Danielle graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015 with majors in Global Studies (concentration: International Politics and Social Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa) and Sociology and a minor in Public Policy. Danielle is a writer and activist and her undergraduate experiences include work with the U.S. State Department Bureau for African Affairs, summer research and internships in Busia, Uganda and Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and leadership roles in the Washington, D.C. based human rights advocacy organizations STAND and the Enough Project. Danielle completed her senior honors thesis on the United Nations peacekeeping force in eastern DRC (MONUSCO), evaluating the mission’s ability to fulfill its mandate to protect Congolese civilians in the province of South Kivu. While at Carolina, Danielle published blog posts through STAND, Mamafrica Designs, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Enough Project, each examining the economic dimensions of ongoing conflict in the Great Lakes region of Africa. While working as a Communications Fellow for Gardens for Health International in Rwanda, Danielle hopes to learn Kinyarwanda, improve her Kiswahili and French, do a lot of hiking and gorilla trekking, and improve her photography skills.

Danielle graduated from Princeton University in 2015 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She spent three months in the spring of 2014 doing a Princeton field study abroad program in Panama. Here she was taught how to formally conduct research. In this program, students had to design their own field projects, collect data and write formal, journal worthy scientific papers all within two weeks. She completed her thesis on prevalence of Angiostrongylus catonensis in Jamaica. This is a parasite in snails that causes eosinophilic meningitis in humans. She modelled the life cycle of this disease, taking into different environmental factors and running simulations. On campus, Danielle served as the Vice President for Rural Health Activism in a club called Tropical Clinics Rural Health. This club worked in connection with a clinic in the rural Kakamega region of Kenya. Her job was to organize events on campus that educated attendees about rural health issues. She led documentary screenings, group discussions and talks about the topic. She also organized dinner discussions with guest speakers and displays on campus. She was also a public health intern at the Blue Mountain Project in Jamaica. Here, she volunteered at a clinic and conducted surveys, which were compiled into a brief report with statistical analysis to determine the direction of the clinic. She also had experience organizing activities for the youth club, including the early planning of a talent show.

Charnelle is from Yaounde, Cameroon and graduated from Macalester College in May 2015 with degrees in International Studies and Political Science. Charnelle’s key interests are in African development, women’s issues and youth affairs. She left Cameroon at the age of ten and has lived in Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. As the recipient of Macalester’s Chuck Green Fellowship, she partnered with Lutheran Social Service where she developed and implemented a new refugee resettlement program, providing extended case management for new Congolese arrivals to Minnesota. During her junior year she studied abroad in Rwanda where she conducted research on sustainable poverty reduction within female coffee farmers. Charnelle has also worked with Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA) in Uganda, focusing on women leadership initiatives. While in Uganda, Charnelle looks forward to returning to her favorite restaurants in Kampala and discovering other parts of East Africa.

Cameron graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Molecular Biology and a certificate in Neuroscience. Her senior thesis research involved conducting stereotaxic neurosurgery on rats to determine a pathway possibly involved in decision making. She volunteered as an EMT at Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad and has been a member of the squad since 2012. Her other primary activity on campus is the Student Global AIDS Campaign, a club that focuses on raising funds and awareness about HIV/AIDS in the student population and the surrounding community. She has also had the opportunity to take her interest in HIV/AIDS abroad through her internship at UNESCO’s Health Promotion Unit in Bangkok, Thailand where she analyzed national action plans and epidemiological data from countries in the Asia Pacific. In the summer of 2012, she interned as a clinical research assistant at UChicago Medical Center for CPR research where she aided in planning initial testing of an application measuring mental awareness in cardiac arrest patients. She has also had the opportunity to view the medical field from a biotechnology perspective through her internship in 2011 at Philips Medical Systems in their AED development unit.

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.

Anthony was born in raised in Chandler, Arizona. He graduated Magna cum Laude from The University of Arizona with a double-major Bachelor’s Degree in East Asian Studies and Economics. His studies took him to China, where he lived in both giant metropolises and rural villages and grew fluent in Mandarin Chinese. One of his trips was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship. Anthony interned with the Congressional Office of Gabrielle Giffords and Arizona Students’ Association in Tucson and International Rescue Committee in Phoenix. He managed to pay the rent and have a lot of fun by working all across the U of A and serving as an Arizona Ambassador campus tour guide. After graduating he spent a year studying in Nanjing, China and completed an internship with the DoS’s Greening Diplomacy Initiative. Anthony then moved to Washington, DC to work with the DoS’s Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement and later USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance. Anthony is excited to dive head on into learning about private sector development practices while working as a Junior Consultant with Imani Development in Malawi. He is especially interested to learn how responsible trade contributes to economic development.

