Heran Abiy is an Ethiopian/Kenyan young passionate professional driven by her curiosity in decolonizing development, community planning, and storytelling for meaningful change. In 2021, Heran graduated from Clark University with a B.A. in Sociology, Global Environmental Studies, & Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies. She also holds an M.A. in Community Development and Planning in Education Development + Forced Migration. Her academic interests intersect at socio-cultural anthropology, community organizing, education, and public affairs. She seeks to understand how communications can leverage indigenous funds of knowledge and recenter peoples’ stories to bolster the success of nonprofits. She is particularly interested in community organizing in the context of Africa and the African Diaspora. Heran’s passion for storytelling has been embodied in her work with the United Nations Foundation as a Communications Intern. At Abt Associates Heran works as a Global Equity Intern. She has collaborated with Yale University, as a Young African Schools Mentor, providing academic guidance to African scholars. Heran’s work includes serving as a Legal Intern at the U.S. Department of Justice supporting assistant attorneys with legislative research. Recently, she has served as a Communications Manager for Inclusive America and Mansa Colabs where she developed communications plans and wrote articles. Furthermore, at the African Community Education Center Heran wrote a grant to Address & Destigmatize Mental Health of African Refugee Youth in Worcester, Massachusetts. Heran hopes to pursue a career in leveraging African narratives and decolonizing development in the non-profit sector on issues pertaining to youth and forced migrant rights by applying her knowledge of communications and placed-based community organizing in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is thrilled to be joining Kucetekela Foundation (KF) as a PiAf Fellow for this upcoming year!

The formation of Maame’s concentration, “Sankofa: (Re) Defining the Indigenous Modern City”, is owed to the inspiration her birth city, Accra, provided during her formative years. While at New York University, Maame secured several research grants to conduct two research projects: one on youth employability in Ghana and the other on civic participation in environmental conservation efforts in Nairobi and Dakar. With the findings from her first research project on youth employability, Maame developed a robust curriculum for a Youth Fellowship Program at the UNFPA in Accra, aimed at mentoring national service personnel and equipping them with employable skills such as team building, research, and creative thinking. The Fellowship Program has since been implemented and will be a part of the UNFPA Accra agenda permanently. Maame is currently working toward launching an Africa-based tourism platform, Ibhazi, which is aimed at promoting intra-continental travel and creating conversations surrounding cultural sustainability on the continent. As a Princeton in Africa Fellow at Yalelo in Lusaka, Zambia, Maame is excited to explore the aquaculture industry on the continent and to live on the side of Africa.

Alumni Update:

Joanna is working as an M&E Officer at Healthy Learners managing data systems and analytics/reporting. She lives in Lusaka, Zambia where she first arrived through her PiAf fellowship in 2019. 

Fellow Bio:

Joanna graduated from Calvin University with Honors in Economics with a minor in International Development Studies. Her curiosity about the world and the systems that shape people’s lives grew throughout her childhood and high school years spent in Michigan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, as well as her experiences volunteering at the U.S. Embassy of Ethiopia, the African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program, and Hope Microfinance in Ethiopia. During her undergraduate career, she studied equity, access, and inclusion in the classroom and through interning at Inclusive Performance Strategies, organizing campus-wide programming on the Multicultural Student Advisory Board, and attending the Justice Studies Semester Program in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Prior to her Princeton in Africa fellowship, Joanna worked as a Research Specialist at the Center for Social Research where she collaborated with nonprofit, academic, and public-sector organizations on research projects involving data analytics, GIS mapping, community listening sessions, and database management. Here, she learned the power of data-based decisions and participatory research. Joanna is thankful for the opportunity to join the Monitoring and Evaluation team at Healthy Kids/Brighter Future and live in Lusaka! She looks forward to exploring new places through her favorite ways: being outdoors, dancing, and discovering cuisines.

Diane Arthur, Ghanaian-American raised in Michigan, graduated from Northwestern University with a major in Human Development and Psychological Services and received a Certificate in Civic Engagement. At Northwestern, she served as Community Engagement Chair of the African Students Association, where she focused on bridging the gap between African students and the larger Chicago African community. She demonstrated a commitment to coaching and mentoring other students towards international exchange and exposure by co-leading the Buffett Institute for Global Studies Fellowship Advisory Board. Her time off-campus included an international development internship in Udaipur, India, where she developed a life skills education curriculum. Diane then spent one academic year studying at the University of Ghana, exploring social work and political science from the Ghanaian perspective. During her final year of university, she interned for Upwardly Global, where she mentored underemployed and unemployed immigrants and refugees towards professional success in the US. Subsequently, she interned with EngageBetween, a boutique multicultural diversity and inclusion consultancy, where she helped to build and facilitate cultural competency workshops. After working as a Change Management Consultant at IT consulting firm Capgemini, she went on to facilitate international internships for study abroad provider, Institute for the International Education of Students (IES) Abroad. These experiences solidified her commitment to working with individuals and communities to pull down employment barriers through higher education, and to see this realized on the African continent. A few of her favorite things include jewelry, blueberry cake donuts, and biking!

