Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Shereen received her BA in Communication from Santa Clara University with a minor in Middle Eastern and Arabic studies. Coming from a biracial family, she has always had a profound love for cultural diversity and suffered/enjoyed unquenchable wanderlust. As a kid she spent almost all of her summers in Egypt, visiting family, eating sugar cane on the roof of her father’s childhood house, and riding camels. In college, she spent six months studying Arabic at the American University in Cairo and eventually returned to Cairo after graduation to intern at the Sekem Sustainable Entrepreneurship Center. There, she worked with development practitioners from all over the world on a variety of projects including the 13 Villages Project—a microfinance endeavor dedicated towards empowering entrepreneurs in neighboring villages. Her work there led her to pursue a career in international development and a life committed to poverty alleviation. She is currently in the Master’s in Development Practice program at University of California, Berkeley, where she is focusing her studies on environmentally sustainable economic development and she is thrilled to be serving her time as a Kiva Fellow in Palestine and Israel.