Four YSE Students Named 2021 Sabin International Fellows

Four graduate students from the Yale School of the Environment have been named Andrew Sabin International Environmental Fellows, receiving up to $40,000 of funding for their education and post-graduate service in the environmental sector.
 
Fadhili Njilima ’21 MEM, Abdeali Saherwala ’22 MEM, Raghav Srivastava ’22 MEM and Soraya Walli ’22 MEM have been recognized by the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, which provides scholarship support for students from developing countries and postgraduate awards to those students returning to their home countries and regions to pursue environmental careers. Each Fellow is eligible to receive tuition assistance of up to $20,000 and another $20,000 in post-graduation awards within 18 months of graduation.
 
Since its inception, more than 60 YSE students have received this fellowship, many of whom have since returned to their home countries to work on conservation, forestry, climate change, biodiversity, wildlife, and agricultural issues.

“These talented international students possess the energy, ingenuity, and global perspective necessary to solve the most urgent environmental challenges,” says Dean Indy Burke. “Thanks to generous support from the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, they will hone their leadership skills at YSE, and then return to their home countries equipped to tackle a wide array of complex environmental issues. I am so grateful to the foundation for supporting this next generation of leaders and providing opportunities for them that boost their promising careers.”

Njilima, a mid-career masters student, has spent more than a decade in environmental leadership and conservation in Tanzania, working with the African Wildlife Foundation, Tanzania Forest Conservation Group and the Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania. He has worked to link science and conservation through long-term ecological monitoring of tropical forests, focusing on plants and wildlife and their link to forest landscape restoration. Having graduated from YSE, Njilima plans to return to Tanzania to research how agricultural practices affect wildlife habitats, animal migration and community livelihood, with the long-term goal of establishing a conservation organization or training center in the country’s Selous-Niassa Wildlife Corridor.

Saherwala has focused his studies on energy, business and policy in hopes of creating more reliable, affordable electricity in his native country of Pakistan. He sees tremendous opportunity for renewable energy in Pakistan, with investment comingfrom the Pakistani government, the United Nations Development Programme, and other foreign governments — which will all require considerable expertise and oversight. Saherwala has sharpened his political, legal, analytical, and financial skills as an intern between Yale Law School and the Natural Resources Defense Council. His summer internship with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for the Department of Energy will provide him with hands-on experience regarding the deployment of clean energy from a financial and political side. 

Trained at the National Law School in Bengaluru, India, Srivastava has placed his interdisciplinary work at the nexus of conservation and development, making environmental law more accessible and effective. His career path has included roles at the Worldwide Fund for Nature; the India-based sustainability and social justice nonprofit Dakshin Foundation; and the United Nations Development Programme. At YSE, Srivastava has pursued a double specialization track in People, Equity and Environment and Environmental Policy Analysis, while also taking part in Yale Law School’s Law, Ethics and Animals Program. He plans to return to India upon graduation and continue his work at the interface of conservation and social justice.

Walli grew up in Kenya, where she witnessed obstacles to sustainable development — unreliable and costly utilities, polluting fossil fuels, and unequal access to energy in rural communities. She came to YSE to study the potential of developing small-scale solar grids for rural electrification in sub-Saharan Africa, eschewing public and private utility services for sustainable renewable energy development and efficient transmission and distribution networks. Walli hopes to return to Kenya upon graduation, developing models for integrating sustainable agriculture and renewable energy in rural development; she’ll get a jump start this summer as a Power and Climate Intern with the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation.