Jiaxuan ‘Joy’ Yue is a second-year MPP candidate at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. Joy’s studies concentrate on peacebuilding and migration, with geographic focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. After her first year at Yale, Joy interned at the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), where she supported her office’s work on promoting conflict sensitivity, advancing partnerships across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, and engaging civil society. Prior to Yale, Joy worked at Search for Common Ground, an international peacebuilding NGO, and did Washington, D.C.-based policy and advocacy work on emerging conflict issues in West and Central Africa, particularly digitalization-related conflict in the Sahel and urban security in Nigeria. Joy was previously a migrant protection and assistance intern with the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Regional Office for Asia-Pacific and a strategic communications consultant at IDinsight.
Joy grew up in Beijing, China, and graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University with a major in international politics and minors in German and international development. As an undergraduate, Joy spent three months in Sarajevo working with a grassroots organization empowering women in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. Joy hopes to pursue an international public sector career promoting sustainable peace and global governance.