Letter from the Director
Working with UNICEF
Alumni Interview
Faculty Updates
Career Services
Career News

Archive: Apr 07 Newsletter
Archive: Nov 06 Newsletter
Archive: Aug 06 Newsletter

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ALUMNI NEWS
(click on photos to enlarge)

Monika Singh, MA 05 and Abhishek Singh were married last May. Congrats!

Best wishes to An Ngyuen, MA 07 on her recent marriage last fall in Vietnam



MA 04 Sara Johnson Steffey's son Jackson just turned 1!


Cedric Schuster, MA 98 and family in Samoa



Trang Minh Ngo, MS 05 gave birth to a son named Pham Minh last March. Best wishes!

MA 06 Dao Khanh Tung's son Dao Hoang Nam was born last spring. Congrats!

Akemi Takahashi and Dtan Chanthakhot, both MA 06, met in Vientiane, Laos

Michou Nyuyen, Eriko Atsumi, Kaushi Nawaratne, and Yeshey Tamang have stayed in touch since SID graduation in 2003

Congrats to Aarti Singh, MA 01, on her recent marriage.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

Paul Farmer was the keynote speaker at the opening ceremony for the renovated Heller-Brown Building. A video of his talk is available online.

SID was mentioned in the Nov-Dec issue of the International Educator.

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Programs in Sustainable International Development

The Heller School for Social
Policy and Management

Brandeis University
Mailstop 035
415 South Street
Waltham, MA 02454-9110
Tel: 781-736-2770
Email: sid@brandeis.edu

Letter from the Director
Professor Laurence Simon
All of us know what it is like to be far from home. For many of you, your residence at SID was a year or two without seeing your families, often including children. This is one of the reasons we have worked so hard to make SID and the Heller School your extended family.

Each year some of our students are particularly troubled by events at home. With students from 50 to 60 countries annually, unfortunately there never is a time when the trauma of war or civil conflict does not affect some students. Over the years, students from Bosnia, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Sri Lanka, among others have phoned home nervously to check on families and friends. Our many students from Kenya this year are experiencing this shock. READ MORE> > >

Working with UNICEF
Phuong T. Nguyen, MA 01
Since graduating from the Sustainable International Development (SID) program at Brandeis University in 2001, I have experienced a whirlwind of professional challenges working with UNICEF. I joined the organization during my second-year practicum and was eventually employed by the East Asia and Pacific Island Regional Office. My initial work in that region was to monitor and follow up on commitments made by individual countries toward the global Education for All (EFA) initiative. The work required that I travel to countries as diverse as China, Papua New Guinea, and Laos PDR to gather education statistics for key EFA indicators. A wide and diverse region, my objective to monitor progress made by all the countries in the region was intensive. I even had to skip joining the SID community back in Boston for our graduation ceremony. Following the EFA initiative, I was charged to coordinate a girls' education project in seven countries where gender disparity was high. I also took the opportunity to coordinate with regional United Nations agencies and I/NGOs to create the first East Asia and Pacific Regional United Nations Girls' Education Initiative.

In 2001, after the downfall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the country and its transitional government was ready to attend to the business of rebuilding. READ MORE> > >

Alumni Interview
Melissa Kizildemir, MA 07
Earthquakes, hurricanes, war zones. These are things from which most people flee. Unless you are Melissa Kizildemir, MA 07, in which case, you rush to the scene of devastation, or at least try to.

Case in point: In 1999 in Izmit, Turkey, fifty-five miles east of Istanbul, a massive earthquake killed 17,000 people. Kizildemir, then nineteen, was visiting her family in Istanbul, though sleeping on the street out of fear their own house would be hit by aftershocks. Only her parents' refusal to let her go kept her from rushing to Izmit to help the earthquake victims. So she did the next best thing: she joined a fleet of workers at McDonalds assembling 10,000 cheese sandwiches to ship to survivors.

But the next time Kizildemir wanted to rush to a danger zone her parents relented, moved by her desire to help. Kizildemir was hired to work for the Turkish Red Crescent Society (akin to the Red Cross), providing psychosocial support for disaster workers at the Turkish-Iraqi border just after the US invaded Iraq in 2003. READ MORE > > >

Faculty Updates
First Annual Mayor's Green Award Recipient: Sajed Kamal

SID Professor Sajed Kamal received one of the Boston Mayor Menino's "First Annual Mayor's Green Awards" for "Community Leadership in Energy and Climate Protection." He was one of 17 residents or businesses who are leading Boston to become more sustainable. Almost ten years ago, Kamal helped to found Solar Boston, a partnership of renewable energy experts, community organizations and businesses committed to promoting solar technologies throughout Greater Boston. In addition to sponsoring many energy related lectures, seminars and workshops, Solar Boston has helped install over fifty grid-connected photovoltaic solar electric systems in the region. READ MORE about Profs Kamal, Suaya, Howard, Olson, and Godoy > > >

Career Services

Heller has made a serious commitment to career development for its students and a large part of delivering on that commitment is to connect students to alumni. EASE is a very user-friendly, easily searchable database that links students to alumni for networking, informational interviewing and general career advice. EASE also provides a job database for students and alumni as well as information on fellowships, grant deadlines, information on practicum sites, etc. Please sign up in order to provide your own assistance to students. The URL is http://heller.brandeis.edu/careers/index.html

Heller has also demonstrated its commitment to career services by hiring a new director. Tom Broussard, PhD 06 has joined the Heller Career Services office as Assistant Dean. Tom is a Heller alum and has been a private practice career counselor for many years. He has worked overseas and domestically; for large corporations and small. The new email for the career office is GotWork@Brandeis.edu.

Many of you know Edward Kibirige (and Magali, MA 07, his wife) from when he worked in the career office. Edward has taken a position with CARE-USA working in San Diego. They have moved there just in time for the wildfire season! A search is underway for Edward's replacement so if you know a well qualified candidate, send the name along to Tom.

Upcoming events for SID students include a trip to Washington DC in February 2008. About 60 students expect to visit many important organizations such as the World Bank, RTI, Brookings, Catholic Relief Services, Chemonics, Management Sciences for Health and many others. There will be an alumni event one night so if you work in the area and would like to participate, please let Tom know. His email is tbroussa@brandeis.edu.

Career News
Melina Cataife, MA 05 is a founding member of an NGO in Buenos Aires that aims is to stop the brain drain that has affected Latin America for so long. In September 2006, Melina and two colleagues from a Harvard-based research institution started to build the ground work for Fundacion Crimson, an Argentine think-tank committed to fostering excellence in education, science and technology at all levels.

Fundacion Crimson gives opportunities to the next generation of leaders who are able to foresee the future needs of citizens and respond to those needs with innovative ideas. In the first year, they established PABSELA (Program for the Advancement of Biomedical Sciences Education in Latin America), in collaboration with Harvard Medical International to create training opportunities for graduate students in Latin America. So far twenty-three students from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico were fully-funded to participate in high tech laboratory trainings and lectures led by top faculty drawn from Harvard Medical School and other institutions.

READ MORE about SID alumni careers > > >