Bio

Amaeka Effiong is the Program Coordinator for the Yale Young African Scholars (YYAS) program. Prior to joining Yale, Amaeka worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the George Clement Bond Center for African Education, where she helped uplift African and Diasporic scholarship at Columbia University while obtaining her M.A. She was simultaneously an Arthur Zankel Urban Fellow, serving as an academic interventionist in a New York City public school.

Amaeka has worked with youth in several capacities, including as a 2025 online YYAS instructor and Ethics and Leadership Teaching Fellow at the School for Ethics and Global Leadership in London. She has also worked as a Program Assistant at Georgetown University’s Center for Intercultural Education and Development, helping to facilitate the State Department-funded Student Leaders Program for Middle East and North African college students.

Amaeka received a B.A. in International Affairs with a minor in Human Services and Social Justice from George Washington University and an M.A. in International Educational Development from Teachers College, Columbia University, with a concentration in African and Decolonial Education.  Her research has centered on the presence of neo-colonialism in schooling on the African continent and educational discrimination against youth from historically marginalized communities.