Meet the Fellows

Monica Mekaru serves as program manager at the Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development at the Earth Institute/Columbia University. She works on the Systems Design team on strategies for the Millennium Villages Project and its related scaling up initiatives. She is originally from Brazil, and recently graduated from the Masters in Development Practice program at the School of International and Public Affairs. During her studies she was involved in several initiatives at The Earth Institute, such as the Haiti Regeneration Initiative, Millennium Villages Project in Mozambique, and a fellowship with the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity. She also was involved with the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment, the United Nations Population Fund-HIV/AIDS program, and UN REACH. Prior to her Masters, she worked in the Sustainability Practice with McKinsey & Company in a variety of projects related to climate change, infrastructure, forestry, agriculture, water/sanitation, health, and  philanthropy. She also worked for the Brazilian Institute for Sustainable Rural Enterprises and the State Secretariat of Finance, and was a volunteer consultant for the Ashoka entrepreneurship program.