Hailing from a small, Midwest town, Udita graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Anthropology and Global Health Studies. Her passion in for “glocal” health has led her to have meaningful experiences both domestically and globally. She spent two summers in both Tanzania and Uganda where she had the opportunity to conduct community-based research and learn more about the health infrastructures in both countries. While at Northwestern, she co-founded and ran a community engagement organization called NU Community Health Corps, that aims to empower individuals to take ownership of their own health and wellbeing. Through NUCHC, she launched the HIRCULES Health Hub, which are health information desks focused on connecting community members to qualified health information and resources. She also served as a Partnerships Fellow at the GlobeMed Global Headquarters where she works closely to manage the 56 global partnerships between undergraduate chapters and grass-root organizations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Udita is extremely excited to be returning to Tanzania and working Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative this upcoming year!

Priscilla Takondwa, from Malawi, graduated from Smith College with a BA in African Studies and the Study of Women and Gender. At Smith, she served as President of the African and Caribbean Students’ Association for 2 years and was an inaugural recipient of the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network Scholarship. She is a published author and founder of an educative children’s book series called The Ekari Book Series, for which she won the OZY Media Genius Awards and the Draper Competition for Collegiate Women Entrepreneurs. She was also selected as one of the Hilliard P. Jenkins Fellows at Frontline Solutions, a consulting firm in Washington DC that engages young leaders interested in the intersection of social justice, entrepreneurship, and consulting. She has spoken at several conferences, including The Economist Africa Summit and The African Leadership Network and the AGCO Africa Summit. Recently, she received a TED Global Emerging Leader Scholarship to attend the TEDGlobal gathering. For three years, she contributed to the Huffington Post and her articles have been featured in Ayiba Magazine, which strives to break down African stereotypes and amplify African stories. Priscilla is an alumna of Watson University (’14) and the African Leadership Academy (’13). She enjoys reading, podcasts, and lengthy conversations about postcolonial theory. Priscilla’s PiAf placement is with the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

Tabitha graduated from Princeton University with an Ecology and Evolutionary Biology major and a Korean Language and Culture minor. She is originally from Nungua, Ghana but grew up in New Jersey and speaks Ga, Spanish, Korean, and English. Broadly, she is interested in access to healthcare and education. While at Princeton, she served as an Advising Fellow and Head Advising Fellow for a non-profit called Matriculate where she coached high-achieving low-income and first generation high school seniors through the college application process. She has also volunteered at JFK Medical Center and shadowed at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. Tabitha is also interested in the effects of environmental toxins on health and completed a Senior Thesis about the role that mercury exposure can play on gene expression. She is very excited about her work as a Program and Operations Fellow at Young 1ove in Botswana where she can put to use her interests in healthcare and access to education while also learning about Setswana language and culture!

Alumni Update:

Stephanie is continuing to work at Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) as a Program Manager for the Pediatric HIV and Elimination of Mother to Child Transmission team. Her work focuses on working in close collaboration and partnership with ministries of health to accelerate HIV treatment and care scale up for pediatrics and adolescents in Africa. She splits her time between Boston and East and Southern Africa.

Fellow Bio:

Stephanie graduated from Yale University in 2016 with a degree in global affairs, concentrating in international development and global health. She graduated from the Yale School of Public Health in 2017 with a Master of Public Health degree in health policy and global health as part of Yale’s five-year BA/MPH joint degree program. Stephanie’s academic studies have focused primarily on health systems strengthening and access to medicines in both the US and global contexts. She worked with the Clinton Health Access Initiative during her senior year of college to advise health workforce management and capacity building in Liberia. Stephanie conducted health policy work for Iona Senior Services, a long-term care nonprofit, and Atlas Research, a federal healthcare-consulting firm, in Washington, D.C. During the summer of 2016, Stephanie interned with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance in Geneva, Switzerland to help evaluate Gavi’s tailored approach to providing vaccines and health systems strengthening support in unstable or challenging environments. Stephanie enjoys running, cooking, and singing a cappella. She will be working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Mbabane and is excited to learn first-hand about health financing in Swaziland, learn about a new culture, and explore the beautiful landscapes.

Sofia graduated from Yale University in 2018, majoring in Environmental Studies with a concentration in in Urban Environment. Throughout university, she was heavily involved with the Yale Refugee Project. Raised in Mbabane, Sofia attended Waterford Kamhlaba UWC. In university, she maintained strong ties to the African continent, returning to work at the Wonder Workshop arts studio in Dar es Salaam, and later as an international volunteer and backhandler at Cheetah Outreach in Cape Town. During her junior year, Sofia studied as an exchange student at Université Paris IV: La Sorbonne, and was granted fellowship funding to return  to Paris the following year to pursue an independent urban studies research project using GIS and interviewing refugees and asylum seekers about urban green space. Sofia has also worked for MAD/Yale Leadership Summit and for the Louisville city government’s Office of Performance Improvement and Innovation. Sofia is passionate about making cities more accessible to marginalized groups.

