Cho Nikoi
The Aspen Institute - Washington, D.C. Program Associate, Global Opportunity Youth Network
Cho serves as the Program Associate at GOYN, bringing with her a strong background in research, analysis, and communications. Prior to this role, Cho worked in the strategic research division at Al Sharq Forum in Istanbul, specializing in Middle Eastern & North African geopolitics, governance & security, and regional diplomacy. Here, she led research on Libya’s political and electoral crisis post-Arab Spring, highlighting the impact of regional and foreign actors on domestic conditions. She also served as a Speaker Coordinator for the Al Sharq Youth Annual Conference, helping to design and optimize guest speaker logistics and coordinator protocol.
During college, Cho dedicated her summers to propelling empowerment and development-related causes, including researching anti-colonial intellectual history and social movement building in the Eastern Cape of South Africa; interning with the Ghana-based Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa; and writing on political and economic development as an editorial journalist, as well as rapporteuring at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. Cho attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead-Cain Scholar, where she majored in History, with a self-designed concentration in Modern Intellectual History, and minored in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Originally Ghanaian, Cho has grown up in and lived between six different countries on multiple continents and considers herself a beneficiary of countless global influences. She previously attended boarding school in Massachusetts and spent her childhood in various international schools, developing a deep appreciation for global communities and the power of inter-cultural exchange.