she/her/hers 

Gorata was born and raised in Botswana, and she graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. Her passion lies in leveraging data to maximize the effectiveness of development interventions in African communities. At Columbia, she served as an executive board member of the African Development Group, which aimed to foster diaspora involvement in African growth and development. She organized speaker events to facilitate dialogue on pressing issues facing the continent.

After graduating from Columbia University, Gorata returned to Botswana and started her career as a Project Support Officer for the European Union project to Support Job Creation and Investment Climate (JCIC) at the Botswana Ministry of Trade and Industry. This role was a transformative experience, exposing her to the intricacies of investment policy and public sector management, and introducing her to the field of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E).

Fueled by her interest in M&E, Gorata transitioned to M&E Research Assistant at Sunshine Cinema, where she gained a deeper appreciation for the role of grassroots movements in effecting change through social and policy advocacy. She further developed her interest in impact measurement by working with the impact lead on outcome harvesting for the organization’s flagship impact case study.

Gorata’s passion for M&E and data-driven initiatives continued through her role as a Research Officer at Youth Impact. Here, she gained exposure to impact evaluations, randomized studies, and interventions improving health and education outcomes. Her responsibilities included conducting field visits, programming surveys in SurveyCTO, and data cleaning and analysis to support monitoring and evaluation of the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) program.

Gorata appreciates opportunities for cross-cultural learning and she is excited to join the Princeton in Africa community as a Project Impact Coordinator at Farming Out of Poverty. In her spare time, she enjoys solving jigsaw puzzles and cryptic crosswords.

Anna Roberts is a Fellow with the International Rescue Committee in Sierra Leone. Before this, Anna spent six years navigating public-private partnerships in the United States, focusing her career on improving the lives of the poor. Anna worked as a Budget Director for New York City, serving a high-poverty district with a large population of religious minorities. As Budget Director, she ran the yearly $7mm budget, coordinated Get Out the Vote in four languages, and succeeded in getting childcare vouchers baselined in the NYC budget, benefiting poor families across New York. Anna also spent two years in affordable housing, working with state, federal, for-profit, and non-profit actors across the United States to bid on expiring government contracts in order to keep housing units affordable. Anna is a Dartmouth College alum, and just completed a master’s degree at Sciences Po in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action, with a concentration in African Studies. She is working on a yearlong research project for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights building a Participatory Policy Assessment tool that will better help policymakers evaluate policies related to people in poverty. Anna co-organized the 2021 International Humanitarian Studies Association conference, hosted by Sciences Po, where she moderated panels on conflict and sexual violence. Anna is excited to bring her experience with policy design, research, and stakeholder communication to the development and humanitarian fields.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, Olivia Charendoff holds a Bachelor of Arts in Francophone Studies from Muhlenberg College, with minors in Political Science and Cultural Anthropology. Since graduating in 2020, Olivia has used her background in translation and project coordination to work with leading peacebuilding INGOs, including Search for Common Ground and the Center for Civilians in Conflict. As an Institutional Learning intern with Search for Common Ground, Olivia assisted in the development of youth-oriented programming across the Sahel region of Africa and translated reports on conflict-sensitive aid between French and English. As an intern with the Center for Civilians in Conflict, Olivia conducted research on the active UN Peacekeeping missions in Mali, CAR, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her project on Community Alert Networks in Eastern DRC contributed to the Center’s 2021 report to the UN Security Council, advocating for stronger early warning and rapid response systems in the Ituri and North/South Kivu provinces. In addition to peacebuilding work, Olivia has also volunteered in the food pantry at the Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia, providing everyday essentials to refugee families in the region. Prior to her fellowship, Olivia worked as a temporary program associate for Borealis Philanthropy’s Spark Justice Fund, supporting grassroots organizations in their mission to abolish the cash bail system and establish community safety mechanisms outside of traditional policing. Olivia is most passionate about conflict transformation, civic renewal and sustainable economic development.

Kathryn (Katie) recently graduated from Tulane University with a dual-degree in international development and finance through the University’s Altman Program in International Studies and Business. Through the program, she spent the summer after her freshman year in Vietnam and split her junior year between Senegal and France. A Boren scholarship supported her study of Wolof, spoken in Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania, at both the University of Florida and in Senegal. During her time in Dakar, she worked for Social Change Factory, an organization that provides professional and educational programs for youth in nine West African countries. After her junior year, she worked for The Carter Center on the Independent Observer team of the 2015 Peace Agreement in Mali. On this team, she contributed to the production of a public document overviewing the Agreement’s implementation status and to the development of a conflict event mapping database for the country. Building upon her academic and professional experiences, she is excited to critically analyze the role a humanitarian organization can play in supporting post-conflict societies in West Africa through her fellowship with the International Rescue Committee Sierra Leone.

