Fellows

Sofia is a graduate of the University of Southern California with a B.A. in Journalism and minors in International Relations and Communication, Policy, & Law. She grew up in five countries and during the summer of her junior year, conducted research on financing female empowerment in Mexico. During her undergraduate career, she founded a community organization, the University Park Action Coalition (UPAC), mentored 21 students for hours weekly through USC Troy Camp, and held various internships including positions at the Office of Congressmember Karen Bass and Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project. Sofia is passionate about access to education and finance, and is most interested in work surrounding equity and supporting at-risk youth. Apart from her academic interests, Sofia loves getting outdoors, CrossFit, reading, exploring new foods, and travel.

Growing-up in Florianopolis, Brazil, Christina has always cared about international development, even though she didn't have the words to describe it then. She pursued this interest at Yale, where she studied Statistics & Data Science and Global Affairs. There she also became curious about how to help others innovate: she was the first student hired by the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking and eventually helped shape the Center's strategy as a co-chair of its Student Advisory Board. Christina also learned a lot from her internships. At Alibaba, she explored how customers' user experience with a company can impact their perception about the company's host country. At Endeavor Louisville, Christina helped create a new regional strategy and learned how to best support entrepreneurs' efforts to lift the local economy. Most recently, Christina learned more about the private sector and about business strategy at Bain & Company. Christina continues to care deeply about international development and wants to do her part to help others. As such, she hopes to work with social impact organizations, helping them become more efficient and effective. She is thrilled to be working with EARTH University, where she is helping identify and harness new sources of revenue for the University. She is also really excited to reconnect with her Latin American heritage over the next year.

Carlota Corbella recently graduated from Princeton University with a degree in physics and a wide range of courses covering ecology, environmental science, and renewable energy. For her senior thesis project, she collaborated with the CHAOS Lab at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment in building a solar-powered golf car and studying the potential of substituting small gas or electric autonomous vehicles for solar ones. Carlota will be working for Pontones & Ledesma as a data analyst in environmental topics during her year with PiLA. She hopes that her involvement with the Mexican company will help her to pivot to a career related to the environment and rooted in NGOs. As an international student who came to the United States for college education, she is concerned about parts of the world that don’t have access to the knowledge or resources to contribute to sustainable local actions. During her time off she enjoys trail running, biking, and backpacking, activities from which she has benefitted to get close to nature. In her getaways she has seen black bears, moose, buffalo, elk, and an Arctic fox.

Madhumita Kaushik is a writer, teacher, scholar, and language enthusiast who is passionate about the intersections of education, language, literature, and community. She is driven by her love for the Spanish and English languages, and often draws inspiration from classic works of literature in her own creative writing. One of the most meaningful parts of her life is volunteering and giving back to the community around her. In her time volunteering as a tutor and youth mentor at the A2E program in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Madhu has taught language arts and reading to elementary school students in both Spanish and English. One of the most important milestones of her academic career is her work in the Boncompagni Ludovisi Archive, transcribing, translating and publishing articles about historical Spanish documents. Outside of her academic coursework, she greatly enjoys researching and publishing articles in encyclopedias about a variety of topics that interest her, some of which include history, politics, and Indigenous Studies. In her free time, as a member of the Rutgers Honors College, Madhu often participates in food drives and community cleanups.

Katherine graduated from the University of California, Berkeley where she received, with highest distinction, a B.A. in Development Studies and a minor in Journalism. She speaks four languages and has lived in nine countries, including Bolivia, Brazil, India, China and more. This nomadic lifestyle taught her to be flexible and adapt quickly while also ingrained in her a curiosity for other cultures and a strong desire to help those most in need. Katherine is passionate about international development work and has conducted on-the-ground research on food shortages in Venezuela in a time of social, political and economic crisis, managed communications for a Berkeley research center focused on inequality, and worked on million-dollar international projects at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Smithsonian. While interning at USAID, she became interested in innovative, scalable, and impactful solutions to development issues. She will never forget conducting site visits in Mumbai, where she met health workers that kept track of their patients through smartphone apps – a simple solution capable of saving lives.

As the son of Chinese immigrants from a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, Rocky grew up witnessing the inequalities that challenged his city, from housing segregation to educational inequity. When he became the first in his family to attend college, he knew he wanted to better understand the causes and consequences of social inequality, so he decided to study Sociology at Yale University. He spent a formative summer in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, working at an educational center that showed him the disparities between the capital city and the larger province. He then spent the next two summers in Beijing and Washington D.C. working as an intern in the private sector, which led him to become interested in how businesses can have a positive social impact. Most recently, he explored this interest as an artivist fellow at TaskForce, where he worked with for-profit and nonprofit organizations on artist-driven, impact-related projects. In the future, he hopes to combine his passions for social issues, intercultural dialogue, and community engagement to help create positive social change both at home and abroad.

