Penn and GIP Alumna, Roopa Gogineni on the Invisibilia Podcast

By: Penn Abroad

Penn alumna, Roopa Gogineni, was part of the making of Inspire Somalia, a reality show funded by the U.N. She helps to tell the story in this recent episode of the Invisibilia Podcast. Through Penn Abroad, she traveled to Kenya to complete an internship in 2009. Roopa recently shared a little with us about how the GIP program (formerly IIP) shaped her career and work in Africa:

“As an African studies major at Penn, I was eager to travel to the continent to see firsthand the places I was reading and writing about. My first opportunity to do so was through the IIP [Now GIP] program, which supported an internship in Nairobi, Kenya the summer after my junior year. The experience was completely transformative in ways I didn’t immediately realize. I made friends, learned Swahili, and observed the complicated world of international development as an intern with an NGO. I returned to Penn feeling as though I’d just scratched the surface of life in Nairobi. I eventually moved back after graduate school, and today, nearly nine years later, I’m still learning from the city.” 

Listen to The Other Real World from NPR’s Invisibilia Podcast.