Meet the Fellows of 2013

Elorm Avakame

Elorm Avakame graduated from Rutgers University in 2012 with a Bachelor's of Science in Public Health. During college, Elorm spent his summers researching and publishing on faculty diversity in United States medical schools (2011) and working with the Urban Nutrition Initiative to promote issues of social justice, healthy cooking, and nutrition among West Philadelphia teenagers (2012). After graduation, Elorm spent the 2012-2013 academic year working as an undergraduate academic advisor through the Rutgers University Office for Diversity and Academic Success in the Sciences to support students from underrepresented and economically disadvantaged backgrounds in their pursuit of careers in health sciences. An aspiring physician, Elorm will begin studying to earn a Doctor of Medicine in August 2013. His professional ambitions involve improving access to quality health care in underserved communities in American inner cities and creating interventions to combat the social pathologies present in many such communities.

Cariad Chester

Cariad Chester graduated from Swarthmore College in 2013 with a dual degree in Neuroscience and Religion. While at Swarthmore, he was a leader of the Global Health Forum and helped launch the "Give a Net, Get a Vote" campaign combining political advocacy and fundraising initiatives to secure insecticide-treated bed nets for distribution in Sierra Leone. During the summers, Cariad has conducted neuroscience research on the epigenetic modification of long-term memory in Drosophila (2011) and studied vaccinology at the Vaccine Education Center of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (2012). While at the Vaccine Education Center, Cariad also helped produce a short film advocating for wider immunization among college students.

Małgorzata (Gosia) Dormas

Gosia Darmas graduated from Warsaw University in 2011 with a Master Degree in Law. At the same time she was studying Spanish culture and language. She then continued her education with postgraduate studies in International Relations and Diplomacy at Collegium Civitas. From the beginning of her studies she focused on foreign policy, human rights, especially women's rights and discrimination issues and penal law. She published, among other things, a thesis on abortion in Poland and Spain and on Human Trafficking in Spain. Gosia completed an internship with the Helsinski Foundation of Human Rights and is still working as a lawyer volunteer in the Center of Women's Rights, where she provides legal services. She is also focusing on international affairs, with which she combines her professional future. That is why she completed an internship with the Embassy of Poland in Madrid, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland in Warsaw (in the Department of United Nations and Human Rights) and participated in the Summer Diplomatic School. Gosia is keen on Spanish and Spanish- speaking countries, she has travelled to Venezuela and Mexico, where she worked as a volunteer helping children and elderly people. Her passion and love is sports- she likes snowboarding, windsurfing and she is a bokwa instructor and she has been working for many years on camps, teaching both children and adults.

Sarah Deal

From Charlottesville, Virginia, Sarah Deal graduated from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 2013 with a B.A. in Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law and a minor in Religious Studies, concentrating in Islam. During her time at the University of Virginia, Sarah studied five languages, was involved in two university choirs and an acappella group, and volunteered with the University chapter of International Justice Mission--an organization involved in the fight to end human trafficking. In the summer after her second year, Sarah worked as a case manager and social services intern for the non-profit Miriam's Kitchen, an organization that serves the homeless community in Washington, D.C. In the Spring of 2012, Sarah participated in an exchange program through in South Africa, studying human rights and multiculturalism and completing a thesis on customary marriage practices as they relate to human rights law. Following her studies in South Africa, Sarah helped lead a high school group to Freiburg, Germany. Besides her love for languages and cross-cultural experiences, Sarah enjoys photography, playing the piano, and outdoor adventures.

Ankur Doshi

Ankur Doshi is a recent graduate from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, he double majored in Neuroscience and Economics. During his time in college, Ankur was involved in many diversity, service, and community-building activities. He was a Resident Advisor for three years, co-president of the university’s Habitat for Humanity chapter, and co-chair of MOSAIC, an organization that works with admissions counselors to increase campus diversity. He spent many of his breaks volunteering in various social issues, from homelessness in California to special needs children in New Hampshire. As someone who is interested in economic development and healthcare, he spent a summer in Zambia working at a nonprofit global health organization. He hopes to use his skills and experiences from college to improve healthcare in communities around the world. His hobbies include dancing, playing sports, reading, and visiting friendly people and places. In Fall 2013, Ankur will be attending medical school.

