Shumaila Mansoor
Pakistan (Host: American Red Cross)Shumaila Mansoor has more than five years of work experience in the development sector with the rural communities in the northern areas of Pakistan. She earned her Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Peshawar in 2011. While managing the Monitoring, Evaluation and Research component of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, she contributed in improving the socio-economic conditions of the people through the regular work of the organization which included improving rural livelihoods, renewable and hydro energy, social development, women development and economic development programs. During her work with the AKRSP, she also led field research in the region focusing on the quality of life assessment, socio economic survey, poverty scoring survey and the labor market assessment. She has a good understanding of a number of analytical tools and frameworks for both field monitoring, result based management and field researches and also an experience of qualitative and quantitative field researches on gender, hydro and renewable energy, women economic empowerment, institutional and market development, livelihood in emergencies and youth development. Before joining the AKRSP, she had worked with a Norwegian funded NGO (CIADP) where she contributed to the overall wellbeing of women in accessing safe drinking water and better education and health facilities. Shumaila is a strong believer in just and equitable development and is interested specifically in development of mountain and rural communities. She has a strong inclination towards field researches and aspires to learn new cross cutting methods during her stay in the U.S.
Host Organization: American Red Cross
Role at Host Organization: Shumaila will support a 2 year grant-funded project on Organizational Learning, conducting literature reviews of key learning questions, writing summary reports of program evaluations and supporting the dissemination and utilization of knowledge products, lessons learned, and evaluation findings.
Sara Çapaliku
Albania (Host: Internews)Sara has two years of experience in the nonprofit sector, and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Law, from University of Tirana, Albania, an “Undergraduate Exchange Student Award” at University of Texas at Austin and
a Master’s of Arts Degree in European Studies from the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen, Germany. As an Open Society Foundation Fellow of the “Undergraduate Exchange Program,” she lived and studied for one year in the U.S. and studied sociology. During her year in the U.S., Sara was a volunteer for two nonprofits, working in grassroots’ level in East Side Austin. As a Master’s student, she was awarded a grant from the Jean Monnet Leadership Programme to implement her Community Project “In from the Margins”, in Albania, focusing on social and educational needs of marginalized children/youth in the extremely poor suburbs of Tirana. Through fundraising for this project she helped 30 beneficiaries with school supplies, and books. Currently, she is working as a Youth Trainer for the Youth Project of the nonprofit Mary Ward Loreto Foundation, in Tirana (Albania).Sara’s responsibilities as a Youth Trainer consist in designing and developing MWL Youth Leadership Programme, targeting youth located in highly marginalized rural areas in Albania; leading the Awareness-raising Training sessions on Human Anti-trafficking in more than 15 vulnerable areas of the country; supporting the Line Manager in implementing project’s economic empowerment strategy for youth; collaborate for fundraising activities, and widen the network with third parties. Due to her job, Sara is part of various European Anti-trafficking Networks, such as RENATE (Religious in Europe Networking Against Trafficking and Exploitation), ANDANTE (European Alliance of Catholic Women’s Organizations), and URAT (United Response Against Trafficking). Through these experiences, she developed strong community-based project coordination skills, as well as, abilities to create innovative implementation ways in grassroots level. Sara enjoys focusing on youth empowerment, education, training on human anti-trafficking, and is very passionate about lobbying for human rights, fundraising and policy making.
Host Organization: Internews
Role at Host Organization: Sara will help Internews build new strategies that incorporate youth development and counter people-trafficking using the organization’s core capacities in media and information. Her tasks will include coordination across staff, consensus-building, administration and logistics for consultants, research, and supporting representation with partners and donors.
