IIHA Recent Graduate Spotlight: Ryan Green c/o 2022

Written by: Gracey Zostant

Ryan Green recently graduated from Fordham University as a Humanitarian Studies major. She is a Rhode Island native, who has been involved in club lacrosse, USG sustainability, and founded Fordham’s Spikeball Club. She is most proud of her position as a head of Our Story Fordham, “a social impact storytelling initiative on campus working to build community.” Green attributes her interest in humanitarian studies to her extensive travels, in which she has “had the opportunity to see some of the world’s most vulnerable crises zones.” Her favorite courses have been her thesis and internship seminars, in which she has been able to demonstrate everything she has learned over the years.

Green chose the Humanitarian Studies major because it felt the most right, providing the versatility and freedom she wanted from her education, as well as an emphasis on studying abroad. “My coursework focuses on the systematic issues facing the humanitarian sector; specifically, the way various international stakeholders may or may not work together to at once deliver emergency aid and solve longer term, systemic issues.” Her thesis addresses the humanitarian development nexus “and its failure to mainstream issues of environmental sustainability,” an issue she is passionate about.

In the future she hopes to help others, with the written, oral, and organizational skills she has learned from her major studies; in hopes that her knowledge will help her to provide a fresh perspective to the humanitarian world. Green feels as though spreading her knowledge with even just her roommates and family makes a difference in the world. She cites her attendance to the Northeastern University Conference on Human Rights, for which she was selected as a delegate for Fordham University’s Humanitarian Studies Program, as an inspiring experience which assured her that young people were dedicated to asking the tough questions.