For a quarter of a century, Gates Cambridge Scholars have been working to build more equitable societies, whether through campaigning, in academia or in the world of policy, business or publishing.
When it comes to impact on society, Gates Cambridge Scholars have been improving the lives of others in many different ways, from work on social inclusion and social enterprise and campaigning or advocating for equal rights to promoting tolerance, conflict resolution and post-conflict rebuilding.
Social enterprise
Many scholars have become involved in social enterprise, either as teachers and catalysts or in businesses and organisations aimed at tackling the major social challenges.
Professor Noah Isserman [2008] is an award-winning entrepreneur and strategist focused on the financing and future of social goods. Currently faculty director of the Origin Ventures Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the University of Illinois, where he co-founded and directs the award-winning iVenture Accelerator and Illinois Social Innovation, he builds systems that unearth and explore problems – and address them through entrepreneurial action as well as working with organisations on the same questions. To date, he has worked with hundreds of start-ups, companies, non-profits and government organisations across six continents.
Noah says of the Accelerator: “We take students profoundly seriously in their ability to change the world. That is at the centre of what we do. In so doing, I have tried to emulate the blend of purposefulness and community vibes of the Gates Cambridge community in a different context.”
As an entrepreneur and CEO, Noah has helped build and sell two profitable enterprises, WholeData LLC and MAStorage, Inc, both of which deliberately generated social as well as commercial value.
Noah co-founded MAStorage while he was an undergraduate. It caters to students who need to leave their belongings in storage over the summer or if they are spending time abroad as part of their course. It hired other students at three times the minimum wage and also helped people affected by Hurricane Katrina, collected textbooks for the University of Baghdad and waived their fee for students who didn’t have the resources to pay. When he graduated Noah and his friends sold the company, although not to the highest bidder because they wanted to ensure that their founding principle of being led by students was maintained.
Other scholars have been at the forefront of social enterprise over the years. Robyn Scott [2004] founded several social enterprises and is now focused on innovation, having been co-founder of the organisation OneLeap with fellow scholar Hamish Forsyth [2007]. It aims to inject entrepreneurial energy into established corporates. She also founded and is currently CEO of Apolitical, an international platform for spreading policy innovation across the civil service. Scott set up two social enterprises in South Africa before that, Brothers for All and Mothers for All. Mothers for All taught entrepreneurship skills to AIDS orphan caregivers and Brothers for All helped former inmates and vulnerable township youth learn technology, entrepreneurship and leadership skills and become positive agents of change in their communities in South Africa.
Sandile Mtetwa [2017] founded the non-profit The Simuka-Arise Initiative while an undergraduate in Zimbabwe. It is a university-based community project which works to empower young women in the country economically, socially and in their academic endeavours. She now works as the Kenya Partnerships Lead at the Centre of Global Equality at the University of Cambridge on sustainable energy and transport solutions and is a fellow of the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners, where her work focuses on advancing inclusive, locally-led approaches to energy and climate futures, with particular attention to marginalised communities in Zimbabwe. Sandile recently spoke on the Gates Cambridge podcast, So, now what? about enterprise for the common good, calling for allyship for sustainable development. She said co-creation of solutions to problems is vital and gave as an example the importance of including women and girls in discussions of solutions to energy poverty.
Uche Ogechukwu [2024], winner of the Gates Cambridge Impact Prize, is an entrepreneur in the energy sector. He co-founded and is chief business officer of Greenage Technologies, a clean technology start-up in Nigeria which is on a mission to help 30 million Nigerians connect to clean energy. The start-up leverages local technologies and human capital to manufacture, scale and connect users to solar energy through home solar installations, energy distribution kits and more. Uche is also a co-founder of Hardware Garage which supports young Africans to build their start-ups in clean tech and E-mobility.
Equal rights
Equal rights is a big focus of many Gates Cambridge Scholars’ research and work.
Halliki Voolma [2011 – pictured left with Bill Gates and Commissioner Hadja Lahbib] did her PhD in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies on intimate partner violence against women with insecure immigration status in England and Sweden. She now works as gender equality advisor to Hadja Lahbib, the European Union’s Commissioner for Equality, Crisis Management and Preparedness where she steers the development and implementation of key EU policy initiatives such as the Gender Equality Strategy and binding legislation such as the Directives on combating violence against women, achieving gender balance on corporate boards and promoting pay transparency to help close the gender pay gap.
Halliki has been at the European Commission since 2017 and previously worked in the Commission’s Secretariat-General, coordinating mainstreaming of equality considerations in all EU policy areas, as well as the department of justice, developing EU policy to combat violence against women.