Ridwan Sheikh-Nor
Somalia (Host: Save the Children)Ridwan has six years of experience in the nonprofit sector, and earned a Bachelor’s degree of Science in Accounting from SIMAD University in Somalia. While working as a Finance Manager with Chemonics International Inc. under the USAID-funded Strengthening Somali Governance (SSG) project, he helped to manage project funds through information analysis, monitor project spending against projections to identify potential project under-orover-expenditure, and liaise with the DCOP to recommend the required action. He also assisted identifying areas for cost reductions and operational improvements, periodic forecasting, and assisting with periodic analysis of operations performance. Previously, Ridwan Worked with the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Somalia serving UNICEF funded Go to School Project as the Technical Finance Officer. He was responsible for maintaining financial information for project and disbursement of teachers’ salaries. He established good relationship with UNICEF and MoE on the liquidation of the advances taken in each period and submitting the monthly financial reports. Through these experiences, Ridwan has delivered financial, budgetary management, and internal control skills. Ridwan is very interested in financial management, budget and accountancy and has a strong passion for operational management.
Host Organization: Save the Children
Role at Host Organization: Ridwan will help the HIV & TB Unit of the Global Health Department, working with the Awards team to support the award management aspects of the program implementation. He will assist the award team on a daily basis on AMS support, approvals and coordination with Country Offices for their support in grant management, financial management and audits.
Rayan Abuamer
Libya (Host: Impact Experience)Rayan has over seven years of experience in the nonprofit sector, and earned a Bachelor’s of Engineering in Architecture and Urban Planning in 2014 from the University of Tripoli in Libya. While working as a Program Officer at the American Bar Association in Tripoli under the USAID-funded National Dialogue and Constitution program by developing and implementing the rule of law across Libya. She was able to manage and implement more than 100 activities to promote the Libyan constitution, raise the public awareness and have conflict resolution and community dialogue Sessions in over 25 different cities across Libya. The role was to also train and raise awareness for over 1400 stakeholders and developed 19 recommendation letters that have been sent to the Constitution Drafting Assembly and many of the demands were considered in the final July 2017 Constitution. During her undergraduate study, Rayan was one of only 4 students who represented the Architect and Urban Planning department in an international workshop to design a proposal for a housing compound to host the illegal immigrants in the island of Lampedusa-Italy. Rayan is an active member in H2O team, a Libyan nonprofit organization that aims to bridge the gaps between youth and authority figures. Through these experiences, she has developed leadership in community engagement, conflict analysis, and project management. She is particularly interested in economic development, social entrepreneurship, and youth empowerment.
Host Organization: Impact Experience
Role at Host Organization: Rayan will play a pivotal role in the strategy, execution, and growth of Impact Experience. She will help deepen the scale of Impact Experience’s work while engaging first hand with community leaders, helping to serve needy communities around the world.
Ons Gharbi
Tunisia (Host: Microsoft)Ons has more than two years of experience in the nonprofit sector, and earned a Bachelor’s of Business Administration from Tunis Business School in Tunisia. As a national coordinator of Tounes at Ta3mal which is an initiative of Microsoft and Sialtech, Ons was responsible for every aspect of program activities in Tunisia. She contributed to the development and growth of the Ta3mal ecosystem, which includes building a network of key contributing partners, adapting continuously the platform to the Tunisian context, and handling the outreach efforts to promote the services to youth and youth-serving organizations. Previously, Ons was the employer engagement officer of Tounes Ta3mal and became a great added value to the team and to the overall performance of the project by building strong, authentic and sustainable partnerships between the “Tounes Ta3mal” platform and the corporate environment. Through this position, she was able to connect to young opportunity seekers with talent hunters, thus shortening the unemployment gap that is facing the young Tunisian communities. Looking back at these years of active civic engagement, Ons can now say that her experience with project management in complex organizational ecosystem was the major live-training field in which she developed both interpersonal and leadership skills, but also an analytical mindset that allowed her to take into consideration new different perspectives
Host Organization: Microsoft
Role at Host Organization: Ons will help evolve global project engagements, partnerships, processes, tools, research, and thought leadership by supporting the AAI team, which collaborates with internal and external partners to develop innovative new products, solutions, and business models that enable billions more people to affordably get online and access applications and services powered by Microsoft’s Cloud.
