As a Franklin Fellow, Kim Penna joins the Bureau of International Organizations (IO), Office of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). She will serve as IO/UNESCO’s primary Advisor in the area of Social and Human Sciences and handle issues that include bioethics, human rights, poverty eradication, democracy, migration, youth and sport.

Kim Penna, who is originally from California, joins the State Department from Oregon, where she went to graduate school at the University of Oregon and worked at a children’s advocacy center since she earned a BA in Psychology from San Diego State University (SDSU). She was given the responsibility of Lead Forensic Interviewer at this non-profit organization where she interviewed hundreds of children who may have been the victims of crime. In her role at the local level, she testified in numerous criminal trials and was an integral member of the multidisciplinary child abuse investigation team. At the statewide level, she served on the Drug Endangered Children Subcommittee of the Governor’s Meth Task Force, and was a member of the Board of the Oregon Alliance for Drug Endangered Children. In that capacity, she trained hundreds of professionals from a wide array of disciplines.

Prior to her move to Oregon, she lived in South Africa, where she helped pioneer a foreign exchange program between the University of Cape Town and SDSU in addition to study, research and volunteer in the community. Kim is an Alpha Chi Omega alum who enjoys traveling and jogging among many other interests. Additionally, she recently started at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.