Alumni Directory

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!

Hannah graduated from the University of Michigan in 2014 with a degree in Global Health & Environment and Afro-American & African studies. After a trip to Ghana sparked her interest in Africa, Hannah solidified this passion by studying abroad in South Africa and leading support groups for HIV-affected teens. Throughout college, Hannah taught an innovative HIV prevention module to high-risk populations and did outreach and testing with Michigan’s leading AIDS service organizations. She also facilitated student sexual health forums, interned as a Spanish translator for undocumented persons with UMichigan’s Law School, facilitated prevention programming for elementary school girls at a women’s shelter in Michigan’s largest Latino neighborhood, and worked in arts-based activism. After graduation, Hannah worked at the American Red Cross in Detroit in International Services where she advocated on behalf of Iraqi and Syrian refugees and reconnected families separated by disaster and conflict. Hannah currently works in Detroit as a Health Education Coordinator for an HIV agency facilitating psychosocial support groups for recently diagnosed and formerly incarcerated individuals living with HIV. She enjoys spending her evenings working with at-risk teenage girls in a live-in scholarship program, and is excited to advocate similarly for teens and families at BIPAI Swaziland.

Fellow Bio:

Luwam is a politics major from Fairfax, VA. She also earned certificates in African studies and French language and literature. On campus, she was vice president of the Princeton Association of Black Women and small group leader for Manna Christian Fellowship. Luwam is looking forward to good conversations with locals and to learning about development from her colleagues while living in Burundi.

Lydia, a Public Health major from Skidmore College, is an enthusiastic and passionate young lady motivated by her need to serve. She has experience in project development and implementation through her Davis Project for Peace. With $10,000, she was able to develop and implement workshop sessions aimed at expecting parents and provided them with baby items for completion of sessions. Each session discussed topics from antenatal care, birth preparedness, and birth plans. Her independent undergraduate research sought to examine the factors that determine women’s choices during childbirth. She also has academic research experience conducted in multiple countries. During those times, she mostly explored healthcare and how one’s community and culture affects access, quality and cost. This developed her qualitative research skills with minimal resources. Lydia has also been able to develop and strengthen her monitoring and evaluation of projects skill via her work with various local NGOs.  She will be spending her year of the fellowship in Liberia working for Last Mile Health.

Katie grew up in Park City, Utah. She graduated from Dartmouth College in the Class of 2015 with a B.A. in Honors Environmental Studies and a minor in Applied Ethics. In addition to skiing and mountain biking, as a Dartmouth student Katie pursued her interdisciplinary interests in environmental science, environmental justice, and civil rights by conducting research in both the Biology and Environmental Studies Departments and the Ethics Institute.  In 2014, Katie interned in the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office in Boston and studied abroad in Morocco. Her experience in Morocco and study of Arabic led to her senior honors thesis research on the influences of international politics on Moroccan phosphate mining. Upon her return from Morocco, Katie served as an AmeriCorps volunteer at Teton Science Schools in Wyoming, where she entered the world of environmental education. Katie believes that improving environmental justice across the globe starts with science literacy. In Rwanda, Katie is excited to work with the Rwanda School Project to develop environmental science curriculum and promote environmental literacy. Katie is a potter and a mountain bike racer, and is excited to learn Rwandan art and pottery methods and explore central Africa.

Dara Bernstein is a young professional with experience in international development program monitoring and evaluation. She is passionate about connecting innovative solutions to poverty at the household level with macroeconomic growth strategies. Since graduating from Brown University in 2018 with a degree in Economics and French Studies, Dara has worked as a program associate in the international division of Mathematica, a policy research institute. In this role, she contributes to research in an array of fields, including energy, financial services, secondary education, and workforce development, primarily in West Africa and Morocco. She sees promise in initiatives aimed at improving the skills and capacity of women and youth in developing communities, such as micro-lending to women, strengthening family planning systems, and improving education and workforce development programs. Dara is continually refining her quantitative and qualitative research skills, which are complemented by her proficiency in French and Stata programming. She also has extensive experience in project management and budgeting for large-scale international projects funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Gates Foundation. Dara is looking forward to her role as a Junior Consultant/MEAL Fellow with the West African Rice Company (WARC) team in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Alumni Update:

Abhit is currently a PhD student in political science at Columbia, where he studies the political economy of development with a focus on Africa.

Fellow Bio:

Abhit is from Knoxville, TN and was a Political Science and African Studies major in college. During his time at Northwestern, he was the co-director of the Undergraduate Africa Seminar, the editor of the Political Science Communiqué, and the director of A&O Films. He also spent time working as a teaching assistant for an African politics class and interning at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Through Northwestern, he was able to study abroad for a semester in Paris and conduct independent thesis research for a summer in Senegal. Abhit looks forward to returning to Senegal, improving his Wolof, and taking in the incredible music scene Dakar has to offer.

Weiwei graduated from Stanford University with a major in Economics and minor in East Asian Studies. Weiwei has professional experience on three continents. She spent two summers working in China, where she supported organizations ranging from an internationally renowned art gallery to a global supply chain management company. She also interned for a mobile payments startup in Ghana through Stanford SEED, an initiative by the Stanford Graduate School of Business that aims to combat poverty through innovation and entrepreneurship. Prior to Princeton in Africa, Weiwei spent two years in management consulting at ZS Associates in San Francisco, where she advised healthcare clients on sales and marketing strategy.