COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
CLASS OF 2014 Kazi Priyanka Silmi is from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Before coming to Ohio University, she worked as a Communications Specialist, and later on as the Manager of Donor Relations, at Walk for Life in Bangladesh, where she was involved in areas that included advocacy for disabled children’s services, developing and managing newsletter and website content, public relations, grant writing, and donor relations management. Her professional experience also includes working as a Research Assistant with the Center for Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS, a UNAIDS initiative dedicated to promoting sexual and reproductive rights. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, where she majored in Marketing. Priyanka’s research interests include violence against women, health communication, social marketing, and ICTs. She is an aspiring writer who enjoys traveling, new experiences, and meeting new people.
Tracy Tinga is from a rural town in the coastal province of Kenya. When she was growing up,Tracy was inspired and motivated by her immediate environment, which led to her interest in pursuing work in the development field.Tracy earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications at Africa Nazarene University. After graduation, she worked for Reel Forge, a media monitoring company in Nairobi, where she was involved in areas that included marketing and media content analysis. Upon graduation, Tracy hopes to pursue a PhD and to eventually teach and conduct research in the field of Communication and Development. Her current research interests center around ICTs and development in rural areas. She loves the outdoors as well as reading and watching movies.
Michael Wolven is originally from New Haven, Connecticut, but has lived and worked in various parts of the world. For the last decade, Michael has served refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) in Yemen, Palestine, Tanzania, and the U.S., where his job profile has included, among other things, identifying and interviewing refugees to assess resettlement needs; designing and implementing training programs to build the capacity of community-level social service agencies; and supervising program operations. His current interests center around improving the U.S. refugee resettlement program policies, and enriching cultural orientation programs for U.S. bound refugees. Michael is also interested in the areas of entertainment-education and health communication. Amongst his many hobbies and interests, Michael is a fan of 1950s Armenian Film Noir, and he collects yupana.
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