Alumni Directory Display

Zuwaina, a native of Wadi Halfa, Sudan, graduated from Columbia University with a triple degree in Economics, Political Science, and African Studies. During her time at Columbia, her passion for social justice and inclusion led her to several leadership positions in the African Students’ Association, the Columbia Admissions office, and more student organizations, earning her the Kings’ College Leadership Award for Inclusion & Diversity. Her love for Law and Policy-making, stemming from her own experiences of injustice in Sudan, led her to research experiences at Columbia Law School and the World Policy Institute. She also spent time at Weitz & Luxenberg, a law firm based in New York City specializing in mass tort cases. Recognizing that Education was her greatest privilege, she also spent time working with Abwab, a nonprofit organization based in Sudan which provides undergraduate students with mentorship opportunities in Khartoum, as well as Audre, a new program in which Columbia students and faculty lead workshops for Harlem fifth graders once a week. Zuwaina is driven by her love for Africa and its people, and will be joining Equal Education in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August of 2019, where she will be working in education reform, law and policy.

Sami, born and raised in South Seattle, graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in the natural sciences and international studies. His work experiences in undergrad ranged from cancer research at the University of Michigan to digital health software and business development in Lagos, Nigeria at a startup he credits with opening his eyes to opportunities on the continent. This professional interest goes well with his language background – having studied Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, and Wolof through courses and a study abroad program where he conducted research on youth organizing in Sufi communities in Senegal, Italy, and France. Sami interned at Bloomberg Philanthropies where he supported early stage public-private partnerships across youth employment and business verticals. After a scholarship program in Taiwan just before COVID-19 hit the US, he is excited to be working with the African Leadership Academy.

Alumni Update:

Currently, she is working as a consultant for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Regional Office for West and Central Africa. Her work focuses on a regional research project to assess recruitment and protection mechanisms for migrant workers from the region abroad, primarily in the ECOWAS and Gulf Cooperation Country regions.

Fellow Bio:

Anna graduated in May 2017 with a Bachelor’s degree in Global Liberal Studies (concentrating on Politics, Rights, and Development) and double minoring in French, and Public Policy and Management. Anna has worked for several nonprofit organizations throughout her academic career, from Girl Rising, a documentary campaign to promote girl’s education, to Human Rights Foundation, an organization which supports political dissidents in countries with authoritarian governments. Her interest in development work in Africa was strengthened last summer, which she spent in Dakar, Senegal, interning and conducting research for her thesis on female migration and its’ impact on social and economic development. Anna returned to Senegal for a month last January to finish her research, and was awarded the best thesis overall in NYU’s Global Liberal Studies class of 2017. In her free time, Anna loves to read and hike, she is an avid backpacker, adventurer, and “Couchsurfer”. Lastly, she can’t wait for the fellowship to explore Benin, continue her research, make new friends and practice her French!

Ornella Baganizi graduated from American University with a degree in International Studies focusing on Global Inequality and Development and a regional focus in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her family is from Rwanda, but she was born in Quebec, Canada, and speaks fluent French. As a child, Ornella spent a few years living in Bamako, Mali. She has interned for Voice of America in the Central Africa Division, where she assisted in the production of two live radio shows. She also interned for the Office of Senator Chuck Schumer. She was a 2017 Boren Scholarship recipient to study Swahili in Tanzania. She also studied abroad in Kenya and interned at a community-based radio station in the Kivuli Center for at-risk youth. Her senior year of college, Ornella organized and led an Alternative Break trip to Arusha, Tanzania, which focused on the legacy of Pan-Africanism and the rights of marginalized communities. Ornella is passionate about youth development through artistic expression. She is excited to return to Tanzania as a Princeton in Africa Fellow at Mainsprings and looks forward to be working with young women.

Haja is from Freetown, Sierra Leone. She attended United World College, Red Cross Nordic from 2015 to 2017 where she transitioned to Skidmore College New York to complete her Bachelor of Arts Degree in environmental studies. Haja will be working with EL-KOONY Center in Kitale Kenya, as a Communications and Marketing Fellow. Haja is very interested in the field of development and looks forward to gaining new skills while learning Swahili. Moreover, she is very excited to learn more about issues affecting women, especially period poverty to see how best she can improve and expand her social enterprise, uman4uman, a Sierra Leonean-based business that produces reusable sanitary pads for women and girls.

A native of Arlington, Virginia, Luisa graduated from Princeton University in 2017 with a B.A. in Religion. Her academic work focused on interreligious encounter; she conducted independent research on Christian-Muslim dialogue in Berlin, Germany, as well as the Syriac Orthodox community in contemporary Germany. Luisa has spent considerable time abroad for her studies and internships; she has lived, learned, and worked in St. Petersburg, Russia; Rome, Italy; and Berlin, Germany. While in Rome in summer 2015, Luisa worked with the Community of Sant’Egidio, an international peacemaking organization that serves Rome’s homeless, migrant, and refugee populations. Luisa was also part of the student coordinating team for the 2014 and 2017 Poverty and Peacemaking Conferences in partnership with Sant’Egidio and the Princeton Office of Religious Life. A lifelong Girl Scout, Luisa served on the board of directors of her council, serving over 80,000 members. Luisa enjoys cooking, hiking, and creative writing. She is looking forward to the many lessons that wait in store for her in Gaborone, Botswana, where she will be a history teacher at Maru-a-Pula.