Anya is a recent Princeton University graduate. She majored in the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs with a certificate in Creative Writing. She wrote two theses—one an analysis of the history of IMF activity in Grenada and Jamaica, and the other a short story collection of Caribbean folktales re-imagined in the present. Her interest in racial and ethnic identities took her to Italy and Poland, where she participated in a seminar that allowed her to study these identities in global and historical contexts. These interests later inspired her to study in South Africa in her Junior Spring, where she took classes at the University of Cape Town and participated in a task force along with other Princeton students. Her junior paper completed as part of that task force discussed the provision of extra-curricular activities by NGOs as alternatives to gang violence in township communities in South Africa. In her spare time at UCT, she was a Tutor at SHAWCO Education in Kensington Township, teaching weekly English lessons to sixth-graders. She spent the summer after her Junior Year as an intern at Jubilee USA in Washington DC, where she was able to explore her interest in the debt crisis in many African countries due to odious debt agreements, illicit financial flows, and Vulture Fund activity. She is looking forward to returning to Southern Africa and to teaching, and is beyond excited that Princeton-in-Africa is giving her the opportunity to do so. She’s especially excited to learn about Botswana’s History and Geography as part of her teaching post at Maru-a-Pula. She isn’t that familiar with it yet, but is certainly up for the challenge!

Anna is a graduate of Georgia State University where she majored in Journalism and Public Relations. Since graduating, she has interned and worked for a variety of nonprofits in the areas of fundraising, development, and special events. She has traveled to Istanbul where she studied international business and media and produced a short film on corporate social responsibility projects in Turkey. Anna was the recipient of Georgia State’s Presidential Scholarship and she spent a semester studying abroad in Limerick, Ireland. In college, Anna was active with Alternative Spring Break where she volunteered with several international non-profits, and she is an active volunteer at a local animal shelter where she tries hard not to bring home every dog she meets.  Anna is excited to travel to South Africa for the first time, explore Cape Town, and learn more about international development and public health.

Alumni Update:

Alex is currently a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he is pursuing a Masters in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID). Previously, he worked as a research fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development, and as a consultant for the World Bank in Uganda.

Fellow Bio:

Alex is from Chicago, Illinois and majored in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences, Economics, and International Studies at Northwestern University. He also received a philosophy certificate as a member of the Brady Scholars Ethics Program.  At Northwestern, he worked to develop financial literacy curriculums as programming director of his Moneythink chapter, helped devise a business model for a pilot transitional housing program for homeless youth, and worked with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. He studied abroad for a semester in Seville, Spain, where he gained fluency in Spanish, interned as an English Teaching Assistant, and taught computer literacy workshops to vulnerable populations. He also spent a summer interning for the Foundation for Sustainable Development in Jinja, Uganda, where he implemented a sustainable income-generating project in his village. Last summer, he conducted research on the globalization of the telecommunications industry in Africa, and as a senior, he wrote an honors thesis titled “Trade Liberalization, Volatility, and Crop Choice in East Africa.” Alex is incredibly humbled for the opportunity to serve as a Fellow with The BOMA Project, and can’t wait to learn Swahili, integrate into the local Kenyan culture, and enjoy the natural beauty of the country.

Akinyi Ochieng started her professional journey working with fast-growing innovators like Nova Credit and WorldRemit to design programs, initiatives and campaigns to advance economic mobility. After several years in the financial services industry, she joined APCO as a social impact consultant to help organizations align profit and purpose.

Akinyi is currently a senior associate director at APCO in New York where she works with leading corporations, foundations and nonprofits within North America, Europe and the Middle East, to improve and advance their social impact in the world. She has worked across various sectors such as technology, entertainment, financial services, consumer goods and education.

She holds a deep expertise in economic development and food security in Africa, with a successful track record of mobilizing multi-million-dollar public-private partnerships to accelerate sustainable business practices in the region. Her insights on business, culture, and politics in Africa have been featured in Forbes, CNBC, BBC, African Business Magazine and the World Economic Forum. She has continued her pursuit of sustaining and developing the African continent and its resources by serving as Board Chair of SOS Sahel USA and a Trustee of Operation Fistula, organizations that have proven to be dedicated to food security and maternal health in Africa. In 2019, she was named one of the 100 Most Influential People of African Descent under 40 . She has previously served as a co-president of the inaugural PiAf Alumni Board and was a Fellow at Global Shea Alliance in Accra, Ghana during her time as a Princeton in Africa Fellow.

Akinyi holds an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science and African Studies from Yale University. She also holds a certificate in Strategic Philanthropy from the University of Cambridge’s Judge School of Business.