Alumni Directory Display

Originally from Accra, Ghana, Vanessa grew up in Romeoville, Illinois, a town next to the city of Joliet, Illinois. A Shakespeare fanatic, she heartbreakingly had to leave Romeoville to attend the University of Minnesota, where she graduated in 2016 with degrees in Journalism and History. Vanessa has written for The Minnesota Daily, Minnesota Public Radio, and The Reporters Inc., a nonprofit journalistic house. Vanessa is interested in all aspects of journalism, including philanthrojournalism and global communications. A longtime history buff, she served as the diversity outreach intern and a National History Day mentor for the Minnesota Historical Society. Vanessa was involved in various campus organizations, but counts her time as a 2014 Orientation Leader as her favorite. Vanessa believes in getting a well-rounded experience in academics and work, which led to her interning for Congressman Keith Ellison and working as an ESL classroom assistant for adult refugees. Due to her internships at organizations that work to strengthen communities in Minnesota and throughout the world, she was named a Kevin Mossier Award Scholar. Vanessa is a soccer fanatic and spent the summer of 2015 in Berlin researching German soccer history. This resulted in a 60 page research paper on the formation of German national identity through World Cups. Vanessa is beyond excited to come to the rainbow nation and work with the future leaders at the African Leadership Academy – and possibly beat some students in soccer. She is especially excited to learn from the students at ALA and explore Johannesburg!

Akinyi Ochieng is a philanthropic adviser and nonprofit board director who identifies, incubates, and scales innovations that advance a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient world. She currently leads strategic planning and operations at the Autodesk Foundation, which invests in nonprofits and startups helping to de-risk innovation and leverage design and engineering solutions to address the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges.

Prior to Autodesk, Akinyi served as Director & Vice President at APCO, where she advised leading corporations, foundations, and nonprofits on their social impact initiatives. She partnered with innovators and changemakers to design and scale programs that support economic mobility and inclusive innovation throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Her clients included global brands such as Visa, BlackRock, Meta, IKEA, Expedia, and Chelsea FC, as well as leading nonprofits and foundations such as Schmidt Futures and Pivotal Ventures. She began her career in the financial services industry, developing economic mobility campaigns and programs at innovative companies including Nova Credit and WorldRemit.

Akinyi holds deep expertise in economic development and food security in Africa, with a successful track record of mobilizing multi-million-dollar public-private partnerships to accelerate sustainable business practices in the region. Her insights on business, culture, and politics in Africa have been featured in Forbes, CNBC, BBC, African Business Magazine, and the World Economic Forum. She continues her commitment to sustaining and developing the African continent by serving as Board Chair of SOS Sahel USA and as a Trustee of Operation Fistula, organizations dedicated to food security and maternal health in Africa. She previously served as co-president of the inaugural PiAf Alumni Board and was a Fellow at Global Shea Alliance in Accra, Ghana during her time as a Princeton in Africa Fellow.

Akinyi holds an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA (with distinction) in Political Science and African Studies from Yale University. She has also completed certificates in strategic philanthropy and social impact from the University of Cambridge’s Judge School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania. She has been named one of the 100 Most Influential People of African Descent under 40.

Tim Offei-Addo, a Ghanaian-American raised in the Boston area, graduated from Amherst College with a degree in Environmental Studies. At Amherst Tim served as the Co-President of Remnant, the Black Christian fellowship, where he focused on creating a space where students could grapple with issues at the intersection of faith and race. He also served as Co-President of the Kidney Disease Screening and Prevention Club and organized free kidney screenings for underserved populations in the Amherst Area. These experiences helped significantly during his internship with the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA). While shadowing government officials Tim noticed the important role community organizations played in MOFA and NGO partnerships. He returned to Ghana to conduct research for his undergraduate thesis, analyzing the cultural competency of Ghana’s National Climate Smart Agriculture Action Plan. Upon its completion he presented his thesis at the Harvard Club to the Amherst College Trustees and distinguished guests. Since graduating Tim has pursued his passions as a Policy Analyst for Climate Scorecard: a non-profit initiative that seeks to strengthen emission reduction pledges to the Paris Agreement and an Apprentice Gleaner at Boston Area Gleaners an organization that harvest surplus farm crops and donates them to Food Banks. Tim enjoys farming, cooking, watching soccer and listening to music in his free time.