Adnen Ben Haj Yahia (Nino)
Tunisia (Host: PYXERA Global)Nino has five years of experience in the nonprofit sector and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Management from the International University of Tunis. After founding two social businesses, Nino became a social entrepreneurship specialist and has developed a curriculum for a MEPI funded job development project. The project will teach practical skills to young unemployed people on starting and running their own businesses. He also serves as manager of EL SPACE, a community shared workspace that he co-founded. EL SPACE provides interdisciplinary workshops for local business people and affordable office space for social entrepreneurs. While working on these initiatives, Nino developed project management skills: conception, research, design, planning, execution, quality control, and report writing. He is the volunteer head of an ongoing organization, Tunisian Association for Nature and Sustainable Development (ANDD), which educates people through public workshops and debates on climate change. This work followed his volunteer work with EVASIONS, an outdoor activity association which he co-founded, that encouraged good bodily health and exploration of Tunisia. Through EVASIONS, he learned how to manage large groups of people and organize events. He also managed the budget for EVASIONS and ANDD. Nino is determined to improve the community by developing social entrepreneurship thus encouraging economic development for young people.
Host: PYXERA Global
Fellow Role at Host Organization: Nino will assist in improving local partner and participant training/tools for the SAP program that has a focus on assisting entrepreneurs. He will also help with Ares client management, social media/communications, project development, and impact measurement.
Nesrine Souissi
Tunisia (Host: PYXERA Global)Nesrine has two years of experience in the nonprofit sector. She earned a Master Degree in Business Management in Marketing from the Mediterranean School of Business in Tunisia. She has worked as a Monitoring & Evaluation Coordinator since January 2017 at the USAID-funded Business Reform & Competitiveness project (BRCP): a job creation project in Tunisia through a targeted technical and HR assistance for small and medium enterprises with the aim to increase their competitiveness. She worked closely with BRCP’s different components elaborating work plans, setting objectives jointly with the team and stakeholders. She also monitors on a regular basis the advancement and achievements of the project in accordance with the project goals – based on key performance indicators. She also reports the results to the project management, Home Office, and USAID. During recent years, she has been involved in the world of entrepreneurship and she took part in several different conferences in order to acquire more understanding in entrepreneurship. She also participated in an entrepreneurship based-program for empowering entrepreneurial minds in the emerging world. During this program, she had collaborated with other participants to create a participatory online platform to enable better communication between citizens and municipalities as well as between citizens themselves.
Host Organization: PYXERA Global
Role at Host Organization: Nesrine will help with the public and communications department in planning the Fall 2018 Global Engagement Forum, corporate sponsorship, and marketing material. She will also contribute her entrepreneurial experience to other events and strategic priorities.
Nadiah Saba’neh
Palestinian Territories (Host: IBM)Saba’neh has eleven years of diverse experience working for Relief International, an international non-governmental organization as a programs manager, Palestinian Cellular Operator Jawwal in the Project management and the strategic planning unit, in addition to Teaching at the Electrical Engineering department in BirZeit University. Saba’neh was a DAAD scholarship holder and earned a very good standing M.Sc degree in Wireless Communication Engineering and Excellent standing B.Sc degree in Telecommunications Technology. Saba’neh works as the Head of the Technical Development Directorate at the Palestinian Higher Council for Innovation and Excellence. Her responsibilities vary from evaluating projects, overseeing the incubation process of startups, leading the discovery of young innovators from schools and universities and building a strong innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Palestine. Throughout her work she has developed a diverse character with strong leadership, management, and operational skills along with the solid technical background. Fostering and integrating innovation in various sectors and fields for better economy is Saba’neh’s main focus while empowering youth and women empowerment is of her main interests as she is an alumna of Techwomen mentorship program 2015.Saba’neh enjoys voluntarism and traveling.
Host Organization: IBM
Role at Host Organization: Nadiah will work closely with the Corporate Service Corps (CSC) Program Manager in Armonk on a number of projects to support the ongoing operations and deployment of CSC teams, in addition to developing new models for community engagement.