Georgiana Epure’s work focuses on advancing laws and policies that protect and promote reproductive rights as fundamental human rights. Since joining the Centre for Reproductive Rights in 2024, she has been working on national legal strategies to defend and advance sexual and reproductive health and rights in Central and Eastern Europe, including safe and legal access to abortion and maternal health.
Georgiana [2016], who did her MPhil in International Relations and Politics at Cambridge, says: “Although most countries in the region permit abortion on request or for broad socio-economic reasons, and despite global progress on sexual and reproductive health and rights, laws, policies, and practices continue to restrict women’s autonomy, dignity and access to care. Recent years have also seen an increase in legislative efforts to restrict access to abortion services. These harms disproportionately affect marginalised groups, such as women living in poverty, ethnic minorities, women with disabilities and Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex people, who often face multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination.”
Before joining the Centre, Georgiana led the national campaign for Romania’s ratification of the International Labour Organisation Convention on Violence and Harassment, in 2024 which catalysed reforms to improve national anti-harassment laws and policies and protections for workers. This is work that she initiated and led with the Association for Liberty and Equality of Gender – A.L.E.G., a Romanian NGO she has been working with in various capacities since secondary school.
Anna Malaika Tubbs [2017] has just published her second best-selling book. Erased: What American patriarchy has hidden from us is described as “the story of the United States from a new perspective: one where the people who shaped this country – who have been oppressed and whose contributions have been denied – are at the centre, reminding us that we can restore what has been strategically kept from us”. It follows on the heels of The Three Mothers, based on her PhD, which celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America’s most well-known figures: Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and James Baldwin.
Tara Cookson [2011] co-founded the feminist research consultancy Ladysmith which works with a range of partners, including UN Women. Now Canada Research Chair in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia [UBC], Tara is looking at how data is changing feminist practice. For the book, Tara’s research team interviewed over 100 development practitioners and rights advocates about how data is changing the way they work. She says: “Data can be a tool for feminist change, but it is not the only tool needed. It is important to recognise its limitations, when it should not be collected and what the unintended consequences might be of collecting it. The metrics you choose to measure really matter. That’s why I started Ladysmith. We needed a different, broader lens and different measurement tools to see the overall impact of programmes.”
Sharmila Parmanand [2016], Assistant Professor in Gender, Development and Globalisation at the London School of Economics, also works on gender equality, in particular in relation to sex workers. She is writing a book, Saving Our Sisters: The Politics of Anti-Trafficking and Sex Work in the Philippines, based on her PhD dissertation. It will argue that if governments insist on understanding sex workers exclusively as victims, that limits the scope of their interventions to ‘rescuing’ and redirecting sex workers to other forms of low-paid, insecure, feminised work, foreclosing sex workers’ political agency or rights. She will make the case for an expansive re-imagining of anti-trafficking that foregrounds social justice and equity rather than criminalisation.
Reetika Subramanian [2019, pictured right], recently named a BBC New Generation Thinker, is focused on the intersections of gender and climate, particularly through her multimedia project, Climate Brides. The project grew out of her doctoral research and began in 2021 while she was conducting fieldwork in western India. Using multimedia tools, she has been documenting how climate change is intensifying the drivers of child marriage in these communities.
One of the central aims of the project is to create accessible, multilingual resources, such as the Climate Brides map, that can serve grassroots organisations and feminist collectives working on the ground. She also presents the Climate Brides podcast, which explores these issues in greater depth through conversations and storytelling.
Several scholars have also worked on LGBTQ+ rights. Eric Cervini is an award-winning author, producer and historian of LGBTQ+ politics, for instance. His first book, The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America, was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Cervini [2015] is the Emmy-winning creator and Executive Producer of The Book of Queer, a queer history docu-series boasting the largest all-queer cast in Hollywood history, which is now streaming on HBO Max.
In March 2024, Cervini launched Allstora, an online book marketplace, alongside 14-time Emmy-winner RuPaul Charles. Cervini currently serves as Allstora’s CEO. On the site, Cervini also hosts Eric’s (Very Gay) Book Club, where he highlights the most brilliant and exciting works of gay literature.
Scholars are also active in promoting the rights of indigenous people. Chris Tooley [2002], for instance, is CEO of Te Puna Ora o Mataatua, a health and social services provider serving the Eastern Bay of Plenty in New Zealand, where his work is based on implementing a fully integrated model that allows social, medical, health, employment provisions into a seamless service delivery approach. Before that, Chris served as chief ministerial advisor for the Maori Affairs portfolio in the New Zealand government.
He says his experience of growing up in the Māori community inspired him to apply to Cambridge to do a PhD on self-determination movements from a more global perspective. “I thought I had to be an academic to understand the world and change it,” he says. “Then I thought I had to be in Parliament to affect change. Now I’m working out in the community and able to see the realities of how change needs to occur in real-time. Everything plays its part and contributes to the overall struggle in different ways. I am fortunate to have been able to have experienced all three sectors and to understand what each brings to the whole bigger picture of how transformation comes about.”
