Current MPA Students

Yumi majored in Economics at the University of Tokyo from 2018 to 2022. After graduation, she joined Japan’s Ministry of Finance, where she has worked at the Customs and Tariff Bureau, the Fukuoka Local Finance Branch Bureau, and the Policy Research Institute (PRI) – a research body affiliated with the Ministry that conducts policy-related studies. At the Customs and Tariff Bureau, she took part in text-based negotiations for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) Agreement, promoted the streamlining of customs procedures, and launched new initiatives to strengthen controls on illegal exports. At the Fukuoka Local Finance Branch Bureau, she conducted regional economic research and participated in inspections of local financial institutions. At PRI, she conducted research on the behavior of financial institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. This summer, she interned at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where she worked on a case study of evidence-informed policymaking in Japan, conducting interviews with government officials to examine how policy evaluation mechanisms function in practice. In her free time, she enjoys walking, playing tennis, and cooking.

Raised in Dalton, Georgia, Sultan graduated from Emory University as a Woodruff Scholar, where he majored in political science and Arabic studies. After graduating, he worked at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) as a microenterprise business counselor, where he provided culturally competent support to small business owners from refugee, immigrant, and other underserved communities. He later went on to be a loan processor for the IRC’s subsidiary lender, seeing first-hand how access to affordable, low-interest consumer and business loans gave clients the chance to thrive in an otherwise unfair financial system. At Princeton, Sultan hopes to explore solutions to the challenge of simultaneously supporting the economic needs of migrants and of host communities globally. He also has a keen interest in addressing the gap between what communities need, what funders want to fund, and what organizations can realistically deliver. Beyond his professional interests, Sultan enjoys boardgames, sufi poetry/qawwali, and is a huge history buff.

Bhavya aspires to dedicate her public service career working in public resource management in collaboration with nongovernmental partners. She believes that communities grow more sustainably when they advance through collective effort rather than reliance on the state alone. With more than a decade of experience as a grassroots administrator in central India, Bhavya is an Indian Administrative Service officer with a strong record of using civic engagement across areas ranging from health to water resource management. After earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, she joined the Indian government and went on to serve on a variety of leadership roles. She was honored with the Prime Minister’s Excellence in Public Administration Award for her work as District Collector in engaging women's self-help groups to make rural water supply infrastructure sustainable. Her efforts in community-led water conservation were also recognized by the President of India with a National Water Award. As an MPA student at Princeton, she hopes to explore financing structures for government mentorship of social innovators. This past summer, she worked on a pilot project on child marriage prevention in a small village in Khargone, Madhya Pradesh, by building local leadership, raising legal awareness while remaining sensitive to age-old traditions. Outside of work, she is passionate about gardening and enjoys long nature walks.

From Cairo, Egypt, Alia grew up across Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, and the United States. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard College. Before attending Princeton SPIA, Alia worked as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group in New York, where she focused on social impact and public sector projects. Her work included supporting multilateral organizations and development finance institutions on efforts to mobilize private capital for development, climate, and agriculture initiatives amid declining levels of official development assistance. Outside of her professional work, Alia volunteers with Leedana, an Egyptian agritech startup working to expand sustainable, water-efficient desert farming across the Middle East. She also helped establish a water filtration station in her hometown in Egypt and advocates for insulin access through organizations like T1international. Alia is pursuing a joint MPA/MBA with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. After graduation, she hopes to work on innovative financing approaches that support economic development, with a particular focus on the Middle East. In her free time, she enjoys running, journaling, and photography.

Emma is a classroom teacher and executive policy fellow with Teach Plus. She holds a B.A. in international relations from Drake University and a Master of Education from University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 2019, she joined the Fulbright Program as an English Teaching Assistant in Indonesia, where she taught English in both public and Islamic residential schools. In 2020, Emma returned to her home state of Nevada to teach second grade in the Clark County School District. As a member of the Teach Plus National Teacher Policy Cabinet and the Bipartisan Policy Center Future of American Teaching Task Force, she combined classroom experience with policy analysis to help inform federal education policy, specializing in early literacy, teacher workforce policy, and education data governance. Most recently, she supported the Nevada Department of Education Office of Early Learning and Development in developing early childhood quality assessment frameworks. Outside of work, Emma enjoys hiking with her rescue dog, Jackson, cooking for friends and family, reading, and exploring artistic pursuits of all kinds.