Alumni Directory Display

Metasebiya is a global health trainee who is passionate about public health research, community service, and cross-cultural engagement. Metasebiya holds a dual degree from Duke University and Duke Kunshan University in Global Health and Biology. In her home country, Ethiopia, Metasebiya regularly volunteers at the Southern Branch of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society and was part of the emergency response team, assisting their disaster aid relief for internally displaced people and their COVID-19 outreach program. She also led the Ethiopian wing of a Columbia University global study on the globalizability of temporal discounting and the association between financial decision making and economic inequality. For her capstone thesis, she is conducting mixed-method research on the coping strategies of and the mental distress among people displaced by conflict in the Konso zone of Ethiopia, for which she received two institutional grants. In her home university, Duke Kunshan, Metasebiya serves as a resident assistant, building a multinational community of students and providing mentorship and support. She works as a lead teacher for the Medical English Program, a student-led initiative in China that helps medical doctors practice English. She also worked as an intern in her home university’s Global Health Research Center where she researched non-communicable diseases and aging in China. As a research assistant at her university’s Health Values Lab, she researches metrics used to quantify health, their empirical shortcomings and the ethical issues associated with using them to guide health policies.

Fellow Bio:

Sarah is an alumnus from Swarthmore College who special majors in African Studies and minors in Environmental Science. She is from Cape Cod, but has always had a deep love for Africa. She studied abroad in Kenya with the School for Field Studies and later in Ghana through NYU. Sarah joined the Peace Corps in Cameroon after graduating in 2007. In Cameroon, she lived in a remote rainforest village promoting sustainable agricultural development and teaching English at the local high school. After completing  her service, Sarah came home to the US where she ate a great deal of cheese, enjoyed hot showers and worked as a field operations supervisor for the census while planning her return trip to the C.A.R.

Alumni Update:

Lauren is currently a Behavioral Science Consultant with the World Bank’s Mind, Behavior and Development Unit and Gender Digital Advocacy Consultant with Save the Children US. In 2020, she graduated from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she was a fellow with the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflict.

Fellow Bio:

Lauren is a recent graduate from Northwestern University and originally from Stamford, Connecticut. While at Northwestern, she majored in journalism, minored in sociology and completed a Certificate in Civic Engagement. She also reported from refugee camps in Malawi and Jordan, worked as an investigative reporting intern, and helped to found a leadership workshop for high school students. She spent three months working at a newspaper in Cape Town, South Africa in 2012, returned a year later on a research grant and has also worked in non-profit communications, specifically related to education and humanitarian aid. While in Uganda, she is excited to tell stories, get to know a new community and explore the world of international development.

Alumni Update:

Zach recently wrapped up an accelerated masters degree through the University of Chicago MAPSS program, during which he focused on cultural, moral, and evolutionary psychology and wrote a thesis reviewing psychological frameworks on global variation in nepotism. He is currently training for a two year teaching residency at a charter school in Chicago called the Great Lakes Academy. He will be teaching middle school sciences while taking coursework through the Relay School of Graduate Education, hoping to receive his teaching certification and MA in teaching within two years.

Fellow Bio:

Zach is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California where he completed his degree in Environmental Studies with a minor in Psychology in May of 2017. His time at USC was spent directing the Environmental Core student advocacy group as it worked to green USC’s campus, leading meditations as a Mindful USC Student Leader, and coordinating adventures with USC students and professors via Peaks & Professors. Zach is always hungry for interesting perspectives on complex and urgent social issues and got a glimpse of the many questions surrounding development in Africa while studying abroad at the University of Cape Town in 2016. He has combined his studies in the environment and psychology through a research position in the interdisciplinary field of conservation psychology, and believes there’s good reason to think that our ability to handle the global problems of the 21st century will start with the way we relate to our local communities. Zach is excited to fill a role in the Kasiisi Project’s conservation education programs and can’t wait to have everything he thinks he knows turned upside-down.

Alumni Update:

Following his fellowship, Case completed a master’s degree at the University of Oxford, where he focused on healthcare development in South Sudan. He then returned home to Texas to start medical school at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, from which he expects to graduate in 2016.

