Melanie Mwangi

My name is Melanie Mwangi. I'm 22 years of age. I recently graduated from United States International University- Africa with a bachelors of arts in International Relation with a concentration in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy and a minor in psychology.

I would describe myself as someone whose passionate, self motivated, hardworking and driven towards achieving my goals and interests. Additionally, I would describe myself as an empathetic and trustworthy person. I live by the mantra that you should always be considerate and kind to each individual you meet as you never know where your luck might lie.

Lastly some of my interests/ hobbies involve travelling, swimming, interior design, arts and giving back to the society.

While in school, I was part of AIESEC, a youth led organization focused on cultivating leadership qualities among the youth and cross-cultural exchanges. My one-year role as vice president of Talent Management in USIU-A involved HR recruitment and onboarding, member performance and evaluation, record keeping and data recording. Later on advanced to Alumni Relations representative in AIESEC in Kenya and this mainly involved maintaining relations between the Alumni network and the AIESEC members.

Day to day activities involved planning for mentorship programs, alumni hangouts and collecting feedback from both Alumni and members in regards to how best that network should be maintained. After graduation, I started an internship program at Acorn Holdings Africa as a customer service and sales representatives.

Daily activities and responsibilities involved: maintaining customer profiles, answering inquiry calls from customers about products offered, cold-calling and resolving customer and residents issues. Both experiences exposed me to different skills such as team management, people skills, communication, customer service, time management and resilience.

For my undergraduate, I attended USIU-Africa where I majored in International Relations with a concentration in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy and a minor in psychology. This was from fall 2018 to summer 2022. Throughout university, I would describe myself as an average student who picked what was taught in class and tried carrying forward to each experience I had during that period.

This was from how different entities, organizations, countries and foreign dignitaries related with each other, conflict resolutions and the different mechanisms of communication. Majority of the International relation courses involved a lot of research and analytical work summarized in term papers, article reviews and projects. On the other hand, the psychology classes involved more of discovering myself as an individual, how to handle sensitive topics such as mental health, drug substance and abuse among others.

These classes also helped understand what it meant to work and interact in different and diverse backgrounds and dealing with different personalities all round.