2022 Fulbright Alumni Ambassadors

gavin.myers@fulbrightmail.org 

During his Fulbright, Gavin pursued a master’s degree at the University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG) in Italy where he studied sustainable food systems and world food culture. Food is the lens through which he views the world and the tool that enables him to better understand culture, society, history, politics, economics, and the environment. Gavin conducted field visits in various regions throughout Italy as part of his coursework. During these visits, Gavin met with producers and food industry experts dedicated to pushing the Italian food system toward a more sustainable future. These experiences helped him understand our global food network’s weak points and potential for improvement. Gavin is currently the chief of staff of Sweet Nothings, an organic snack-food startup based out of Los Angeles, CA. He is looking forward to getting involved in local food activism and advocacy.  

Ask me about: First-Generation College Student, Native American/ Alaskan Native, LGBTQIA+, Rural American Roots 

wen-kuni.ceant@fulbrightmail.org 

For her Fulbright, Wen-kuni studied health infrastructure in Kaolack, Senegal, through an organization called IMEK (Institut Mere-Enfant de Kaolack). Through this system, she was able to provide over 5,000 patients and their families with social health insurance despite their socioeconomic circumstances. The impact of her Fulbright grant fundamentally shifted the way that the Senegalese population viewed healthcare from a luxury to a necessity. While in Senegal, Wen-kuni worked with the GiveOne Project to develop an incubator for businesswomen in the region, which helped startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses. Prior to her Fulbright, she attended Howard University in Washington, DC, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with honors with a Bachelor of Science in biology. She then received her master’s in Public Health from Drexel University. She currently serves as the CEO and co-founder of Politicking, a mobile app with the central aim of providing election information to historically disengaged constituencies. Wen-kuni also works at the American Society of Hematology as a Diversity Programs Manager and does freelance writing for The Grio. Her overarching goal is to integrate public health and policy in her work to eradicate health and political disparities both domestically and abroad. Wen-kuni is a first generation American of Haitian parentage and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.

sydney.stewart@fulbrightmail.org

In Germany, Sydney studied various alternative biosecurity and husbandry (caretaking) strategies adopted by local livestock producers and food animal veterinarians in response to both changes in federal regulations and increasingly negative consumer perceptions of conventional practices. While based at the University of Bonn's Institute for Animal Sciences, she consulted on and assisted with a number of projects investigating herd health, animal welfare, farm hygiene, food safety, and zoonotic pathogen detection and surveillance at farms and packing plants across rural northern and northwestern Germany. Upon returning to the United States, Sydney completed a Master of Science in animal science from Oklahoma State University, with a focus on herd health and productivity. After witnessing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the agriculture industry and food supply chain, she transitioned into the field of emergency management consulting, hoping to foster resilience in rural communities and help livestock producers better prepare for and recover from disasters. Sydney currently works as an analyst for a non-profit research and analysis firm based in Arlington, VA, where she specializes in emergency management, public health and safety, and critical infrastructure resilience. 

Ask Me About: First-Generation College Student, Rural Student, Woman/Minority in STEM 

rogelio.onofre@fulbrightmail.org 

As a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Morocco, Roger served as an instructor at Chouiab Doukkali University in El Jadida. While on Fulbright, Roger taught several English courses to undergraduate students and led the public speaking and drama clubs. Both clubs aimed to help students increase their language skills and confidence levels in a casual setting. Outside of the university, Roger created a community program highlighting the importance of the English language and leadership skills where Moroccan college students created and delivered lessons to the children of El Jadida. In addition, Roger partnered with the American Language Center to promote the program with schools and universities in Morocco. During his spare time, Roger traveled the country, introducing the Fulbright Program at high schools and universities. Roger is currently pursuing his master’s degree in international relations at Syracuse University, where he studies the importance of leadership in navigating foreign and diplomatic relationships.  

Ask me about: First Generation College Student, Hispanic/LatinX 

oyin.aderoba@fulbrightmail.org 

During her Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in Honduras, Oyin taught English at the binational center in San Pedro Sula, Centro Cultural Sampedrano, and at the National Pedagogical University (UPNFM). In tandem with her teaching responsibilities, she implemented co-curricular programming, such as English tutoring, a career development job fair, an English teaching enhancement conference, and an entrepreneurship workshop where her students created small businesses and sold their products to attendees at the conference. Oyin enjoyed sharing her experiences as a first-generation Nigerian American in the United States with her students. She also thoroughly enjoyed traveling throughout Honduras and experiencing its natural beauty. Now, as a first-year graduate student at The Fletcher School at Tufts University studying international security and strategic management, she recognizes her time as a Fulbright ETA as a valuable experience that gave her an opportunity to explore various interests and fine-tune transferable skills related to education, international relations, organizational management, and program implementation.  

