Syed Aman Ali
Pakistan (Host: Frontier Design Group, LLC)Aman is a Monitoring and Evaluation professional with expertise in evaluations, quantitative
and qualitative research, assessments, surveys, studies, and report writing with more than eight years experience in government, private, and development sector organizations. He holds an MPA with majors in Evaluation from University of the Punjab, Pakistan, and an MBA in Finance from International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan. The passion for evaluation is reflected in his published work that he had presented at mega international conferences across three regions; Mexico, Uganda, and Thailand. He is a founding board member of Pakistan Evaluation Association (PEA) – an organization established with a vision to transform evaluation culture by impacting lives of millions in Pakistan. He has served as M&E Specialist in a provincial ministry, and in one of the world’s leading development consulting company for a USAID grant. For initial five years in his professional career, he served at IFRC, Nai Zindagi – a national NGO, and BRAC, where he created impact on lives of vulnerable segments of society. Over the years, Aman has monitored and evaluated projects of different donors including; USAID, World Bank, Red Cross, Government of the Punjab, and BRAC through which he has developed skills in M&E, assessments, reporting, and data management. He enjoys working with multicultural and diverse organizations, and has a strong passion for serving in governance, public health, disaster emergencies, and conflict affected communities.
Host Organization: Frontier Design Group, LLC
Role at Host Organization: Aman will apply his regional and functional expertise to help the firm achieve its business development targets in the national security space. He will help guide a high-profile
development client’s strategic planning process in Pakistan and contribute to Frontier’s additional work streams at the nexus between national security and cost effectiveness, systems practice, and design thinking.
Al Khan
Pakistan (Host: Eat Offbeat)Altaf is a digital marketing aficionado and bona fide Software Engineer with over seven years of diverse experience working in the for-profit, nonprofit and government sector. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from City University of Science and Information Technology in Peshawar, Pakistan. Last year, Altaf joined a team of entrepreneurs as CTO and helped them in developing an E-commerce store and formulating the online marketing strategy. In one year the store had over hundred thousand dollars in sales and it recently got incubated in the Government of Pakistan backed National Incubation Center Accelerator program. His Software Engineering background enables him to document, design, build, implement and manage large scale software development projects. Previously, at China Pakistan Economic Corridor project, he worked on conceiving, developing and implementing an encrypted project timeline monitoring and information relaying system. His nonprofit experience includes working on digital rights advocacy as an independent consultant for Digital Rights Foundation Lahore. Where he led a pilot project to build and manage a Right to Information web portal for District Government. For online fundraising, he built a digital ecosystem from the scratch for a nonprofit, Pehli Kiran School. Working in different sectors with his unique blend of marketing and development background, it has inculcated strong analytical skills, strategic thought process and leadership abilities in him. He plans to use his professional prowess to add more verticals to his personality and find an enabling environment where he can apply himself.
Host Organization: Eat Offbeat
Role at Host Organization: Altaf will act as the Technology & Digital Marketing Fellow to build proprietary technology to increase flexibility and improve customer experience. He will also work on designing and running digital marketing campaigns for its current product and testing campaigns for new products.
Margaret Chambeshi
Zambia (Host: RestoreNYC)Margaret is a 33 years old Zambian female citizen born in Kitwe, Zambia. She has 11 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. 3 years of volunteerism and 8 years different positions of full time contracts. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Development Studies from Zambian Open University, Post-graduate Diploma in Monitoring and Evaluation from Cavendish University-Zambia and Diploma in Social Work both from University of Zambia. Margaret works as a Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning officer for the USAID funded Zambia Community HIV Prevention Project (Z-CHPP)/DREAMS Initiative based in Choma, Southern Province of Zambia. She supports the organization in ensuring a functional monitoring and evaluation systems. Her main responsibilities are; to ensure data is collected from service delivery points, analyzed and reported according to organizational and donor requirements, data quality audits, identifying success stories for organizational learning. From August 2014 to November 2016 she worked for Women and Law in Southern Africa – Zambia as Monitoring and Evaluation Officer in Lusaka province. She contributed to Women and Law in Southern Zambia’s mission to contribute to socio-economic, political and legal advancement for women. Achieved through a collaborative, strategic action oriented research in the social and legal field; lobbying for legal reform and policy, changes on laws and practices which discriminate and disadvantage women and children. Her responsibilities were to assist programs with planning, manage programs information systems, conduct reviews of performance against targets, identifying and addressing implementation challenges, documenting lessons learned and most-significant success stories lastly oversee the entire organisational Monitoring and Evaluation system and participate in baseline studies. Margaret has acquired skills in activity scheduling and tracking, design and implementation of project monitoring and evaluation plans and Reproductive and Sexual health. Margaret is passionate about women and children’s rights, Gender, HIV/AIDS and Disability issues.
Host Organization: RestoreNYC
Role at Host Organization: Working as an Impact Manager, Margaret will lead Restore’s team in its outcomes model and tracking across client services, housing, and economic empowerment programs. She will refine Restore’s impact infrastructure including manuals and processes, ensure effective implementation of impact activities, and analyze data and communicate results of findings to diverse stakeholders.
Komal Ashraf Syed
Pakistan (Host: Microsoft)Komal has seven years of experience in the technology and research sector, having earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Computer Science from the Lahore University of Management Science. Her passion is educational technology, platforms, tools and techniques that leverage the power of the tech space to enhance educational learning outcomes both in academic and professional setting. She went onto to pursue a Master’s degree in Technology, Innovation and Education from Harvard and worked as a Head Teaching fellow for the computer science department at Harvard. Most recently she has worked in various capacities in building globally implemented technology projects in various sectors like oil and gas, health, education, and airline industry both as a Project Manager and Technical Team lead. She is apart from doing technology consulting at various levels also teaching undergraduate courses in game development and mobile application design at the local university and is involved in faculty training at the institute.Through these experiences, she has developed a strong understanding of what it takes to build teams and the kind of training that is required for building efficient systems. She enjoys excellent research and problem solving skills learned through a number of years of research in academic institutes and the corporate world. She thrives at a good challenge in technology and education space, and has a strong passion for youth and student empowerment through the use of technology and connectivity, believing it to be the way for providing equal opportunities for all. Her current research interests lie in building cheap reliable hardware and software solutions for developing countries’ students that do not have access to the resources to work in the development sector and is looking towards tech giants to lower the cost of access to development tools and platforms available.
Host Organization: Microsoft
Role at Host Organization: Working as a Cloud Solution Architect Fellow, Komal will support the Cloud Solution Architecture team to drive the deployment of the Airband partner workloads into Azure, increasing their consumption of the platform by providing deployment guidance and supporting
development of the partners’ cloud adoption model.
Hira Saeed
Pakistan (Host: Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship)Born in a middle-class family in Karachi, Pakistan, Hira used to envy the life of bankers. The lavish branches chilled with ACs, shiny cars and home loans just for using computers all day. Wow! After completing the Intermediate, she got all excited to study chartered accountancy. Unfortunately, life had other plans and her family couldn’t arrange the fee. She got the talent farming scholarship, completed her business administration degree and won Gold. That’s where she found her Entrepreneurship gut. She was 18 when she started a business of organizing training on career-counseling. It failed and she entered into the corporate world (unwillingly). Writing has always been her passion, be it a personal diary, or an exam. The words flow as she takes out the pen. As her first internship, she stepped into the world of digital and started making social media strategies for them and her unique selling proposition was still her ‘words’. Tech industry embraced her talent like no other thing and she got recognized by many local and international companies because of her exceptional work. Fast forward to 5 years, she is currently a Tech Journalist writing for multiple top-tier tech publications including VentureBeat, TheNextWeb and Entrepreneur.com. She also heads blog and media for Coinschedule.com, a leading ICO listing the company in the UK. She is also the facilitator of Startup Weekend Karachi. In local sphere, Hira is famous has a tech evangelist and a public speaker involved in digital skills penetration and bringing inclusivity in the tech industry. She founded of a copywriting agency, Digital Doers and a closed community, Tech Geeks Pakistan where tech enthusiasts share their love for technology on one platform. She is also a certified Editor from IBA. Her website is www.hirasaeed.com
Host Organization: Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship
Role at Host Organization: Hira will work as a GSBI Women’s Economic Empowerment Fellow to implement new research, initiatives, and/or projects to help her host organizations advancement of women’s economic empowerment through GSBI programs and resources.
Giana Andonini
Brazil (Host: Women's Alliance for Knowledge Exchange)Giana is a hands-on professional with 8+ years experience working with Communications and Project Management in Social Sector organizations from Brazil, U.S. and Spain. Giana holds a Bachelor degree in Social Communications from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (Brazil) and a Post Certificate Course degree in Social Innovation Management, from Amani Institute. Giana is currently studying a Master in Strategy and Technology for Development at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and working as project manager at Fundación Tomillo (Madrid). While Brazil is her home, she has been living for the past year in Spain and has lived for some time in Bolivia while volunteering at Proyecto Martadero. Giana was as a scout team leader, president of AIESEC in Curitiba (Brazil) and had volunteered in other various NGOs. On a professional level, she has worked on social impact projects in different sectors: at a multinational company, a governmental organization, a non-profit foundation and a social enterprise. Giana has experience working as ‘intrapreneur’ twice: when implemented the Social Franchise ‘Projeto Pescar’ at the multinational company Dixie Toga S.A. and when implemented the initiative ‘Estudar Fora’ at Fundação Estudar, one of the main non-profit foundations that support Brazilian youth in their education. Her interests are related to Education, Social Innovation and Sustainability and her way of working is based on a mixture of empathy, action, and strategic thinking. See more at www.gianaandonini.com
Host Organization: Women’s Alliance for Knowledge Exchange
Role at Host Organization: Giana will work as a Strategic Planning & Marketing Fellow to contribute to the development of essential marketing materials and marketing campaigns that will help WAKE achieve organizational sustainability, partnership development, outreach and impact.
Muhammad Abdullah Arshad
Pakistan (Host: BronxWorks)Muhammad has five years of experience mostly in education sector specifically Technical and Vocational education. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and a Master’s degree in Marketing from Lahore School of Economics and Bachelor’s of Law LLB from University of the Punjab. He has been appointed as a CEO of City and Guilds International in Pakistan. While working at C&G International as a Quality Assurance Manager he has successfully managed to implement the best quality and compliance practices, which has elevated the brand reputation of the organization in Pakistan, and a program of 3000 students, 15 Master trainers of Culinary Arts and Patisserie Qualification was agreed between the Technical Education & Vocational Training Authority Punjab for one year. Previously, he has worked with Information Technology University, Punjab as an Outreach and Linkages Associate and helped the technical team to develop an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to find jobs for marginalized people and post jobs by the industries, it was backed by a research at the grass root level and a baseline survey. Also, during his job he has disbursed vouchers to Training Service Providers (TSPs) and apprentices for apprenticeship training to 1300 trainees over six months period. He has also worked at USAID Chemonics International at Procurement Department and developed robust procurement skills during 6 months period. During his work he has experienced following issues in the country; lack of skilled education, poverty, hunger, homelessness, women empowerment, youth development. Through his experiences, Abdullah has established a strong implementation and coordination skills, training and development, education management, marketing, business development, communication skills and outreach and creating linkages skills. He is passionate to work for skills development and encourage people to develop skills for themselves, businesses and eventually for the economy.