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Michael Banks holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and international affairs, with minors in business and anthropology from the University of Georgia. His interdisciplinary education spanned four colleges at the university, driven by a curiosity about cultural formation and cross-cultural interactions, particularly through media and business channels. At UGA, Michael conducted research on the impact of US foreign aid in Africa and educational disparities in post-Apartheid South Africa, igniting his interest in international development. He gained valuable experience in media strategy and healthcare communications while collaborating with health equity advocates in West Africa and the Caribbean through work with the United Nations Foundation’s United to Defeat Malaria team. He proposed a restructuring of McKinsey & Company’s Careers Blog to underscore colleague and talent narratives of the firms’ offices in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as one of their inaugural communications interns, and he explored how the higher education research ecosystem on the continent can inform STEM partnerships between the US & African states through work with the US State Department. Michael hopes to pursue a career in international development that joins his passion for cultural advancement with his varied experiences in communications across the private, public, and non-profit sectors. Outside of work and academia, Michael is a classically-trained singer, former long-distance swimmer turned gym-goer, and an aspiring polyglot.

Alumni Update:

Joanna is working as an M&E Officer at Healthy Learners managing data systems and analytics/reporting. She lives in Lusaka, Zambia where she first arrived through her PiAf fellowship in 2019. 

Fellow Bio:

Joanna graduated from Calvin University with Honors in Economics with a minor in International Development Studies. Her curiosity about the world and the systems that shape people’s lives grew throughout her childhood and high school years spent in Michigan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, as well as her experiences volunteering at the U.S. Embassy of Ethiopia, the African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program, and Hope Microfinance in Ethiopia. During her undergraduate career, she studied equity, access, and inclusion in the classroom and through interning at Inclusive Performance Strategies, organizing campus-wide programming on the Multicultural Student Advisory Board, and attending the Justice Studies Semester Program in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Prior to her Princeton in Africa fellowship, Joanna worked as a Research Specialist at the Center for Social Research where she collaborated with nonprofit, academic, and public-sector organizations on research projects involving data analytics, GIS mapping, community listening sessions, and database management. Here, she learned the power of data-based decisions and participatory research. Joanna is thankful for the opportunity to join the Monitoring and Evaluation team at Healthy Kids/Brighter Future and live in Lusaka! She looks forward to exploring new places through her favorite ways: being outdoors, dancing, and discovering cuisines.

Sarah, born and raised in rural Vermont, (Barnard ’17) graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College, Columbia University with a degree in Economics. At Barnard, Sarah completed a multi-year internship at EcoHealth Alliance, where she conducted a literature review evaluating the effectiveness of One Health interventions. While there, she was immersed in a multi-disciplinary team composed of scientists, veterinarians, and economists. This served as the impetus for her work at the interface of global health and economics. She has interned at the HIV, Health and Development group at UNDP, where she drafted a guidance note identifying integration opportunities for non-communicable diseases into the programming of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. She has researched the impacts of extractive industries on women as a Research Assistant for Barnard’s Department of Economics. Sarah has also consulted for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where she led a cost analysis of the Department’s responses to Hepatitis A incidents in restaurant food handlers. She has presented her research at conferences, including the 2017 Consortium of Universities for Global Health and 2018 World Bank Land and Poverty Conference and has several publications, including in the journals One Health and Annals of Climate Change.

Afi Apefa Bello is originally from Togo, West Africa. At the age of 6, her family immigrated to the United States. Having grown up aware of the circumstances which faced her family and others across the African continent, Afi was inspired to address them in her career, especially those concerning disparities in education and gender. Afi graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May 2019, where she majored in African, African-American, and Diaspora Studies. While at UNC-CH, Afi studied several languages spoken across the African continent, including Kiswahili and Lingala. In 2017, she was awarded the U.S. Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship to study intensive Kiswahili in Tanzania through the Howard University Swahili Study Abroad program. Driven by her passion for education and gender equity, Afi returned to Tanzania in 2018 as an intern with non-profit organization Students for Students International (S4Si), in partnership with NGO Forum for African Women Educationalists where she worked to address gender disparities in secondary education in Zanzibar. Afi later became Co-Executive Director of S4Si. Through the Okun Foundation grant, Afi conducted research exploring Afro-Diasporic community relations. Afi remains curious as to the role which the African Diaspora plays in development in Africa. At UNC-CH, Afi was awarded the Annexstad Family Foundation Leaders of Tomorrow scholarship in its inaugural class, 2015, and was named a 2017 Harvey Beech scholar. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, Afi served as a College Advisor with the Carolina College Advising Corps, working to increase college access and other post-secondary opportunities for low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented high school students. Afi volunteers with Refugee and Immigrant Community Partnership in North Carolina to address the needs of its immigrant communities. Afi enjoys sewing with African fabric, African literature, and learning new languages. She is excited to work with the African School of Economics this year!