Maya, President of the Global Fund for Children, and Elana, Principal of The Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice, will discuss the career and educational paths that led them to their organizations and the challenges they faced in developing and sustaining a social enterprise.
They are leaders and visionaries addressing educational issues on a local and global basis.
Their work, passion and commitment lead us to ask
"What can I do?"
Maya Ajmera, '89, is the founder and president of the Global Fund for Children, a grant-making organization that invests in community- based organizations serving vulnerable children around the world. The Global Fund for Children channels its support into four primary issue areas: hazardous child labor; child trafficking and prostitution; schools and scholarships; and education for boys. Maya is also the founder of the Global Fund for Children's book-publishing venture, Shakti for Children.
Maya graduated from Bryn Mawr majoring in Biology and Women's Studies, and completed a Master's degree at Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. She is the recipient of a Rotary International Graduate fellowship to study in South Asia, the 1993-1997 Echoing Green Public Service Graduate Fellowship and the William C. Friday Fellowship for Human Relations of North Carolina.
Elana Karopkin, '97, is the founding principal of The Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice in the Redhook neighborhood of Brooklyn, a college-preparatory high school with a focus on law now in its second year of operation. Elana has served as the Regional Instructional Specialist for the New York City's Department of Education Region 8, and as Assistant Principal at Harry Van Arsdale High School, where she spearheaded the Ninth Grade New Visions Transformation Project. Prior to that, she worked with the team that created the Cobble Hill School of American Studies, coordinating and supervising its English Department.
Graduating with a degree in English from Bryn Mawr, Elana did a Master's degree in Secondary English Education at New York University as a Jonathan Levin Fellow. She has been awarded fellowships from the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Supreme Court Summer Institute and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Aparna Mukherjee, '95, is completing a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism, receiving a joint degree of a M.S. in Journalism and MBA from Columbia University in May 2006. She previously worked as producer of Bloomberg Television's Emmy-nominated morning show, "Bloomberg on the Markets," and coordinator of the "Bloomberg Forum," a series of multimedia interviews with CEOs, analysts, politicians and authors. Formerly a reporter for the Associated Press, she has written for Business Week and the Far Eastern Economic Review, launched Where Hong Kong magazine and worked as editorial director of an Internet advertising agency before joining Bloomberg in 2001.
Aparna graduated from Bryn Mawr with an A.B. in English literature and currently serves on the board of the South Asian Journalists Association. As a Luce Scholar, Aparna reported and edited for BusinessWorld, the Philippines' only business daily and she has also served as a Bosch Fellow in Berlin, working for German-language radio and television stations.