Announcing the Spring 2023 Alumni Impact Award Winners

The U.S. Department of State in collaboration with World Learning is pleased to announce the Spring 2023 Professional Fellows Program Alumni Impact Award (AIA) winners: Mr. Brian Malika (Kenya), Ms. Raluca Negulescu-Balaci (Romania), Ms. Phan Thi Hoang Hoa (Vietnam), and Mr. Brian Clauss (USA).

With backgrounds in inclusive disability employment, civic empowerment for women, technical education for children, and legal aid for the disadvantaged, these four AIA winners joined the Spring 2023 Professional Fellows Congress to accept their awards and share their experiences and achievements with current Fellows. 

The Professional Fellows Congress is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. government and administered by World Learning, an international nonprofit organization.

The Professional Fellows Congress took place in Washington, DC from June 6-8, 2023. To learn more about the AIA winners, read their bios below. 

(INTERNATIONAL AWARDEE, Kenya) Mr. Brian Malika, hosted by the Association of University Centers on Disabilities in fall 2018, believes that the UN's  Agenda 2030 for achieving a fairer, inclusive, and safer world for all can be accelerated when traditionally marginalized populations such as women in rural areas, persons with disabilities, and youth from informal settlements are meaningfully heard and involved in the development of their communities. Currently, Mr. Malika serves as the Director at One More Percent, a grassroots non-governmental organization that advocates for digital rights, inclusive disability employment, climate change, and sex equality. Mr. Malika is also a civil society advisory board member with Tech for Democracy, an initiative of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he actively participated in drafting the 2021 Copenhagen Pledge that gives digital rights recommendations to leading tech companies such as Google and Meta. Previously Mr. Malika served as a Youth Task Force Member with the British Council (Nairobi office), where he spearheaded a series of qualitative and quantitative research activities that were crucial to the drafting of Kenya's National Report on Youth Employment. He is a trained social worker who loves going on long walks in the forest and is a passionate defender of wildlife. In 2022, Mr. Malika was named a Dalai Lama Peace Fellow because of his role in creating a safer, fairer, and accommodative work culture for youth with disabilities.

(INTERNATIONAL AWARDEE, Romania) Ms. Raluca Negulescu-Balaci, hosted by the Great Lakes Community Action Partnership in spring 2013, is the  Executive Director of UiPath Foundation, a global nonprofit organization that enables underprivileged children from Romania and India to reach their potential through access to 21st century-oriented education. Ms. Negulescu-Balaci has 14 years of experience in designing and implementing innovative programs in vulnerable communities, linking education to technology, arts, sport, and community organizing. In 2013, Ms. Negulescu-Balaci was a Legislative Fellow in the Professional Fellows Program, focusing on building grassroots democracy in minority communities. She subsequently received the Human Rights Award of the Embassy of France in Romania for her local women civic initiative, the Mothers’ Club. Ms. Negulescu-Balaci has written extensively about structural racism against Roma and ethnic profiling in European reports commissioned by the European Network against Racism in Europe and the European Roma Grassroots Organizations Network. From 2017 to 2019, she was the Board Chair of the Fare network, an international organization with more than 150 members in nearly 40 European countries that works to advance social inclusion of marginalized and disenfranchised groups via football and to engage policymakers, key players, and governing bodies in the anti-discrimination movement. She is an alumna of the Global Shapers Community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum, and a 2015 Fellow of the Young Leaders Program of Aspen Institute Romania. Currently, Ms. Negulescu-Balaci is also a member of the board of the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS), an international, Brussels-based nonprofit organization with a pan-European membership and nearly 30 years of experience, with the mission to empower citizens in order to create a more inclusive and stronger European Union by promoting and defending citizens’ rights and by developing and supporting mechanisms to increase citizens and citizen organizations’ democratic participation in, and engagement with, the EU.

(INTERNATIONAL AWARDEE, Vietnam) Ms. Phan Thi Hong Hoa, hosted by Portland State University in fall 2013, worked as an educator and business leader at Apollo English from 1996 as their first employee to 2021 as Director of Operations. During those 25 years, she contributed greatly to Apollo’s growth from a small team with no students to 2000 staff, over 50 schools, and nearly 30,000 students. She considers her biggest achievement to be that she built a very strong team through the Talent Development Program. During the last 10 years, over 80% of managers and leaders at Apollo English have come from their internal team; many of those were directly recruited, trained, and coached by Ms. Hoa. The Talent Development Program has proven to be the number one contributor to the sustainable growth of the organization.

In early 2022, after an acquisition and rebranding, Ms. Hoa was appointed the Managing Director of a new venture during the pandemic with complex Covid regulations. Since January 2022, what is now Sky International Preschool has coped well and has been able to offer creative and innovative programs for the learning community. These programs enabled the kindergarten to not only survive the school closures and retain all staff during the pandemic but thrive as they reopened to expand and recruit and celebrate in 2022.  

Throughout her career, Ms. Hoa has been a passionate and active learner. She gained Distinction in her MBA from Solvay Business School in 2003 and was awarded “Alumni with Most Potential.” In 2016, she was awarded the Australian Leadership Award by the Australian Government. 

(U.S. AWARDEE) Mr. Brian Clauss is an arbitrator and mediator of Labor, Employment, and Commercial disputes. Together with his attorney wife Andrea, they own Clauss Alternative Dispute Resolution. His legal background began as a prosecutor in Chicago, Illinois and then he later defended county government in employment and labor matters. Understanding that disputes can be resolved outside a courtroom, he started a dispute resolution practice in 2004. 

Mr. Clauss travels the United States resolving workplace disputes and throughout the world as an educator. He has spoken to hundreds of groups in the United States, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In addition to founding one of the nation’s free legal clinics for military veterans in 2006 at the now University of Illinois Chicago Law School, he recently co-developed a master’s program concentration in dispute resolution for the University of Arizona Law School. 

As a placement host for the Professional Fellows Program, Mr. Clauss has hosted a number of Fellows at the University of Illinois John Marshall Law School in Chicago, and has since remained in touch as a mentor, friend, and collaborator. Under Mr. Clauss’s guidance, Fellows have worked with various legal-aid and pro-bono programs, developing the legal frameworks needed to establish similar programs for vulnerable people and underserved communities in their home countries. 

The Professional Fellows Congress is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). World Learning is administering the event in collaboration with ECA and 12 partner organizations.