Mekhla Jha
CITIZENSHIP
India
HINRICH SCHOLARSHIP
NUS Lee Kuan Yew School of Public PolicySingapore
Master in International Affairs, Class of 2022
“The scholarship will give me the financial support and knowledge required to pursue my goal of solving global challenges with sustainable global trade.”
Scholar background
Based in New Delhi, India, Mekhla worked as Assistant Reporting Officer for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in India for a year beginning June 2019. As a part of the Executive Office, she was responsible for conceptualizing and executing advocacy projects for refugee protection as well as exploring the potential for a legal and policy framework at the national level to safeguard the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. Before joining UNHCR, Mekhla was Deputy Manager at Ashoka University in 2018. She also worked as a Business Analyst for Ernst & Young in 2017.
She graduated from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, India with a Bachelor of Business Administration major in Finance. She also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Liberal Studies from the Ashoka University, Haryana, India.
Personal statement
Sustainable global trade based on mutually acceptable terms and balanced economic outcomes ensures that the huge potential of global trade is used for maximizing benefits for all its participants and ensuring minimal negative impact on the environment.
My interest in advancing sustainable global trade is in working towards creating well-balanced trade practices which advance the realization of sustainable development. By pursuing a Master in International Affairs at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS, I aim to deepen my understanding of international economic development and global environment policy to contribute meaningfully towards development of economically and environmentally sustainable trade practices. I hope to leverage my exposure to the United Nation’s system and the sustainable development goals (SDG) framework at the national level as well as my finance background towards making the realization of SDGs a reality using the tool of sustainable global trade.
Access to the financial and social capital provided by the Hinrich Foundation in the form of the awarded scholarship puts me in a strong position to take a step closer to my goals and advance the pursuit of sustainable development using sustainable global trade.