Yael Weissburg

United States

MSc Africa Studies, 2011
St Cross College
Funding: Arcadia

Yael graduated from Oxford with an MSc in African Studies in 2011. Previously, she completed her BA in International Relations summa cum laude in 2004 at Wheaton College Illinois.

She worked as Special Assistant to the US President at the Institute for Global Engagement, a human rights NGO, and as Research Assistant in Development Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank. From 2007 she worked at the International Republican Institute (IRI), primarily in the Africa Division where she managed the Sudan programme. During her time at IRI she facilitated a meeting between leaders of a Sudanese rebel group and those from a former paramilitary group from El Salvador, the latter of which had developed into a viable political party.

Yael feels that one of the main challenges facing the international community is to help integrate anti-government movements into the democratic process. She is currently Vice President of Movement Building & Growth at the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit organisation that hosts Wikipedia). In this role, she leads the teams responsible for ensuring that the volunteer contributors to Wikipedia and its sister projects have the tools, resources, skills and funding they need to build a thriving and resilient free knowledge movement.

She currently resides in California, USA.