, learn more about Zambian culture, spend as much time by Victoria Falls as possible, and (hopefully) take some great pictures of it all.

Alumni Update:

After completing her fellowship in 2012, Cydnee spent another year doing business development for mothers2mothers in Cape Town, SA before enrolling at the NYU Stern School of Business in 2013. She will receive her MBA from NYU Stern in May 2015. She’s spending the summer as a pro-bono consultant with the African Entrepreneurs Collective in Kigali, Rwanda. In September 2015, she will join Strategy&/PwC Consulting in their organization design and leadership practice.

Fellow Bio:

Cydnee graduated with a major in History, concentration in African History, and minor in Peace Studies. Originally from North Kingstown, RI, Cydnee has spent the past two years working as the Deputy Scheduler for US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. She studied abroad at the University of Cape Town and is excited to have another 12 months to continue to explore the city. While in South Africa next year, Cydnee plans on taking many road trips, running the Two Oceans Marathon (she still hasn’t decided if she’ll do the half or the full), and going pony trekking in Lesotho.

Monica was born in Tennessee but has always felt more comfortable on a plane traveling somewhere new.  At Stanford, she majored in Human Biology with a concentration in Global Development and Social Justice and minored in French.  After her sophomore year, while attempting to research the connection between colonialism and maternal health outcomes, she traveled to Madagascar and Uganda and found herself deeply changed in the process.  Newly committed to social impact, she worked at Dalberg Global Development Advisors in Washington, D.C., volunteered at East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring, directed Stanford’s student government’s Social Impact Initiative, chaired the Pre-Professional Team of the Social Entrepreneurial Students’ Association, and wrote an honors thesis in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law about the effect of contraceptive prevalence on maternal mortality.  Before leaving for Togo, she worked at the Tides Foundation in San Francisco.  Monica is obsessed with coffee and tea from around the world and can’t wait to see what new adventures await her in West Africa.  While still figuring out whether she wants to pursue a career as a physician, she hopes to soak in the experience and become a more informed global citizen.

Avdeep Dhillon graduated from University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in Political Economy and a concentration in Economic Development. In her last semester, she worked for Kiva as an Impact Investing Intern in their Direct to Social Enterprise portfolio to help social enterprises around the world access capital to grow their businesses. In her time at Berkeley, Avdeep founded Development Solutions Organization at Berkeley, through which, she helped Basic Needs, an International mental health NGO,  improve their impact measurement and evaluation. Avdeep also founded a course on Networking at the School of Information of Berkeley, started to give first generation college students the resources to build their own professional networks. Born and raised in Punjab, India, she has lived, worked and studied in Panama, Dominican Republic, Washington D.C., San Francisco and London. She is really excited to add Nairobi to the list through PiAf, where she will be working with Population Services International to develop a PSI Social Enterprise in East Africa.

Corey is a recent graduate of Clark University, having completed his undergraduate degree in Geography with a minor in Environmental Science in May 2015. Corey is very passionate about the relationship between communities and the environment around them, and he has chosen to focus his career on issues related to this. While studying abroad at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, he studied how local indigenous groups worked with the environment around them, and he was fortunate enough to have the chance to engage with communities in the area on issues related to environmental security. He also had the opportunity to work with various sustainable communities in southern Africa during the summer after his study abroad term. Corey also was the sole organizer and designer of a major research project centered on nation of Nauru in the South Pacific. He worked with local government officials in Nauru to analyze the effectiveness of traditional agroforestry systems on the Nauruan economy and explored ways that these systems could be improved. This research eventually formed the basis of a TEDx talk delivered in the spring of 2015 at TEDxClarkUniversity. Since graduating, he has worked with a variety of different conservation initiatives, including the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC on their Transforming Cultures Project. Most recently, he has been an environmental educator with the United States National Park Service in both Kentucky and Colorado. Corey is extremely excited to return to the African continent to work with the Kasiisi Project, and he looks forward to trying to see as many large dangerous animals as he possibly can.

Throughout his life, Alex has transformed a passion for learning about the world into a globe-spanning academic career. Growing up a geography whiz, Alex lived in four countries prior to moving to Benin and has visited nearly 30. He completed a B.A. at Tufts University, graduating in 2015, and he completed high school in Uppsala, Sweden. He also studied for a year at the Sorbonne in Paris. He speaks French fluently, knows conversational Swedish, and is learning Mandarin. As a student at Tufts, Alex worked for Tufts Telefund, conducted research in Rwanda on civil-military relations with the Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES), and danced with the infamous Tufts Dance Collective. He has previous completed internships at the Center for International Policy and for the U.S. Department of State, and he most recently worked in Shanghai as a private college prep teacher. In his spare time, Alex enjoys watching Liverpool FC matches and trivia games.

Alumni Update:

Thomas is an attorney at Clayman & Rosenberg LLP in New York City. He focuses on civil litigation and criminal defense.

Fellow Bio:

Thomas Dollar ’08 is a Woody Woo major from Troy, New York. A member of the Colonial Club, he has enjoyed IM sports and acting on stage. Some of his favorite roles include Roald Amundsen in “Terra Nova,” and Bradley in “Buried Child,” both at Theatre Intime. Tom enjoys Spanish and Latin American literature, and spent a semester in Buenos Aires. He enjoys hiking, skiing and camping in his free time. Tom looks forward to living and working in Freetown, Sierra Leone.