Category: 2020-2022 Cohort

Cyrena graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs, a concentration in Conflict Resolution, and minors in Geographic Information Systems and French Literature, Language, & Culture. As a member of the 2020-2022 cohort Dean’s Scholars Program, she interviewed members of the Rwandan Tutsi diaspora to explore the effects of the gacaca community court system on the forgiveness process between diaspora Hutus and Tutsis in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.

During her time at GW, Cyrena served as a peer advisor for first-year Elliott School students, an intern with the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Foreign Influence: Election 2020 project, and an analyst with Miburo Solutions, a research and consulting firm that detects and counters extremism and disinformation campaigns in the digital sphere. Cyrena currently lives in Barbezieux-Saint-Hilaire, France, where she works as a teaching assistant for middle and high school English students.

Mona Dong is pursuing a Bachelor of Science with a double major in International Affairs and Economics. She is interested in studying international finance, sovereign debt problems, and China’s role in the global economy.

Her research project centers on understanding factors behind China’s overseas developmental finance. Her research aims to bring greater clarity into Chinese methods of economic statecraft and how China is changing the international credit landscape for developing countries.

At GWU, Mona works as a Research Assistant for Professor Maggie Chen studying how intellectual property laws impact industrial development. She also interns at the State Department’s Economic Bureau.

Isabel is pursuing a major in International Affairs with a concentration in Security Policy and a minor in Public policy. Her research aims to analyze how the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in Kenya – a roughly $4 billion project through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – is perceived by local Kenyans and if attitudes towards China more generally have changed as a result. 

She seeks to emphasize the opinions and perspectives directly from locals through virtual interviews. Outside of class, Isabel is a dedicated member of the Delta Phi Epsilon (DPE) Professional Foreign Service Sorority and has previously interned for the Institute of World Politics and was a Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) intern for the Department of State on the “China in Africa” project.

Cynthia Yue graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Affairs with a concentration in International Economics. As a UNICEF Youth Ambassador, she helped reinforce the European Union’s commitment to child welfare and launched a youth advocacy campaign at the UN General Assembly that amassed over 450 million engagements. In her current role as the U.S. Youth Observer to the United Nations, she represents young people at the UN and has led global initiatives for sustainability, diversity, and human rights. Currently, she also serves as one of thirty youth representatives in the Biden-Harris Administration and MTV’s inaugural White House Mental Health Youth Action Forum. As an Elliott School Dean’s Scholar, she researched the impact of human rights and non-compulsory treaties on transnational climate change litigation. Cynthia is currently a Master in Public Policy candidate at Harvard University.

Toluwani Adedeji is studying International Affairs with a concentration in International Development, and minors in Economics and French. She recently spent a year as an intern with the Energy Sector office at the US Trade and Development Agency, and currently is an intern at an asset management fund. At GW, she is an undergraduate consultant at the Writing Center.

Her Dean’s Scholars research project focuses on the engagement of the business communities in Nigeria and Rwanda within the African Continental Free Trade Area. With this project, she hopes to understand the contemporary relevance of policies that use Pan-Africanist ideology to promote economic growth.