Ask Me About: Black, First-generation American   

sara.sajer@fulbrightmail.org 

During her Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in Kosovo, Sara taught English to 200+ university students at the University of Mitrovica Isa Boletini in the northern, ethnically divided city of Mitrovica. Outside of her classroom responsibilities, Sara led an extracurricular conversation club, which served as a casual creative outlet for participants of all proficiency levels. Additionally, Sara engineered interactive lessons for the U.S. Embassy’s American Corner and the NGO Community Building Mitrovica on a weekly basis. A community radio enthusiast, Sara broadcasted her music show “Greyscale” with two stations, Radio Mitrovica and Radio Ylberi, and aired the installments in English, Albanian, and Serbian to optimize audience engagement. Sara traveled to every Balkan state to explore military history and perspectives on nationalism and identity. By extension, she became acquainted with peacekeeping and stability programs and their proprietors such as the U.S. Department of State, NATO, and the United Nations. Sara is currently a U.S. Army Captain. She is stationed in Salt Lake City, Utah, and will attend law school in 2023.  

Ask Me About: Military/ Veteran  

marc.reyes@fulbrightmail.org

During his Fulbright in New Delhi, India, Marc studied the history of India’s atomic energy program. Marc conducted research at several Indian archives, libraries, think tanks, and research centers devoted to the history of Indian science and international affairs. His project examined India’s early enthusiasm for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and its demands for the universal disarmament of atomic weapons, as well as the political and cultural events that led to India declaring itself as having nuclear capabilities and adopting a doctrine of credible minimum deterrence in the late 1990s. In addition to his Fulbright award, Marc also received a Critical Language Enhancement Award (CLEA) to study Hindi. While in India, Marc was based at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), working closely with students, faculty, and staff of the university’s Center for Canadian, U.S., and Latin American Studies. While affiliated with the center, Marc delivered lectures, read thesis proposals, and offered guidance on fellowship applications. Marc is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Connecticut andis also a co-founder and editor of Contingent Magazine, a non-profit history publication writing for the public.  

Ask me about: First-Generation college student; Hispanic/Latinx; Traveling with Spouse; Catholic; Parent; Raised by Single Mother 

peter.bittner@fulbrightmail.org 

Through a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) and then a Fulbright arts research award, Fulbright has supported Peter in developing and sustaining a longstanding relationship with Mongolia. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from University of Puget Sound, Peter was awarded a Fulbright in 2013-14 and placed at Rajiv Gandhi Polytechnic College of Technical Arts. In his role as an ETA, Peter taught professional English classes for Mongolian students, developed English teachers’ language skills and cultural knowledge of the United States via individual tutoring sessions, and planned and led English club activities to encourage interest in ESL and American culture among the student body. His ETA year launched him in the direction of journalism and filmmaking. The opportunity to explore Mongolia's nomadic culture outside of teaching led him to start a blog and video series to share his experiences with his family and friends in the United States, and he was inspired to study new media at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, where he is now a lecturer. This inspired him to pursue another Fulbright in 2018-19, which provided him an incredible chance to produce a film project focusing on environmental public health. The experience helped him become a full-time correspondent in Mongolia, where he reported for CNN, Bloomberg, Reuters, and other major outlets. Peter currently works as head of community success at the live streaming platform, Happs.

 Ask Me About: Mental health, Physical health, Personal safety 

rebecca.brittain@fulbrightmail.org 

While on Fulbright, Rebecca was based at the Tuanan Research Station in a remote peat swamp forest in Borneo, Indonesia, where she studied the role of gut microbes in wild orangutan energetics and health. She worked closely with counterparts at Universitas Nasional in Jakarta to carry out her research and other long-term, collaborative orangutan health and environmental projects at the field station. She also trained undergraduate students from Indonesia in field techniques, and secured grant funding for these students to carry out their independent research projects at the field station. In addition to her research, Rebecca worked with village communities surrounding the research station to start the project Kamus Bahasa Kapuas, which aims to document the local language for which no dictionary exists. Rebecca is currently a PhD candidate at Rutgers University and plans to pursue a career that uses evolutionary perspectives to better understand human health and biology. 

