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:

After graduating from Princeton University in 2006, Cynthia taught middle school math at YES Prep Public Schools in Houston, Texas for four years. In 2013, she graduated from The University of Texas School of Law. She is currently clerking for the Honorable Elaine D. Kaplan of The United States Court of Federal Claims.

Coryna Ogunseitan graduated from Yale in 2017 with a BA in Literature. She speaks Spanish and French and is most interested in literature of the black diaspora written in these languages. Her junior fall, she spent a semester abroad in Santiago, Chile, becoming fluent in Spanish and studying modern Ibero-American literature. The fact that many of these texts were not available in English led her to develop an interest in literary translation. She was an intern at Glossolalia, PEN America’s new translation journal, where she worked primarily on the issue “Women Writing Brazil,” a compilation of writing by all female Brazilian authors. She is passionate about making marginalized narratives, like those presented in Glossolalia, exposed to global audiences, and in keeping with this goal also worked to facilitate interviews with formerly incarcerated people for StoryCorps through the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project. With this organization, she also tutored inmates in the New Haven Jail for the GED. She is also involved in the writing community at Yale, and has served as Artistic Director of TEETH Slam Poets and an editor of Weekend, the arts and culture section of the Yale Daily News.

Colleen graduated from Kenyon College with degrees in Film and English. She was awarded Honors by the college’s Film and Theater Department for electing to complete a thesis project of an original screenplay and television series. She also studied International Film in Wellington, New Zealand. Colleen served on KGD Film’s production staff, working with local small business owners and nonprofits to boost their community presence. She is dedicated to advocating for social justice causes by crafting narratives that position marginalized groups at the forefront of their own stories. She worked for the nonprofit Identifying Dyslexia, documenting dyslexic students’ personal experiences as a tool to raise awareness for education reform. She held an internship in digital media advocacy, where she developed a social media campaign and an oral history project to educate audiences about challenges faced by foster-care children in her home state, New Jersey. A four-year member of Kenyon’s varsity cross country and track team, she enjoys *casual* twelve mile runs, in her free time. As a communications fellow for the Nyaka Aids Orphans Project, Colleen looks forward to blending her creative and humanitarian passions to share the stories of those in the Nyakagyezi village.

Corey is a recent graduate of Clark University, having completed his undergraduate degree in Geography with a minor in Environmental Science in May 2015. Corey is very passionate about the relationship between communities and the environment around them, and he has chosen to focus his career on issues related to this. While studying abroad at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, he studied how local indigenous groups worked with the environment around them, and he was fortunate enough to have the chance to engage with communities in the area on issues related to environmental security. He also had the opportunity to work with various sustainable communities in southern Africa during the summer after his study abroad term. Corey also was the sole organizer and designer of a major research project centered on nation of Nauru in the South Pacific. He worked with local government officials in Nauru to analyze the effectiveness of traditional agroforestry systems on the Nauruan economy and explored ways that these systems could be improved. This research eventually formed the basis of a TEDx talk delivered in the spring of 2015 at TEDxClarkUniversity. Since graduating, he has worked with a variety of different conservation initiatives, including the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC on their Transforming Cultures Project. Most recently, he has been an environmental educator with the United States National Park Service in both Kentucky and Colorado. Corey is extremely excited to return to the African continent to work with the Kasiisi Project, and he looks forward to trying to see as many large dangerous animals as he possibly can.

Clara graduated from Bates College in 2016 with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a minor in U.S. History. While attending Bates, Clara had the opportunity to study abroad for a semester in Rwanda and Uganda through the School for International Training’s program Post-Genocide Restoration and Peacebuilding. Upon returning to the States, Clara continued to cultivate her interest in East and Sub-Saharan Africa. During the summer of 2015, she received funding through Bates to work in South Africa, as well as to return to Rwanda to conduct independent research. While in South Africa, Clara gained hands on wildlife rehabilitation experience at the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds. She then traveled to Rwanda to research how the coffee industry has been utilized as a reconciliation tool. During her final year of college, she completed a senior thesis analyzing Rwanda’s gorilla tourism industry through a positive peace paradigm. With a strong interest in East Africa and having previously worked on farms, Clara is excited to return to Uganda to work as a Farm fellow at The Kasiisi Project. She looks forward to expanding her understanding of conservation work, learning Rutooro, and becoming a part of the Kasiisi community.

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.

Alumni Update:

Carolyn is currently living and working in Chicago, IL. Since her fellowship, she has been working in public health policy and social policy. She did program evaluation of public health programs for the US Department of Health and Human Services. Now she is pursuing a PhD in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern.