About

That's me (on the left) distributing checks to winners of the Global Refugee Design Challenge. Winners were given checks to accelerate their winning ideas for solving complex refugee challenges.

That's me (on the left) distributing checks to winners of the Global Refugee Design Challenge. Winners were given checks to accelerate their winning ideas for solving complex refugee challenges.

 
 

It all started when...

I’m a Fulbright Scholar who works at the forefront of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) innovation program. As a core member of UNHCR’s Innovation Unit, I drive strategies to engage staff and refugees in open innovation. The best part of my job is working in the field on programs that foster bottom-up innovation among displaced populations. But, I feel that true impact will come from connecting local innovators to capital and financing. And so now I’m seeking a career in social impact investing and humanitarian financing.

Before joining the UN, I worked in South Africa, traveling around townships in Johannesburg and Cape Town, giving micro-entrepreneurial training and mentorship to asylum-seekers. 

My passion for social enterprise/innovation started in grad school at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Public Policy and Management. My team’s capstone project led to the creation of a tool that could calculate the return on US government investment in social innovation.

In January I'll receive a professional certificate in Social Impact Investing & Social Enterprise Management, after which I hope to be able to accelerate and scale community-owned innovations with the potential for large-scale social impact through new approaches to financing in the humanitarian sector.