Sarah is a recent graduate from Vanderbilt University where she double majored in Spanish and Medicine, Health and Society. Her interests lie at the intersection of community development and health equity, particularly though sustainable community driven intervention. During her time at Vanderbilt, Sarah’s passion for community centered work drove her to engage with the Nashville Community in many ways. She worked with Catholic Charities as a cultural orientation instructor for newly resettled refugees and immigrants, and interned with the Nashville Food Project, working to fight food insecurity in the city’s most underserved communities. Sarah also volunteered with the Nashville Welcoming Committee to greet Latinx immigrants seeking asylum in the United States. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Sarah has also worked and studied in Conocoto, Ecuador and Madrid, Spain. She spent a summer as a Community Development Intern in Conocoto, researching community health needs and facilitating health and nutrition workshops. During her semester abroad in Madrid she engaged with Latinx immigrants as an English language instructor. Sarah is extremely excited to combine her passion for health equity and love of Latinx culture as a member of the Pueblo a Pueblo team this year!

Margot grew up on a small homestead in rural northern California. As she was homeschooled, she had ample time to explore the outdoors hiking mountains, working in the garden, and developing a respect for the natural world. When Margot was 16 she spent three weeks as a volunteer in Tanzania. This experience was transformative for her as it exposed her to the world outside of her hometown and developed a passion to see the world. She obtained her degree in biology from Pitzer College which inspired her to work in sustainable agriculture and food security projects. While Margot’s initial trip to Africa incited a yearning to explore, it was her three-month solo trip to India that help her solidify the intention to work in community development projects. She saw the impacts of poverty, instability, lack of access to education, and gender discrimination on communities. Through her experiences she encountered individuals and groups that were addressing these issues through locally driven solutions which created long-lasting change. She wants to use her education and experience to help support and empower locally based community development and environmental protection projects. She believes that through intercultural understanding and collaboration we can create global solutions.

Jessica Pasquarello is a recent graduate of the University of Georgia, where she partook in a combined bachelor’s/master’s program and received a master’s degree in political science and international affairs, bachelor’s degrees in international affairs and economics, and minors in Arabic, Spanish, and religion. Growing up in the heart of South Philadelphia, Jessica witnessed immense poverty and suffering, and she has dedicated her life to fighting for the rights of marginalized groups through policy and activism. Over the past few years, Jessica has worked for politicians at the local, state, and federal levels, serving most recently as a senior staffer and policy writer in the Georgia House of Representatives. Meanwhile, hoping to learn about global issues firsthand, Jessica has visited over three dozen countries, including Ecuador, where she was an exchange student, and Sweden, where she was a visiting research fellow at a university and co-authored an academic paper about Syrian refugees. Eventually, Jessica hopes to receive her JD/MPP (along with potentially a PhD in women’s studies) and one day run for office herself. Through PiLA this year, Jessica will be working with the Women’s Justice Initiative as a Communications and Development Fellow. She is also utilizing the current quarantine to receive her yoga teaching certification and to learn new languages, namely, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

Alice Wistar recently graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Spanish, Global Health & Health Policy, and Latin American Studies. Passionate about the connections between food systems and climate change, Alice’s undergraduate research focused on food culture and the gastronomic revolution in Peru, socio-cultural aspects of the vegan movement in Madrid, and on the most effective ways to promote more sustainable food choices amongst Latino and non-Latino populations in the U.S. Throughout college, Alice enjoyed volunteering as an ESL tutor, managing the dining hall student workforce, and leading Greening Dining, a club promoting sustainable eating. It was through this club and her commitment to nutrition that Alice successfully advocated for natural, sugar-free peanut butter to be provided in all campus dining halls, published Princeton’s first ever plant-based eating guide, and founded the Princeton Vegan Society. In the future, Alice hopes to further her passion for food sustainability by working to develop environmental policies that support sustainable agriculture. Apart from her passion for promoting public and planetary health, Alice loves baking extra doughy bread (her favorite food), long-distance running, hiking, and traveling—her favorite destinations so far being Norway and Patagonia. Alice looks forward to working for EARTH University, where she will help promote the development of a program supporting EARTH graduate entrepreneurs in advancing their enterprises in rural areas of Latin America and Africa.