Daniel Amankwah was born in Accra, Ghana and earned his bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership from Mercer University in Atlanta. He has over 10 years teaching experience working with low-income communities in West Africa and Botswana. For the past 20 years, Daniel has worked in the biomedical research industry at Emory University. His desire for peaceful existence among all identities steered him to pursue a dual degree in the Candler School of Theology and the MDP program. In the early 1980s, Daniel was moved by the plight of refugees that trekked to Ghana during the Liberia Civil War; these social issues motivated him to further research human rights and its implications. He plans to focus his graduate work on refugee rights and resettlement, as well as care for marginalized populations. Daniel enjoys listening to NPR, travelling, learning about different cultures, and watching soccer.

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Bella Cockerell received her bachelor’s degree in Education and Spanish from Wagner College in Staten Island, NY. After graduating, she served as a Community Development Advisor and English Instructor with the Peace Corps in Kosovo from 2015 to 2017. Following her time with the Peace Corps, she focused on education in New York City in two ways, by working as an Admissions Manager for a nonprofit that advised low-income, public high school students on college admission and mentorship, and by working with  AFS-USA to provide financial support to students from predominately Muslim countries to study in the US. These experiences, combined with her experiences abroad, sparked her interest in development practice. She plans to focus her studies on practices that help families in post-conflict areas. In her free time, she loves spending time with her cat and boyfriend, Olympic weightlifting, eating, baking, finding new places to explore, and watching movies. 

Ryan Cruz is a native of Denver, Colorado and received a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Affairs from Metropolitan State University of Denver.  Following graduation, Ryan worked as a Study Abroad advisor at MSU Denver before taking his education experience to Zambia as a Rural Education Development Volunteer with the Peace Corps from 2016 to 2018. Ryan’s research interests include food security and its relation to public health and climate change and seeking a better definition of multidimensional poverty. In his free time, Ryan enjoys the outdoors, movies, board games and cooking.  

Hailing from a small town in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, Lyndsey’s interest in development practice began while working on a small eco-development project in India. Lyndsey returned to the United States to study Politics and International Relations at Hendrix College. Lyndsey has worked internationally in Rwanda, Uganda and India with governments and civil society organizations to develop frameworks for inclusive participation in development planning and policymaking processes. She has spent the last five years working in the civil and community development sectors, gaining expertise in nonprofit program management, grants administration, and leveraging community resources to address barriers facing underprivileged individuals. Her research focuses on rural livelihoods, political capital of marginalized communities and the micropolitics of development. Her favorite activities include making and sharing food with others, dog parks, and amateur bicycling. 

Mona Elminyawi received her bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies with a minor in Economics from Wellesley College. Upon graduating, she completed a fellowship in Johannesburg, South Africa. The project she designed, Young Practitioners Cooperative, empowered program participants to become social entrepreneurs and challenged them to propose novel solutions to local issues. For the past five years, Mona has worked with organizations that change landscapes, revitalize neighborhoods, and manage real estate. In her last role at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mona supported initiatives that seek to increase the vibrance and attractiveness of the campus and surrounding areas. Her experience with the built environment will be enhanced through the MDP curriculum and studies of feminism, human rights and environmental sustainability in national and global contexts. She has interests in the relationship between business, private industries and sustainable and socially conscious development. She aspires to lead projects that meet the social, economic, political, and health needs of underserved communities.

Josh Griffin graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in Communication and Social Sciences. As an undergraduate, he focused on the correlation between the effects of mass media and compassion fatigue. He conducted independent research that examined compassion fatigue and the East African famine crisis of the 1990s. Throughout his undergraduate career, Josh worked full-time at Swedish Hospital in Denver, Colorado. His time spent working in healthcare, along with his passion for helping empower marginalized communities, propelled him into serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Kingdom of Morocco. There, Josh gained first-hand experience in international development work and learned what it means to assist in the creation & promotion of self-sustainability. He is passionate about researching the best practices to improve the quality of life within marginalized communities in the Global South. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time outdoors, writing and performing poetry, and relaxing at quaint cafes.  

Sally Hwang is Buena Park, California. She graduated with a double major in Sociology and Writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2016. Following graduation, Sally worked teaching children and adult refugees trapped in Vial camp on Chios, a Greek island. She returned to the U.S. with a strong passion for refugee issues. This led her to serve as an AmeriCorps member in the resettlement department at New American Pathways, a refugee services agency in Atlanta. In her work at New American Pathways, she provided case management assistance, picking up new arrivals up at the airport (sometimes at midnight!), setting up apartments, shopping for groceries, registering children for school, and advocating for newly resettled refugees within local institutions. In MDP, she looks forward to learning more about the contexts from which refugees come and continuing to find ways to advocate for refugees locally, domestically, and internationally.

Pooja earned her bachelor’s degrees from Boston University, where she studied Economics and Business Administration. As an undergraduate, she co-founded the university’s chapter of Global Brigades, a nonprofit focused on international, holistic sustainable development. Her first brigade staffing legal clinics in indigenous Panamanian communities cemented her interest in the intersection of development sectors. She has gone on to work in the energy and business sectors. In the UK, she interned for a nonprofit dedicated to providing renewable energy to low-income communities. After graduation, she worked for Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a Boston-based nonprofit focused on building US inner city economies through small businesses. Her Boston experience revealed her passion for becoming an agent of change in the US economic landscape. The MDP program will allow her to continue exploring different development sectors and provide insight into the obstacles immigrants and refugees face within entrepreneurship. In her free time, Pooja enjoys traveling, dancing, and choreographing. 

Rebekah Koch, a Washington, DC native, graduated from the College of William and Mary with a bachelor’s degree in Africana Studies. During her undergraduate degree, she focused on political and economic factors that impact the development of sub-Saharan Africa and spent two summers in north-eastern Ghana working on malaria education and mosquito net distribution. Rebekah is returning from a three-year service as a Secondary Education volunteer in Cameroon where she taught English as a Second Language to Francophone students. In addition to teaching, she completed projects that promoted literacy and gender empowerment. Rebekah is interested in researching the impact that gender values have on development in a community regarding access to resources and opportunities, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. Outside of class, you can catch her on a run, at the basketball court, or checking out the latest movie.