Undergraduate Director’s Fellow

Esul Burton

Yale College

Esul Burton is a junior majoring in Political Science. At Yale, her scholarship has concerned racial justice and civil rights, with a particular focus on the criminal justice system in the United States. She was formerly the legislative coordinator of the Yale College Democrats, where she advocated for legislation expanding youthful offender protections to defendants under the age of 21.

Jaster Francis

Yale College

Jaster Francis is majoring in Philosophy and Political Science with a concentration in American law and justice. He is particularly interested in the intersections of race, class, and the development of mass incarceration during the late 20th century. As an Edward Bouchet fellow.

Gabriel Malek

Yale College

Gabriel Malek is an American Studies and Environmental Anthropology double major in Timothy Dwight college. He is interested in studying how metropolitan public policy can encourage investment in urban climate adaptation, and has investigated city resilience as an intern at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and the Environmental Defense Fund. At Yale, Gabriel explores the intersection of sustainable finance and municipal governance in leading the Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund and the Yale Roosevelt Institute, Yale’s undergraduate public policy think tank.

William Marks

Yale College

Will Marks is a junior in Davenport College studying History and Political Science. He is interested in the intersection of technology and human rights, especially online. He currently works remotely for the Center for the Governance of AI, which is housed by the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, and spent the summer interning at Privacy International, an organization focused on challenging state and corporate surveillance. Will is Vice President of the Junior Class, a student fellow at the Information Society Project, and is involved with Camp Kesem.

Elias Mastakouris

Yale College

Elias Mastakouris is a junior studying political science with interests in political philosophy, international security, and public corruption reform. In the past, Elias has worked in the New York City Mayor’s budget office, the New Haven Board of Alders, and Capitol Hill. On campus, Elias is the president of the Peace & Dialogue Leadership Initiative, a Yale-West Point foreign policy initiative and a research assistant in military history.

Robel Mulugeta

Yale College

Robel studies EP&E and Data Science at Yale and is interested in using quantitative policy evaluation as a measurement of the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of urban policies. Policy domains he especially cares about are those related to affordable housing, welfare, and urban economic development. At Yale, Robel is a member of the Yale Black Men’s Union, a mentor at a local public school, and served the New Haven Neighborhood Housing Services.

Aidan Pillard

Yale College

Aidan Pillard is a junior in Jonathan Edwards college in the humanities major. He leads the Yale chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, which advocates for those most harmed by the War on Drugs through campus education, New Haven community organizing, and state-level policy lobbying. He will attend the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine after graduating, and hopes to work on healthcare reform.

Akhil Rajan

Yale College

Akhil Rajan is a sophomore in Branford College studying Ethics, Politics and Economics. He is also a Human Rights Scholar at Yale Law School’s Schell Center. He is interested in empirical democratic theory, especially applications in redistricting and voting behavior. On campus, he has worked on several campaigns, does research at ISPS as a Dahl Scholar, and is a Research Assistant in the Political Science Department. He also serves on the board of the Yale Undergraduate Legal Aid Association and Dwight Hall.

Molly Shapiro

Yale College

Molly Shapiro is a History and Political Science major with a specific interest in criminal justice policy. She currently serves as the Elections Coordinator of the Yale College Democrats, an Associate Editor for The Politic and a GED tutor with the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project.

Ry Walker

Yale College

Ry is a junior at Yale from Brooklyn majoring in Astrophysics and African American Studies. Her interests include civil rights law, educational inequality, and Black queer feminist organizing. Outside of classes, she works as a Recruitment Coordinator for Yale Undergraduate Admissions and as a Peer Liaison for the Afro-American Cultural Center. Additionally, Ry is a co-founder and director of Engender, an undergraduate organization with the goal of gender integrating Greek life at Yale — given its impact on sexual misconduct on campus and economic opportunities after graduation.

Institution for Social and Policy Studies

Advancing Research • Shaping Policy • Developing Leaders

Undergraduate Director’s Fellow