Host Organization: Bronxworks
Role at Host Organization: Muhammad will act as the CQI Coordinator and will be responsible for tracking and assuring that business transactions are properly supported and recorded for various regulatory requirements. He will will work with the CQI team to understand key performance indicators and program metrics, conduct internal program audits, and present metric reports at inter-agency and internal meetings.
Edith Mecha
Kenya (Host: Transparency & Accountability Initiative)Edith has four years of experience in the nonprofit sector. She has earned a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics from Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya and a Master’s degree in Communication Studies from the University of Nairobi in Kenya. She also received certifications in Social Media Marketing and Monitoring and Evaluation as offered by USAID. As Assistant Manager in Advocacy, Publicity and Fundraising with the National Fund for the Disabled of Kenya, she helped socio economically empower persons with disabilities through various advocacy initiatives, and increased awareness on disability issues. Previously, Edith worked with PATH where she developed Communication and Media Strategies for Malaria and Tuberculosis Elimination in Kenya. In addition, she edited the National Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Lung Disease Program (NTLD-Program) Annual Report of 2014. She has volunteered as a mentor and organizer of several disability awareness initiatives including the International Day of Persons with Disabilities and World Cerebral Palsy Day observance in Kenya. Edith is the founder of “Youth Speak”, a Facebook page for motivation and personal development. She has strong skills in advocacy and strategic communication, research and fundraising, web content management and social media. Edith has also worked in Education for All, Sexual Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS, Good Governance, Rule of Law and Human Rights, and Disability Awareness. She is strongly devoted to social inclusion of vulnerable people, gender equality and youth empowerment.
Host Organization: Transparency & Accountability Initiative
Role at Host Organization: Edith will work as a Communications & Operations Fellow to bring together leading international funders of transparency work. She will share knowledge and report for and with donor members, communicate knowledge products and activities, and raise the profile of TAI its members’ programming on good governance.
Clara Li-Shan Wan
Malaysia (Host: Center for Asia Leadership Initiatives) - Atlas Corps MalaysiaClara has seven years of experience in the nonprofit sector. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Finance, Accounting and Management from the University of Nottingham funded by a scholarship under the Star Education Fund. While working at Generasi Gemilang Foundation (GG), Clara led a team on a collaborative project with the local Corporate Responsibility Department of an international financial institution. She was involved in developing a plan to provide access to basic financial protection for the urban poor. Clara also trained children and youth to manage their finances wisely through financial education programs run in schools and communities across Malaysia. As part of the deployment of this project, she worked closely with relevant government departments, regulators, and nonprofit organizations to maximize results. Prior to that, Clara managed GG’s volunteer group, built the volunteering structure and mobilized hundreds of volunteers to serve the community. Through these experiences, she developed strong project management and implementation, leadership and presentation skills. Clara is passionate about increasing the financial inclusion of the poor and in partnering with companies to meet the needs of underprivileged communities through their corporate responsibility initiatives.
Host Organization: Center for Asia Leadership Initiatives – Atlas Corps Malaysia
Ansa Rabia
Pakistan (Host: United Way Bay Area)A development professional with more than ten years of experience of working with public and private sector stakeholders particularly in the domain of public-private partnerships, skills development, counseling & placements, technological sophistication, labour market survey, institutional capacity building, and knowledge management for socio-economic development. Currently, working with Louis Berger on USAID Punjab Youth Workforce Development Project as a Lead for Placements, Partnerships, and Institutional Capacity Building. Ansa is providing strategic, technical & policy support, and advice on formulation and execution of capacity development initiatives for empowering vulnerable and marginalized youth; strengthening partnerships with public and private sector stakeholders at all administrative government tiers with an aim of improving accessibility, equity, and relevance of youth development services for sustainable socio-economic development. Previously, worked with GiZ as PPP Advisor and facilitated the Government and public-sector institutions in bridging the disconnect with private sector for demand-driven workforce development. Prior to that, served at Technology Upgradation and Skill Development Company (TUSDEC), a subsidiary of the Ministry of Industries and Production, Government of Pakistan (GoP), for about eight years in multiple capacities, starting from a trainee metamorphosed into a Manager leading a team of four professionals. The sphere of responsibilities included orchestrating proposals and papers for the Government, multi-funding agencies, creating partnerships with bilateral/multilateral groups, corporate sector, and government bodies along with executing image building initiatives. Her educational pursuits involved an MPA from University of Punjab, Pakistan and a BBIT from Lahore College for Women University. The blend of classroom and on-job learning significantly inculcated leadership, cross-functional team work, effective communication skills, problem resolution, and resilience into her personality. She always has a balanced approach towards life, relishes her work as a development professional, and eager to mark herself as social entrepreneur contributing productively towards socio-economic melioration of local communities.
