The Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life (CSPL) recently welcomed Ahmed Badr ’20, Briana Bellinger-Dawson, and Jacqueline Rabe Thomas on board for the Spring 2023 semester. These new hires have joined the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship, the Jewett Center for Community Partnerships, and the Koeppel Fellowship in Journalism, respectively.

Badr will serve as Interim Director of the Patricelli Center as well as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Policy. During his time as a student at Wesleyan, he worked as a fellow with both the Patricelli and Allbritton Centers and as the recipient of a Patricelli Center Seed Grant. As Interim Director, Badr will be responsible for grant programs, helping students interested in social innovation and working to create opportunities and resources for students and alumni to become community leaders. 

“I hope to create long-term infrastructure for programming that emphasizes and prioritizes cross-campus student engagement, and work to connect students with outside opportunities across industries,” Badr wrote in an email to The Argus. “I hope to make the Patricelli Center a space for all students interested in social innovation and impact, from venture ideation to creation, to community transformation and leadership growth and development.”

During his career, Badr has worked on many projects that have increased awareness amongst youth around topics such as refugees, displacement, and climate change. 

“Over the past seven years, I have created platforms, exhibits, podcasts, and a book that all aim to uplift the creative potential of young people across the world,” Badr wrote. “These experiences taught me the importance of community-centered and community-informed work, and I am so grateful to be able to continue this mission at Wesleyan.”

Makaela Kingsley ’98 MA ’05, the previous Director of the Patricelli Center, congratulated Badr for taking on her former role in a public Linkedin post, recounting a heartwarming story that started with Badr stopping by Kingsley’s office while he was first touring the University.

“I learned about his inspiring life story and Narratio, the organization he founded [before coming to Wesleyan],” Kingsley wrote. “When Ahmed left, I told my colleagues, ‘I think I just met the next Kennedy.’ In a true full-circle moment, Ahmed will now become Interim Director and usher the Center into its next phase of growth. This is tremendous news for Wesleyan students, who will benefit from Ahmed’s extraordinary track record of empowering young people to find their voices and take action.”  

Bellinger-Dawson, who has taken on the role as the Jewett Center’s Coordinator of Community Participation, formerly worked as an educator in New Haven and is an alumna of Wesleyan’s Center for Creative Youth program. She has created multiple community programs throughout the pandemic. 

“I am so excited to be involved with the literacy and civic engagement programs,” Bellinger-Dawson wrote in an email to The Argus. “I would love to incorporate more programs with middle school students engaging with programs on campus as well as tours.” 

As a K-8 teacher for New Haven Public Schools for the past eight years, Bellinger-Dawson explained that she has insight into the literacy programs that are taught by Wesleyan student tutors. 

“I hope to share teaching techniques and elaborate more [on] what it truly means to be in community,” Bellinger-Dawson wrote. “I am excited to be a resource for student tutors to bounce ideas off of and share experiences of being in the classroom. I hope that my guidance can help ease any stress or provide new perspectives for Wesleyan students when working with students in our community.”

Rabe Thomas, the Koeppel Fellow for the spring semester, is an investigative reporter with Hearst Connecticut Media. Her reporting has led to important policy breakthroughs, helping enable access to Connecticut state-funded outpatient dialysis treatment for undocumented immigrants—which affected 110 people in hospitals at the time—and prompting Connecticut’s largest hospital system to reimburse pay that was illegally taken from low-wage health care workers. 

“Stories like these are among my most important accomplishments,” Rabe Thomas wrote in an email to The Argus. “The impact my work has had on the lives of others is what drives me.”

Director of the Allbritton Center Sonali Chakravarti also commended Rabe Thomas’ previous works.

“Her work as an investigative reporter is exemplary of a critical aspect of democratic life—that is, holding institutions and elected officials to account when they are not meeting their responsibilities to the community,” Chakravarti wrote in an email to The Argus. 

As Koeppel Fellow, Rabe Thomas is teaching a journalism class entitled “The Rest of the Story: Techniques for Investigative Reporting” for the spring semester, sponsored by the CSPL.  

“My course aims to teach students research skills[:] how to find out what public records exist, how to get their hands on those records, and how to use those records to tell a story,” Rabe Thomas wrote. “Students will also learn key techniques to source development and how to engage communities that they are reporting about.”

Sida Chu contributed reporting.

Spencer Landers can be reached at sklanders@wesleyan.edu.