Adia Armstrong
Class of 2025
Adia Armstrong, a proud child of immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago, was raised in the suburbs of Montreal and Toronto, Canada. She later moved to Boston, Massachusetts for her undergraduate studies at Boston University (BU), graduating cum laude with a degree in international relations, as well as minors in history and French. Throughout her time at BU, Adia's passion for international development and humanitarian assistance flourished through diverse study abroad and research experiences. Notably, in her junior year, she studied security and migration issues in Morocco and served as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA) for asylum-seekers and refugees. In her senior year, Adia conducted research at the American University of Beirut, focusing on improving living conditions for Syrian refugees in Lebanon through humanitarian engineering interventions. She further enriched her education through additional abroad programs in Israel/Palestine, Cuba, and France.
Post-graduation, Adia served as an Associate Program Officer on the Africa team at the Center for International Private Enterprise, where she contributed to project portfolios related to democratic governance, peacebuilding, digital economy, women’s economic empowerment, and security/economic policy development across West Africa, the G5 Sahel, Kenya, and Ethiopia. As a 2023 Payne Fellow, she aspires to join the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Foreign Service after completing the GHD program.
Adia's interests extend beyond her professional pursuits. During her leisure time, she enjoys participating in and watching sports (especially soccer!), globetrotting, indulging in culinary experiments, and passionately singing along at concerts.
Adia chose GHD because she wanted a program with three key features: (1) located in Washington, D.C., providing immersion in "the heart of the action" for the development field; (2) a curriculum focused on enhancing her quantitative analysis skills; and (3) learning from professors who are active practitioners, ensuring that course content is immediately applicable to real-world scenarios.