Originally from Addis Ababa and raised in Vermont, Belan began her academic journey at Cornell University, focusing on public health policy. During her tenure with the City of Burlington, she held pivotal roles in community and economic development, COVID-19 analytics, and the formation of the City’s Office of Racial Equity. Through the Ethiopian Diaspora Fellowship, Belan was able to return to her birthplace to consult in healthcare, serving diverse clients including health-tech startups and government hospitals. Her leadership in Vermont's pandemic response propelled her to co-found the Vermont Health Equity Initiative (VHEI), where she served as Programs Director, leading collaborative efforts to tackle health disparities across the state and emphasizing equitable emergency response strategies. This past summer, Belan explored southern China before diving headfirst into her beloved co-ed adult soccer team back at home. At Princeton SPIA, she hopes to apply her policy toolkit to explore policy areas in emerging technology and transportation infrastructure. After Princeton, she is excited to build a career that helps make municipal governments more efficient and effective in serving their communities. 

Raised in Minneapolis, Noah has spent the majority of his career in public service working to end mass incarceration and reduce the harm caused by the criminal legal system. After completing his B.A. in Economics at Reed College, Noah monitored markets at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before making the leap to criminal legal reform. He first worked at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law on a multi-year research project seeking to learn the fiscal impact of criminal justice fines and fees. He then spent several years at the Crime and Justice Institute, working on policy implementation at the state and local level with a focus on pretrial reform and performance measurement. In his free time, he walks his big dog around Red Hook, Brooklyn, and watches professional wrestling.

Nadia is coming to Princeton SPIA from Indonesia. Previously, she worked at J-PAL Southeast Asia, where she worked on an urban transportation operational improvement project in Jakarta and a randomized evaluation on the performance improvement of tax offices in Indonesia. Nadia’s 1.5-hour bus commute in Jakarta served as her daily lesson on how cities work—or sometimes, how they don’t. Combined with her prior educational and professional journey, this experience sparked her interest in learning how data and invaluable local context can drive progress in urban policymaking, particularly in the areas of urban mobility and climate adaptation. In her free time, she enjoys scenic walks or easy hikes, playing squash, and trying out good food.

Katie is a joint MPA/J.D. student at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and Yale Law School. She was born and raised in Bellevue, Washington, and studied psychology at Duke University. She was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at a rural teachers’ college in Ixtapan de la Sal, Mexico. After returning from Mexico, Katie helped manage ten in-house pro bono legal clinics at the University of North Carolina School of Law. She interpreted and translated for 80 Spanish-speaking clients, organized the CARES Act Eviction Information Line to help undocumented tenants, and helped establish the Adult Parole Project. She later served as the community education coordinator for the Farmworker Unit at Legal Aid of North Carolina, where she coordinated know-your-rights trainings for migrant, seasonal, and H-2A farmworkers. In that role, she developed outreach strategies to reach prospective clients with limited literacy, with limited digital literacy, and who speak Indigenous languages. Outside of work, she volunteered with Al Otro Lado, Respond Crisis Translation, and the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. Katie was the 2020–2021 recipient of the Hillary Rodham Clinton Award for Peace and Reconciliation at Queen’s University Belfast. There, she researched the intersection of immigration law and technology, the role of women in peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, and the treatment of speakers of Indigenous languages at the U.S.-Mexico border. Katie is interested in policy approaches to increasing access to justice. She speaks fluent Spanish, intermediate French, and basic Maya Mam. In her free time, she enjoys playing board games, reading investigative reporting, and singing in her church choir.

Isabelle is from Fulton, Maryland, and graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Public Policy. Her experiences in Southeast Asian American student organizing at Brown fostered her interest in higher education policy and led her to Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) Scholars. At APIA Scholars, she led advocacy campaigns focused on Minority-Serving Institutions and conducted research on the educational experiences of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander students. After Princeton, she hopes to work in government with a focus on promoting college affordability and student success at public colleges and universities. In her free time, Isabelle is an amateur adult figure skater, a competitive jump roper, and an enthusiastic foodie.