Before coming to CIE, Leslie was a Peace Corps volunteer St. Lucia and then continued to work with Peace Corps as a Task Force Outreach Specialist, first in Chicago and then in Washington, D.C.

She earned a Masters of Public Administration at Rutgers University in an accelerated program which included a year of community service in Camden as a Project Manager.  Subsequently she completed an Advanced Masters of Education degree in International Education and Policy at Teachers College Columbia.

After graduating with her Master’s degree Ella returned to Malawi to work as a Chief Research Officer at the Malawi National Examinations Board for two years. She then followed her husband to Botswana where her husband was working and she devoted her time to taking care of her children.

After graduating from UMASS in 2005, I went back to my teaching job at Lilongwe Girls Secondary School in Malawi. Then in May 2005, I was posted to the Planning Department of the Ministry of Education as a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, where I was responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of the Research, Monitoring and Evaluation systems for the Ministry of Education.

Janna Shadduck-Hernández is currently a project director at the UCLA Labor Center, where she has been for the past 15 years, and teaches for UCLA’s Labor Studies major and in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Her research and teaching focus on developing culturally relevant, participatory educational models with first- and second-generation university students, community members, and youth. Her research and policy work also examine the organizing efforts of low-wage immigrant workers to combat labor and workplace violations.

Upon graduating from CIE, Maxwell returned to his position as a Senior Planning Officer in the Ministry of Education. In 2006, he became the Managing Director of Max Development Consultants, which provided services in program planning, participatory M&E, and training development.  In 2010 he took on the voluntary role of Country Director for the Chiyembekezo Trust.

As a graduate student at CIE I studied the inclusion of children with varied abilities in BRAC non-formal primary schools in Bangladesh. After my graduation I worked with a variety of schools and organizations in both the international and domestic education arena.

During and after studying at CIE, Sonia has been working with the Human Resources department of UMass Amherst, first as a multicultural evaluator and adult education trainer.  More recently she became the Project Manager with Partnership Worker Education with a focus on career ladders development and multicultural workplaces.

After graduating from CIE, Karen moved to Boone, NC and began working at Appalachian State University  in international admissions helping to increase international enrollment as part of the effort to internationalize the campus. 

After completing my Master’s degree, I resumed my position as a District Education Manager back home in Malawi. In 2010 I was transferred to the Ministry Headquarters to head the Education Sector Wide Approach Secretariat, a position I held up to 2016 when I was appointed Education Division Manager (Provincial).

In January 2020, Paul joined the LEGO Foundation as a Senior Program Specialist supporting the foundation's new humanitarian portfolio with a focus on reaching school-aged and out-of-school children in crisis settings with Learning through Play interventions. The foundation supports holistic childhood development using play as a vehicle to build upon children's cognitive, social, emotional, physical and creative skills.