Shantel Marekera

Shantel Marekera

Zimbabwe

Shantel Marekera is a Rhodes scholar and a MasterCard Foundation scholar pursuing a Masters’ degree in Justice Studies at Arizona State University. She will continue her postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford in September, 2019. She is a member of the Alpha Lambda Delta and Phi Eta Sigma Honor Societies. Shantel is passionate about advocacy, policy and international human rights law with a special focus on women’s rights in African countries. Her research is focused on examining the dynamic ways in which power manifests itself through customary law to perpetuate violence against women in Zimbabwe. In South Africa, she examines the relationship between sexual consent and democratic citizenship. Shantel served in the office of the president in the Undergraduate Student Government at Arizona State University as the Director of diversity and inclusion and also served as the co-Editor in chief for HerCampus Magazine. She is the founder of Little Dreamers Foundation, a subsidized preschool for orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC). She also co-founded Female Dreamers Foundation, a community-based project focused on creating jobs and projects for guardians of OVCs in Zimbabwe. As an aspiring lawyer, she has been involved in various judicial and legislative internships one of which includes a full-time internship at the Arizona State Senate as a legislative research intern for the Judiciary Committee.

Shantel is also a United Nations Millennium fellow , Resolution Project fellow and a member of the United States Achievers Program 2014 cohort. In 2018, she was nominated for the African Young Achievers “Female Achiever of the Year” Award. Outside classes, Shantel loves public speaking and writing. She has spoken at various conferences and Ignite talks as well as served as an emcee for multiple events. Shantel’s work has been published in the Normal Noise Journal, Give Voice Magazine and HerCampus magazine where she also served as the Editor in Chief and Campus Correspondent. Currently, she serves as the Global Peace Chain Country Director for Zimbabwe as well as a Global Peace Ambassador for Zimbabwe