Summer Fellowship

Monica Elizondo is passionate about the intersections of food justice, social justice and inclusivity in the environmental movement. She is starting her second year at Diablo Valley College and hopes to double major at Cal in Environmental Science along with Society and Environment. She was honored to be a fellow at the Haas Institute because of the tremendous potential to make systemic change through research, policy and advocacy. Monica was an intern for several years at Summer of Solutions: Oakland, a youth-led grassroots program in Fruitvale.

Chloe Tarrasch is a second year undergraduate at UC Berkeley and plans to major in Statistics and Political Economy. This fall, she is a Communications Fellow for the Haas Institute. She previously interned this summer at Curbed SF, an online real estate publication based in San Francisco. At school, she writes for The Daily Californian and volunteers at the Berkeley Student Food Collective. Chloe is passionate about institutional justice, specifically pertaining to economic inequality, gentrification and gender equality.

Magali Duque is a rising senior at Stanford University, majoring in History with a focus in World History and Global Affairs. She is also pursuing a minor in Modern Languages (French and Spanish). A Los Angeles native, she has always been interested in issues of inequality and equitable development, in particular how race, gender and class intersect and affect social development. This led her to join various student organizations on campus through which she has organized conferences and career fairs in order to promote advocacy for human rights and development issues.

Navgeet King Zed (King) is a senior at UC Berkeley pursuing dual degrees in Business Administration and Rhetoric with a Minor Global Poverty and Practice. He is deeply passionate about issues of food justice, food equity and sustainability and their relationship with business and finance. He is interested harnessing the power of business to do good and make a global impact.

Bradley Afroilan is a 1st generation, 4th year Undergraduate majoring in Sociology at UC Berkeley who transferred to Cal from UCSB in the Fall of 2014.  At UCSB, Bradley was a research assistant for John Foran and also wrote and presented a paper on the rapport between the media and Pilipin(x)/ Pilipin(x)  Americans at the Comparative Literature Dept's annual Conference.  This past year at Cal, Bradley has worked closely with the Pilipin(x) Community in his involvement with the Pil-Studies Committee and as a Volunteer Organizing Committee Co-coordinator who successf

Emily Stein is a fourth-year part-time law student at the Rutgers School of Law in Newark, New Jersey.  She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Urban Studies and Special Honors from Hunter College of the City University of New York, where she performed independent research on the quality of life for LGBT communities in rural and urban spaces.  Prior to commencing her legal education, Emily worked closely with diverse communities through grassroots outreach and community programs in New York and New Jersey’s urban centers.  As a law student, Emily has focused her stud

Fernando Reyes is passionate about reversing historical trends of structural inequality though his passion for economics and finance.

Michael J. Myers II is from Buffalo, New York and is a Ph.D. student in the Department of African-American Studies at UC Berkeley. A first-generation college student, Michael graduated with honors from SUNY Buffalo State with a B.S. in Criminal Justice. He also holds an M.P.A. from SUNY Binghamton and an M.S. Ed in Education Policy from The University of Pennsylvania.

llaria Giglioli is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of California Berkeley where she is currently researching cross-Mediterranean migration between North Africa and Italy. More generally, she is interested in the relationship between the organization of space and the production and reproduction of inequality. She has previously carried out research on struggles around access to natural resources, particularly in settler colonial contexts.

Raj Bhargava is a second year undergraduate at UC Berkeley majoring in Economics and minoring in both Public Policy and Creative Writing. His passions lie in urban inequalities of opportunity, and especially gentrification and racialized disparities in community involvement and education. Raj is a contributor to the Haas Institute's Just Public Finance program and researches the financial structuring of public institutions through the Great Recession as well as the broader trend of municipal financialization. 

Kemi Bello explores storytelling - about ideas, people and community - through the intersections of words, data, design and technology. Kemi was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and migrated to the U.S. at the age of six. Upon learning she was undocumented in high school, she joined the immigrant rights movement as a community organizer. Kemi has also conducted research and policy analysis for the labor rights movement and fundraised at the intersection of arts & culture and social change. She is a math and economics alumni of the University of Houston and aspiring data scientist.

Kian Vesteinsson is a rising senior at Pomona College and is contributing to the Just Public Finance program at HIFIS. He is a double major in Politics and Religious Studies, with a coursework focus on the dynamics of race and religion in the post-9/11 United States. Kian wants to explore how we can make academic knowledge accessible and actionable, especially as relating to equity in education, systems of immigrant integration, and life in the city.

Jaylina Vay is a Summer Research Fellow in the Haas Institute Equity Metrics Program where she is working on the Equity Indices project which develops research that explores how various index models conceptualizes equity and well-being in order to better serve and support the work of the Haas Institute. Jaylina is a first-generation undergraduate student at Mills College studying Sociology with a minor in Asian Studies. Her thesis will explore the relationship between public transportation and supermarket accessibility in East Oakland.

Jenna Shelton is a rising senior at UC Berkeley and will graduate from UC Berkeley in Fall 2016 with a major in Conservation and Resource Studies with a concentration in food access and equity and a minor in Public Policy. She is most passionate about using policy as a tool for creating change and empowering marginalized community. Formerly, she served as Policy Director on the Board of Directors for a 200-member non-profit public benefit corporation.

Basima Sisemore completed her M.A. in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London, where her research focused on the intersections of space, power, resistance and reproductive rights of Palestinian political prisoners. As a Summer Research Fellow, Basima is supporting the development of the “Thinking Ahead” author speaker series as part of the Leap Forward Project, and is contributing to a report on anti-Muslim and anti-Islam U.S. legislation for the Global Justice program. Basima received her B.A.

Sarah Omer is a rising senior at UC Berkeley majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on Global Social and Economic Development specific to the African continent. She studies Interdisciplinary Studies because it allows her to explore various aspects of development and the causes of "underdevelopment" in "third world" countries. Through her customized major, Sara accounts for the social, economic, health, business, political, environmental and any other factors that contribute to a state's development and wellbeing.