Meet the Fall 2020 Zolberg-IRC Fellowship cohort!
Daniela Castillo
Latin America Design Fellow
Daniela Castillo will be working with Shirley Rodrigues as Latin America Design fellow. She is currently pursuing her MS in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons. She is interested in abolition geographies, mapping, mutual aid networks, mobilities, and ecologies of care. She previously worked as a Research Assistant at Healthy Materials Lab.
Patrick Ciaschi
Blended Learning Designer/Developer - Emergency Capacity Building
Patrick Ciaschi will be working with Christine Amy as Blended Learning Designer/Developer -Emergency Capacity Strengthening. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Politics, and is researching the politics of nativism in current day Hungary and its intersections with regimes of care. He has worked as an Instructional Designer with the tech education company Top Hat.
Andrea Edman
Signpost Fellow
Andrea Edman will be working with Andre Heller the as Signpost Fellow. She is currently pursuing her MS GPIA and Gender and Sexuality Certificate. Her capstone research is focused on gendered intervention programming for refugee communities, internally displaced persons and urban settlement communities. She has previous work experience as Campaign Officer at Equality Now.
Zishan Jiwani
Mental Health Fellow
Zishan Jiwani is working with Marie-France Guimond and Eva Kaplan on mental health interventions in Jordan and Tanzania. He is pursuing a graduate degree in Psychology, and his research interests include Global Mental Health, parenting, trauma, mindfulness and memory. His master’s thesis research will seek to better understand the relationship between maternal self-efficacy, attachment trauma and mental health in low-resource contexts in rural India.
Daniel Ozoukou
Strengthening Prevention and Reintegration for Children (SPARC): Evidence and Action for Children in Armed Conflict - Research Design Fellow
Daniel Ozoukou will be working with Alexandra Blackwell as Research and Design Fellow, SPARC Project: Evidence and Action for Children in Armed Conflict. He is currently pursuing an MSc in International Affairs, and his previous experience includes work as a Political Affairs Officer for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic.
Sudeepti Rachakonda
Autonomous Learning Fellow
Sudeepti Rachakonda will be working with Sylvia Sable as Autonomous learning fellow. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Transdisciplinary Design at the Parsons School of Design. She is interested in youth-centered design and has helped create digital solutions for Fortune 100 clients at IBM and taught middle school math.
Sandra Rincon
Governance Fellow
Sandra Rincon will be working with Katja Starc-Card as Governance Research Fellow. She is a third year PhD student in the Program of Public and Urban Policy at the Milano School. She is interested in governance, mobility, and the role of justice in planning. Sandra has ten years of experience working with national agencies and local governments in Colombia.
Olivia Steiert
Marketing and Communications in Humanitarian Settings Fellow
Olivia Steiert is workig with Chelsea Graham and Alex Bandea on marketing and communications for Airbel. Olivia is a Sociology PhD student, and she is interested in social theory and cultural sociology, symbolism and discourse special interest in social movements and identities, nationalism and gender. Her PhD research focuses on the current global youth movements for political action on climate change.
Vaidehi Supatkar
Middle East Design Fellow
Vaidehi Supatkar is working with Ayah Younis as Middle East Design Fellow. Through her thesis, she is exploring alternate models of learning, specifically looking at decoloniality and indigenous knowledge systems to potentially realize design practice in humanitarian aid. She has worked as a UX researcher and designer in the public health space with governments and humanitarian actors.
Julia Wieslava Szagdaj
Research Toolkit Design Fellow
Julia Wieslawa Szagdaj will be working as Research Toolkit Design Fellow with Kate Falb and Marie-France Guimond. She is currently pursing her MFA in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons. Julia is an experimentalist, speculative futurist, and design-led researcher. She is also the founder of a social start-up called RezerwujSport.
Tejaswini Vavilala
Leadership Training and Curriculum Development Fellow
Tejaswini Vavilala will be working with Marissa Bell as Leadership training and curriculum development fellow. She is pursuing her MS in International Affairs, and is interested in the United Nations and development financing. She has experience in public relations and communications-related roles across non-profits and corporate entities in India and the United States.