Colloquium | Members

Lilly Tahmasebi

 

Lilly Nahal Tahmasebi is a freshman studying International Relations at Tufts University. She comes from an Iranian background and before coming to Boston, she previously lived in San Francisco. She graduated from the Head-Royce School where she served as president of the Junior Statesmen of America chapter, and was a member of the Upper School Student council, and Curriculum Committee. In high school Lilly was heavily involved in the Oakland Youth Advisory Commission (OYAC) where she was elected chair for 3 years consecutively. During her term with the commission, the appointed body focused on commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) and in June of 2013, the OYAC put forth a bill to prevent the rise in children being trafficked. It was successfully adopted by the Oakland City Council and remains to be the first piece of legislation regarding CSEC in Oakland's history. In addition, Lilly was also responsible for the creation of a local Oakland non-profit called Oakland FoodFellas that strove to deal with the food injustice issues plaguing the West Oakland neighborhood. At Tufts, Lilly is excited to be involved in the Persian Student Association and the Tufts Dance Collective.

Alexis Tatore

Alexis is a freshman at Tufts University, intending to major in Economics and International Relations. Growing up near New York City, she was exposed to multiculturalism and international affairs at a young age — naively leading her to believe that she was prepared to debate such topics at the dinner table. However, as she became even more conscious of the world around her, she became involved in activism and economic development. She has worked for various political campaigns for the Connecticut Democratic Party and has conducted economic research twice — once on innovation and shared prosperity, and another time on Brazilian free-trade agreements — for the World Bank. These experiences served as a catalyst for her decision to take EPIIC, since while researching, she noticed a spike in populism across the globe. In EPIIC, Alexis hopes to assess how these changes will fundamentally re-shape the current balance of power.

Shan Zhi Thia

Shan Zhi comes from Singapore, and like most Singaporeans he supports a soccer team that he has no geographical relation to. An avid Manchester United fan, he is also looking to pursue a History and Peace and Justice Studies double major at Tufts. Among his passions in life are food, exercise, reading and sleep, and is able to do at least two of those at the same time. He also serves in the Republic of Singapore Navy, reinforcing his interests in military and security issues.

Caitlin Thompson

Caitlin is a sophomore from Carmel, CA, pursing a major in International Relations with a concentration in Global Health and a minor in Russian. On campus, she is involved in Model UN, as well as the Tufts Equestrian team. Her interest in Russia stems from her passion for human rights and public health, supplemented by her fascination with journalism and freedom of expression. This past summer, Caitlin worked at The Borgen Project, a non-profit organization that focuses on global poverty related issues. She wrote for the group’s online magazine, reporting on topics from poverty in the struggling European Union countries to the persistence problem with alcohol in Russia. Caitlin is interested in becoming a foreign correspondent or an international prosecutor later in life, but for now, she is content learning everything there is to know about Russia through EPIIC. This year, Caitlin hopes to focus on the formation of a national identity and development in post-Soviet republics, as well as the interaction between the government’s decisions and the every day lives of citizen. She hopes to pursue research on Russia’s failing public health system and crippling rural poverty, and examine how the Kremlin’s priorities diminish the attention paid to policies in this area. 

Petar Todorov

Petar Todorov is a student of chemistry at Tufts University. Originally from Bulgaria, Petar has lived in Massachusetts since the year 2000. A strong interest in the natural sciences has led to his involvement in numerous research projects spanning biophysics, molecular biology and biomedical engineering. Already looking at the world through the lens of science, Petar hopes to expand his scope to the political, economic and humanitarian aspects at the base of current global issues.

Jahnvi Vaidya

Jahnvi Vaidya was born and raised in Mumbai, India. She is a sophomore majoring in Quantitative Economics and is very interested in public health and development. She has discovered a fascination for infectious diseases and parasites over the last year, and is especially interested in efforts for their prevention. She is also interested in hygiene and sanitation initiatives - she is a member of BUILD: India (Building Understanding Through International Learning and Development), through which she is helping introduce ECOSAN composting toilets to a community in southern India. This summer, she interned with the Healthcare/Life Sciences team of Universal Consulting, one of India’s largest boutique consulting firms. Through working on a pharmaceutical project that considered the middle ground between business objectives and distributive justice of the market for medicinal drugs, she has become eager to learn about ways in which businesses can profit from projects that generate sustainable positive social impacts. She hopes to study and work abroad, and then eventually go back home and work in the field of Public Health and/or Developmental Economics.