Alumni Update:

In Fall 2019, Sofia began a Masters in Teaching at the University of Chicago as a part of the Urban Teachers Education Program (UTEP). During her fellowship year, she had the opportunity to focus on school management at the primary level and she is thrilled to have the opportunity to focus on educational equity in the United States over the next five years.

Fellow Bio:

Sofía, a native of Chicago, graduated from New York University, Abu Dhabi with a double major in Theater and Political Science with a concentration in Social Research & Public Policy. Sofia completed her final two years of high school at the United World College of Southern Africa. During her time at NYUAD, Sofia co-founded the Girls’ Education Network (GEN), a leadership development program for middle and high school girls in Abu Dhabi. Throughout her undergraduate career, Sofia held a variety of internships related to education, public service, and human rights. She has interned at the Human Rights Advocacy Centre in Accra, Ghana. At NYUAD, Sofia worked in the Office of Community Outreach and Office of Spiritual Life and Intercultural Education. Sofia has received numerous awards including the Associate Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence, NYU President’s Service Award, NYUAD’s Campus Life Community Service Award, and the Dalai Lama Fellowship. She is firmly committed to her values of empathy, humility, and hard work and believes that the first step when entering a new community is to listen.

Satya, a Los Angeles native, graduated from Yale University earning  a B.A in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Energy Studies. Her academic work focused on resource use and sustainability, and during her time at Yale, she traveled extensively to explore her interests. Sachi spent one summer in Costa Rica studying sustainable development and another in Istanbul, Turkey interning with an energy investment firm where she conducted research to inform the development of their first biomass plant. She also spent a semester in Copenhagen, Denmark studying sustainable design and renewable energy systems. After graduating, she joined the Market Intelligence and Strategy team at Vestas, a global wind power company. There, motivated by her passion for climate change mitigation, she has worked to understand the drivers of renewable energy demand, analyze challenges the industry faces, and help customers and utilities identify opportunities to increase wind power deployment. In her free time, Sachi loves hiking and camping, seeing live music, and spending time near the ocean. She’s excited to spend the year in Nairobi pursuing her interests in the intersection of business and social/environmental impact, and to explore the outdoors in East Africa!

Alumni Update:

After earning an Ed.M. degree in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Sarah returned to her fellowship organization to work remotely as a Program Manager. She is delighted to be back on the team at ASE!

Fellow Bio:

Raised in Seattle, Sarah Pollnow graduated as the Middlebury College class of 2014 Salutatorian with Highest Honors in History and an award-winning thesis. A lover of languages, she minored in French and spent a semester studying in Bordeaux. She also earned a minor in Secondary Education en route to becoming a state-certified Social Studies teacher in 2015. During the summers, she pursued teaching opportunities in Kentucky and Massachusetts. After graduation, Sarah continued exploring U.S. education while touring nationwide as a National History Bee intern. She then moved to Germany to serve as a 2015-2016 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. In her free time there, she assisted with a youth theater project based on local history, volunteered with refugees, and studied at the Technische Universität Berlin. Her passion for teaching next led her to Japan for a year as a JET Program Assistant Language Teacher, during which she developed curricular resources with the support of a grant from USJETAA and U.S. Embassy Tokyo. She is excited to immerse herself in Beninese culture and grow as a professional this year at the African School of Economics.

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.

Samantha Mendoza graduated from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas with a degree in English Writing & Rhetoric and minors in English Literature and Global Studies. She mentored students through leadership development programs and writing courses, and as student Body President, she co-founded a program that raised awareness about college sexual assault. She spent a summer studying Peace and Conflict in Uganda and Rwanda, and another summer leading a group of students to volunteer at the an orphanage for HIV-positive youth in Capetown, South Africa. Samantha then earned a prestigious Fulbright fellowship to teach middle-school English in South India. She spent her weekends mentoring high school students through the college application process and taking a 6-hour train to volunteer at a non-profit in Bangalore. Samantha has just completed a Master’s program in Magazine, Newspaper, and Online Journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications to pursue her goal of becoming an international journalist. She currently reports on community issues in Syracuse, New York, and writes about women’s rights, feminism, and politics for a national audience. She will spend the summer interning at NBC Studios before moving to Monduli, Tanzania for a one-year role as the Scholarship and Communications Coordinator at the Indigenous Education Foundation of Tanzania.