Alumni Directory Display

Amity Weiss ‘07 is a politics major with a certificate in African studies from Ithaca, New York. During her PiAf fellowship year, she will be working to develop programs for the opening office of Plan Rwanda. (Plan is an international child and community development non-governmental organization.) While at Princeton she was a cadet for three years in the Reserve Officers Training Corps, where she learned how to do night land navigation, handle an M-16, and interact with people of different political and social backgrounds. She also served on the board of the Global Issues Forum and as the co-chair of the Princeton Darfur Action Committee. During her summers as a Princeton student, Amity worked with a local community-based refugee organization in Cape Town, South Africa; worked with the International Rescue Committee in Uganda; and did thesis research in Malawi. Her interest in Africa stems from her fascination with African politics and culture and how this forces her to confront ingrained biases about the continent on a daily basis. She also, totally randomly, is a certified aerobics instructor. Over the next year she hopes to learn about how international NGO programming is developed through her work with Plan and to connect with some of the Rwandan refugees she worked with in Cape Town that have since returned.

Alumni Update:

Keiana is currently a Justice Fellow at the Equal Justice Initiative where she advances public history work surrounding our nation’s history of racial injustice, facilitates community organizing around the country, and assists with legal intake. 

Fellow Bio:

Keiana graduated from Williams College with a BA in Psychology and a minor in Africana Studies. Throughout her undergraduate experience, she was deeply engaged with community organizing and education research in her hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. She co-directed an organization called Converging Worlds focused on combating injustices in the prison system, and this allowed her to develop community programs, organize panels, and create a magazine to facilitate relationships between activism on campus and in the surrounding communities. As an Allison Davis Research Fellow, Keiana received two years of funding to conduct independent, faculty mentored research including the effects of race and gender on perceptions of high school students’ behavior and psychological support for behavioral concerns. She also studied abroad in Durban, South Africa, where she had the opportunity to study social and political transformation in the country and to conduct a mixed-methods evaluation of a diversion program offered by the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Reintegration of Offenders. The following summer, she completed a research internship at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she analyzed data and co-authored a pending publication on health interventions in Black churches. In the summer leading up to her fellowship, she and a peer were awarded the Davis Projects for Peace Grant to coordinate a social justice mentoring program with middle school students in Pittsfield. She is thrilled to continue her love for applied education research and non-profit work in Johannesburg

Fellow Bio:

A member of the Class of 2007, Katie White is a history major from Chatham, NJ. She will spend her fellowship year in Dakar, Senegal, working with the United Nations Population Fund in its regional advisory office. Katie has traveled during her last two summers to Cape Town, South Africa, where she studied human rights related issues and researched her senior thesis. At Princeton, she earned a certificate in African studies and was a member of the Cottage Club. A summer internship at the Clinton Foundation in New York gave Katie insight into private sector development work, and she is eager to learn more about an international development agency’s approach.

Alumni Update:

Bjorn recently completed his Master’s degree in International Affairs with concentrations in migration, diplomacy, and human rights at Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs. He is currently working as a consultant for international organizations in the fields of human rights, political reporting, and impact evaluation. He splits his time between Europe and New York.

Fellow Bio:

Bjorn, originally from Ithaca, NY, majored in Human Evolutionary Biology with a minor in French. While at Harvard he also conducted research on human development and completed a senior thesis on the evolution of aggression. He was also involved with the Cultural Survival campaign at Harvard where he campaigned against human rights violations against indigenous people in Ecuador. In Burundi he will be working with returning refugees, both establishing their livelihoods and ensuring the needs of the locals are met. He looks forward to working closely with Burundians, learning about their country, and looking for adventure in his travels around Africa.