Cody Valdes

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Cody is from Vancouver, Canada, where he was formed on a hockey rink, and graduated from Tufts University in 2013 with a Bachelors of Arts in Political Science, where he was formed in the productive tension between action and reflection. As an undergraduate in Tufts’ Institute for Global Leadership (IGL), he researched US foreign aid, oligarchy, and mass poverty in the Philippines and the impact of the Olympic Games on poor urban communities in Vancouver. He and his peers attempted to launch projects in the fields of renewable energy and conflict transformation in Rwanda and across the Israeli-Gaza border; they accomplished some but not everything they dreamed of, proving the importance of dreaming big. In 2010, he co-founded Sisi ni Amani Kenya with a fellow IGL alumna, a project that deploys SMS-based conflict response mechanisms and mobilises violence-prone Kenyan communities to mitigate political violence and strengthen hyperlocal civic dialogues. With Sisi ni Amani, he was a finalist in the World Bank’s Innovation Fair in Cape Town, South Africa and lived in Nairobi, Kenya in 2010-11 co-launching the project, which as of 2015 is under local leadership. He served for one year as the Undergraduate Coordinator of the IGL’s Empower Program for Social Entrepreneurship, in which capacity he worked to cohere a community of social entrepreneurs at Tufts and Fletcher rooted in sound ideas about the meaning of their work. During his undergraduate years he was part of the symposium planning committees for the year-long EPIIC colloquia on Global Cities (2008-9), South Asia (2010-11), and Conflict in the 21st Century (2011-12), which nourished his curiosity from his first days at Tufts. Since graduating he has not strayed far from his intellectual community at Tufts, where he continues to reflect on the existential, historical, and moral questions that life foisted on him during his most active years and to which he devoted himself as a junior and senior. He now serves as a Teacher’s Assistant and Research Assistant in political philosophy and international relations classes in Tufts’ Political Science department and the Institute for Global Leadership, helping his educators do for thoughtful students what they did for him a few years ago.

His elected task is to understand the character of modernity. He currently studies how philosophy and religion intervene in the rise and fall of civilisations. He enjoys thinking about themes such as decadence, nihilism, how societies handle the tension between faith and reason, and higher possibilities for individualism. He practices a traditional martial arts with the School of Oom Yung Doe and is trying his best to one day read classical Persian poetry.

Rebecca Varley

Rebecca is a senior from Los Angeles studying international relations with a focus on international trade. She spent the last studying through Tufts programs in Ghana and Madrid, Spain. While in Ghana, Rebecca was a teaching assistant at a local elementary school, which helped her to appreciate the opportunities that good education can engender. On campus, Rebecca is involved with women's club soccer and the university radio station. She is grateful for her experience here at Tufts, her friends, and her ability to be involved in EPIIC.  

Nithyaa Venkataramani

Nithyaa Venkataramani is a senior majoring in International Relations focused in global health studies and with specific interest in South Asia and Latin America. She has co-directed the BUILD Program for Sustainable Development through the Institute for Global Leadership, which has given her the opportunity to research and work on a community-driven entrepreneurship model and other holistic development projects to meet basic needs of the village of Thottiyapatti, India. She has also worked with the founding team of Saathi Pads, a technology development project of MIT graduates, on shaping their business plan for the 2011 Tufts 100K competition. Nithyaa spent this past spring semester studying abroad in São Paulo, Brazil where she was directly enrolled in the local university, PUC-SP, teaching English and volunteering with Saúde Criança, creating collaborative family action plans for financial and infrastructural stability of the home for a child after coming home from significant treatment at the hospital. This past summer, she interned at the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Economic Development Administration of the Department of Commerce. Her work centered on researching best practices of American universities and colleges engaging with entrepreneurship and innovation, and policy recommendations to foster more entrepreneurship activity across the United States.  In her free time, she likes to learn new languages, spend time outdoors, and sing with friends.

Jonathan Vincent

Jonathan Vincent is a senior at Tufts University, majoring in International Relations and Political Science. He comes from Houston, Texas and just returned from a year abroad in Germany and Egypt, where he studied the German and Arabic languages and Middle Eastern politics and history. Academically, he’s interested in how different ways of looking at the world influenced by politics and international relations. In the future, he hopes to use his language skills to facilitate his understanding of disparate cultures. He joined EPIIC after attending the symposium his sophomore year and being impressed by the depth in which the students learned about the subjects during the year.