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Malaika Ogukwe, a Nigerian-American raised in the suburbs of Boston, MA, graduated from Pomona College, earning her bachelor’s degree in economics. She spent a semester in Copenhagen, Denmark, studying Globalization and European Economies at DIS. Malaika has always been passionate about youth & community work, and while at Pomona, she led multiple high school mentorship programs and served as a Jumpstart Team Leader in local preschool classrooms. Malaika spent her early career at a management consulting firm, a VC-backed beauty startup, and in tech. Her dedication to youth capacity building was reignited when she returned to Jumpstart, where she served as Site Manager at the Claremont Colleges site and managed the operations and partner relationships of the program. Malaika is grateful for the opportunity to support Emerging Leaders Foundation’s goal to empower the next generation of young leaders. After the Princeton in Africa Fellowship, Malaika plans to pursue a Master’s of Education. Malaika leads mindfulness & wellness workshops and in her free time enjoys creative expression, using ceramics, dance, yoga and photography as her mediums.

Coryna Ogunseitan graduated from Yale in 2017 with a BA in Literature. She speaks Spanish and French and is most interested in literature of the black diaspora written in these languages. Her junior fall, she spent a semester abroad in Santiago, Chile, becoming fluent in Spanish and studying modern Ibero-American literature. The fact that many of these texts were not available in English led her to develop an interest in literary translation. She was an intern at Glossolalia, PEN America’s new translation journal, where she worked primarily on the issue “Women Writing Brazil,” a compilation of writing by all female Brazilian authors. She is passionate about making marginalized narratives, like those presented in Glossolalia, exposed to global audiences, and in keeping with this goal also worked to facilitate interviews with formerly incarcerated people for StoryCorps through the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project. With this organization, she also tutored inmates in the New Haven Jail for the GED. She is also involved in the writing community at Yale, and has served as Artistic Director of TEETH Slam Poets and an editor of Weekend, the arts and culture section of the Yale Daily News.

Biafra is a Nigerian-American, seeking to advocate and serve underserved populations through artistic activism, community engagement, and implementation of evidence-based research. He graduated from Amherst College with a double major in Interdisciplinary Global Public health and Middle Eastern Studies. While at Amherst, Biafra completed a study abroad year in Cairo, Egypt at the American University of Cairo. There he conducted research for his seniors honors thesis “Cardiovascular Disease: Exploring Cultural and Economic Conditions to Inform Intervention”. Which provided him the opportunity to interview a range of health professionals in both Arabic and English for potential reform policies. At The UT School of Public Health, he’s delved into innovative approaches to tackle HIV/AIDS. At The Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI) he researched Suicidality in the Intellectual and Developmental disabilities population. He is a CDC Undergraduate Public Health Scholar and received a certificate of public health training in Maternity Child Health/Research at KKI. Most recently, he worked at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Genitourinary Oncology department doing clinical research as a program coordinator. Additionally, he served as an ambassador for the Baltimore Health Dept. working in community outreach alongside health clinicians, to increase Covid-19 literacy, conduct needs assessments, and increase vaccination rates in Baltimore. Following the Piaf fellowship, Biafra seeks to further his experience working in global public health while obtaining a Master’s degree. A lover of the arts, he is a co-host for the podcast Shapes of Love, a dance choreographer, and a spoken word artist.

