Alumni

Chivy Sok
SIPA M.I.A. '95

Chivy Sok recently relocated to the Bay Area to be closer to her family after a decade of exciting and rewarding work on international human rights. She is currently working on selected projects to advance education and training about global child labor and continues to conduct public lectures on different aspects of human rights, particularly child labor and the Cambodian genocide.

Before moving back to the Bay Area, Chivy spent three years at the University of Iowa where she was recruited to serve as the Deputy Director of the university's Center for Human Rights and the Project Director of the Child Labor Research Initiative. With her passion for institutional growth and development, Chivy was recruited to get the Center's programming off the ground and fulfill its mandate by developing programs and services for the university and the larger communities. She successfully oversaw the initial process of launching the Center's work.

Chivy also participated in an historic effort to build the first Killing Fields Memorial and Museum in the United States. She worked with the Cambodian Association of Illinois on this project and the museum and memorial is currently operational in Chicago.

Chivy says "it has been a rare privilege to work on these exciting endeavors and to learn and grow from them. What has been most amazing is that at each step, I was constantly in contact with fellow SIPA/EAI alumni and friends for constant support and advice."

She credits part of her successes to the wonderful support she received from the Institute, including the opportunity to work as one of the many research assistants, a fellowship for her summer internship, and support from various faculty and staff members affiliated with the Institute. She says the WEAI was also "a wonderful place to learn. The Institute's Common Room was an especially invigorating intellectual space where many stimulating academic and policy events were held…It was also a great space to find common interests with fellow students who now make up a vast network of friends and colleagues engaged in some of the most interesting professional and academic disciplines centered around East Asia."