Elena Agarkova • RUSSIA • May 2008 -  2010

Elena will be living in Siberia, studying management of natural resources and the relationship between Siberia's natural riches and its people. Previously, Elena was a Legal Fellow at the University of Washington's School of Law, at the Berman Environmental Law Clinic. She has clerked for Honorable Cynthia M. Rufe of the federal district court in Philadelphia, and has practiced commercial litigation at the New York office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP. Elena was born in Moscow, Russia, and has volunteered for environmental non-profits in the Lake Baikal region of Siberia. She graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2001, and has received a bachelor's degree in political science from Barnard College.

Pooja Bhatia • HAITI • September 2008 -  2010

Pooja attended Harvard as an undergraduate, and then worked for the Wall Street Journal for a few years. She graduated from Harvard Law School. She was appointed Harvard Law School Satter Human Rights Fellow in 2007 and worked as an attorney with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, which advocates and litigates on behalf of Haiti’s poor. As an ICWA Fellow, Pooja will explore Haiti more deeply and write more broadly about the country.

Eve Fairbanks • SOUTH AFRICA • March 2009 -  2011

Eve is a New Republic staff writer interested in character and in how individuals fit themselves into new or changing societies. Through that lens, she will be writing about medicine and politics in the new South Africa. At the New Republic, she covered the first Democratic Congress since 1992 and the 2008 presidential race; her book reviews have also appeared in The New York Times. She graduated with a degree in political science from Yale, where she also studied music.

Ezra Fieser • GUATEMALA • January 2008 -  2010

Ezra is interested in economic and political changes in Central America. He is an ICWA fellow living in Guatemala where he will write about the country’s rapidly changing economic structure and the effects on its politics, culture and people. He was formerly the deputy city editor for The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal, a staff writer for Springfield (Mass.) Republican and a Pulliam Fellow at The Arizona Republic. He is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston.

Suzy Hansen • TURKEY • April 2007 - September 2009

Suzy will be writing about politics and religion in Turkey. A former editor at the New York Observer, her work has also appeared in Salon, the New York Times Book Review, the Nation, and other publications. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999.

Cecilia Kline • CENTRAL AMERICA • January 2009 -  2011

Cecilia´s passion is hanging out with kids on the streets and in juvenile prisons learning about ways youth experience and survive violence. She is currently in Honduras collaborating with different NGOs pursuing her interest in the causes and innovative outreach methods to at-risk youth, gangs and violence which she will continue in various Central American cities. She has worked internationally with detained youth since college, integrating legal and social influences, backed by her studies in Psychology and Sociology at Georgetown, degree in Child Law from Loyola and masters in Social Service from University of Chicago.

Derek Mitchell • INDIA • September 2007 - August 2009

Derek will be exploring the social and cultural impact of economic change in India. Previously, he was a Fulbright scholar in India at the Gandhi Peace Foundation. He has worked as a foreign policy research coordinator at George Washington University's Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies and as a political organizer in New Hampshire. Derek graduated with a degree in religion from Columbia University.

Raphael Soifer • BRAZIL • March 2007 -  2009

An actor, director, playwright, musician and theatre educator, Raphi Soifer is a Donors’ Fellow studying, as a participant and observer, the relationship between the arts and social change in communities throughout Brazil. He has worked as a performer and director in the United States and Brazil, and has taught performance to prisoners and underprivileged youth through People’s Palace Projects in Rio de Janeiro and Community Works in San Francisco. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Theatre Studies and Anthropology from Yale University.