Ask Me About: First-Generation College Student, Military/Veteran, Rural Background, Working-Class Background, Women in STEM

josephine.chaet@fulbrightmail.org 

During her Fulbright, Josephine conducted nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in Amman, Jordan, as part of her PhD dissertation. Her project examined the intersections between the state, women’s interests, and civil society through the lens of women’s organizations. Using frames derived from theories of the state and of resistance, this project sought to document how women’s organizations actively operate within, through, and against state systems and to uncover how those various methods created differential political realities among those directly involved. Josephine spent her free time exploring the city and the country, taking language classes at the Sijal Institute, and running through the capital with a local marathon group. Since returning to the United States, she has focused on sharing her research by presenting at several national and international research conferences while completing her PhD in anthropology with a concentration in gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she is currently a Dean’s Fellow. Josephine will defend her dissertation in fall 2022 and will continue her research in Jordan. 

Ask me about: first-generation graduate studies, first-generation college student

tayla.moore@fulbrightmail.org

For her Fulbright, Tayla spent eight months in New Delhi, India, working with the Department of Pharmacology at Jamia Hamdard University. Her research focused on the Indian health care systems where she used qualitative and interview-based methods to examine AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) and Allopathy as treatments for type 2 diabetes mellitus. In addition to her research, Tayla was also a Critical Language Enhancement Award (CLEA) recipient and spent the first three months taking intensive Hindi classes at the Zabaan School for Languages. Her Fulbright experience, in conjunction with the complications that COVID-19 posed on her time in India, exposed Tayla to the legal implications of solving health care issues which further strengthened and solidified her interest in becoming a lawyer. Tayla is currently a first-year law student at the University of Minnesota pursuing a dual degree with public health (JD/MPH). Tayla hopes to return to Delhi to continue her research once she completes her education. 

Ask me about: Black, LGBTQIA+, Managing Chronic Illness abroad  

corine.rosenberg@fulbrightmail.org 

As an English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Benin, Coco supported the English Department of Lycée Behanzin in the capital city of Porto-Novo. They also worked closely with learners at the U.S. Embassy’s American Corner, where they launched and facilitated an intergenerational arts program. Outside of their placement, Coco ran English Clubs at the K-12 school, Le Defi, and supported youth arts programming and cultural and artistic installations at Centre Culturel OUADADA. During teacher strikes across the country, Coco worked alongside these partners to develop and strengthen community relationships between youth centers, arts and culture institutions, and schools. This initiative created more robust and impactful opportunities for youth to engage in their community, initiate social change, and promote learning through the arts. Coco continued their work in Benin following their grant while working as a Princeton in Africa Fellow in Abomey-Calavi. Coco is currently the Assistant Director for Youth Development at the Elma Lewis Center in Boston, MA, where they run social justice programs for youth using the creative arts. They hold an EdM in Arts in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and are a community organizer, artist, educator, and care-worker. 

Ask Me About: LGBTQIA+, A Disabled Person, Jewish, White 

jude.tunyi@fulbrightmail.org

During his Fulbright in Finland, Jude pursued a master’s degree at Tampere University in biomedical technology with a specialization in bioinformatics. In conjunction with his academic coursework, he performed research evaluating RNA sequencing data aiming to identify differentially expressed genes in breast cancer patients. While in Finland, he also worked with a personal genomics and biotechnology startup. Jude is currently an MD-DPhil student completing his medical degree at The Ohio State College of Medicine and his doctorate degree at NIH-Oxford University as part of the NIH-OxCam program. As part of his doctorate degree, he will be studying the neural circuitry that underlies reinforcement learning in the brain. Outside of the lab, Jude is passionate about increasing diversity in medical and graduate fields. To that end, he helped found a 501c3 non-profit organization, the American Association of Black Physician Scientists (AABPS).  

Ask me about: Black/African American, First-Generation Medical/Graduate Student 

clemente.garcia@fulbrightmail.org 

Clemente served as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in the Netherlands beginning in 2018. During his initial grant year, he was placed in the city of Alkmaar, where he worked with the diverse populations of North Holland in two high schools. Clemente was selected to renew his Fulbright for a second year and become an ETA mentor as well as a teacher at a vocational college in Amsterdam. While in the Netherlands, Clemente was able to closely examine the Dutch education model and contrast it to American pedagogical methods. Alongside his work as an ETA, Clemente conducted research into language-teaching practices through the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Outside of his teaching and mentoring responsibilities, Clemente enjoyed long-distance cycling in the Netherlands and volunteering at a non-profit HIV community clinic. For Clemente, the highlight of his Fulbright was the opportunity to work with classes comprised of students with refugee status. Connecting with that student population while in the Netherlands inspired Clemente to pursue studies in international education policy, particularly around workforce development and adult education. Clemente currently teaches elementary school in Houston and intends to pursue a graduate degree in international education policy and development.  

