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Scholars in the Arts
"I am fascinated by the breadth of Art History and by how painting teaches a culture about itself."
Yasmeen Hossain
"I greatly cherish my multi-racial background, even though growing up in Switzerland I was the only child with dark skin and dark hair in a radius that spanned five villages."
- Alumni of: 2005 Graduate Scholarship Program
- Resides: Fairbanks, AK
- Hometown: Switzerland
- Age: 32
- Four-year College or University: London School of Economics and Political Science
- Graduate School: University of Alaska Fairbanks
- Academic/Career Pursuits: Environmental Scientist, International Economic Development, International NGO/Relations, Social Science / Anthropology, Community resiliency and adaptation to natural disasters caused by climate change
- Other Interests: Film / Photography, Outdoor / Mountaineering / Camping, Visual Arts, Writing, Photography, Rescue Animal organizations
Biography
Yasmeen Hossain dates her passion for a healthy ecosystem to growing up amid the fresh air and crisp streams of the Swiss mountains. She became a preservation activist after a developer tore down a forest near her house to build single-family homes. In response, Yasmeen planted tree seedlings, built forest trails, tested streams for dangerous toxins -and "dressed up as a giant corn cob to protest the use of genetically engineered ingredients in Kraft products."
A junior year abroad in Kenya convinced Yasmeen that she wanted to devote her career to environmental sustainability challenges. She had traveled in Europe and the US, but in Kenya "learned the meaning of poverty, desperation, and the devastating effects of a year-long drought on a country dependent on cash crops and cattle."
Back home, her own family faced a major financial crisis. Her parents (a German mother and Bangladeshi father) had moved to the US when she was 16, but her father lost his job in the dot-com implosion. Yasmeen scrambled to get loans to stay in school. She graduated on time, magna cum laude. Then she got serious about environmental problems and worked for more than two years with Friends of the Earth. In December 2004, two weeks after the tsunami disaster, Yasmeen went to Bangladesh. In January 2005, she started working out of Dhaka, writing relief proposals for BRAC (formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee).test
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