Volunteers

Yaniv Barzilai
Program Officer

Yaniv Barzilai is a Public Service Scholar and Honors Student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is majoring in Peace, War, and Defense and History with a minor in Arabic. As a high school student, Yaniv studied the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure at the Neurodevelopmental Psychology Lab in Carolinas Medical Center and published an algorithm that identifies cocaine exposure in infants. As a first-year student at UNC, Yaniv received the James and Florence Peacock Fellowship to travel to Kenya and intern with Carolina for Kibera (CFK). Upon returning from Kibera, Yaniv became a program officer with CFK and leads student involvement in the organization. As a sophomore, Yaniv became a Thai Heels Teaching Fellow and traveled to Thailand for an internship with the Population and Community Development Association.

Yaniv is a recent recipient of the Thomas R. Pickering Undergraduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship from the U.S. Department of State. The Pickering Fellowship covers the junior and senior years of college and a master's degree in international affairs, two internships with the State Department, and a four and one-half year commitment as a Foreign Service Officer (diplomat). See the UNC press release here.

Yaniv is spending the Summer of 2009 traveling through Southeast Asia. Follow his adventures via his blog: http://ymbarzilai.blogspot.com/.

Photo: Yaniv with CFK Executive Director, Salim Mohamed. Kibera, Kenya Summer 2008