Emi Mahmoud

Emi is a two time World Champion Poet, a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR— the UN Refugee  Agency, and was named one of BBC's 100 Most Inspirational Women. She co-founded a Sickle Cell research initiative at age 19 lauded for its human-centric approach to building the advocacy network and public health apparatus of a historically marginalized community. She has since worked with President Obama, the Dalai Lama, the World Bank, Forbes 30 Under 30, the  American Academy of Arts and Sciences and more, and has given multiple presentations at the United Nations General Assembly, The World Economic Forum, Google Zeitgeist, and various high-level events. 

In 2017, she created and hosted the first fully inclusive civilian peace talks and roundtables across her native Sudan; She then, in 2018, as founder of the One Girl Walk and Dreams for Peace  Initiatives, walked 1000km for peace in 30 days, mobilizing thousands of people along the way.  In the final stages of the now ratified Darfur peace agreement (Summer 2020), she acted as an independent unaffiliated advisor on civilian inclusion and citizenship representation, personally authoring and putting forth unprecedented recommendations for civil liberties, education, gender  equality, refugee rights, inclusion, diversity, and the rights of all vulnerable populations across the country.  

She studied Anthropology and Molecular Cellular & Developmental Biology at Yale and graduated in 2016, earning a Bachelors of Science and Certificate in Global Health. Her studies placed her at the intersection of the humanities and sciences. As global activist, advocate, and Changemaker, she dedicates the majority of her time to fostering and facilitating the inclusion of marginalized voices in the private sector, public sector, and media one collaboration at a time; for this she was featured as the Cover Girl for Marie Claire Arabia’s March 2022 Issue. She was also named among Harper's  Bazaar UK’s New Changemakers of 2020 alongside several other groundbreaking artists,  leaders, and entrepreneurs. In 2021 she worked with Nespresso and Hulu to create promotional  campaigns featuring themes of care and freedom. For the past 6 months she has worked with Cartier and others as part of the Women’s pavilion for Expo 2020 in Dubai.

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