Other scholars have worked on the ground to promote social justice through community groups. They include Carlos Gonzalez Sierra [2015] who, after leaving Cambridge, worked at a non-profit organisation which provides educational programmes and access to social and health services to Latino and other low-income families in Pennsylvania. He is now enrolled in a joint Juris Doctor and Master in Public Policy programme between Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School. He is currently clerking for Judge Gustavo Gelpí of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Meanwhile, others, like Farhan Samanani [2013], have taken a broader approach. His early work, captured in his book How to live with each other, looked at how to create connection, understanding and community across meaningful differences. He has been building on that in the last five years in collaboration with the community organising network Citizens UK. Citizens UK work to bring diverse communities together into grassroots alliances that campaign for change around the issues that matter most to them. Farhan is interested in understanding how this process is able to bridge divides and connect people across differences in the realm of politics, where the stakes are often higher than in community building.
His work with Citizens UK includes the first major national study into the gendered dimensions of hate crime in the UK. The study helped inform the UK Law Commission review of UK hate crime policy and several of the recommendations were echoed in their final recommendations to Parliament and led to reforms in policing practice across the UK to proactively prevent and better monitor gendered hate. He has also worked with Citizens UK on making climate justice more accessible to marginalised communities which helped inform the Greater London Authority’s Just Transition Strategy.
On the back of this, Farhan serves as a member of the Green Economy Steering Group in London and has fed into the UK government’s Public Participation Strategy for Climate. Farhan has also been collaborating with Citizens UK to teach his students some practical tools for social change which led to them successfully campaigning for the British Film Institute to pay all its staff the living wage and winning an award from the Living Wage Foundation.
Conflict resolution and peace building
Bridging differences is at the root of conflict resolution and peacebuilding and many scholars have been involved in this area.
Alice Musabende [2016] is a senior political advisor to the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she advises on African policy, peace and security and multilateral engagement. She played a central role during the UAE’s term on the UN Security Council (2022–2023) and continues to support high-level diplomatic initiatives through the Ministry’s Policy Planning Department. Her work focuses on shaping strategic partnerships and advancing the UAE’s engagement with African states and institutions. Alice, from Rwanda, completed her PhD in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and has remained deeply engaged in questions of international power and African agency in global affairs.
Sara Habibi-Clarke [2011] has worked in the field of peacebuilding through education for over 20 years as a practitioner, researcher, curriculum developer and trainer. Her work focuses on educational intersections with violent conflict, displacement, transitional justice, collective trauma, social healing, post-conflict peacebuilding and intergroup reconciliation. She currently works for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), Division for Peace, in Geneva. Her latest publications include Peace Pedagogies in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Theory and Practice in Formal Education (Springer, 2023) and From Trauma-Sensitive to Trauma-Responsive Peacebuilding, which will be published by Routledge in 2025.
Other scholars working on conflict resolution include Njoki Wamai [2012], an academic, researcher, gender, governance, peacebuilding and transitional justice consultant and feminist activist whose work focuses mainly on power, citizenship in the context of international interventions like the International Criminal Court and transitional justice in Africa, African feminisms and decolonial research practices. She is currently Assistant Professor of International Relations at the leading and oldest Kenyan private university, the United States International University.
Professor Sarah Nouwen [2005] also works on the intersections of law and politics, war and peace and justice and the rule of law. Building on her experience in diplomacy and peace negotiations, her research focuses on how international law plays out in concrete situations. Her 2013 book Complementarity in the Line of Fire: The Catalysing Effect of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan explores whether, how and why the complementarity principle in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has had a catalysing effect on the legal systems of Uganda and Sudan.
And Mona Jebril [2012, pictured left] is currently drawing on her research in higher education to talk about issues related to the reconstruction of Gaza’s higher education system. Mona, currently a Bye-Fellow of Education and Academic Development at Queen’s College and a research associate with the Centre for Business Research, has written extensively in both academic and non-academic publications about higher education and health in Gaza. She has also taken an innovative approach to getting her research to a wider audience, using everything from poetry and theatre to podcasting. Her podcast, A Life Lived in Conflict, sees her interviewing a broad span of people from conflict zones ranging from Gaza to Afghanistan and from entrepreneurs to students.
“My podcast tries to give a voice to people in conflict areas and from different disciplines. I am trying to bridge the gap between policymakers, academics and the public,” says Mona, who won a Gates Cambridge Impact Prize. Alongside the podcast episodes, she produces voicing and engagement cards which enable listeners to participate in the conversation and to continue the conversation. “I want to encourage more interaction and make the interviews more meaningful,” she says.
*Top picture courtesy of Picpedia.
