Leslie is a Skidmore College graduate who comes to GHD following 3 years’ living and working in New York City, and 2 years’ Peace Corps service in Namibia. Leslie has always been a passionate advocate for girls and women. In New York she worked as a Research Assistant for a non-profit that serves homeless women, and during Peace Corps service she continued to focused on supporting the rights and dignity of girls and women in her own small village and beyond. As a volunteer, she ran a week-long gender equality and leadership camp in Windhoek for under-resourced students. She and her team of American and Namibian counterparts went on to develop an after-school club curriculum with 2 years of extracurricular content and an integrated Monitoring and Evaluation system.

At GHD Leslie plans to study responses to humanitarian crises, with special attention to gender issues in refugee contexts. Although a realist, she strongly believes that ethically-driven, passionate leaders can influence social and political structures to mitigate poverty and conflict, promote justice, and create a better world. Leslie enjoys baking sugary treats while singing along to French music, and running trails or reading fiction with her dog Mukwetu by her side.