Alumni Update:

As part of the Physician Scientist Training Program, Morgan recently started her Infectious Diseases fellowship at Yale, where she also completed her Internal Medicine residency and participated in the Global Health and Equity track. After this clinically focused year, she plans to return to microbial pathogenesis lab-based research, with a focus on tropical medicine fieldwork. 

Fellow Bio:

Morgan majored in molecular biology while at Princeton. Born and raised in the small town of Hamilton, Montana, coming to Princeton was a big change—but a terrific one, at that. At Princeton, Morgan spent time working in a herpes virology lab, being a peer academic advisor and Butler Undergraduate Fellow, playing recreational soccer, and studying abroad at the University of Cape Town. Since graduating, Morgan returned home to Hamilton to work as a post-baccalaureate research fellow at Rocky Mountain Labs, a satellite campus of the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. At RML, Morgan studies the Chlamydia bacteria with a group of researchers working towards a vaccine. Aside from being in the lab, she spends time coaching grade-school soccer players, playing with her dogs, and enjoying the outdoors as much as possible. Morgan is deferring from the MD/PhD program at UNC-Chapel Hill to participate in PiAf, where she looks forward to experiencing the public health side of infectious disease work during her time with mothers2mothers in Cape Town.

Alumni Update:

Since her fellowship, Molly has moved back home to the Washington, D.C. area and has been working at USAID for the past couple years (as the Public Affairs Advisor for USAID’s Office of HIV/AIDS), traveling back to Africa as much as she can! She’s very excited to be getting married this June, and she and her fiancé are currently planning a yearlong trip around the world!

Fellow Bio:

Molly (UVA ‘10) is a graduate of UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and hails from Arlington, VA. While an undergraduate student at UVA, she majored in sociology and African/African-American studies. Through Alternative Spring Break at UVA, Molly traveled to South Africa on a service trip to build a school in Venda. After graduation, she interned at the US Embassy in Lilongwe, Malawi for the US Department of State. While a graduate student at Batten, Molly traveled to Botswana, Swaziland, and South Africa as a consultant for the World Bank and served as the Senior International Editor for the Virginia Policy Review.

Alumni Update:

After working in Baltimore around community investment for the past five years, he has returned to graduate school at McGill University to pursue a master’s in urban planning where he focuses on neighborhood revitalization and schools. He currently splits his time between Montreal, Baltimore and Philadelphia

Fellow Bio:

Michael Arnst was an International Studies (African Studies concentration) and German literature double-major and is originally from Chaska, Minnesota. While an undergraduate, he interned at the East African Economic Development Center in Minneapolis and studied abroad at the University of Botswana. Since graduating, he has worked in the East and Southern Africa program at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C., and acted as the membership manager for Kabissa, an online network of African civil society organizations. As a dedicated film and music festival junkie, he is excited to explore all the cultural offerings to be found in Cape Town.

Although she was born and raised in Los Angeles, Melissa braved the arctic tundra of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she graduated with honors in 2015. She majored in International Studies, with an emphasis on global environment/health, and held dual minors in Science, Technology, and Society and African Studies. While in school, she was an intern for the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, served as an Employment Specialist Intern with the International Rescue Committee, and was an intern with USAID’s Office of HIV/AIDS communications team. As part of a class on South African history, Melissa traveled to the country where she spent three weeks doing research on HIV treatment/prevention programs. She also spent half of her junior year abroad in Barcelona in a Spanish culture and immersion program. (Melissa is fluent in Spanish and has working proficiency in French.) Melissa has a long-standing concern with issues relating to global health, disaster/emergency aid, and hunger relief. She is excited to apply all she has learned to her work with the World Food Programme. In her spare time, she enjoys soccer – a game she hopes to continue playing while in South Africa. Before she comes back to the U.S., Melissa hopes to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Melissa received her A.B. degree in Social Studies from Harvard University and master’s degree with distinction in Development Studies from Cambridge University.  Her academic work has focused on the intersection of health and politics, and she has additionally worked on access to medicines advocacy and research with the MSF Access Campaign, the Harvard School of Public Health, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, the Health Global Access Project in Nairobi, the Student Global AIDS Campaign, and is a commissioner for the Lancet Youth Commission on Essential Medicines Policies. Prior to joining CHAI, she was a consultant at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, focusing on advocacy and support to key populations in the context of transition from funding.

Alumni Update:

Mariah is finishing her second year of her MPH at UC Berkeley, where she is studying Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is interested in environmental epidemiology and how environmental issues disproportionately impact vulnerable populations, including those on the African continent who are and will be most impacted by climate change.

Fellow Bio:

Based in Chicagoland most of her life, Mariah graduated in 2014 with majors in Environmental Science and International Studies and a minor in Global Health Studies. At Northwestern, she was involved in GlobeMed, a student-run nonprofit dedicated to promoting health equity; was a board member of an organization that hosts an annual human rights conference for students; was a community health volunteer with a student group that mapped health assets in north Chicago; and was a tutor and mentor at a before-school program at an elementary school. She received a departmental award for her senior thesis on the microbial ecology of certain indoor environments and the interactions between microbes and humans in those spaces and is publishing her research through the Biosciences Division at Argonne National Laboratory. She spent her junior spring near Cape Town, studying public health and development. She currently works at Chapin Hall in Chicago, a policy research organization dedicated to using data to benefit children, families, and their communities. Mariah is thrilled to be returning to South Africa and is looking forward to exploring the southern Africa region, living somewhere with mountains again, and working in the South African health sector.

Alumni Update:

Liz holds a J.D. from Duke University, with a term at the University of Hong Kong. She currently works as an associate attorney in the Washington DC office of the global law firm, Clifford Chance LLP. Her practice focuses on international project and corporate finance and other cross-border development finance transactions. Liz previously worked at a social change consulting firm where she managed the launch of a new social venture serving communities of color. 

Fellow Bio:

Liz graduated with degrees in Journalism and African Studies. She is originally from Nairobi, Kenya. While an undergraduate, she did independent studies that focused on topics of wealth disparities in Kenya and Black Economic Empowerment policies in South Africa. She also spent a summer doing research on ICC cases and investigations. Liz interned at TransAfrica Forum, a foreign policy advocacy organization for Africa and the African Diaspora, and at a human rights advocacy organization in Cape Town, South Africa. Liz looks forward to returning to South Africa and learning more about the work of the African Leadership Academy.

While originally from the Netherlands, Liselot spent majority of her life living in different cities across America and now calls Baton Rouge, Louisiana, home. She graduated in May 2016 from Georgetown University, where she majored in International Health. While at Georgetown, she was a volunteer and community outreach intern for DC SCORES, a health-policy research intern at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), and a volunteer in the DC community as a tutor and teaching assistant. During her senior fall semester, Liselot was a researcher at the National Institute of Medical Research in Dar es Salaam, completing her senior thesis on anemia and its risk factors in children under the age of two in rural Tanzania. Throughout college, Liselot was also a member of the varsity tennis team. When not playing tennis, her summer experiences included being an ambassador and a high school teacher in Zanzibar for America’s Unofficial Ambassadors, a fitness fundraising intern at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and a neurology nursing assistant at a hospital in Amsterdam. She is looking forward to discovering a new part of Africa, continuing to work in the public health sphere, meeting new people, and hopefully using her fluency in Dutch to learn some Afrikaans.