2025-26 Global Community Fellowship Cohort

Maywadee Viriyapah

BEAM Education Foundation

My name is May, and I am the fellow posted at BEAM in Chang Mai. I am a Thai-American and this will be my second time living in Thailand for a year! I got my degree in Political Science and Fine Arts, and I am still pursuing work in both these industries. Beyond my professional interests, I really enjoy K-pop and go to concerts very often (I think I went to 10 last year) and love doing nature activities. I hope to improve my language skills while in Thailand and possibly get more involved in the art community while in the program!

Jason Own

Education for Friendship Foundation (EFF) / Minmahaw School

Burmese American and Bay Area raised, these two identities have shaped me to my core. I studied neuropsychology at Yale because I was fascinated by how the brain makes sense of experience—how we derive meaning, how we heal, and how we connect. Photography has always been a part of that journey. It provides me a language to make sense of the world when words fall short. After graduating, I moved to Alaska to slow down and reconnect with the outdoors. Now I live on a sailboat, spearfish for dinner, and serve as the executive director of Brave Heart Volunteers, a nonprofit focused on grief and elder care. I’m so excited to be a part of VIA and to work at Minmahaw School. I hope to help inspire the next generation of Burmese youth in Thailand and to make wonderful new friends and stories along the way!

Alexandra Dingle

Parami University

Alexandra (Alex) Dingle grew up in New York City, where she was constantly surrounded by people from all over the world. Her upbringing, alongside visiting her family in Greece every summer, piqued her global engagement and desire to listen to different stories and hear about backgrounds. Wanting to immerse herself somewhere on the ground after graduating high school, Alex became the sole fellow on the Tufts 1+4 Bridge Year program to go to Pune, India with Global Citizen Year. There, she learned about the power of education firsthand by working in a government school with Teach for India. Her experience inspired her to work in the Eleonas refugee camp in Athens, Greece during the summer of 2020. While she was organizing activities for young children from many different countries, she understood the power of play in social cohesion efforts.

Upon arrival to Tufts in the fall of 2020, Alex decided to pursue her majors in International Relations (Identity) concentration and Middle Eastern Studies with minors in Arabic and Child Study and Human Development. She wanted to take her experiences to the classroom and build on skills to bring back to the ground. During her time at Tufts, Alex was heavily involved with the Middle East Research Group and other programs through Tisch College. She was also accepted into the Laidlaw Research and Leadership Program to pursue research on children’s play in refugee camps in Greece, which led her to spend a summer working with UNICEF, and the work culminated in her senior honors thesis. Wanting to immerse herself and learn from people in community firsthand, Alex spent a year studying abroad in Amman, Jordan with SIT: Refugees, Health, and Humanitarian Action and the Middlebury School in Jordan. Her time there was transformative and further pushed her to reconsider traditional protection and education structures upon her return to Tufts.

After graduation, Alex is excited to work with Parami University as a Program Progression Adviser and learn directly from her students and new community. She hopes to continue understanding different approaches to education in challenging situations and to support her students to develop into change-makers for their community. She is eager to better delve into understanding causes for transnational migration and engage in cross-cultural immersion.

Navya Mohan

Parami University

Navya Mohan graduated from the University of Maryland in May 2024 with a double degree in Public Policy and Marketing, in addition to a citation in Public Leadership. She is committed to community engagement, and spent her college years leading adventure trips around the east coast and volunteering as a peer crisis counselor. She is passionate about education justice, exhibited through her experiences teaching and camp counseling in addition to her years of nonprofit development and private sector corporate social responsibility work.

An avid board gamer and proud older sister, Navya is passionate about exploring, mentoring, and forging connections.She is a passionate changemaker with a love for storytelling. She hopes to forge a strong sense of community in Chiang Mai while developing a deeper understanding of Southeast Asian education equity through direct experience. She hopes to use this experience to continue building a career in international education equity.

Cleo Pollinger

Parami University

I’m Cleo, and I am excited to be joining the Global Community Fellowship as a Program Progression Advisor with Parami University. I’m a recent graduate from Loyola Marymount University, where I earned a BS in Information Systems & Business Analytics and Economics.

I’m passionate about educational equity and cross-cultural collaboration, and I’ve explored these themes through research, international immersion programs, and tutoring experiences. Last summer, I interned at the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics in Nairobi, Kenya where I supported research focused on decision-making and social impact. That experience deepened my commitment to working with young people and using data and dialogue to support local capacity building.

I’m particularly excited to support Parami’s mission of nurturing Myanmar’s future leaders through a liberal arts education. I’m looking forward to building meaningful relationships with students, helping them navigate academic and career pathways, and growing as a mentor and facilitator in a cross-cultural, hybrid environment.

Outside of academics, I love exploring local food scenes, practicing photography, and connecting with people through service. I’m eager to get to know all of you and collaborate in ways that are both impactful and transformative!

Lia Sokol

Parami University

Growing up in Indiana as the daughter of a Soviet refugee, my upbringing was defined by cross-cultural identity. My desire to understand my own background and increasing domestic and global tensions spurred a curiosity toward cross-cultural connection, human rights, and diplomacy. At Cornell University, I studied international relations with a focus on opposition movements in Eastern Europe.

Through my work in Zambia, Ukraine, Spain, and the U.S., I have worked at NGOs, think tanks, and schools: I love working with people and believe that human-to-human connection is the most direct way to affect change. At a time of profound global uncertainty, I am motivated to be involved in grassroots movements. In the future, I hope to work in journalism and/or humanitarian aid. I’m really excited to be joining VIA as an advisor at Parami University and to engage with the Burmese community in Chiang Mai!