Diaspora in Development Your host is Soraya Senosier. Music and Editing Rukayato-fiverr

My guest today is  Dr. Claudine Kuradusenge-McLeod. Claudine is a Professiorial Lecturer  and the Director  of Graduate Studies at American University in the School of International Service. She lectures on Human Rights
and Cultural Relations.

 Claudine specializes in genocide studies and the intersection of Diaspora consciousness and social mobilization. She is the  2023 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Distinguished Scholar for "Erasing Refugees: How Camps Became Killing Fields in the First Congo War," a joint project with Dr. Chris Davey. 

You can find out more about Claudine's work here: https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/kuraduse.cfm



The opinions shared on this forum are the opinions of the individuals and are not the opinions of the organizations and institutes that they work for.

Happy Black History Month - We talk with Adria Armbrister about her illustrious career in Global Health. It's a candid conversation about race and global equity and whether international development can work.

She is currently a Foundation Representative at the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), a small U.S. Government agency that provides grants to community-based
organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. Armbrister also maintains a consulting practice under which she has provided expertise for the Pan
American Health Organization/World Health Organization, UN Women, UNICEF Ethiopia, the Global Health Council, and Chemonics, among others. Since 2018, Dr. Armbrister has also been an instructor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman
School of Public Health Columbia University in the City of New York.  Previously, she worked for nearly a decade
as a Social Development Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), most of which she was stationed in Colombia and Peru. Dr. Armbrister holds a BA in history-sociology from Columbia College, Columbia University; a master’s degree in International Relations and Economics from SAIS Johns Hopkins University; and a PhD from the Mailman School of Public
Health, Columbia University.

On the first episode of 2024, we talk about climate change with Blessing Ewe and Sequoia Riley. We caught Blessing on her return from COP 28. We discuss how climate change disproportionately affects people of color, climate change research and what we can do to combat climate change.

Dr. Sequoia Riley is a Research Associate at HARC, focusing on the Water-Climate-Energy nexus. Her research specializations and interests include urban environmental planning and management, green infrastructure, flood disaster risk management, adaptive governance, and environmental justice
efforts in the context of urban and rural flood sustainability and resilience.
She earned a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa where she worked as a graduate research associate and later as a post-doc fellow at the National Preparedness Disaster Training Center (NDPTC).
Dr. Riley received her M.Sc. in Marine Resource Management from Texas A&M University-Galveston and a B.Sc. in Marine Science (with a minor in applied mathematics) from Coastal Carolina University.

 You can find out more about HARC here.

 

Blessing Ewa is a passionate advocate for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a youth and community engagement expert, and an active contributor to the global effort to combat climate change. In her role as the West Africa Coordinator for Net Zero
As Soon As Possible (NZASAP), she works towards promoting climate action within workplaces across Africa, where she strives to make a significant impact on the way businesses approach sustainability and environmental responsibility towards the 2060 agenda for achieving Net Zero. She is also the founder of Young
Advocates for a Sustainable and Inclusive Future (YASIF) Nigeria, YASIF Nigeria, under her leadership, has trained over 500 youths and 1000 women on climate change adaptation and mitigation with an emphasis on waste management as a means to combat climate change, which has successfully evacuated over 5000 kilograms of plastics.

 

You can find more
about Blessing Ewe here

You can find more
about YASIF here

The opinions shared on this forum are the opinions of the individuals and are not the opinions of the organizations and institutes that they work for.

This month I speak to France Francois a social impact leader who is currently the Director of Global Community management at TikTok and the Founder and former Executive Director of In Cultured Company, an organization committed to racial equality and transforming legacies of conflict between Black and Latinx leaders and communities. We talk about France's transition from International Development to the Private Sector, and if International Development works. It's a great conversation enjoy!

You can find out more about France at https://francefrancois.com/


The opinions shared on this forum are the opinions of the individuals and are not the opinions of the organizations and institutes that they work for.

In our third episode will be speaking to Christa Michaud from Partners in Health.


Christa is a Senior Development Officer on the Major and Principal Gifts team at Partners In Health, a social justice nonprofit that provides high quality health care to those who need it most. In addition to helping generate the funding needed to support PIH’s mission, Christa also contributes to several of the organizations Equity, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives. Before transitioning to the nonprofit sector 13 years ago, Christa spent more than a decade working at marketing communications firms across the Midwest, developing and managing multi-million-dollar advertising, public relations, and global brand campaigns.

 

A native of St. Louis, MO, Christa has been a Miami Beach resident for seven years. She holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Christa is a member of the Gamma Zeta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and 100+ Women Who Care Miami Beach.



You can find out more about Partners in Health here: https://www.pih.org/

In this Episode we speak to Dave Fils- Aime
Founder and Executive Director of Basketball to Uplift the Youth (BAL) a non-profit organization that uses basketball as a tool to educate and mentor Haitian youth.  Dave left a promising career in International Development to concentrate on BAL. He will talk about his career trajectory and how he keeps BAL running during exceptionally difficult times in Haiti.


The opinions shared on this forum are the opinions of the individuals and are not the opinions of the organizations and institutes that they work for.