Baala Shakya, Staff Photographer

The Jackson School of Global Affairs announced its newest class of 16 World Fellows.

The 2025 cohort of the World Fellows Program includes a Nigerian singer-songwriter, an Israeli politician and a Russian journalist. The program, which hosts fellows for four months for networking and leadership training, received a record 4,200 applications this year. 

“I can’t wait to meet fellows from all over the world because solving the challenges facing the world increasingly requires the collective wisdom and action of multiple parties,” said Wei Xing, a 2025 World Fellow and the founder of China Fact Check, the first independent fact-checking program in China. “This is especially important in 2025, when the world seems to have never been so divided and chaotic.”

The fellows are chosen through a nomination process from people inside and outside of Yale.

Emma Sky, the director of Yale’s International Leadership Center that houses the World Fellows program, said that the record number of applicants this year is a testament to the global reputation of the program. 

“The World Fellows program feels more necessary than ever,” she said. “In a world that is increasingly fragmented and polarized, the World Fellows program is a truly global platform for open dialogue and hard conversations.”

According to Xing, the interdisciplinary nature of the program inspired him to apply to the program. Media professionals cannot address misinformation issues alone, he said, but they need an ecosystem of diverse experts.

“The backgrounds of the fellows are so diverse and not limited to journalism,” he said. “It is exciting to see that the problems you are working on may happen to be what other fellows are best at.”

As fact-checking is under great worldwide pressure, Xing added, it’s all the more important to draw inspiration and energy from other fields.

Akim Daouda, an investment and climate finance expert from Gabon, told the News that after developing his business, he saw the World Fellows Program “as a chance to step back and sharpen both the vision and the strategy.”

“It’s an opportunity to engage with people tackling major global challenges and to bring that learning back into the next phase of our work,” he added.

Vivian López Nuñez, another 2025 World Fellow and trailblazer in digital technology and women’s rights in the Paraguayan judiciary system, said that the ability to bring her family to New Haven encouraged her to apply to the program.

“Professional development sponsorships at my age generally view families as a burden, but the fact that the Yale World Fellow program takes into consideration our roles as parents and does not force us to choose between career or family, encouraged me to apply,” she said. “As a woman judge from a developing country in the middle of my career, I believed that my professional development was over when I was young.”

López added that her background will contribute to the program as she will bring the stories of Parguayan women and their innovative abilities in securing justice in their communities.

Sky said that the network- and dialogue-based nature of the World Fellows program is especially important “in a world where the old institutions are eroding and traditional power centers are diffusing and flattening.”

“The scale and complexity of today’s global challenges is daunting,” she said. “It can feel paralyzing. Many people are driven to cynicism or apathy. The 2025 World Fellows are individuals who buck this trend, who dare to dream about optimistic futures — and take big risks in making them a reality.”

Sky added that what made the 2025 cohort stand out to her was the interdisciplinary nature of each fellow’s work. 

As everyone is so adaptive, entrepreneurial, interdisciplinary and constantly evolving, she said, it’s hard to label each individual as one particular thing: “only” a politician or “only” a journalist.

“They’re scrappy; they have grit,” she said. “In a world that so often feels hopeless, the World Fellows inspire and uplift.”

The World Fellows Program started in 2002.