  

Hannah Gardenswartz

Hannah Gardenswartz will complete her sophomore year at Scripps College in May, 2013. She is majoring in Politics and International Relations with an emphasis in EU/European Politics and she has made the Dean’s list for the past 2 semesters. Hannah plans to minor in Theater. At Scripps, Hannah was selected as a student panelist for the Malott Public Affairs Speaker Program and participated in the Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the EU presenting her research regarding the historical and cultural roots of the naming dispute between Greece and Macedonia. She also is very active in the theatre program and has been involved in numerous productions as an assistant master electrician, lighting board operator, and lighting assistant. In addition, Hannah volunteers as a campus tour guide for Scripps, a member of ‘It Ends Here,’ a campus organization for the discussion of the culture surrounding sexual violence and working to create a sustainable solution, an officer for the Fine Cheese Club, and works as French tutor. Hannah was born and raised in Aspen, Colorado. During her free time, Hannah enjoys swimming, hiking, skiing and reading.

Krzysztof Jankowski

Krzysztof Jankowski is a final year student of law at University of Wrocław, Poland. He is an alumni of the federal Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Initiative program (2008) and a member of State Alumni Association. He used to work for a legal aid clinic and law firms. Krzysztof speaks Polish, English and Italian. In 2010, while studying for a year at Università degli Studia di Verona in Italy he deepened his understanding of constitutionalism, regionalism and human rights. In his sphere of academic interests there are also European Union law, commercial law, practise and theory of law & justice, arbitration and mediation. His special focus on ‘soft justice’ and alternative dispute resolutions led him to participation in FDI International Moot Court Competition in 2011 and ICC International Commercial Mediation Competition in 2012. Krzysztof graduated from Winter School of Tertio Millennio Institute in 2010, a program focused on Catholic social teaching. Currently he develops his speech craft in Toastmasters International Association. Krzysztof is also an ordinary member of Amnesty International. He plans to begin PhD studies and start working in a field of mediation services. In his private life Krzysztof has two great passions: theatre and travelling via couchsurfing and hitchhiking.

Clara Kent

Clara Kent is a student at Wheaton College, graduating in 2014 with a degree in Cultural Anthropology and a certificate in Global Development. In her studies she focuses on issues of development, race and ethnicity, and social justice globally and in the US. Clara has spent summers organizing development projects with a rural church in Nicaragua (2009), doing community research in Indonesia (2011), and teaching and mentoring a group of first-generation college-bound high school students from Chicago (2012). In the Summer and Fall 2013, Clara will intern with a humanitarian charity NGO in Amman, Jordan working with and researching Syrian and Iraqi refugees. At Wheaton, Clara is a part of a student group that plans events for the campus to learn and talk about racial issues in the US. After graduation, Clara would like to study public policy and work internationally.

Katarzyna Klimowicz

Katarzyna Klimowicz graduated from University of Warsaw in 2012 with a degree in Philosophy, focusing on Philosophy of Being, Cognition and Value. During her studies she was mainly focused on ethics in media, human rights, global politics, intercultural conflicts and interhuman dialogue. Katarzyna was an Erasmus student at the University of Bologna for two semesters (2009/2010) and she came back to Bologna several times in order to do her Erasmus Placement internship (2011) and European Volunteering Service (2012/2013) for YouNet Association - an NGO specializing in sending and hosting participants of international youth exchanges, promoting volunteering and organizing intercultural events. Katarzyna usually spends her holidays going on workcamps organized by Service Civil International and together with international groups of volunteers she works for peace, supporting alternative theater and music festivals for local communities all around Europe. After graduation, Katarzyna started to collaborate with a local SCI volunteering group which organized an Action Week Against Racism 2013 in Warsaw. Recently, Katarzyna worked as a cultural animator and a coordinator of volunteering in one of Warsaw' cultural centres. Katarzyna is currently developing her own foundation supporting youth initiatives and she is working on her PhD interdisciplinary project in social and political sciences elaborating on the subject of participatory and direct democracy.

