Alumni Directory Display

Fellow Bio:

Mark is a religion major from Hartland, WI. At Princeton, he was an avid volleyball player, Aquinas member, Athletes In Action student leader, and Colonial Club member. He completed the Teacher Preparation Program to become a certified high school social studies teacher. Mark’s love for international travel was born at Princeton, starting with a trip to Rome with fellow classmates and culminating in his study abroad experience at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland with numerous excursions in between. Since graduation, he has been developing pre-college enrichment and community service programs for high school students in Wisconsin, Costa Rica, and Panama. Mark is excited to begin a new adventure embracing the culture and people of Zambia this fall.

Ian Stiehl graduated from Dartmouth College with a major in Astronomy and a minor in Mathematical Physics while completing the pre-medical track. His honors thesis integrated all three courses of study in a project that applied information theory to the field of extrasolar planetary science. He examined whether computational methods could distinguish between different types of planets (e.g., Earth vs. Jupiter) without the need for input physics. Involved in the Native American Program at Dartmouth, Ian spent three years working as a tutor and advising younger students on scholarship applications. Outside of school, he interned at Allegro Pediatrics in Washington state and researched how the musculoskeletal system responds to spaceflight with funding from the Stamps Scholarship. Originally from Seattle, he grew up loving the outdoors, an interest he maintained in college. He has led multiple backcountry canoe and hiking trips around the US and relishes the opportunity to explore northern Tanzania. In his free time, Ian loves running, racing on Dartmouth’s triathlon team all four years of college. In February of 2023, months of training came to a close as he participated in the Kilimanjaro marathon. With Tanzanian Education Corporation, Ian has served as a computer science teacher, an IT manager, a STEM project advisor and more. He started both a Girls in STEM program that meets weekly and a digital literacy development program for teachers at Tumaini Senior Secondary School (TSSS) where he works. Also in pursuit of bridging the computer knowledge gap, he initiated a partnership between TSSS and the International Certificate of Digital Literacy (ICDL). ICDL classes for A-level students are currently in the pilot phase for a full launch in July 2023. Ian has been grateful to his colleagues, students, and friends at TSSS for welcoming him into the school community.

Emily graduated from Kansas State University in May 2017 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Elementary Education, a secondary major in International Studies, and minors in Spanish and Nonprofit Leadership Studies. In the summer of 2013 Emily taught English for a rural migrant community in Puebla, Mexico then headed to Valparaíso, Chile in spring 2014 to teach English in an urban public school. In the summer of 2016, Emily returned to Latin America to teach English at a local cultural center in Cuenca, Ecuador.  In between trips, Emily enjoyed working as a Program Leader and Intern for the Boys and Girls Club of Manhattan and as a teaching assistant for first semester college freshmen in the course Introduction to Leadership Concepts. Emily spent her final semester at K-State student teaching in a local kindergarten classroom and also finished her fifth year playing bass drum in the Kansas State University Marching Band. Moving forward, Emily is excited to teach at Maru-a-Pula and learn about the Botswanan education system. She hopes to use the skills she has gained throughout her collegiate experiences to challenge her students to think critically and creatively about the world around them.

Alumni Update:

Anne moved to New York City in July 2018 to work at ideas42, a nonprofit behavioral science design lab. Her work right now primarily focuses on economic mobility in New York City, but they do Africa-based work as well.

Fellow Bio:

Anne (UVA ‘11) graduated with a major in History. She is originally from Long Beach, CA. At UVA, Anne was the president of UVA’s chapter of Invisible Children, worked as a teacher’s aide in a local preschool, and participated in Sustained Dialogue. She studied abroad in Uganda and Rwanda through SIT and interned with Amnesty International in Washington, D.C. Anne is excited about returning to East Africa, learning about the unique history and culture of Ethiopia, attempting to master Amharic, and hopefully getting to travel around Africa.

Originally from Toronto, Canada, Meredith graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, majoring in International Political Economy with a Certificate in International Business Diplomacy. While at Georgetown, Meredith interned for the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, Parvati Swayamrojgar microfinance in India, the Independent newsmagazine in Uganda, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the US-India Business Council within the US Chamber of Commerce, and the international brokerage firm Auerbach Grayson & Co. She has studied abroad in Durban, South Africa and Pune, India. While in Uganda this year, Meredith looks forward to returning to her favorite Kampala restaurants, traveling in East Africa, and learning about infrastructure development in frontier markets through her work with eleQtra.

