Uzodinma Iweala
Advisor
As advisor to williamsworks, Uzodinma provides counsel on complex African affairs and guidance on advocacy strategies that help our clients maximize their impact.
Uzodinma has conducted research on the reintegration of former child soldiers into their communities in post conflict situations in addition to his work around internally displaced peoples in northern Nigeria. As the Special Assistant to the Health Coordinator at the Millennium Villages Project, he has worked on the logistics of implementing health related interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. Most recently Uzodinma has served as an advisor to Virgin Unite and the Elders on their “Every Human Has Rights Campaign” and youth issues.
Uzodinma is the author of Beasts of No Nation, a novel about child soldiers in an unnamed West African country. Beasts of No Nation has been translated into twelve languages and has won a number of prizes in the United States and the United Kingdom, including the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters First Fiction Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Los Angeles Times First Book Award. Beasts of No Nation was named a best book of the year by Time magazine and selected as one of the New York Times 100 Best Books of the year. Uzodinma is currently working on a book about HIV/AIDS in Africa to be published by HarperCollins.
His stories, essays, and opinion pieces have appeared in Granta, the Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, Financial Times Magazine, New Statesman, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and numerous European magazines and newspapers. Uzodinma is a regular contributor to the new Washington Post site, TheRoot.com, and the executive editor of the Nigeria-based publication Farafina Magazine.
Uzodinma grew up in Washington, D.C., and is a citizen of both the United States and Nigeria. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and is currently a medical student at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.