Alumni Directory Display

Alumni Update:

Alex is currently a first-year MBA student at the Yale School of Management. She will be spending her summer interning at the Boston Consulting Group in Philadelphia.

Fellow Bio:

Alex is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame where she majored in Political Science and Peace Studies. Since graduating, Alex has worked as the Raise Hope for Congo Assistant Campaign Manager at The Enough Project, part of the Center for American Progress, in Washington D.C. She develops campaigns targeting both the U.S. government and major electronics companies that use the Democratic Republic of Congo’s minerals to address the root causes of conflict in eastern Congo. As a student, Alex studied in Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania, and most recently she traveled to the eastern Congo with Enough. In her free time, she plays soccer on two co-ed teams and likes to go on long bike rides around D.C. Alex is excited to explore West Africa and see first-hand how multinational companies can operate successfully and responsibly in Africa.

Alumni Update:

After her fellowship, Lisa took time off to backpack Thailand and Australia with some friends. She is now living in Washington, DC (her roommate is other former PiAfer!) working for Deloitte’s federal emerging markets practice, where she’s been focusing on capacity building and training development for USAID and its counterparts.

Fellow Bio:

Lisa is originally from San Diego, CA  and graduated with a B.A. in International Affairs. While at GWU, Lisa dedicated a year of service to the AmeriCorps Heads Up initiative, where she led literacy programs for a class of second graders in an inner-city Washington, D.C. elementary school. She also worked with Calcutta Kids, a maternal-child health NGO in Calcutta, India, designing behavior change communication curriculums to combat diarrheal disease among slum children. Upon graduating, Lisa returned to Calcutta to create and implement health training modules for Calcutta Kids’ team of community health workers. In her free time, Lisa enjoys doing yoga, taking naps and seeing live music. While in Gabon next year, Lisa is excited to live by the beach again, as well as learn how the for-profit businesses model can be adapted to incorporate social and environmental impact.

Alumni Update:

In the fall, Helena started a Masters of Public Health at the Harvard TH Chan School of Health. Her degree is in Environmental Health, with a focus on Climate and Sustainability.

Fellow Bio:

Helena is half-German, half-American and grew up moving around Europe. She graduated from Princeton University in 2016, where she majored in Anthropology and earned certificates in Latin American Studies and in Global Health and Health Policy. In her senior thesis, she studied the intersections between water, political belonging, and health in rural Peru. Her interest in the country stemmed from nine months spent in 2011-2012 working as a volunteer in Urubamba, Peru through Princeton’s Bridge Year Program, where she worked on projects related to community health and youth development. In 2014, Helena was selected as a Global Health Scholar by the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton, which allowed her to conduct her fieldwork for her senior thesis back in Urubamba. At Princeton, she was a peer academic adviser and was involved in student organizations related both to global health and student health. Helena spent a semester studying abroad in Santiago, Chile, and has interned for organizations in Colombia and Panama. She enjoys running, cooking, and traveling, and she cannot wait to hike the mountains around Maseru.  After her year in Lesotho, Helena intends to pursue a career in global health.

James graduated with a degree in Government and Legal Studies and is originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. He enjoys traveling, learning other languages, and outdoor activities like hiking and whitewater kayaking. At Bowdoin, he was on the rowing team and led a group of volunteer tutors who staff a study center at the Portland Housing Authority. He also had several major opportunities to travel and volunteer abroad, spending a summer teaching English and volunteering at a health clinic in Rwanda, 6 weeks spent as a kindergarten classroom assistant at Safe Passage in Guatemala City, and a semester in Lima, Peru studying and volunteering as a math tutor and leading a leadership workshop with disadvantaged urban youth at Building Dignity. While in Ethiopia next year, James looks forward to teaching Chemistry, learning Amharic, and getting involved with the health clinic at Project Mercy.

Caleigh ived with a host family in rural Budondo, Uganda and interned for a local Savings and Credit Co-op (SACCO) for eight weeks in 2013. During this time, she worked with three other interns to develop a short- and long-term income-generating project for SACCO members. She recently traveled back to Uganda to independently research small-scale entrepreneurs’ perceptions of aid organizations in Kampala and Jinja for 8 weeks as part of her honors thesis. Caleigh has also worked as a research assistant for the Eleos Foundation, an organization that invests in market-based solutions to poverty alleviation in Africa and Latin America as well as for the Center for Complex Operations (CCO), a government think tank where she worked as a Research and Editorial Assistant for the Africa edition of CCO’s premier security studies journal, PRISM. She then served as co-director of Northwestern University Community for Human Rights, one of the largest social justice organizations at Northwestern that organizes the largest student-run human rights conference in the country as well as various programming events, a Spring Break service trip, and a student-organized seminar. She rowed all four years for Northwestern Crew Team, an entirely student-run organization, and was elected on the Executive Board where she served as Transportation Chair, Varsity Women’s Team Captain, and President. Caleigh graduated from Northwestern University in June 2015 with a BA in Political Science and International Studies with a focus on International Political Economy and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Alumni Update:

Jessica is currently the Salesforce Administrator & Architect at the Heising-Simons Foundation in the Bay Area, where she leads technical design of the large foundation’s grantmaking platform. Outside of work, Jessica volunteers with the large-scale metal & fire sculptural group the Flaming Lotus Girls.

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.

Fellow Bio:

Liza Hillenbrand is originally from Summit, NJ and has lived in NYC since graduating from Princeton in 2004. Liza majored in politics, was pre-med, and had two certificates: one in French language and culture and another in European political studies. Liza was a member of TI, played varsity lacrosse all 4 years, was a volunteer EMT, and spent a gap year abroad living in London and Paris while at Princeton. Since graduating, she has worked in public finance investment banking at JPMorgan in NY, continued her volunteer EMT work, done a marathon and triathlon, and coached lacrosse to little kids. She will be working at BroadReach Health Care in Cape Town, South Africa.

Alumni Update:

Kaitlin is working at the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining as an Explosive Ordnance Risk Education Officer. Based in Geneva, she works at a global level (policy, coordination, capacity development) with periodic travel to mine-affected countries, especially in the Middle East.

Fellow Bio:

Kaitlin studied Government and African Studies, co-founded a student anti-genocide coalition and was awarded high honors for her thesis on the politics of classifying mass atrocities. In addition to her studies at Smith, Kaitlin participated in an experiential learning program on peace and conflict in East Africa and spent her junior year abroad in Geneva on Smith’s Advanced Program in International Relations and Development Studies. Kaitlin continued her education at the London School of Economics and Political Science, graduating in 2013 with a Master’s degree in comparative conflict studies. Her dissertation focused on explaining differences in patterns of conflict within two regions of the DRC. Having previously interned with Human Rights Watch and the International Centre for Migration, Health and Development, Kaitlin is excited to now learn about the unique challenges and rewards of working in the field. She is also looking forward to discovering Malawi’s countryside, learning to cook without perishable ingredients, and (hopefully) adopting an adorable furry friend.

Alumni Update:

Grace works at USAID as a Relationship Manager for the Development Credit Authority, where she builds and strengthens partnerships with private financial institutions in six countries in Africa. She currently lives in Washington, DC but will soon relocate to Abuja, Nigeria.

Fellow Bio:

Grace (Princeton ‘11) majored in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs with a certificate in African Studies. She originally hails from Livingston, NJ. While at Princeton, she worked behind the scenes on theater productions, served as Business Manager of Princeton University Players, and was a member of Princeton Tower Club. She is excited to return to the African continent after studying abroad at the University of Cape Town. She can’t wait to explore Ghana and learn everything she can about the African cashew industry, which will hopefully include many tasty samples.