Alumni Update:

In July 2019, Sophia started medical school at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.

Fellow Bio:

Sophia majored in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. After graduating, Sophia worked as the Lead Mechanical Engineer at Uncharted Play, a social enterprise startup dedicated to addressing development issues with innovative and empowering play products. She helped design, develop, and manufacture a line of energy-generating products including their flagship soccer ball, SOCCKET, a jump rope called Pulse, and a variety of lamps. As a student, Sophia traveled with Penn Engineers Without Borders to Mbengwi, Cameroon and Pajomel, Guatemala, worked in a Bioengineering lab, and apprenticed at a vintage motorcycle shop in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philly. While in Nairobi, Sophia is excited to contribute to the sanitation field, explore East Africa, and find a soccer team.

Max hails from Issaquah, Washington, and studied International Studies with an environmental studies concentration and Environmental Science and Resource Management. He worked with environmental education during Alternative Spring Breaks in Eastern Washington, and co-founded Empowered Eco-Education with UW’s Earth Club in South Seattle. When not entertaining kids with nature and science, Max conducted remote sensing research on wetlands, and spent a quarter in South Africa studying ecology and falling in love with the savanna, Venda culture, and birding. As a proud Canadian, Max has enjoyed travelling to Québec to study arctic climate change and work with the consulate of Canada in Seattle. While in Uganda with The Kasiisi Project, Max looks forward to befriending chimpanzees (from a distance), hiking in the Mountains of the Moon, learning Rutooro, and sharing his camera with Ugandans.

Alumni Update:

Elly is currently working for Mercy Corps as part of USAID’s Implementer-led Design, Evidence, Analysis and Learning (IDEAL) consortium as their Food Security Technical Officer. She is based in Washington, DC.

Fellow Bio:

Elly (Iowa State ‘08) graduated with a double major in Public Service and Administration in Agriculture and International Agriculture. A native of Sheffield, Iowa, Elly previously worked for the World Food Programme in Ghana as a 2010-2011 Princeton in Africa Fellow.  After such a positive experience the first time around, she was thrilled to receive the opportunity to do it all over again!  Prior to her year in Ghana, Elly worked for the Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and a small NGO in Liberia.  While she loved her time in Ghana, Elly is looking forward to experiencing a new culture, eating lots of Ethiopian food, learning a new side of WFP’s work (in Ghana she worked as a Programme Officer, in Ethiopia she will work in Public Information), and, of course, drinking lots and lots of Ethiopian coffee.

As an educator at heart, Veda has spent a decade in several roles with the African Leadership (AL) Group, first as an Entrepreneurial Leadership Faculty at the African Leadership Academy before later serving as the Founding Dean of the African Leadership University (ALU), Rwanda for 2 years. Veda is currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer of ALC & ALU, overseeing operations across both the Mauritius and Rwanda campuses while steering the institution’s new 5-year strategy to become a ‘distributed university’ across the world. He has helped develop the leadership model of central to the mandate of the AL Group- to develop 3 million African Leaders by 2035. During a sabbatical that he took in 2019, Veda co-founded NiaDelta, a Leadership and Education consulting firm that advises corporate C-suites as well as education leaders.

Originally from Wayzata, Minnesota, Johnna is a graduate of UW-Madison where she majored in Economics and Political Science. During her time at Madison, she held leadership positions with Madison’s chapter of Amnesty International and interned with several organizations, including the United Nations Foundation and the Wisconsin Alumni Association. Additionally, she completed several service-learning projects working with vulnerable populations in Philadelphia, Nicaragua and Cambodia. Her junior year, she studied Swahili and development in Zanzibar, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya as a Boren Scholar. While in Kenya, she also had the opportunity to intern with Ruben Microfinance in the Mukuru slum and research challenges women entrepreneurs face within the community. Next year, Johnna is excited to explore more of East Africa, improve her French, and learn about community-led development initiatives through her work with Spark.