E4C Fellowship Alumni: Where Are They Now?

Engineering for Change’s Fellowship is a workforce development program in social innovation that activates and empowers early career engineers worldwide to solve local and global challenges. Through our program, Fellows are provided a unique opportunity to develop professional and technical skills as well as gain exposure to our growing network of experts in this space. In this virtual panel, E4C Fellowship Alumni will share insights into their professional careers paths and their trajectory since becoming E4C Fellows.

Date: Wednesday August 24th | Time: 9am to 10:30am ET

Speakers

Kathleen Kirsch worked as an E4C Fellow in 2019, researching sanitation technologies and social innovation in Tunisia. Before beginning her E4C Fellowship, Kathleen completed her Master of Public Policy and M.S. Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, conducting research on waste management policies, green bond financing for sustainable infrastructure, and solutions to air pollution from crop burning. Prior to entering graduate school, she worked in the Peace Corps in Cameroon and managed a WASH program with SEED Madagascar. Kathleen is currently a US Agency for International Development Foreign Service Officer, working as an Engineering Officer in Egypt. She is also pursuing a PhD in Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Emmanuel Kinyanjui is an engineer based in Nairobi, Kenya. He leads the Digital and Financial Services team at Twiga Foods Ltd. Emmanuel graduated from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology with a Bachelors of Science in Mechatronic Engineering. While in school, his project dubbed the MiniMRF earned first prize in the 2018 Autodesk Design NextAfrica Challenge for the Product Design Category. Emmanuel is an accomplished coder and programmer. His life mission is to be part of teams that build products, services and experiences that matter. He enjoys using his skills to build fit-for-purpose systems that modernize African retail.

Krista Liguori is a double E4C Alum: she was a Research Fellow in the 2015 cohort and an Expert Fellow during the 2017 cohort. Her interests and specialty align best with the Water and Health sectors. Krista studied Biology at Pennsylvania State University, received her Master’s of Science in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, and she is a fourth-year doctoral student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) studying Environmental Engineering. Between her Master’s and PhD, Krista worked at the US Environmental Protection Agency Headquarters in Washington, DC, writing human health-risk assessments and pre-regulatory criteria. She left EPA to work on a contract with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct a state-wide HIV surveillance program for Texas, one of the first to utilize molecular cluster detection to prevent the spread of HIV in high-risk communities. As a doctoral scholar, Krista studies antibiotic resistance in water environments, specifically wastewater, surface water, and well water.

Bryan Sherill worked as an Engineering for Change Fellow in 2020, researching ecological resilience and endemic technologies in the Mt. Elgon region of Eastern Uganda. Prior to the E4C fellowship, he completed his Bachelors in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lafayette College, where he lived and worked in Guatemala for his Senior thesis on cultural identity within economic and engineering development, and enrolled in the Masters in Development Practice program at Columbia University. Following his E4C fellowship, he returned to Columbia University and graduated in the Spring of 2022, focusing on water and energy systems policy and finance. He is now a Water Resources Engineer in Training at Jacobs engineering in Sacramento, California, working on investment strategy and planning efforts for flood mitigation and ecosystem resilience at the State level. developing educational resources on placing global responsibility at the heart of how engineering is taught and practiced, and developing the design challenges that inspired him to be more globally responsible in engineering.