Career News

Azalia Mitchell, MA 05, just started as the Haiti Training Coordinator for Partners in Health (PIH). She is based in Boston but will spend more than half her time in Haiti. Azalia will be doing training design, workshops for community-based health workers and logistics. The training center in Haiti is the first and largest for PIH. Since PIH is working in new countries and receiving many requests for training materials, the Haiti training center will be used as a model for all other training centers. Azalia will have the opportunity to develop training methodologies, standards for evaluation and she will work on standardizing all of the training materials.

Aziz Jan, MA 06, in January 2007, joined the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington DC as Executive Officer.

Chris Chin, MA 05, (chrischin28@yahoo.com) has recently taken a position as Monitoring Manager with the Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development. Located in central Guyana (South America), the Centre manages 371,000 ha of tropical forests to show how tropical rainforests can be conserved and sustainably managed. Chris will be working with the Resource Management and Training Unit, supporting the development and management of a monitoring program for the conservation reserve's rivers, roads, and forest. He will also be incorporating socio-economic monitoring of the impact of business ventures on local communities. Chris was the Senior Environmental Education Officer within the Environmental Protection Agency, Guyana.

Elizabeth Petheo, MA 06, (empetheo@yahoo.com) has become program coordinator with the American Refugee Committee in Sri Lanka. The position is based in the city of Trincomalee.

James Wirth, MA 06, (jpwirth@gmail.com) will be spending five months in Ethiopia affiliated with Tufts' Friedman School of Nutrition. He will be assisting with an evaluation of a UNICEF food security and integrated basic service program. As one of the independent evaluators, James will be gathering a wide range of data using surveys, focus groups, key informants, etc. in order to evaluate the program's success and make recommendations for the future.

Josique Radegonde, MA 05, (mjradegonde@uom.ac.mu) founded an NGO, Grassroots Organization, based in Mauritius. As part of the Institute for Community-Based Research, the organization addresses the issues and rights of vulnerable groups, and focuses on capacity building, empowerment, and providing technical assistance.

Lauren McCulloch, MA 05, (lauren.mcculloch@gmail.com) is working for PROTEJA, the Program to Support Shelters for Victims of Trafficking in Persons in Mexico. Based in Mexico City, the project is funded by USAID as part of the US global initiative to fight trafficking, and focuses on improving services to victims of human trafficking and providing technical support in drafting legislation to combat human trafficking. She invites anyone working in the field or interested in working in the field to get in touch.

Leslie Blanton, MA 05, (essiama@yahoo.com) started at Catholic Relief Services (CRS) headquarters in January after a 5-month fellowship with them in Niamey, Niger, where she worked on HIV/AIDS internal (to CRS, for their staff) policy/programs, managed a regional small grant fund, and did a training rotation through various programs and departments. Leslie is currently a Specialist in the Program Quality and Support Department and works on knowledge management, supporting technical advisors and program quality directors at HQ and overseas in sectors focusing on Agriculture, Peace-building, and Water and Sanitation.

Maria Catoline, MA 05, is the Advocacy Coordinator at WILD for Human Rights. Since August 2004, she has been working on the San Francisco campaign to promote human rights through public policy. Maria's responsibilities include research, community outreach, and overseeing WILD's technical assistance to community leaders and government. Recently, Maria co-facilitated a training with US grassroots advocates who are interested in using the human rights framework in their local work. The training included practical sessions on how to use human rights to advance public policy initiatives, documentation work, media and messaging actions, oversight and monitoring, and strategies for community organizing.

Mary Lee-Crocker, MA 98, is now residing in Vancouver, British Columbia, taking a short break after having worked in Latin America and on complex emergencies in areas affected by the 2004 Tsunami and the Pakistan Earthquake.

Rabson Dhlodhlo, MA 97, (RDhlodhlo@deat.gov.za) is now based in Pretoria, South Africa, where he is the Project Manager for the World Bank/GEF funded Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Project, Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. The project is a collaborative initiative between South Africa and the Kingdom of Lesotho to protect the biodiversity of the Drakensberg and Maloti mountains through conservation, sustainable resource use, and land-use and development planning.

Roba Sharamo, MA 02, is currently a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Arlington, VA. He is writing his dissertation on peace processes in failed states--focusing on Somalia and Liberia.

Ronald Mutasa, MA 06, (rmutasa@gmail.com) has joined World Education as a Program Officer in the Africa Division. Previously, he worked with the African Development Foundation, a US agency working in 23 African countries. Ronald was part of the Southern Africa program with primary responsibilities in Swaziland.

Salamat Ali Tabbasum, MA 02, (s.tabbasum@unesco.org) is currently working as Assistant Programme Specialist at the World Heritage Centre of the United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Headquarters in Paris, France. Since 2002, he has been working on the implementation of the World Heritage Convention (one of the Multilateral Environmental Agreements -- MEAs) in the Pacific Region including Australia; New Zealand; Fiji; Niue; Palau; Papua New Guinea; Kiribati; Marshall Islands; Micronesia; Samoa; Solomon Islands; Tonga; Vanuatu; the Cook Islands; Nauru; Tokelau and Tuvalu. He assists government authorities in those countries with identification, nomination, conservation, and management of World Heritage natural and cultural sites.

Tate Munro, MA 06, (Munrot@enterpriseworks.org) is currently a Program Officer with DC-based Enterprise Works/VITA (EWV), an international development organization that runs programs based on sustainable, enterprise-oriented, market-driven solutions worldwide. He backstops a portfolio of countries in West Africa, managing projects and grants, supporting program development, and fostering communications between the field and headquarters. Visiting Senegal often, Tate field manages an agro-business project in cashew processing. One of the most demanding parts of his job is implementing the annual impact tracking system to ensure consistent quantitative analysis across EWV's portfolio of projects. Recently, the New York Times ran an article about an EWV treadle pump that transformed the regional ecology in Nigeria.

Send your career news to: sid@brandeis.edu