Mohammed Almadhoun
Palestinian Territories (Host: IBM)Mohammed has eight years of experience in the nonprofit sector; he earned MBA from the Islamic University of Gaza, and a Bachelor’s of Information Technology in Computer Information Systems from Jordan University of Science and Technology in Jordan. Through his job as Research and Evaluation Officer – UNRWA Community Mental Health Programme (CMHP), Mohammed works in the monitoring and evaluation of the results and impacts of CMHP projects’ and programmes’ implementation. He gathers, standardises and maintains data on different structured programs through databases for internal and external use for M&E and summary reporting purposes. Before his current position, Mohammed worked for CMHP as Training Coordinator where he helped in planning, organizing, and developing capacity building strategies for staff members who provide psychosocial support and counseling services to Palestinian refugees (children & adults) at both UNRWA schools and primary health care centers. Previously, Mohammed worked for UNRWA Khanyones Training College as Technical Instructor, he provided semi-professional training to students of Business Diploma Programs; in addition to his academic experience in delivering a number of management and business administration modules, he contributed practically in delivering different ICT, MIS & Information Management modules. As part of being initiative, Mohammed had a voluntary role during 2014 summer hostilities in Gaza, he worked as a collective centre member in providing PFA, logistical, and emergency preparedness support for internally displaced people (IDPs) in the emergency shelters, which as a result contributed in enhancing IDP’s coping and resiliency. Mohammed is passionate in supporting youth development in different aspects such as training & capacity building as well as entrepreneurship initiatives.
Host Organization: IBM
Role at Host Organization: Mohammed will work closely with the Corporate Service Corps (CSC) Program Manager in Armonk on a number of projects to support the ongoing operations and deployment of CSC teams, in addition to developing new models for community engagement.
Maria Lourdes Zapata Miranda
Nicaragua (Host: Heartland Human Care Services)Lourdes has over three years of experience in the nonprofit sector, and she recently graduated with honors from Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Nicaragua where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, during which she was an exchange student at Murray State University in the U.S. for one year as part of the Global UGRAD Exchange Program. While working as an Operations Coordinator at the Organization of American States (OAS), she helped coordinating logistics and administrative operations for the Inter-American Program of Judicial Facilitators (IPJF). Previously, she worked with the community-based organization Foundation for the Development of Cuapa (FUNDED CUAPA), where she assessed the impact of several poverty reduction projects. Recognized as a young leader by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and Junior Chamber International (JCI), Lourdes has also volunteered extensively in international organizations, first in the world’s largest youth-led nonprofit AIESEC, and then as a Community Development Consultant in Brazil where she successfully developed strategies to address community needs and issues. As a fellow of the USAID funded Talent Cloud Fellowship Program, Lourdes has also conducted a research on volunteer experiences for the development of soft skills and their impact on youth employability in Nicaragua. Through these experiences she has developed skills in project management, impact assessment, research, and leadership. Furthermore, Lourdes has a strong passion for youth employment, social justice and women’s empowerment.
Host Organization: Heartland Human Care Services (HHCS)
Role at Host Organization: Lourdes will join a management team of three leaders with many years of experience to handle several major projects, including helping the Operations team at HHCS to grow toward a more strategic, coordinated approach by streamlining the infrastructure and customer service.
