Alain Ondias-Souna

Alain Ondias-Souna is a committed humanitarian aid worker who has been assisting and serving people and communities for the past 20 years. For a big chunk of his life, he has worked and lived in conflict or post-conflict countries. Understanding the dynamics of conflicts and how to improve the welfare of afflicted populations is central to who he is. He has worked worldwide, from Somalia to Sri Lanka, from Eastern Congo to the Syria crisis, but his commitment and focus are on West Africa.
 
Alain is a committed advocate for education, economic development, and creating strong educational programs for underserved and disadvantaged communities. He wants to change the narrative dictated by humanitarian organizations depicting Africans as passive recipients of aid, not actors engaged in their own futures.
 
Alain graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was an Edward S. Mason fellow.


Dr. Aliyu Zakayo

Dr. Aliyu Zakayo is a Harvard-trained medical doctor and a global health expert with long field experience in West Africa. He has worked as an emergency physician in northern Nigeria, a region embroiled in a violent insurgency, and has advised the Nigerian government and international humanitarian organizations.
 
In 2019, as a research fellow, he collaborated with scholars at the Harvard Kennedy School to design studies, write academic papers and conduct virtual seminars alongside a globally diverse academic collective at the Politics After War (PAW) forum.
 
Dr. Zakayo has a strong interest and commitment to mainstreaming gender in conflict analysis. He has collaborated on a research paper due for publication in Nature titled The Female Guardian Hypothesis: Beyond the Male Warrior Paradigm. In addition, he has co-authored an article in The Lancet titled The Political and Security Dimensions of the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict.
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Dr. Zakayo lives in Maiduguri (northern Nigeria) and is passionate about advancing science in West Africa. His dream is to see an African kid wins the Fields medal.