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Ariane Alzhara Kirtley · Biography

For Ariane's resume, click here.

Ariane Alzhara Kirtley first crossed the Sahara desert at six months old with her brother and parents, freelance photojournalists working for Geo Magazine and National Geographic. From those earliest months until she turned ten, her home was North and West African countries of Algeria, Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast and Niger.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Yale University in 2001, and a Masters in Public Health in 2004 from the Yale School of Public Health. During the summer of 2003, she returned to Niger to intern for CARE International on a hygiene and sanitation program in the rural areas of the Konni district. In May of 2004 Ariane was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to return to Niger in order to research the special needs of women and minority ethnic populations in the Sahel with regard to health behaviour, knowledge and resources.

To conduct her Fulbright research, Ariane traveled to the pastoral region of the Azawak, Niger's most remote and abandoned region. In the Azawak, Ariane discovered the most vulnerable populations of her travels throughout West Africa. She had never before witnessed an area with so few resources and infrastructure, where individuals live on the brink of disaster on a daily basis due to circumstances beyond their control. Ariane has devoted her life to improving the living conditions of this region by founding Program Amman Imman to build permanent water sources. She hopes that this initiative will serve as a catalyst for humanitarian organizations to bring additional developmental aid, thereby significantly improving the lives of 500,000 adults and children among one of the most vulnerable populations in the world.