Katarzyna Kotula

Katarzyna Kotula holds a Master's degree in History. This year she started a PhD in the same major. Her interests are World War II, the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations in the twentieth century. Her current research project focus on the illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine 1938-1946. She has participated in numerous international research projects, workshops and conferences. She’s presently working as a volunteer in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. She pins her hopes on working with youth in the future as a memorial places teacher.

Elzbieta Kwiecinska

Ela Kwiecińska graduated in 2011 with a BA degree in International Relations at University of Warsaw, where she is currently pursuing a Masters degree in History, Law and Sociology. In 2010 she did an internship at the Department of International Relations at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland. Since 2012 she has worked as a trainer for an NGO, Forum for Dialogue Among Nations, doing workshops for teenagers about Jewish history and culture. In March 2012 she represented her university at Model United Nations - Human Rights Council. In September 2012 Ela took part in an international seminar held by the Kreisau Foundation, “Once Upon Today: Questioning national stores of Ukraine, Poland, Israel and Germany”. On the scientific field, Ela focuses on the history of Polish/Jewish/Ukrainian realations, collective memory and national narratives in South East Europe and human rights. Ela constantly takes part in scientific projects, conferences and debates all over Europe. This summer she will spend two weeks in Western Ukraine on a scientific trip searching for traces of past multiculturalism there.

Immanuel Lokwei

Immanuel Lokwei comes from the arid northwestern region of Kenya. Despite facing the challenges of ethnic violence, illiteracy and entrenchment of traditional and nomadic lifestyles in this region, he was able to attend school in Kenya and Wesleyan University in the United States, through the help of his guardians in Kenya and a U.S.-based organization called Kenya Scholar Athlete Project. He graduated from Wesleyan in 2012 with a degree in Philosophy. His philosophical endeavors culminated in a senior thesis entitled “Moral Beauty as An Overriding Imperative in Confucianism” which was awarded the Wise Prize by the Philosophy Department at Wesleyan. After graduation, Lokwei was offered an internship with University Relations at Wesleyan, and he has extended the fundraising skills he has honed in this position to his organization, Kapseret Soccer Club, which he founded in 2009. Lokwei is also an avid writer and songwriter; some of his work, mainly fictional anecdotes and political commentaries, can be found at the Long Mouth Social Commune website that he also founded in 2010. He also founded a reggae band called Men With Bad Manners in 2010, and ever since he has stuck with the role of lead composer.

Anastasiia Mykhailova

Anastasiia Mykhailova is an alumna of FLEX Programme (Future Leaders Exchange) of 2007, having been an exchange student in the United States in 2006-2007. Anastasiia holds a BA in Classical Philology (Ancient Greek, Latin, and French) from Kiev National Taras Shevchenko University and has experience in students’ council’s activities, having been a head of Students’ Councils during 4 years at the University. She has also worked with a number of NGOs dealing with issues of healthcare and patients’ safety. In 2011, Anastasiya decided to pursue a path in human rights’ protection, and questions of female empowerment in particular. She is about to obtain her Masters degree in Human Rights and Democratization in the Eastern Partnership region. Anastasiia has also been chosen as one of the Alumni Network representatives in her current MA programme.

Nara Narimanova

Nara Narimanova graduated from the History and Philology Department with a focus on English and Crimean Tatar language and literature in 2008. She worked at the UNDP Sub-Office in Crimea (SRDC Project) and worked as an editor (2012) and as a journalist at the Crimean News Agency (2009). Nara is from the Crimean Tatar ethnic minority group, which are indigenous to the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine. Starting in 2009, Nara has been in advocacy of Human Rights Protection and Minority Rights Protection. She has participated in different international and local conferences, trainings and study-sessions on human rights and minority rights protection. She participated in the School of Youth Politician, where she was awarded a Youth Politician Diploma (2008); the UNITED Conference: 'Europe All Inclusive? Minorities on the Edge of Society' (2010); and in the international conference “Engaging youth in learning about the Holocaust and Human Rights in the 21st century”, organized by the Anne Frank House (Amsterdam) and Anne Frank Zentrum (Berlin) in Berlin.

