Haja is from Freetown, Sierra Leone. She attended United World College, Red Cross Nordic from 2015 to 2017 where she transitioned to Skidmore College New York to complete her Bachelor of Arts Degree in environmental studies. Haja will be working with EL-KOONY Center in Kitale Kenya, as a Communications and Marketing Fellow. Haja is very interested in the field of development and looks forward to gaining new skills while learning Swahili. Moreover, she is very excited to learn more about issues affecting women, especially period poverty to see how best she can improve and expand her social enterprise, uman4uman, a Sierra Leonean-based business that produces reusable sanitary pads for women and girls.

Janhavi was born and raised in India and graduated from The George Washington University (GWU) with a master’s in international affairs in 2018. During her graduate study, she worked with Search for Common Ground (SFCG) in Yangon, Myanmar for a summer, supporting research and advocacy efforts for peacebuilding programs in the country. Janhavi credits this experience with propelling her into the world of international relief and development and has since conducted research on youth civic engagement in Myanmar in partnership with the US Agency for International Development (USAID). She has also consolidated refugee resettlement casework from Uganda for submission to the US and Canada with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and analysed US and UN policy frameworks for humanitarian access and assistance in Yemen, Syria and South Sudan at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Additionally, through an internship at the International Peace Institute (IPI), she supported research efforts focused on Protection of Civilians (POC) mandates in UN peacekeeping missions and the effects of sanctions regimes on humanitarian action. Janhavi drew from these experiences in informing her approach to her most recent role as well, as she wrote weekly editorials on foreign policy, international security and development, and humanitarian affairs for a digital publication (Statecraft) in India. As crises evolve to become more multifaceted and complex, she believes it is more necessary than ever to continue strengthening her understanding of international development and humanitarian response efforts in hopes of supporting impactful, innovative, and sustainable solutions.

Emma Anderson is a graduate student at the London School of Economics pursuing an M.Sc. in international development and humanitarian emergencies. She graduated with a B.A. in international affairs from The George Washington University in 2020. During her master’s degree, Emma worked as a graduate consultant at the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, researching the humanitarian-development nexus in northeastern Nigeria and proposing policy recommendations to close humanitarian aid gaps in the region. At DevTech Systems, Emma served as proposal coordinator for USAID-funded projects in Jordan, the Philippines, and the DRC. Emma has also worked specifically on the Sahel region of Africa during her time at the World Justice Project, where she researched extensively rule of law and access to justice in 5 different Sahel countries. She has conducted field research in Jordan and worked at an anti-violence center in South Africa, and has published multiple articles, blogs, and academic papers. Emma also formerly ran a podcast called Foreign Affairs Inbox, managing a team of student hosts and conducting interviews with high-profile guests. For fun, Emma likes to run a radio show at her local station in London! She is thrilled to be joining IRC Somalia as a PiAf Fellow for this upcoming year.

Tim Offei-Addo, a Ghanaian-American raised in the Boston area, graduated from Amherst College with a degree in Environmental Studies. At Amherst Tim served as the Co-President of Remnant, the Black Christian fellowship, where he focused on creating a space where students could grapple with issues at the intersection of faith and race. He also served as Co-President of the Kidney Disease Screening and Prevention Club and organized free kidney screenings for underserved populations in the Amherst Area. These experiences helped significantly during his internship with the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA). While shadowing government officials Tim noticed the important role community organizations played in MOFA and NGO partnerships. He returned to Ghana to conduct research for his undergraduate thesis, analyzing the cultural competency of Ghana’s National Climate Smart Agriculture Action Plan. Upon its completion he presented his thesis at the Harvard Club to the Amherst College Trustees and distinguished guests. Since graduating Tim has pursued his passions as a Policy Analyst for Climate Scorecard: a non-profit initiative that seeks to strengthen emission reduction pledges to the Paris Agreement and an Apprentice Gleaner at Boston Area Gleaners an organization that harvest surplus farm crops and donates them to Food Banks. Tim enjoys farming, cooking, watching soccer and listening to music in his free time.

Isaac Kim is a recent graduate of Georgetown University with a major in International Politics and a certificate in African Studies. Originally from Northbrook, Illinois, Isaac focused his undergraduate education on the human impacts of environmental change and policy. Previously, Isaac worked as an external relations intern at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the Multi-Country Office of Washington, DC, supporting the external relations team’s engagement with US government officials to sustain support for UNHCR’s humanitarian work. Additionally, he has interned at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, worked as a community development intern at the Lalibela Game Reserve in South Africa, and helped organize the Georgetown Africa Business Conference. In his free time, Isaac enjoys singing choral music and working as a camp counselor at Lac du Bois, a French language immersion camp.

