Alumni Spotlight : Amelia Conrad 16G

Amelia Conrad, Laney Graduate School Master’s in Development Practice (MDP) class of 2016, was named one of Emory’s 40 Under Forty honorees for 2024 in acknowledgement of her groundbreaking work in international development and human-centered consulting.

The 40 Under Forty award marked a meaningful milestone in Conrad’s journey. The honor was both a recognition of her accomplishments and an opportunity to pause and reflect.

“Receiving the 40 Under Forty award felt like an acknowledgment that, while there is always room to keep growing and I’ve still got a lot of goals ahead of me, I have achieved a lot! It encouraged me to take a moment to reflect on how far I’d come, not just to keep looking at how far I still have to go,” she said.

Conrad is currently the Director of Impact with Frontier Design and serves as a visiting instructor at Emory, teaching a consulting graduate course. Her Master’s in Development Practice experience focused on gender equity and monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL).

As the Director of Impact, Conrad and her team support government, philanthropic, and nonprofit clients to harness data, evidence, and storytelling to drive increased impact, empowerment, and transformative change.

“My background at Emory has tremendously impacted my career path and my current work. It led me to work in international development, first consulting and then in academia as a staff member at Rollins School of Public Health. The qualitative and participatory research methods I was trained in at Emory are the same methods I use today while working with clients from a wide range of sectors,” said Conrad.

Conrad attended Tulane University as an undergraduate and majored in international development and political science. After a gap year working with a local nonprofit, The Fellowship Cup, in her hometown, Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, she applied to schools with strong graduate programs in international development and hands-on experiential learning, including Laney’s MDP program.

“I chose Laney because the MDP program utilized two international summer practicums and encouraged internships during the academic year to gain extensive real-world experience while also acquiring academic grounding and skill development.”

As a graduate student, Conrad was heavily involved in internships with Emory’s Office of Sustainability Initiatives and CARE, and served as a Graduate Assistant with The Carter Center’s Access to Information (ATI) program. She spent her summer practicums in Ethiopia and Malawi, supporting gender-based violence and women’s empowerment-related projects.

One of the most foundational lessons she took away from her time at Emory is “there is often an underlying rationale for why things are done the way that they are done and without thoroughly understanding the context, history, culture, and reasoning of a place and a people, you can’t hope to influence change.”

Conrad would like to impart to current and prospective students the value of gaining as many diverse experiences as possible while in school and getting hands-on experiences to help find them the right job after graduation.

“I’m proud of where I’m at, but I learn something new every day – from clients, colleagues, students, and so many others.” The honor offered a moment to look back on the path she carved from a small town in Iowa to leading impact-driven work on a global scale, while also affirming her commitment to continued growth and purpose.