Justyna Politańska

Justyna graduated from the University of Warsaw in 2011 with a degree in Political Science. During her studies she spent one year at Complutense University in Madrid and conducted a research on the political participation of women at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Her interests focus on women rights, their political and public engagement and on account management, project management, change management. She leads the Youth Forum Lewiatan since 2011 and she is a member of the Congress of Women Association where she initiated and led the "Kino Kobiet" (Women in Documentary Films) project. She spent the last two years working at Ogilvy, an international advertising agency.

Mariana Pryven

Mariana Pryven received a B.A. in Philology from Kyiv National Linguistic University, Ukraine (2009). In 2011, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to complete a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature at Washington University, Saint Louis where she focused on Cultural Critical Theory, Post-1945 Literature, and European Intellectual History. Since completion of her M.A., she continued her graduate education at the Paideia Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden. During and after her studies, she initiated and contributed to a number of projects exploring religious and ethnic identities. Upon her arrival to Ukraine, she began working for the NGO “Dukh i Litera” Research and Publishing Association in Kyiv in the capacity of the editor and researcher. She also is a member of the All-Ukrainian Union of Translators, the only organization in Ukraine that advocates for interests of translators in Ukraine and abroad.

Tomasz  Pyszko

Tomasz Pyszko graduated in 2008 with a BA degree in International Relations at Krakow University. In 2010 he studied at the International People’s College in Denmark where, he focused on human rights and environment protection. From 2011 to 2012, he worked at the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Poland as a logistic expert during Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. He organized ministerial conferences in the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Canada, RPA and Poland. During the summer 2012, Tomasz participated in the Peace Caravan project where he was raising awareness about human rights. During the project he organized street actions in Scotland and Austria, provided workshops in Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, gave lectures in Bulgaria, created a movie about minorities in Romania and visited refugees and asylum seekers centers in Finland, Bulgaria and Belgium. In October 2012, Tomasz began the European Voluntary Service in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, at the Youth Information Center CIIC. Tomasz recently participated in trainings organized by the Council of Europe and was involved in two long-term projects – Climate Justice, focusing on human rights from environmental perspectiva, and YALLA project which promotes cooperation among European Union countries with Euro-Mediterranean partners (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, and Tunisia). In February 2013, he graduated from Collegium Civitas with an MA degree in Public Policy and Administration.

Jan Świątek

Jan Świątek graduated from the University of Science and Technology in Krakow in 2010 with a degree in Finance and Management. His master thesis deals with salary discrepancies. Jan’s main interests are are poverty, economic growth, economic inequalities and globalization. During his studies, Jan was a member of various student associations and NGO’s. Jan also spent four months in Brazil as a fundraiser in an NGO helping children from poor families. In 2011, Jan created and coordinated “Projekt Huxley” – a series of documentary movies concerning political and social issues. He likes cycling and promotes the bike as a healthy and environmentally-friendly means of transport in the city.

Jeffrey Treisbach

Jeff Treisbach graduated in 2008 from The George Washington University with a BA in International Affairs. In the summer of 2009, he began volunteering with Balkan Sunflowers in Kosovo working with Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian communities there. After a brief internship in Macedonia, Jeff returned to Kosovo in 2010 to coordinate volunteers for Balkan Sunflowers. He then began his Masters studies and recently completed his MA in Intercultural Conflict Management from Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin with a thesis about the reintegration of forced returnees in Kosovo.

Vera Wedekind

Vera Wedekind will receive her Master’s degree in Violence, Conflict and Development with a concentration in post-conflict reconstruction and gender from the London School of Oriental and African Studies in mid-2013. After volunteering for six months as a primary school teacher in a Guatemalan non-profit after high school, she pursued her BA in International Relations at the University of Dresden. She focused on conflict, development and Latin America, and studied abroad in Mexico for a semester. After graduation, Vera spent a year in Washington D.C. as a Fulbright and Rotary Scholar where she focused on Monitoring and Evaluation. Her professional experience includes work for the development committee of the German Parliament (2007), a Member of Parliament in Brussels (2008), the German Embassy in Honduras (2009), the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) in New Delhi (2010),  and the Monitoring and Evaluation team of the D.C.–based NGO ‘Search for Common Ground’ (2011). Last summer, Vera spent three months in Guatemala to conduct an evaluation of an education and social project. Having travelled extensively in Central America, she now plans a trip to Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and Israel.