Mia Bouyoucef is a student in the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business, concentrating in Finance at Wharton, with French as her target language. She was born and raised in Miami, Florida to an Algerian family, where conversations tended to move quickly between languages and worldviews.
Growing up in Miami, climate change was a quiet undercurrent that affected the places and communities she cared about most. Over time, she began to notice that young people were often missing from conversations about an issue that would shape much of their future. This pushed her to get involved in climate advocacy and promote climate education in underserved communities, where she saw more clearly how unevenly both environmental risk and access to information are distributed. Those questions followed her to Penn, as she now works with an education NGO in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, striving to employ young women and address education inequality in the region.
What started as a local concern gradually widened. Drawing on both her academic interests and family background, Mia became increasingly interested in postcolonial development, particularly in Africa, and in the role energy plays within it. She is especially curious about how resource-rich countries navigate growth while facing the constraints of the “resource curse,” and how renewable energy fits into that equation as many continue to contend with the long-term effects of colonization. At Penn, she has pursued these questions and more through Penn International Impact Consulting, GRC, Penn Climate Ventures, Impact Investing at Penn, and Wharton Council, working on projects ranging from sustainability strategy to data systems and development-focused consulting.
Growing up as an only child with plenty of time to think, Mia tends to be naturally introspective and reflective, which is part of what drew her to the Paideia program. While dialogue and intercultural communication are often treated as things that come with exposure, she sees them as skills that require intentional practice. She is excited to join the Paideia community as a space to think more carefully, test her assumptions, and get more comfortable sitting with the uncertainty of questions that don’thave clean answers. Outside of class, Mia is an avid Miami Heat fan, sailor, amateur food critic, and is almost always listening to music.