JingKai, a native of Malaysia, graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Economics. He speaks professional Bahasa and Mandarin Chinese. At UC Berkeley, he had several student leadership positions as the External Vice President of Delta Phi Epsilon (UC Berkeley Professional International Relations Fraternity) and the External Events Chair of the International Student Association. JingKai has earned the Outstanding Delegate at the World Youth Economic Forum. He also has extensive research experience including as a research assistant for the Center for African Studies at UC Berkeley, analyzing the rotation in the ministerial cabinet in 36 African countries. In addition, he was a research assistant on an Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) study regarding social incentives for prenatal care and safe delivery in Sierra Leone and for Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS). He was an international development intern with the Uganda Village Project (UVP) in rural Uganda. JingKai is really excited for the opportunity to return to the continent as a Princeton in Africa fellow and looks forward to working with Imani Development in Malawi as a junior consultant.

Alumni Update:

Ibilola is working as a Senior Associate in the West & Central Africa and Haiti region at Chemonics International. Her work focuses on project management of activities across West Africa & the Caribbean. She works primarily in DC, with travel to Nigeria, Mauritania, and Haiti.

Fellow Bio:

A Nigerian raised in California, Ibilola graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, with a BSFS in Culture and Politics and a minor in African Studies. Passionate about the continent, Ibilola has integrated her love for African affairs into her personal and professional life. During her junior year, she spent a semester abroad in Lomé, Togo, where she interned for the Political-Economic bureau at the US Embassy and led English conversation classes at the local university. On return, she interned for the US Chamber of Commerce’s Africa Business Center, as well as the State Department’s Africa Regional Media Hub. At Georgetown, she served as President of the African Society of Georgetown, and helped plan and conduct Georgetown’s second annual Africa Business Conference. She also wrote articles on business, democracy, and diplomacy in West Africa as a reporter for The Caravel, Georgetown’s only international affairs newspaper. Ibilola is excited about the opportunity to work with ASE in Benin, and looks forward to improving her French and learning more about Beninese life!

Edwina was born and raised in Ghana. She graduated from Stanford University in 2020 with a degree in Energy Resources Engineering and a minor in African Studies. She worked with energy companies in New York City developing community-generated clean energy solutions for the Long Island community, and with oil companies in Southern California where she developed solutions to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions from an oilfield. She explored her interest in service by working on self-designed projects with two Ghanaian NGOs – the West African AIDS Foundation (WAAF) where she designed and implemented a community intervention program to train Ghanaian high-school-aged youth as HIV/AIDS peer and Smartix Education where she developed a comprehensive sexual health education curriculum and teaching module for Ghanaian schools, through a fellowship from Stanford University. She is passionate about female empowerment and worked with Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research where she conducted research, analyzed data, and helped plan events. Through these academic and professional experiences, she explored the intersection of energy, health, and education. She speaks English, Asante Twi, Fante, French, Yoruba, Mandarin, and Igbo and enjoys cooking, building-watching, learning new languages, and reading African Science fiction books. As a young African, she is excited by the upsurge in youth-led innovation, service, and social activism across the continent and is eager to work with fellow African youth to contribute to the continent’s well-being and development, while cultivating meaningful relationships. Post fellowship, she hopes to pursue an MBA focusing on social impact on the African continent.

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Kanyinsola Oye is a recent graduate of Howard University, where she studied Political Science and History. Ms. Oye is also a freelance writer; she has written for Teen Vogue and Vogue. She uses her writing to explore the connection of politics to everyday life. Through her work, she implements her cultural background and how that plays a role in her future career goals. She is also the Founder & Executive Director of She Can Make A Difference, which teaches young girls the power of education and embracing their beauty. Recently, she visited her hometown Lagos, Nigeria, to hold a retreat regarding self-love to help young girls build their confidence. Secondly, Ms. Oye is a founder of an organization called CPDoutofCCS, calling for removing police surveillance in Columbus, Ohio, city schools. With her efforts, the district and the city were able to break a 1.5-million-dollar contract with the police and invest in counselors for students. Kanyinsola is a Cultural Sensitivity Reader and Trainer for primary and secondary education. She navigates creative and unique worldviews of young learners to engage them in lessons on history and politics effectively. Ms. Oye also works as a Youth Learning Associate at Columbus Library, providing academic support for students by assisting in the operation of after-school homework care. Lastly, Kanyinsola hopes that through her writing and dedication to the community she can influence students around her to pursue their dreams.