Dara Bernstein is a young professional with experience in international development program monitoring and evaluation. She is passionate about connecting innovative solutions to poverty at the household level with macroeconomic growth strategies. Since graduating from Brown University in 2018 with a degree in Economics and French Studies, Dara has worked as a program associate in the international division of Mathematica, a policy research institute. In this role, she contributes to research in an array of fields, including energy, financial services, secondary education, and workforce development, primarily in West Africa and Morocco. She sees promise in initiatives aimed at improving the skills and capacity of women and youth in developing communities, such as micro-lending to women, strengthening family planning systems, and improving education and workforce development programs. Dara is continually refining her quantitative and qualitative research skills, which are complemented by her proficiency in French and Stata programming. She also has extensive experience in project management and budgeting for large-scale international projects funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Gates Foundation. Dara is looking forward to her role as a Junior Consultant/MEAL Fellow with the West African Rice Company (WARC) team in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Emily is a recent college graduate interested in human rights and social justice. She previously worked with the Central and West Africa program at the National Democratic Institute, supporting portfolios in Nigeria and Sierra Leone, and with the Humanitarian Agenda program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She also completed an internship with Innovations for Poverty Action in Tanzania and a fellowship with the Open Impact Institute in Uganda. She is excited to learn more about Sierra Leone and migration justice through her fellowship with IRC. Outside of work, Emily volunteers with RAINN to support survivors of sexual violence. She graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2019 with a degree in International Relations.

Anisha Sehgal, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, graduated from Georgetown University with a B.S. in Global Health. She is committed to working towards the social, political, and economic empowerment of all people and believes in the power of sustainable, high- impact public health initiatives to aid in this objective. Anisha has published research on antibiotic resistance, written blogs on reproductive health policy, and contributed to an accepted grant proposal regarding the inclusion of individuals with disabilities in research activities. As an advocacy intern at Save the Children, Anisha successfully organized an event at the Open Government Partnership Summit in Tbilisi, Georgia. The event brought together civil society organizations and government officials from Kenya and Liberia to discuss and advocate for increased public participation in governance. Most recently, she lived in Tanzania for four months where she interned at the National Institute for Medical Research. While there she designed and conducted a study on the prevalence, drivers, and reproductive health implications of child marriage in Mwanza, Tanzania. Anisha is excited for the opportunity to return to the continent as a Princeton in Africa fellow and looks forward to working for the International Rescue Committee in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Alumni Update:

Joaquin currently works for the New Zealand government’s export promotion and business development agency, accelerating New Zealand exporters’ journey to bigger, better, faster growth in international markets.

Fellow Bio:

Joaquín is a recent graduate from Georgetown University where he majored in Finance and International Business. His career path and interest for both business and international development have led him to varied professional experiences, from interning at Google helping content creators monetize their websites and apps to spending a summer in Nicaragua optimizing donor data strategies for an education nonprofit. Most recently, he worked at Citibank’s Government Affairs team at the intersection of public policy, financial inclusion and financial technology regulation in Latin America. While at Georgetown, he actively led the Georgetown Global Consulting student organization providing pro-bono consulting services to microfinance institutions and NGOs across the globe. Joaquin will earn a MicroMasters certificate in Data, Economics and Development Policy from MITx before embarking on his PiAf fellowship year with the West African Rice Company (WARC) social enterprise as a Junior Consultant in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Joaquín is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Alumni Update:

Samantha is currently a Research Associate with FHI 360, where she does global public health research, primarily qualitative and quantitative research on family planning in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Fellow Bio:

Samantha Archie is a young professional in international development, specifically interested in monitoring, evaluation, and research with a gender focus. Samantha developed her passion for international development during her study abroad experiences in Guatemala, Tanzania, and Uganda while pursuing a degree in International Relations and Global Health at the University of Southern California. In 2016, she was awarded the prestigious Boren Scholarship to study Swahili and intern at an agricultural microfinance organization in Arusha, Tanzania. In her senior year, she returned to East Africa to conduct her own independent mixed methods research project for her honors thesis, which aimed at understanding what contributes to gender differences in entrepreneurship program outcomes in Northern Uganda. Since graduating from USC, she has worked at Women for Women International, where she performed data analysis to test the effectiveness of WfWI’s programs in conflict regions and Innovations for Poverty Action in Monrovia, Liberia, where she oversaw the implementation of a market access intervention connecting farmers with agricultural goods dealers. Samantha is very excited to embark on her next endeavor as a Women and Girl’s Protection and Empowerment Research Fellow at International Rescue Committee-Sierra Leone.

Tomas graduated from Davidson College in 2015, majoring in Political Science and minoring in Economics. As an undergraduate, he worked with a professor on a study of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, sparking an interest in African conflict that led him to intern at the Enough Project and culminated in a senior thesis on the M23 rebellion in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After graduating, he joined the Congressional Research Service, where he assisted Africa analysts with research on a range of projects. While at CRS, he was fortunate to co-author reports on Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Boko Haram, and the Lord’s Resistance Army, among others. Tomas is very excited to join the International Rescue Committee in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he hopes to expand his knowledge of Sierra Leone and West Africa, gain insight into the challenges of governance and development in post-conflict societies, and (with any luck) learn a little Krio.