Muska Fazilat is a second-year master’s in public policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Belfer Young Leader Student Fellow. Prior to Harvard, through the UC Berkeley Haas Scholars Fellowship, she conducted independent research in Afghanistan on maternal mortality rates. After her undergraduate studies, as a UC Berkeley Visiting Scholar through the prestigious Judith Lee Stronach Fellowship, she developed and implemented culturally appropriate maternal and reproductive health education programs for mothers and adolescent girls in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She also volunteered as a multilingual medical assistant during the refugee crisis in Athens, Greece, assisting the medical team as they addressed the health concerns of over 700 refugees. 

Last summer, through the Payne Fellowship, she worked with congressman Juan Vargas as a legislative policy fellow at Capitol Hill. During her first year at HKS as a Belfer Young Leader Student Fellow, she worked with Dr. Syra Madad to lead the study group The Pandemic Life Cycle through an Emergency Lens. The study group focused on five emergency phases of the pandemic: prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, where students explored the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within each of these phases and how we can better pandemic-proof society for the future. Currently, she is completing her summer internship with USAID at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia. Her primary summer project for USAID is focused on conducting independent research and analysis on violence against youth in Quibdó, Choco.