Alumni Update:

Yash now works as Deputy Country Director at One Acre Fund’s Malawi program. He spends most of his time fiddling with their back-end systems (logistics, client services) and operations strategy to ensure improved client experience. He lives in (and continues to love!) Zomba, Malawi.

Fellow Bio:

Yash is originally from Mumbai, India. For some crazy reason, he decided to leave the warm coastal locales of Mumbai and ended up in frigid Ithaca, studying Natural Resources at Cornell University. While at Cornell, he was part of the Big Red Raas team (a western Indian dance form) and a founding member of Cornell Tarana, a South Asian a capella group. Yash studied abroad in Kenya and Tanzania in fall 2011, where he wrestled (read as “observed from a safe distance”) with elephants, hunted (with cameras) lions and conducted (backbreaking) research on land use change on the northern slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. As an avid birdwatcher, Yash hopes to add a couple hundred more central and southern African bird species to his bird list while in Zambia, in addition to learning the local language, listening to psychedelic Zambian rock from the 70s, driving a safari vehicle at least once (I don’t speed, no worries) and engaging with the world of corporate responsibility and sustainability.

Alumni Update:

After completing her PiAf fellowship in 2014, Sarah stayed on the African continent for another 4 years working in the social enterprise sector, and she had the opportunity to live in Burundi, Rwanda, Ghana, and Senegal. Two years ago she relocated to Boston and is currently managing the Implementation Team for the education technology startup, Ellevation, which develops software and instructional strategies to help school districts better support their English Language Learners.

Fellow Bio:

Sarah is originally from Massachusetts but spent part of her childhood in France. She graduated in 2013 with a degree in Public Policy Studies and a certificate in Child Policy Research. While at Duke she helped run Duke Basketball’s undergraduate operations, captained the Women’s Club Soccer team, and served as Vice President of the Public Policy Majors Union. She combined her interests in sports and international development by researching the expansion of sports based youth development programs in African countries. Sarah then spent a summer in Lusaka, Zambia working with the NGO Sport In Action, coaching, teaching and conducting research on HIV/AIDS education. She also studied abroad in Florence, Italy and interned in Washington D.C. doing education policy research. Sarah is very excited to go back to Zambia and looks forward to exploring many other countries!

Olivia is from Chicago and graduated from the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan with a focus on poverty, health, and international development. During her time as a Wolverine, she led a summer volunteering trip to Peru as part of an internship with Childreach International, lobbied on Capitol Hill as a member of the ONE Campaign, and worked at Barger Leadership Institute on campus. She interned with LIFT Communities, working one-on-one with low-income and homeless individuals to help build a sustainable path out of poverty. During her semester study abroad in Cape Town, South Africa, Olivia volunteered weekly at a primary school in Nyanga Township as an English tutor for fifth grade students. She is excited to continue addressing issues of education and inequality as a Fellow with the Kucetekela Foundation. Olivia looks forward to exploring Lusaka and playing ultimate frisbee on Sundays, a KF Fellow tradition.

Mina received her B.A.H. from Stanford University in Comparative Literature with a minor in African Studies. During her time in Palo Alto, she has been deeply involved with the Haas Center for Public Service, serving twice as an African Service Fellow in Accra, Ghana, working as a peer adviser for the Undergraduate Fellowships office, leading sessions for a preschool service program in which Stanford students build relationships with young learners while helping scaffold their early math literacy, participating in and leading an Alternative Spring Break program, and participating on the National Advisory Board of the Haas Center as a student member. Mina’s work at the West Africa AIDS Foundation was transformative and led her to pursue her Master’s in African Studies, which she just received, also from Stanford. She is excited to work with the Kucetekela Foundation in Lusaka, Zambia for the upcoming year and hopes to come away with new strategies for addressing educational inequity in the space of Lusaka. She looks forward to learning about the structure of educational non-profits and cannot wait to meet the students with whom she will be working.

Alumni Update:

Mary Reid is a high school English and History teacher and recently moved to Atlanta!

Fellow Bio:

Mary Reid, Princeton ’10, is an English major from Jackson, MS. A big college sports fan, she wrote for the sports section of the Daily Princetonian all four years. She was also a leader and leader trainer for Outdoor Action, and spent one summer at Princeton as a frosh trip coordinator. Interested in cultures of all kinds, she’s written her independent papers about African American literature, studied abroad in Bologna, Italy, and worked with refuges one summer in Durban, South Africa. While in Africa, she’s pumped to work with Zambians and people from all over the world, get involved in the education system, and have some big outdoor adventures around Victoria Falls.