Fellow Bio:

Jen is a double major in French and International Relations from San Luis Obispo, CA. While at Scripps she played an active role in her campus’ Peace and Justice Coalition and FACE AIDS chapter, and helped organize and coordinate an on campus food rescue program. She studied abroad in Paris and has spent her summers working at The Carter Center and in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department. Jen is really excited about the opportunity to live in a francophone West African country and can’t wait to explore the region and meet new people.

Alumni Update:

Ida serves as VP, Strategic Planning for Railroad Development Corp., a family-owned railroad investment and management firm based in Pittsburgh, PA. She will be completing an Executive MBA at Columbia Business School this fall which has allowed her to split time between Pittsburgh and New York. Earlier this year, Ida joined the board of American Jewish World Service.

Fellow Bio:

Ida is a Civil and Environmental Engineering major from Pittsburgh, PA. At Princeton, she served on the board of the Center for Jewish Life, played club field hockey, and was member of the Tiger Inn. Ida earned a certificate in African Studies and spent the spring semester of her junior year studying abroad at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She is excited to travel around Kenya and East Africa, climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and learn some Swahili.

Alumni Update:

After her fellowship, Ida stayed in Ethiopia to work with a microfinance institution called the Amhara Credit and Savings Institution, which provides financial services to over one million productive poor in the Amhara region. She wrote the institution’s gender policy, including provisions for gender-responsive budgeting, gender mainstreaming in the provision of microfinance services, gender equitable staff recruitment and development, parental leave, and sexual harassment protocols. She also conducted an evaluation of the institution’s Youth Savings Program, primarily using surveys and client interviews. Upon returning to the U.S., she worked at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Division of Epidemiology, where she worked on a randomized controlled trial testing the effect of the timing of postpartum clinical visits on various postpartum health outcomes. Since June 2014, she has worked at Arabella Advisors, a philanthropy consulting firm, where she provides strategy, evaluation, and implementation consulting services to a wide range of institutional, family, and corporate clients, and specializes in the firm’s global philanthropy practice.

Fellow Bio:

Ida graduated with a major in Comparative Literature and Society and a concentration in Political Science. She is from Richmond, VA, and studied in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Peru during her undergraduate career. At Columbia, Ida provided consultations to assist low-income Harlem residents navigate government benefits systems as a volunteer with the Advocacy Coalition, and sang as a member of the Chamber Singers. She is an avid music lover, enjoys writing, and intends to be an advocate for social justice throughout her life. She looks forward to learning her heritage language, visiting relatives, making new friends, and eating delicious injera while in Ethiopia!

Fellow Bio:

Elizabeth is a Sociology major from Princeton, NJ. Before starting college, she took a year abroad devoting her time to several service projects in Southeast Asia and India. While at Princeton, she was on DICAB, Davis International Center Advisory Board, and worked in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of Firestone Library. Her summers were spent working at non-profits committed to helping refugees and immigrants, and alleviating housing instability in the United States. She wrote her thesis on housing insecurities of Hispanic immigrants, investigating the difference between first and subsequent generations. While in Senegal next year, Elizabeth looks forward to learning about food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa, brushing up on her French, and exploring a whole new continent.

Alumni Update:

David is a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State. Currently he is a Vice-Consul in Kinshasa, DRC.

Fellow Bio:

David is a government major from Irvington, NJ. At Harvard, he was president of the Harvard Haitian Alliance and a mentor to high school students in his hometown. He studied several African languages during his time at Harvard and enjoys listening to and collecting music in his free time. During his summers, he interned at the American embassy in Angola and worked for a bank in New York. While in Uganda next year, David looks forward to picking up a bit of the local language, exploring the country, and making new friends.

Alumni Update:

Dara wrapped up her PiAf year at the International Rescue Committee, Kenya in 2013. After a great month of travel in Kenya, she started at Dignitas, an education support organization focused on school leader and teacher development. As the Program Quality Manager, she gets the chance to think about how to improve their program evaluation and use data to gain new insights.

Fellow Bio:

Dara is a Chicagoan with lots of love for East Africa. While working toward a Bachelor’s in Anthropology she was able to spend over a year in Uganda studying and conducting research on social components of mental health and illness. After completing her degree she worked as Program Manager at Atanekontola (Uganda Mental Health Fellowship), and then returned to Chicago where she was a Youth Case Manager at Heartland Refugee and Immigrant Community Services. Living in Nairobi, Dara hopes to start a garden and ride every city matatu (bus) route at least once.

Alumni Update:

Fellow Bio:

Alumni Update:

Since his teaching fellowship at Maru a Pula, Christopher has continued to work in education. First, on the policy side as a senior aide to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in Boston, then as a manager in Education First’s (EF) non-profit arm running homestay programs for international students in the US. He currently works as the Assistant Director of Development and Alumni Relations at a small boarding and day school. Christopher always loves meeting up with other fellows and asks to please not be a stranger if you’re in the Boston area.

Fellow Bio:

Chris is an American history major from Middletown, Delaware. At Bates, he was his class representative to the President’s Advisory Committee, a council member of the Bates Outing Club, and organized a forum for students entering Bates after taking a “gap year”. Before studying at Bates, Chris took a year off and worked in the office of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Chris has also led commercial hiking trips for high school students in the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, the Tetons, New England, Tanzania, and studied abroad in East Africa. While in Botswana next year, Chris looks forward to teaching and learning in the Maru-a-Pula community, and many memorable adventures throughout southern Africa.

Alumni Update:

After 7 years of working for social enterprises across Africa, Chris has recently launched his own business, CoffeeChat, based in Mauritius. This online platform connects professionals, entrepreneurs and enterprises with coaches, experts and speakers from across Africa.

Fellow Bio:

Chris is an economics major from Baltimore, MD. At Occidental College, he managed a student-run coffee shop and served as the vice president of a six-figure student investment fund. During his summers, he travelled to Ghana to explore the complexity and potential of development. In 2010, this was through a Davis Project for Peace grant and then in 2011, he conducted field research into the impact of microfinance on traditional chieftaincy. As a Fellow with Olam in Gabon next year, Chris looks forward to learning how large corporations can pursue a social mission in Africa – and picking up French along the way!

Alumni Update:

Camille is currently living and working in New York City. She moved here directly following the conclusion of her fellowship and began working as an investigator at Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS), a progressive, holistic public defender’s office that defends low-income Brooklyn residents accused of crimes. Working as an investigator at BDS has opened her eyes to the serious defects of our criminal justice system, notably its cyclical nature. Public defense and prison reform here in the United States are two topics that will undoubtedly steer where she goes in the next few years.

Fellow Bio:

Camille is a French and History double major from Santa Barbara, CA. At the University of California at Los Angeles, she was the Director of Publicity for the Pediatric AIDS Coalition, the On-campus Coordinator for the NGO, Support for International Change, and a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She has earned honors for her writing by the UCLA Department of French and Francophone Studies in the form of the Martin Turrill Memorial Award for Best Essay. While at UCLA Camille studied abroad in Paris, France, and spent two consecutive summers interning in Paris – first at BNP Paribas, and then at Publicis Conseil. She also spent a year interning at the French American Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles. While in Senegal next year, Camille looks forward to tasting all of the West African cuisine, traveling all around West and North Africa, and meeting and working with what she is sure will be an incredible group of people.