06/05/2017

Student and Alumni News
photo of Joy Nuga
Joy Nuga

Joy Nuga was born and raised in the South Bronx to immigrant parents from Lagos, Nigeria.  Since childhood, Joy has had a variety of interests related to culture, policy and technology that included avidly memorizing the succession of US Presidents to the tune of Yankee Doodle, perfecting her Yoruba, and acting as the family’s resident Windows XP technician. All of this later developed into her collegiate academic interests in Economics (her major), with minors in German and International Relations. Joy also has a Public Policy certificate with a concentration in Cyber Policy and Internet Governance.

“The flexibility to pursue all the academic endeavors at Macaulay— I never thought I would be able to do this anywhere else. Being a first generation Nigerian American definitely had a profound impact on how I view society and the world around me, and because of this, I will always have an inherent dedication to defending the intellectual and societal contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants.”

Throughout her time at Macaulay, Joy remained involved in a variety of academic and extracurricular activities, including the Hunter College Senate, Hunter Association for Pre-Business Students and TEDxCUNY, the largest TEDx University event in the nation by representation. Furthermore, Joy was also fortunate to have been named a 2017 Franklin Williams Scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Working at the Council was truly a formative experience during some of the most transformative geopolitical events our nation and our world has ever seen. I was able to meet with senior fellows and other foreign policy experts and learn more about the future of international relations.”

Joy’s other honors included being named a 2017 Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs Student Research Finalist, and receiving a 2016 Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University. These honors directly pertain to her undergraduate research.

Joy  completed her senior capstone project “A Byte-ing Conundrum: Barriers to Comprehensive Cybersecurity, Internet Governance, and Internet Privacy.” She hopes to continue her interests in the intersection between private finance, public policy, and cyber affairs as a New Analyst with Goldman Sachs. She has future aspirations to work in economic diplomacy, and cites her time at Macaulay as key to her intellectual growth.

“I was attracted to Macaulay’s close-knit community that very much resembled my small nuclear family as well as the genuine care that advisors had with their students. Never in my life have I been in an academic environment that makes the idea of ‘dreaming big’ more than a cliché, but more of an actual lifestyle—and for that, I am forever grateful to Macaulay.”