Skip to main content

Cristina Bernardo ’05

Cristina Bernardo

Cristina Bernardo graduated from UNC in 2005 with a bachelor’s in Global Studies and a minor in Business Administration at Kenan-Flagler. She then attended the London School of Economics where she earned her Master’s in 2012 in Political Economy of Late Development.

After LSE, she completed the NexGen fellowship in South Africa with Emzingo. Emzingo is a leadership development and social impact firm that brings top graduate students from across the world to do consulting projects with a nonprofit or social entrepreneur in a developing country. Cristina worked with an orphan and vulnerable children center in the heart of Soweto and then with another Emzingo partner, The Zazida Institute of Entrepreneurship. Following her time in South Africa, Cristina traveled to Peru to lead Emzingo’s Peruvian summer fellowship.

Today Cristina is back in the U.S. working as the head of Emzingo’s academic business development. From her experiences, Cristina says,

“I really have learned that business and the private sector can have a very large and positive impact on society and poverty reduction. I am glad that my studies at UNC have brought me to where I am today.”