Luigi Barraza Cardenas
Mexico (Host: The Mission Preparatory School)Luigi has over five years of experience in the nonprofit sector in national and international environments. He earned a degree in Architecture from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico, obtaining
Academic Excellence Honors and the CIESLAG Academic Merit Award. In 2016, Luigi worked with Ciclo Organico in Rio de Janeiro, where he developed visual content and consulted on sustainability, project development, and urban landscaping. As an Architectural Assistant at Groupe 3 Architectes in Morocco, Luigi developed strategies to implement sustainable policies on architectural and urban projects. Luigi collaborated with Dare Inc. in Rabat, where he expanded the Dare Build project for sustainable architecture and interior design, and imparted workshops on community development, social impact, and recycled collective art. At the Migrant Solidarity Group of Hungarian refugee camp in Bicske, Luigi provided humanitarian relief and capacitated refugees by conducting training sessions on sustainable development, leadership, and environmental awareness. In 2015, Luigi acted as a
visual content developer and graphic designer for LEAD India in New Delhi, successfully reshaping the public image of the organization by improving the quality and outreach of graphic, photo and video material. Luigi applied his leadership development skills during the planning and execution of National Training Sessions on integrating conservation and climate adaptation into urban and rural development in India. Prior to that, Luigi co-founded and led Proyecto ECO Ephemeral Architecture & Conceptual Art, a community movement to achieve social impact through context-based sustainable ephemeral architecture installations in marginalized areas in Northern Mexico. Through these experiences Luigi has refined his proficiency at designing and developing visual and media products, strengthened his project management skills, and reinforced his educational experience by conducting workshops and training sessions. Luigi has developed as an artist, volunteer and activist for over a decade and believes art is a channel to attain sustainability and originate positive impact on societies around the world. Luigi is passionate about urban development, social housing, community engagement through artistic development, environment and sustainability, and capacity building.
Host Organization: The Mission Preparatory School
Role at Host Organization: Luigi will partner with the Executive Director and School Director to support internal communications, such as notices and materials to provide families with logistical and educational information, and external communications, such as online and print materials to communicate with prospective families, current and prospective donors, and the broader public to share updates about the school and enrollment information, cultivate engagement, and connect people to the school’s mission and programs.
Julie Lwando
Zambia (Host: Save the Children)Julie has six years of work experience in the nonprofit sector. She earned a Master’s of Science degree in Project Management from the University of Bolton, and a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Economics and Public Administration from the University of Zambia. Julie has worked as Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Officer for Pact Zambia in Ndola since November 2016. She supported the Zambia Community HIV Prevention project (Z-CHPP) focusing on community HIV prevention. Julie’s main role was ensuring a functional monitoring and evaluation system to catalyze innovative sustainable, accessible and quality health solutions. She supported Implementing Partners to ensure that data was collected from health service delivery points, analyzed and reported, conduct data quality audits, identify success stories for organizational learning, and participated in all research work. From March
2016 to October 2016, Julie worked as a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer in Lusaka, Zambia for Society for Family Health (Population Services International). Her project portfolio included; Sexual Reproductive Health Initiative for all, Department of Defense, Expanding Effective Contraceptive Options and HIV self-testing. From February, 2012 to March, 2016 Julie worked for World Vision Zambia as Monitoring and Evaluation Officer in Eastern province. She contributed to World Vision Zambia’s mission to work for the poor and oppressed through the implementation of area development programs aimed at enhancing transformational development by reducing poverty and empowering communities. At World Vision, Julie’s project portfolio included Health, HIV/AIDS, Sponsorship, Water and Sanitation, Education, Food Security and Livelihood. Julie has assisted programs with planning, managing information
systems, reviewing performance against targets, identifying and addressing implementation challenges, documenting lessons learned and most significant success stories, report periodically and, oversee research activities, program assessments and designs. Julie has acquired skills in activity scheduling and tracking, design and implementation of project monitoring and evaluation plans and, conducting both qualitative and quantitative research.
Julie is interested in development programming, research and policy formulation and implementation to improve development outcomes. She enjoys traveling, site seeing, meeting different people from all walks of life and dancing.
Host Organization: Save the Children
Role at Host Organization: Julie will work with the HIV & TB technical team to support the technical aspects of program implementation. She will assist with program oversight, operations, logistics, and monitoring and evaluation functions and will also support the technical and M&E teams in reviewing program documents/reports and ensuring their timely submission to the relevant quarters. She will also contribute to the development of new proposals, program innovations, knowledge products and various other technical tools and processes.