Lydia Swart
Consultant

Lydia Swart is a consultant at the Center and was born and raised in the Netherlands. Her current expertise concerns the Fifth Committee, Security Council reform, and UN revitalization. From June 2006 through May 2009 she was the Executive Director of the Center. Previously she worked for international NGOs, such as Amnesty International in London; the Animal Welfare Institute, the Environmental Investigation Agency, and the Academy for Educational Development in Washington DC; the Coalition for the International Criminal Court and the Hague Appeal for Peace 1999 (of which she was a founding board member) both in New York and the Netherlands. In 2004 and 2005, she worked for the Secretariat of the Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands. She graduated from the University of Utrecht and has a working knowledge of French and German.

Fartuna Said
Finance Associate

Fartuna Said is originally from Mogadishu, Somalia. She grew up in the US and received her B.S from University of Maine in Business Administration concentration in Accounting/Dual degree in Management.

Jessica Kroenert
Research Associate

Jessica Kroenert was born and raised in the US and graduated from the State University of New York at Geneseo in May of 2015. She received her B.A. in International Relations and French with a focus on the Developing World, and she has a working knowledge of French. Her undergraduate thesis explored grassroots female empowerment as a strategy for international development, with case studies of two organizations in Haiti and Nicaragua, respectively.

Former Staff
Gabrielle Jorgensen
Former Research Associate (June to August 2015)
Gabrielle Jorgensen is from the U.S. and received her B.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 2015, specializing in Europe.
She studied abroad in the U.K. and is primarily interested in the political and judicial institutions of the E.U. She is currently working toward her Master of Public Policy at the University of Virginia.

Siam Tooran
Former Research Associate (September-December 2014)
Siam Tooran was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and moved to Peshawar, Pakistan shortly afterwards. In 2001, he and his family moved to the United States and have lived in Westchester, NY since then. Siam graduated from Fordham University in 2014, where he majored in Political Science with a focus on international relations. In his senior year, he participated in the Fordham University Undergraduate Research Symposium where he presented his research on Western Approaches to Understanding Islam and Defining the Orient: From the Medieval Period to the 21st Century.

Sonia Jagtiani
Former Research Associate (June-August 2014)
Sonia Jagtiani grew up in the US and graduated from Louisiana State University in May 2013. She double majored in French and International Studies, with a regional specialization in Europe and concentration in Global Studies and Global Diplomacy. She also minored in Political Science. For her undergrad thesis, she examined the underlying societal factors leading to the 2012 Malian military coup d’état and subsequent declaration of independence of Azawad in northern Mali in a post-colonial context. She studied abroad in France and is bilingual in English and Hindi and has a professional working proficiency in French. She is currently pursuing a MA course in Religion in Global Politics at SOAS in London.

Alex Maresca
Former Research Associate (February-May 2014)
Alex Maresca received her B.A. from New York University, where she majored in Sociology and minored in Middle Eastern Studies. Her undergrad thesis explored the development of student activism on behalf of Israel and Palestine in the United States.

Jason Rochford
Former Research Associate (October-December 2013)

Abigail Nehring
Former Research Associate (July-August 2013)

Lesley Hsu
Former Research Associate (May-August 2013)
Lesley Hsu grew up in the US and received her B.A from Middlebury College in International Studies, regional specialization in Europe and concentration in Economics. She also minored in Anthropology, and her undergrad thesis examined the barriers to senior management facing women in corporate Europe. She studied abroad in Germany, and has a working knowledge of German and Spanish.