Ask me about: First-Generation college student, Latinx, LGBTQIA+ 

alexandra.hauke@fulbrightmail.org 

Alexandra received the Fulbright-Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Award for Graduate Studies and PhD Research in Science and Technology in 2019. After graduating from North Carolina A&T State University, she relocated to Vienna, Austria, to conduct environmental studies research. While on grant, Alexandra collaborated with her host affiliation, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, to analyze methane emissions from biogas manufacturing plants located across the country. The data was used to contribute to the development of fugitive greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies on a national and international level. In addition to her fieldwork, Alexandra conducted laboratory studies with the purpose of improving data quality and methods of standardization within the biogas sector. Alexandra particularly enjoyed learning about Austria’s environmental regulations and history regarding pollution mitigation by engaging with public institutions. While not in the lab or in the field, Alexandra spent time in Vienna volunteering with Caritas Austria as an environmental coach for local youth. Alexandra currently works as a policy analyst within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Ask Me About: Black / Multi-racial, Historically Black College and University

cierra.powell@fulbrightmail.org

A Montana native, Cierra Powell served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Tenerife, Spain. Working in two primary schools, Cierra supported teachers via English/Spanish translations between the school office and parents and participated in after-school activities that promoted English language acquisition. Outside of school, Cierra’s community engagement included food exchanges to promote intercultural learning, studying Catalan, and volunteering with Reach the World to connect with U.S. classrooms to introduce students to her experience. While on school holidays, Cierra traveled throughout Spain, exploring rural towns and bustling cities. Cierra was a Gilman Scholar in 2017 to Ecuador. Currently, Cierra is a 2021 Rangel Fellow pursuing a Master of International Affairs at the Penn State School of International Affairs and is preparing for a career as a political officer for the State Department.

Ask me about: Being Black Abroad; low-income; from a Frontier State (Montana) 

amelia.wagner@fulbrightmail.org 

Amelia Wagner served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Jeonju, South Korea, where she taught conversational English and experiment-based principles of engineering to high school students. While on her Fulbright, Amelia coordinated the Youth Diplomacy and Activism Conference, a biannual conference encouraging public speaking, critical thinking, and cooperative skills. She also volunteered with North Korean defectors in her local community and at the Korean Kids and Orphanage Outreach Mission. Amelia was invited to renew her grant, and, during her second year, she served as a coordinator for Fulbright orientations, where she organized teaching and professional development workshops for the incoming ETA cohort. Amelia is currently in management at an industrial part supply company in New Jersey. She is passionate about applying adult learning practices to training curriculums.  

alyea.pierce@fulbrightmail.org 

Alyea is a poet and educator who spent her Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship in Trinidad and Tobago analyzing the complex interplay of spirituality and sociopolitical relations within Trinidad and Tobago’s traditional mas. Mas, short for masquerade, is in reference to Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival and the street parades/competitions that occur where the participants, who are known as masquerades, prepare their costumes and performances for the celebrations. She used her creative work with poetry, photography, and spoken word performance to examine how oral storytelling and folklore traditions are tools of remembrance within mas. As a child of Caribbean immigrants, she also investigated the histories of migration and homemaking in Trinidad and Tobago and the United States. 

During her Fulbright, Alyea enjoyed volunteering at schools as a reading volunteer, participating in postgraduate creative writing courses at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, and traveling with community scholar artists as they prepared for their upcoming mas’ performances. In her downtime, Alyea enjoyed hiking and exercising with a local women’s gym. Alyea is currently a National Geographic Explorer, facilitating research and assisting with script writing and voice acting for a National Geographic six-part podcast series, Into the Depths, which focuses on a group of Black divers documenting slave shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean. She works as a higher education practitioner in career services and leadership. 

Ask me about: Being Black abroad

anna.waller@fulbrightmail.org 

During her Fulbright in Mexico, Anna worked in collaboration with la Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro to develop a smartphone app and sensor to quantify iron in corn flour samples. She worked with local Mexican corn flour companies to obtain samples both directly from processing plants and market retail locations. Collecting samples took her not only to various markets and companies in her host city of Querétaro, but also to markets in other regions in Mexico such as Saltillo, Cuetzalan, and Cuautitlán Izcalli. Her Fulbright research grant work contributed to her PhD in Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently, Anna is a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC.  

Ask me about: STEM fields, doctoral research programs