Alumni Directory Display

Sofia graduated from Yale University in 2018, majoring in Environmental Studies with a concentration in in Urban Environment. Throughout university, she was heavily involved with the Yale Refugee Project. Raised in Mbabane, Sofia attended Waterford Kamhlaba UWC. In university, she maintained strong ties to the African continent, returning to work at the Wonder Workshop arts studio in Dar es Salaam, and later as an international volunteer and backhandler at Cheetah Outreach in Cape Town. During her junior year, Sofia studied as an exchange student at Université Paris IV: La Sorbonne, and was granted fellowship funding to return  to Paris the following year to pursue an independent urban studies research project using GIS and interviewing refugees and asylum seekers about urban green space. Sofia has also worked for MAD/Yale Leadership Summit and for the Louisville city government’s Office of Performance Improvement and Innovation. Sofia is passionate about making cities more accessible to marginalized groups.

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Redeit Hailu is an Ethiopian-American from Washington, D.C. passionate about Women’s Empowerment and Economic Development. Growing up in Addis Ababa and DC, this fostered her interest in cultural immersion and deepened her passion for International Development. In 2024, she graduated from William & Mary where she earned her B.A. in International Relations and minored in Economics. At W&M through the Freeman Fellowship in Chiang Mai, Thailand, she served as an English teacher and fundraised to support the higher education of ethnically marginalized women from Myanmar. In Thailand, she recognized the necessity of local voices in shaping her framework of ethical International Development. Additionally, she worked as a Research Assistant with Aiddata to track underreported financial flows to assist policymakers at USAID understand the scope of Chinese commercial finance. Redeit’s diverse set of experiences within International Relations, from nonprofit consulting to advocacy, speaks to her multifaceted skill set and adaptability. She has a strong track record of community involvement, having served as the Undersecretary of Sexual Health, English Teaching Assistant in Prague, and a Representative on the Sexual Misconduct Steering Committee. With a multiregional educational background and a diaspora connection to Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, Redeit brings a distinctive perspective to addressing global challenges. With over three years of enriching experience in International nonprofit work, she consistently demonstrates her expertise in youth mentorship, project management, and fundraising. As a confident individual, Redeit remains eager to make a significant impact within International Development.

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 Adam is a Diplomacy and International Relations promoter with three years of experience in Marketing and Career Development at an ed-tech startup, BAG, in Rwanda. He completed a bachelor’s degree with Honors in International Business and Trade from the African Leadership University. With his passion in IR he served as the Chief of Staff at the Kigali CFR from 2020 to 2021. Adam founded Rwanda Model UN, an organization that promotes global leadership among youth. As a natural storyteller, Adam leverages the power of social media to immortalize highlight moments in different communities he takes part of. He has been serving as an Assistant Producer at Ramansa Media a film startup and along with his team they have mobilized to raise $30,000 dollars for production funds from GIZ Rwanda. Adam envisions leveraging technology to solve some of the biggest challenges the continent faces. He runs Gazap, as the CEO, a tech startup that addresses climate change and uses big data to provide clean cooking to all.

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.

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.

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.

Alumni Update:

Nicholas is based in Durham, NC while completing a Master’s in Biomedical Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. Nicholas applied to the 2020 medical school application cycle, and ultimately hopes to focus on sexual health amongst LGBTQ* adolescents.

Fellow Bio:

Nicholas, a native of North Carolina, ( UNC ’17) graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in American Studies and minor in Social and Economic Justice. While at Carolina, he co-founded UNC’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to challenge stigma surrounding mental illness. He worked with University administration to enhance mental health-related policies and procedures affecting students, faculty, and staff. He has also worked with the Infectious Disease Clinic at UNC Hospitals to craft a nutritional program for the clinic’s HIV patients, with a focus on the intersection of nutrition, race, and class. Nicholas is an alumnus of Columbia University’s Summer Public Health Scholars Program (SPHSP). While studying at the Mailman School of Public Health, he served as an HIV/AIDS Prevention and Outreach Intern with CAMBA where he facilitated focus-group sessions comprised of parents of LGBTQ* youth to communicate the relationship between familial acceptance and positive health outcomes in queer adolescents. For fun, Nicholas enjoys spending time with friends, watching sports (go Heels!), staying active, and binge-watching Rupaul’s Drag Race. He’s honored to join BIPAI Botswana and explore Gaborone and beyond!

Alumni Update:

Ela is currently the Communications Manager for Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter, an international unit focused on housing market systems development in more than 40 countries.

Fellow Bio:

Ela, a native of Canada, graduated from Davidson College with an honors degree in History focusing on colonial Africa and the diaspora. While at Davidson, Ela studied abroad in Dakar, Senegal and completed independent research at the British Library as a Kemp Scholar and Kelley Scholar, which culminated in an 80-page honors thesis on the British East India Company’s dependence on African slavery. After graduating, Ela worked for Habitat for Humanity International in Washington DC, supporting their global programs in WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene), land tenure, gender, and urban development. As a fellow, she helped organize regional conferences on land tenure in South Africa and the Philippines and represented Habitat at the ninth World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Prior to working for Habitat, Ela served on the international Board of Directors of WE Charity, traveling as a speaker. She also shared the stage with Al Gore, on various occasions, addressing top media executives, including CEOs from Fox, Time Warner, and Universal McCann. Ela is also a proud alumni of Pearson College UWC in British Columbia, Canada.

Julia is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where she studied Political Economy and Public Policy and cultivated an interest in using data to inform policy and improve livelihoods in the developing world. Her research experience at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and the Blum Center for Developing Economies heightened her interest in examining the relationship between the global north and south and advocating for health access as a fundamental human right. Originally hailing from Long Beach, California, Julia spent the last two and a half years supporting the design and implementation of evaluations and randomized control trials at Social Impact, a Washington DC-based international development consulting firm. During her time at SI, Julia gained field experience supervising data collection in Nepal, supported a maternal and child health evaluation in Laos, analyzed data for a Ghana education portfolio, and implemented a nationwide labor force study in Kosovo. In her previous work, Julia interned at a Los Angeles-based nonprofit where she worked to improve economic outcomes for marginalized communities, and contributed to policy briefs and research projects in human rights and sustainable development at a Madrid-based think tank.  Julia is looking forward to honing her monitoring and evaluation skills and focusing her efforts at the local level in Lwala.

Clare graduated from Colorado College with a major in English and minor in Russian, Nonviolence, and Music. The child of anthropologists, Clare spent extended periods of her life living with livestock herders in East Africa, where she learned, firsthand, of the daily challenges impoverished rural families face in developing countries. She also spent some time in Japan, where she learned about Kyoto’s education system. Through these varied experiences, she developed a commitment to eliminating barriers to high quality education and an interest in the policies that shape people’s everyday economic and educational realities. During college, Clare worked on political campaigns, served as a legislative intern for two United States Senators, and founded a college organization to address socioeconomic challenges. In her study abroad to Russia, she conducted research about Russians’ understandings of their identities from a contemporary global perspective. Upon graduating, Clare served as a Youth Specialist for the non-profit, Joint Initiatives, where she developed new strategies for strengthening youth voices at all levels of child and family systems and services. Clare’s fellowship with the Indigenous Education Foundation of Tanzania has a mission she loves – providing high quality education supported by the indigenous community the organization serves.