Please give a brief background on yourself and your career.
I am a senior legal counsel for the World Bank Group, where I have represented the development institution in Africa and the Middle East, notably in project structuring, negotiations, and compliance in international development finance transactions and advisory services across a diverse portfolio that includes agriculture, food security, social safety net, maternal and infant health, climate change, education, energy and natural resources governance. Prior to joining the World Bank, I was an Associate at Hogan & Hartson LLP (now Hogan Lovells LLP), working on international business transactions. I have worked with the South African Human Rights Commission and the United States Justice Department, Civil Division as law clerks.
Beyond my transactional practice, I commit some time to capacity development. With a specialization in mineral law practice, I, in coordination with the University of Cape Town, South Africa, designed and facilitated a 10-day intensive training course in mineral law for advanced law students as well as law professors representing many African universities in December 2014. The training included trainers from global mining companies, civil society organizations, judges, law professors, and law firms. I also lead a knowledge project call the Africa Mining Legislation Atlas (AMLA) Project, which is a legislation gathering, processing and analysis project. The platform is available at www.a-mla.org. The Project is also facilitating the strengthening of local legal capacity in Africa through coordinating law faculties across all the regions of Africa towards the implementation of the Project.
As an adjunct professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law, I will teach the law of international organizations at the Law School’s 2015 summer program. I have been a guest lecturer at Vanderbilt University and Johns Hopkins School of International Studies. I have written on development issues and reviewed articles for legal journals. I am also a thesis advisor to an LLM student at Loyola University of Chicago (Rome, Italy campus).
I was a fellow of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship which recognizes among new Americans remarkable scholars who are poised to make significant and lasting contributions to American life. I served as the Vice President of Programming on the Board of the Washington Foreign Law Society and a scholar delegate to the 2005 Academy of Achievement summit.
I received my BA from Wellesley College, an M. Phil from Oxford University and my Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
How has your career changed since you originally envisioned it at Wellesley? What other careers did you consider as a student?
I came to Wellesley in the Fall of 1998 after I had been out of secondary school (high school) for 4 years (I graduated in 1994) but I was still a traditional student because I graduated high school just before my 16th birthday. I’d done some odd jobs here and there but had a dedicated experience as a court advocate for victims of Domestic Violence in Worcester, Massachusetts. So, when I came to Wellesley, I was certain that I wanted to be an international lawyer. I just was not sure of how to go about becoming one. I considered myself pre-law even though there was no formal program such as the pre-med program at Wellesley at the time. Wellesley’s liberal arts foundation and global education vision gave me the solid footing towards becoming one.
How has Wellesley contributed to your career?
I was a Philosophy and Africana Studies major at Wellesley. I had considered an Economics major and took micro and macro Economics with Chip Case, who, although I left Economics because I was convinced that the formula for calculating a country’s GDP was misleading in the context of African countries and therefore not an accurate assessment of their economic strength, remained a mentor and a quasi host parent (I was technically not an international student). I also considered Political Science and was on my way to major in it before I went on the Junior Year Abroad program. I did the Wellesley JYA [Junior Year Abroad] at St Peter’s College, Oxford at the prompting of one of my professors MaryKate McGowan. I came back and completed a senior thesis in Philosophy studying Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason with Nicolas De Warren as my thesis advisor and another senior thesis in Africana Studies on the impact of the Nigeria’s civil war on its modern day socio-political realities, with Professor Menkiti as my thesis advisor.
After graduation, I went back to Oxford and completed the MPhil in Development Studies with substantive financial support from Jodi Mikalachki, another Wellesley Professor, who had not taught me but felt inspired to support my academic career after first meeting me as part of my interview panel for the Knafel Fellowship (which I did not receive) and then hearing about me from others.
There were many professors, and administrative staff at Wellesley that were instrumental to the formative experience I had at Wellesley and I am thankful to them and for them. Frankly, the Wellesley environment as a whole, including the landscape affirmed my sense of purpose.
Often I motivated myself when I faced challenges by reminding myself of the Women Who Will banners on lamppost that were all over the Wellesley Campus in my senior year. It was never a question of “can you”, because at Wellesley, that was assumed. The question was “will you?” Put another way, I came to Wellesley with a good level of self-esteem about my capabilities. Wellesley affirmed that sense in the healthiest of ways, teaching me to challenge ideas, formulate mine, stand on my own, advocate for others and in the end work to serve and not to be served. I had learned much of these lessons growing up and Wellesley affirmed them at a really formative juncture in my life and these are life skills that have served me and continue to serve me in my career.
What is a typical work day or work week like for you?
My work week is usually a combination of drafting legal agreements, meetings with sector specialists within the World Bank to prepare projects that we intend to finance, negotiating the legal agreement with recipient-country representatives, preparing documents for presentation of potential Bank-financed projects to the World Bank Board of Executive Directors, and preparing the legal documents for filing with the United Nations as treaty documents. Some of these activities entail travel to the recipient-country.
Other times, I meet with the team on the AMLA knowledge product and we outline action items such as identifying African regional institutions, universities, and mineral sector experts to work with on the AMLA Project as well as specific activities that are entailed in the implementation of the project, such as applying for funds for the project and dealing with budget issues, designing aspects of the projects or redesigning other aspects based on feedback from beneficiaries, preparing training curricula, reviewing work deliverables etc. Throughout the week, we spend our time carrying out the identified action items for the week. I have a great team, one of whom is a Wellesley graduate.
What piece of advice would you offer students looking to get into your area of interest and expertise?
As college students, hone your research skills. Academic writing is a way of distinguishing yourself. Seek out internships with international development organizations and seek out some of those work opportunities in developing countries.
What do you wish you had known as a student?
- How to ask for help when I needed it. Some things would have been much easier if I had learned to ask for help. I went through Wellesley with a challenging chronic condition and I chose to tough it out than show any sign of weakness. I’d like to think that I would have got much more support than I did.
- That specific A which I failed to get, would not make or break my life. I would have saved myself a lot of worry.
If you could come back and take one class at Wellesley what would it be?
Poetry Writing. (I did take a class with Frank Bidart and I loved it! I should have taken more). In terms of classes that I never took at all, I would take an astronomy class so that I could spend my evenings getting to know the stars.