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Meet our 2018 Spring Interns!

Meet our 2018 Spring Interns: Yasmeen Alkooheji, Medina Bakayeva, and Demi Moore. Shine is lucky to have them bringing their passion and working with us this semester.


Yasmeen Alkooheji, a senior at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, is elated to be interning at Shine Global for a second consecutive semester. She is majoring in Screenwriting and minoring in Spanish and in her free time, enjoys photography and soccer. She was drawn to Shine’s mission of creating social change through film and helping empower at-risk youth on a global scale. After graduating, she hopes to write rom-coms, mystery dramas and the untold stories of the underserved and misrepresented communities around the world.

 

Medina Bakayeva is a Junior studying Global Liberal Studies, Philosophy, and French at NYU. She was born in Kazakhstan, immigrated to London at a young age and spent many childhood summers in Israel. Growing up with a variety of cultural influences such as Russian, Central Asian and Israeli she is fascinated by what defines a culture, how people interact and how different customs and shared values shape our perception of the world. She is interested in journalism, documentary film, non-profit and philosophy of ethics. Medina was first introduced to Shine Global through The Eagle Huntress and, as the film documents a central aspect of Kazakh custom, was enamored by the way the protagonist, a young girl, partook in ancient traditions and crossed boundaries. She was captured by Shine Global’s mission and believes in the capacity of stories to shape our hearts and minds and is passionate about presenting empowering narratives. 

Demi Alexis Moore is a Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College Junior exploring the nexus of Political Science, Creative Writing, and Human Rights on the Pre-Law track. With high hopes to use a J.D. with a specialization in Critical Race Theory, Demi plans to redesign a national engagement model that empowers Black (natives and immigrant) youth to lead socially salient movements in politics through effective representation. Demi is a founding member of the Macaulay Crew: Hip Hop Dance Team as its Creative Director, a Student Senator in the Hunter College Senate, and is responsible for leading and organizing the largest TEDxUniversity event in the country (TEDxCUNY), representing over 530,000 of CUNY’s students. To Demi, being an active citizen requires building community across disciplines, across platforms, and across bias. She is happy to be interning with Shine to understand how a child’s perception of space and place can help craft a social message that encourages change at all levels of civil society.