Fellow Bio:

A proud native Texan, Case hails from Dallas.  A major in both History and African Studies, Case pursued his strong interest in African politics at Northwestern University.  In addition to his enthusiasm for politics and history, Case also is interested in medicine, especially surgery.  Combining his interests in seemingly unrelated disciplines, Case has attempted to learn as much as possible about regimes, political systems, and conflict while working or conducting research in the medical field on numerous trips to Africa.  Very interested in international relations, current events, and traveling, Case worked extensively at Northwestern with Alternative Student Breaks, a student-run group that organizes domestic and international service-learning trips during school breaks.  Case also particularly enjoys backpacking, skiing, and other outdoor activities.  While in South Sudan next year, Case looks forward to learning more about Sudan’s political situation, witnessing the implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and South Sudan’s referendum for independence, and working in the healthcare sector.

she/her/hers

Isabel Masawi is graduating from Agnes Scott College, in May 2024, with a B.S. in Physics, a B.A. in Mathematics, and a minor in The Foundations of Artificial Intelligence. Isabel was born and raised in Zimbabwe. Before the PiAf fellowship, Isabel also worked with Metis, an organization specializing in training leaders in education, under the ALforEducation apprenticeship. Isabel is passionate about education beyond the classroom, teaching younger children skills like programming, electronics, and robotics and about Africa’s technological and economic development. At Agnes Scott, she competed in intercollegiate soccer and made the list of all academic honors for three years in a row. She is an Omicron Delta Kappa National Honor Society member and a Tri-Alpha (AAA) National Honor Society member for first-generation college students. In the future, Isabel’s goal is to pursue a graduate degree in engineering and establish a technological and industrial presence in Zimbabwe or Africa, that speaks out for the youth, empowers them, and develops their talents inside and outside the classroom as she believes it is imperative to create a platform that introduces young people to problem-solving skills and engineering for those who would want to pursue the discipline.

Sarah Mathys is a graduate of Georgetown University, where she majored in Anthropology and minored in Government and African Studies. Sarah has worked and studied across East Africa, and is interested in the intersections of spirituality, healing systems, and development work. She spent the spring of 2018 conducting independent qualitative research on the influence of religion on family planning decisions in eastern Uganda, and collected data which informed her honors thesis on the engagement between American FBOs and Ugandan communities. She has honed her project management and monitoring and evaluation skills through internships with The Carter Center, The Baker Trust for Transformational Learning, and now, a Monitoring & Evaluation fellowship with the Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project. In her spare time, she enjoys live music, contemporary art, and trying out new recipes.

Mackenzie, (Tulane ’18) graduated from Tulane University with a double major in Sociology and International Development and a minor in Spanish. She grew up in Los Angeles, CA. Although she loves New Orleans and Louisiana, her passion for travel and global development started at a young age with visits to her grandparents and family in the Philippines. She studied abroad in Argentina, where she backpacked around the country and lived with a host family. While there, she worked at a nonprofit where she tutored teens and completed research on teen pregnancy prevention. In addition, Mackenzie interned with the United Nations’ World Food Programme in Yangon, Myanmar, where she was responsible for communications, reporting, and liaising with donors for Maternal Child Nutrition initiatives. On Tulane’s campus, she has been a part of Sexual Aggression Peer Hotline and Education. She worked on a hotline for survivors, creating programming for students and advocating for cultural and legislative change around sexual violence. Mackenzie also served as a Public Health intern for the New Orleans Children’s Hospital, collaborating with the government on initiatives to combat infant mortality. She aims to work in the international development and global public health field, reducing disparities in maternal-child health and preventing sexual violence.  

Beverley was a Political Science and French double-major at Wellesley College and is originally from Lagos, Nigeria (by way of London, England). While an undergraduate she interned in Cape Town, South Africa for an NGO promoting discussions around democracy, and also interned at the Research Center of the National Parliament of East Timor. After graduation she went to law school, spending the next three years at George Washington University studying international law and participating in the law school’s international human rights clinic. She loves languages, travel, and food, and can’t wait to learn Amharic, travel throughout Ethiopia and eat lots of injera!