Host Organization: United Way Bay Area
Role of Host Organization: Ansa will enhance UWBA’s business partnerships work through research, data analysis and the creation of a strategic plan. She will work with the Equity Team to assess current activities of the business partnerships team as well as conduct research on best practices across the nation, including feasibility of expansion in the Bay Area and analyze our data.
Victor Anyebe
Nigeria (Host: San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium)Victor is a Public health professional with 6 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. He earned a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery from the University of Jos in Nigeria. Victor currently works as the Active Case Finding Coordinator at KNCV Tuberculosis foundation, a Netherlands based international organization providing technical assistance to countries on Tuberculosis control and eradication. He leads a USAID-funded TB case finding intervention across communities and key populations in Nigeria known as WOW (Wellness on Wheels) which uses a mobile clinic platform in identifying and linking diagnosed TB patients to free treatment through innovative screening and diagnostic methods. Prior to this, Victor coordinated two NIH research projects (ISTAR and mHealth) in Benue while working with Caritas Nigeria where congregation based approaches to prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV were implemented with outstanding results achieved. Victor has experience in research, institutional capacity building and project management. He believes that through evidence, solutions can be provided to public health challenges, women and gender issues as well as leadership development. Victor is optimistic that the efficient use of data in designing public health interventions and health policy will ensure sustainability and overall improvement in health systems across Africa.
Host Organization: San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium
Fellow role at San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium: Victor will serve as a SFCCC a Health Care Data Analytics and Strategy Fellow who will help develop a data strategy and streamline the processes used to collect, store, analyze, and report data. He will The work with partners to develop usable reports and validate the data used to deliver high quality health care to the most vulnerable residents of San Francisco.
Christine Wangui Wachira
Kenya (Host: BronxWorks)Christine has an Executive Masters in Development Policies and Practices from the Graduate Institute Geneva, a BSc. Computer Science from Catholic University of Eastern Africa, and close to eight years’ experience in both the private and the nonprofit sectors. Her ability to adapt and respond to emerging challenges, and embrace daunting learning opportunities, facilitated her transition from a career in banking to a career in international development. Her most recent experience was working as a Research and Policy Officer for the multi-agency $31 million Strengthening Education Systems in East Africa Project at Aga Khan Foundation, East Africa. In this position, she lead the Learning and Dialogue component and use evidence generated through targeted research initiatives to engage government authorities and other key actors. One of her notable accomplishments was leading the planning and execution of two major regional stakeholder events in Kenya and Uganda which allowed policymakers and practitioners to make evidence-based decisions on education reforms. Christine has excellent relationship and coordination skills and is passionate about making a difference in the lives of people, especially the marginalized or less privileged. She desires to grow as a leader and a change agent in Africa.
Host Organization: BronxWorks
Role at Host Organization: Christine will act as the Executive Coordinator provide a variety of executive, administrative, and strategic support to the Executive Director, members of the Executive Team, and Senior Program Leadership of a large social services agency serving communities of the South Bronx. She will act as liaison to multiple organizational structures and coordinate special projects and events.