Dhruvi is a graduate of NYU Abu Dhabi, where she studied Civil Engineering with a concentration in Urbanization and developed an interest to work at the intersection of policy and sustainable development. Her field experience working in Dharavi, Mumbai with local potters on mitigating air-pollution through the design of a retrofitted chimney highlighted the importance of developing cost-beneficial and need-based solutions at a local level. She has formed a strong understanding of global efforts geared towards environmental conservation through conducting research with NYU Langone and Yale University on mapping waste disposal pathways across the United States, with a specific focus on New York. Her senior capstone project highlights the rising need to better manage global waste, working to design an effective and sustainable system applying waste-to-energy technologies in Abu Dhabi. She is interested in transportation networks and spent last summer working at the New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Here, she worked on a wide range of projects from advancing congestion pricing to building out proposals for MTA’s organizational reform. By combining her experience with community-led initiatives to city-level projects, she is determined to build a career at the intersection of sustainable development, infrastructure, technology, and the environment. As an Indian-Kenyan, born and raised in Nairobi she is looking forward to developing her monitoring and evaluation skills in the context of her home country Kenya.

Katerina recently graduated from Tufts University with a degree in International Security. As an undergraduate, Katerina worked as a writing tutor, was a member of Tufts Mock Trial and acted as a Green Dot ambassador to improve campus culture around sexual misconduct. She has explored her interest in law, international affairs and intersecting health or environmental issues through work experience at a food-tech start-up, an INGO and the State Department. Through these internships and academic experiences, Katerina has conducted regional conflict analyses, explored the role and limits of nongovernmental peacebuilding and used GIS to explore conflict trends over time. She hopes to attend law school and pursue domestic and international peacebuilding and negotiations. She is excited to complement her academic experiences with practical training at the International Rescue Committee in Nairobi and challenge her current understanding of development and aid work.

Rachel, a native of Seattle, graduated from American University with a major in Public Health.  Prior to AU, she was a fellow with Global Citizen Year, where she spent seven months in Ecuador living and working in an indigenous community. As a research assistant her sophomore year, she examined the efficacy of culturally relevant programming among migrant populations in D.C., specifically focusing on recruitment of participants and organizing group meetings in Spanish. Back in Seattle for the summer,  she worked for AmeriCorps as the Outreach Coordinator for SNAP benefits for Pike Place Market Foundation. The following fall semester she spent studying health systems in Nairobi, Kenya while interning at the Center for Rights and Education Awareness, an organization that provides legal services for survivors of gender based violence. Returning to D.C. to finish her junior year she was the Development Intern for the Nothing But Nets campaign at the United Nations Foundations. While at UNF she worked on prospecting corporate and individual donor pipelines, as well as created strategic plans for congressional districts based off of qualitative research. She is excited to be moving back to Nairobi, for her fellowship year with the International Rescue Committee.

Alumni Update:

Since his fellowship year, Brent has relocated to Honolulu and is now a Certified Eye Bank Technician. He serves as Director of Operations at the Lions Eye Bank of Hawai’i, an eye tissue recovery and distribution nonprofit dedicated to meeting the transplantation needs of the Hawaiian Islands. His organization works to keep sight-saving eye tissue accessible to the communities that donate it, and he is proud to honor the wishes of eye donors and their families while strengthening the independent medical infrastructure of the Islands.

Fellow Bio:

While pursuing a double major at the intersection of Biomedical Engineering and African Studies at Yale, one of the things Brent enjoyed most was working with his campus chapter of Engineers Without Borders to design and implement infrastructural innovations that reduced water poverty in rural communities in Cameroon and Tanzania. Brent feels lucky to have seen up close the powerful effects that a community-level, locally directed development plan can have on improving health outcomes on the African continent, and so he is grateful for the chance to continue enabling that kind of work with Princeton in Africa, as a Sustainability Fellow at Nyumbani Village in Kenya. In the future, he hopes to use his skills as an engineer, combined with the firsthand knowledge of real-world needs and challenges gained during his fellowship year, to develop more affordable biotechnologies that can help to close resource and personnel gaps in medically underserved parts of the world.

Megan has a lifelong passion for wildlife conservation and community service, stemming from her childhood which took her across eight states as well as Italy and Korea. Driven to find collaborative and innovative solutions to biodiversity and development challenges, she links science and advocacy to meaningful action. A graduate of the University of Virginia studying Environmental Science, Conservation Biology, and Global Sustainable Development, Megan has worked with the World Wildlife Fund and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, supporting both terrestrial and marine programs. In collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society, she has helped develop the Marine Ecological Research and Monitoring Aid (“MERMAID”) app to accelerate coral reef data collection and analysis and has led workshops in Tanzania and Fiji to train local scientists to use the tool. She is also a certified Virginia Master Naturalist and is active in citizen science projects, community education, and leading volunteers in environmental projects and advocacy. Megan visited Kenya for the first time in 2017 and she is grateful to return to the country to work for Mpala Research Centre in the beautiful Laikipia County!