MGA Fellowship Recipients
The Liu Institute provides a full-tuition fellowship each year to a Master of Global Affairs student at the Keough School of Global Affairs whose academic and/or career interests are connected to Asia.
Lamrana Alieu Jalloh (Sierra Leone)
Governance and Policy, 2025
Lamrana Alieu Jalloh is a highly effective global leader with more than five years of professional experience, specializing in global leadership, youth in agriculture, and Pan Africanism. In his role as director of the Diamond Youth Transformation Initiative Africa, he focused on optimizing cross-regional integration, organizational design, and cross-functional collaboration. He led learning initiatives across nationalities and evaluated their effectiveness, created leadership and professional development programs, aligned business priorities with organizational strategy, and implemented creative solutions to meet Africa’s largest and most effective youth leadership platforms, reaching more than thirty-four African cities.
Lamrana is a linguist by training, as well as a curator and an accomplished public speaker. He earned an M.A. in educational administration from Beijing Language and Culture University and is the first Sierra Leonean to be granted a master's degree program in Chinese. In his home country, Lamrana is the founder of Youth in Agriculture and Environmental Protection, one of the largest youth investments in sustainable agriculture in Sierra Leone. He is the recipient of a Liu Institute Fellowship.
Ishika Sharan (India)
Governance and Policy, 2024
Ishika Sharan has worked as a research associate with the Trivedi Centre for Political Data in India, where she led projects that helped build open-source accessible datasets on public institutions and power holders in India—datasets that will help answer questions about the representation of power in the country. Ishika holds a master’s degree in liberal studies from Ashoka University, where she was a Young India Fellow. The fellowship aims to train students to become socially conscious leaders and exposes them to diverse spheres that combine research, study, and practice. Ishika majored in political science and media studies, and her thesis looked at the use of disinformation in news media as a way to legitimize political violence against minority communities in India.
Prior to her graduate studies, Ishika worked with the Akanksha Foundation, teaching students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds and helping build sustainable liaisons with community members, including parents and leaders, to ensure continued support and interest in the students’ education.
Thanh Binh Le (Vietnam)
Sustainable Development, 2023
Thanh Binh Le came to Notre Dame after working for a USAID-funded forestry project in Vietnam, where she expanded monitoring and evaluation capacity for government agencies in 45 provinces. The project culminated in the establishment of a national guideline and platform for the monitoring and evaluation of payment for forestry environmental services.
Binh’s academic interests focus on policy and intervention assessment, and she has professional experience assisting social enterprises in writing impact reports. A devoted writer, Binh maintains a personal blog (in Vietnamese) about life as a young adult.
Mikaela Bona (The Philippines)
Global Affairs + Specialization, 2022
Mikaela Bona holds degrees in political science from Ateneo de Manila University. While on scholarship, she finished undergraduate and graduate coursework in global politics and earned minors in economics and Southeast Asian studies. As the school representative for more than 2,200 students, Mikaela successfully lobbied for tuition reform that resulted in significant aggregate savings for students. She also has been awarded study grants in Japan and Brunei Darussalam.
Mikaela has interned for Filipino nonprofits and government offices that advocate for indigenous peoples and agricultural workers’ rights, gender equality, and labor migrant protection. Through these experiences, she developed an interest in the intersectional relationship between misogyny, racism and economic underdevelopment. As a feminist and MGA candidate, she hopes to develop analytical skills that will better equip her in dismantling institutions of oppression and creating new structures that empower women of color.
Uriel Galace (The Philippines)
Sustainable Development, 2021
Uriel Galace formerly served as a foreign affairs research specialist at the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies, a think tank in the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. In this capacity, he conducted research on international security and economic development and produced policy papers and research articles for the Philippine government. A former intern for the UN Development Programme and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Uriel also has volunteered for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. He holds an AB in political science from Ateneo de Manila University.