LearnServe Virtual Gala 2022

LearnServe Gala Honorees & Co-Chairs

Entrepreneurship Awardees Hannah Ford and Zoha Siddiqui

Zoha and Hannah founded HER in 2016, when they were sophomores in high school. They met on their school’s cross country team, and on their runs they would talk about their shared passion for education and community service.  They reflected on inequities in access to education; due to underfunding of public girls’ schools in Pakistan, two of Zoha’s aunts were forced to stop their education at age 14.  From their conversations, Hannah and Zoha decided to start a club for other students to learn about, and take action around, girls’ education.  That club grew into a non-profit called HER, working to ensure that other young women in Pakistan, and beyond, have equal access to quality educational resources.  To date, they have built 13 libraries serving 20,000 students in Pakistan and Morocco.

Zoha Siddiqui is co-founder and co-director of HER.  She is an alumna of the LearnServe Incubator Program, and has served as a mentor with the LearnServe Fellows Program.  Zoha is a junior at the College of William & Mary, studying International Relations and Transitional Justice.  An aspiring human rights lawyer, Zoha is passionate about using courts to advance the rights to truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence for victims of human rights violations

Hannah Ford is a creative engineering student at Duke University with academic interests in industrial and systems engineering, informed by humanities… and humanity. She is the co-Founder of recognized NGO “HER” with demonstrated passion and interest in social entrepreneurship. Her interests are in the study of human behavior, quantifying risk and uncertainty, and optimizing decision making.

Global Perspectives Awardee Japhet Chulu

Japhet is a Zambian media entrepreneur, co-founder of Light Up Media Company, and Executive Director at Njira Skills Youth Training Center.  He co-founded Njira Skills Youth Training Center in 2015 to offer vocational skills and entrepreneurship training to survivors of gender-based violence.  Njira currently operates in Mtendere Township and Kalikiliki Compound, two densely populated communities in Lusaka, Zambia.  Prior to his work with Njira, Japhet joined Africa Directions, a youth-led organization formed in 2001 to respond to the growing HIV epidemic in Zambia.  The project was motivated by the increase in HIV incidence among young people ages 15-19.
Japhet helped forge a partnership between Africa Directions and the LearnServe Abroad Program.  For the past two summers he has served as the Lusaka-based program manager for LearnServe’s Global Summer Fellowship.

Civic Champion Awardee Clint Smith

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller and was selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award.

Clint has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review, and elsewhere. He is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion and a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review.

Previously, Clint taught high school English in Prince George’s County, Maryland where, in 2013, he was named the Christine D. Sarbanes Teacher of the Year by the Maryland Humanities Council. While teaching, Clint served as a LearnServe Advisor, nominating and supporting students through the LearnServe Fellows, Incubator, and Abroad Programs.He is the host of the YouTube series Crash Course Black American History.

Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and his Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University. Born and raised in New Orleans, he currently lives in Maryland with his wife and their two children.

Gala Co-Chair Ali Fraenkel

Ali Fraenkel is the Director of Community at Tribute.co, Co-Founder & Director of Ascienzo Family Foundation, and a Community Management Consultant. Devoted to all-things-community & creation, Ali brings an unwavering spirit as a facilitator, community builder, experience creator, & artist. Ali serves as Tribute.co’s Director of Community, where she works to empower individuals, orgs, and businesses to make gratitude, celebration, and acknowledgement everyday occurrences with joyful video technology (the “Tribute”). Almost a decade ago, she co-created the Ascienzo Family Foundation in her Hudson Valley hometown with her former high school calculus teacher – a reflection of her love for intergenerational relationships and long-term collaboration. Their foundation’s volunteer-based team of directors has granted millions of dollars into their local, regional, and national communities, and they operate via trust-based philanthropy principles and a passion to put money in the hands of young people. She’s been a part of the LearnServe community for 5 years, most recently serving on the Growth Council and passionate to shift impact capital into LearnServe’s mission. Her work is deeply rooted in unlocking expression, putting power in the hands of youth, and a steadfast devotion to wellbeing & collective responsibility. Come visit Ali in her homebase in Prishtina, Kosovo (you’re always welcome!) or find her frequenting her hometown in NY and extended community in the DMV area.

Gala Co-Chair Chanda Garfield

Chanda Tuck-Garfield is an attorney and former District ANC Commissioner who recently returned to Washington, DC after living abroad with her family in Amsterdam, Holland for two years.
Chanda began her legal career in Boston, Massachusetts as a Litigation Fellow selected by the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation to create the first legal project to eliminate disparities in access to healthcare and other services. She later moved to New York serving as Counsel to Congressman Edolphus Towns (D-NY), a member of the US House of Representatives.  Chanda was appointed to the Minority Telecommunications Development Program at the US Department of Commerce, where she worked to improve funding and access for minority companies.  Chanda later pivoted to her North Carolina roots, co-founding Lee-Clar Inc., a family-owned company developing rural farmland. 

Passionate about education and community advocacy, Chanda has served in Board and volunteer fundraising capacities with Aidan Montessori School, Imagination Stage, and E.L. Haynes Public Charter School.  Chanda and her husband Dean, along with their daughters Ariel (an NYU Senior) and Zari (LearnServe Fellow 2021 and a first-year student at Middlebury College) have been politically and socially engaged working to improve the lives of children under 18.  They support LearnServe International, College For Every Student, the SEED Foundation, and the International School and Amsterdam, as well as organizations in Jamaica (Dean’s home.)
Chanda received degrees from Howard University and Northeastern University School of Law. She was a Denise Carty-Benia Scholar as well as a Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) Scholar.

Master of Ceremonies

Master of Ceremonies Aaron “AJ” Jenkins is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Partner for North Star Strategies LLC, an equity consulting practice that provides services in public policy and root cause analysis, strategic planning, and training. He has over two decades of experience in advocacy, community organizing, racial justice, interfaith and cross-cultural dialogue and education and unconscious bias training. He is a servant leader and advocate who has worked in the non-profit, local, state and federal sectors.

A fourth generation Washingtonian, Aaron is an associate minister at New Solid Rock Church Ministries. As a first-generation college student, K-12 and collegiate education is extremely important to Aaron. He honors this commitment by serving as the President of the Abramson Scholarship Foundation (ASF). Based in Washington, DC, the ASF is a non-profit organization that provides critical scholarships and comprehensive mentoring to first generation college students from the District of Columbia Public and Public Charter Schools. He is a graduate of Williams College with a BA in Political Science.

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