Yihemba Yikona is a joint MPP/MBA candidate at the Jackson School of Global Affairs and the School of Management. Her focus is the intersection of business and international development, particularly through social entrepreneurship and public-private partnerships. After her first year at Jackson, Yihemba interned for a social enterprise startup in Mexico City developing a business model and organizational strategy to address urban poverty more effectively. The following summer, she interned at Boston Consulting Group in Washington, D.C.
Prior to Yale, she led communications at a girls’ education organization in Guatemala as a Princeton in Latin America Fellow. She also worked at USAID for Power Africa, a U.S. government-led partnership that aims to double access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. In this role, her portfolio focused on improving the enabling environment for private sector investment in the African energy sector. Yihemba graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in politics and certificates in Latin American studies and Spanish. At Princeton, she wrote her undergraduate thesis on the inclusion of Afro-descendants in the 2016 Colombian peace process.