Born in Nagasaki, Japan, Kelsie split her childhood almost equally between Japan and New Jersey; but having spent the last seven years in Washington, DC, the District now feels like home. Kelsie graduated from Georgetown University in 2012 with a BSFS focusing in Global Health. Outside of the classroom, she volunteered as an EMT with Georgetown´s student-run ambulance service and served as Executive Director of the world´s largest student-run Model UN conference. After graduation, Kelsie served as an AmeriCorps volunteer in a medical clinic for homeless men and worked as a federal consultant assisting with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. She is currently living in Chile, teaching English at a public high school through an initiative conceived by the Chilean Ministry of Education and supported by the UNDP. Kelsie is passionate about access to health care, health education, and education as a tool for poverty eradication. She is also passionate about baking, music, sunshine, quotes, crafting, and hiking. She is very grateful and excited for the opportunity to further explore her interests while serving as a Princeton in Africa Fellow, and she can´t wait for the adventures, learning, and new friends that await her in Tanzania!

Fellow Bio:

Allison Williams is an ecology and evolutionary biology major from Mt. Laurel, NJ. At Princeton, she focused her senior thesis research on the behavior and physiology of yellow baboons in Kenya and worked in the Altmann hormone lab analyzing stress hormones. Allison enjoys playing soccer and played for the university on the varsity and club teams. She also tutored children through several university programs and is a member of the Cottage Club. In Kenya next year, Allison looks forward to the research and work she will take part in at the Mpala Research Center and learning the local languages, eating the local food, and interacting with the people.

Alumni Update:

Claire is a third-year law student at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, where she has been able to further explore the intersections of health, law, and human rights that she saw during her fellowship year in Tanzania.

Fellow Bio:

Claire is from Richmond, VA and graduated from the University of Virginia (UVA) in 2015 with a degree in Foreign Affairs and French. While at UVA, she worked to facilitate dialogue around social, economic, and political issues as a Sustained Dialogue leader and group moderator and to promote interdisciplinary engagement in global public health issues as a student advisor at the UVA Center for Global Health. After graduating, Claire partnered with local agricultural cooperatives in rural, southwestern Rwanda to conduct research on gender equity as a UVA Center for Global Health Scholar. Following her return from Rwanda, she gained program management experience through her position on the Central and West Africa team at the National Democratic Institute, where she enjoyed supporting democracy development programs in Guinea, Niger, the DRC, Nigeria, and Ghana and having the opportunity to collaborate in French and English with her West African colleagues to solve programmatic challenges. Claire is excited to pursue her interest in the intersections of health equity, governance, and development through her position with CCBRT. She loves running, hiking, skiing, and cooking, and can’t wait to further explore East Africa and to work on her Swahili!

Fellow Bio:

Whitney is a Woodrow Wilson School major from New York City. She also earned certificates in both Portuguese and Latin American studies. While at Princeton, Whitney sang with the Katzenjammers and campaigned against sexual assault as a member of both Speak Out and SHARE. During her summer breaks, Whitney worked with the International Media Agency, Media Vest Worldwide, and studied in Brazil twice. She also spent the spring semester of her junior year in Cape Town, South Africa. Whitney is so excited to spend a year in Lesotho, where she looks forward to gaining a wealth of practical public health experience.

Alumni Update:

Elizabeth has been a Research Associate with the UNDP Independent Evaluation Office since September 2018. Recently she had the pleasure of returning to her PiAf host country (Uganda) to assist with the country program evaluation of UNDP Uganda.

Fellow Bio:

Prior to her Princeton in Africa fellowship, Elizabeth worked as a Program Officer for HIAS, an international refugee protection NGO, where she assisted with refugee assistance programs in East Africa, Chad and Latin America and deepened her interest in issues of global migration, displacement, and integration. Previously, she worked in communications for POV, an independent documentary series on PBS which puts a human face on contemporary social issues. Elizabeth is a graduate of Wesleyan University, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history and French Studies, focusing on issues of gender, race and identity during the colonial and post-colonial era. As an undergraduate she spent two semesters in Paris. A native of New York, she loves to travel, read and try new foods. For the next year in Kampala, she is looking forward to enjoying the legendary Ugandan hospitality, exploring the continent, and contributing to IRC’s work helping refugees go from “harm to home.”