The Howard S. Brembeck Fellowship was launched in January 2023 by the Fourth Freedom Forum Board of Directors and is named to honor the memory of the Fourth Freedom Forum founder, Howard S. Brembeck.
In 2025 the Fourth Freedom Forum was pleased to award two Howard S. Brembeck Fellowships: Mahathi Ayyagari at Women In International Security (WIIS) and Poorvika Mehra at Charity and Security Network.
Mahathi Ayyagari (she/her) is the Howard S. Brembeck Women, Peace, and Security Fellow at Women In International Security (WIIS), an organization whose mission is to advance gender equality and leadership opportunities for women in the international peace and security field. Given the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda and UN Security Council Resolution 1325, Mahathi’s fellowship will converge around programming, strategic communication, and research and convening for this critical moment.
Previously, Mahathi worked at the International Peace Institute in the Women, Peace, and Security program, where she contributed to research on a range of issues including women’s political participation in peace processes, environmental peacebuilding, and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR); organized events that convened civil society and high-level UN member state representatives; and authored original analysis for The Global Observatory.
Prior to joining IPI, Mahathi earned an MSc in Gender, Peace, and Security at the London School of Economics. There, she achieved the Betty Scharf Prize for Best Dissertation in Gender and Religion, which is awarded annually to the best dissertation that not only relates to religion, but is also thought to have the greatest significance for the future of global societies. Her dissertation presented a critical feminist discourse analysis of the construction of gender in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national public radio program, grounded in gendered understandings of nationalism, militarization, and securitization.
As informed by her academic and professional experiences, Mahathi’s thematic research interests include feminist foreign policy, (de)militarized masculinities, the climate-gender-conflict nexus, feminist peace frameworks, and gender, racial, and queer justice.
Mahathi completed her BA at the University of Chicago with a double major in Economics and South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and a minor in Human Rights, for which she additionally studied abroad at the University of Vienna.
Poorvika Mehra is the 2025 Howard S. Brembeck Fellow at the Fourth Freedom Forum and Charity & Security Network (C&SN), where she focuses on the intersection of financial access, sanctions policy, and human rights. At a time of increasing restrictions on humanitarian aid and civil society operations, her work examines how counterterrorism financing regulations, economic sanctions, and de-risking practices limit the ability of nonprofits to operate in conflict-affected regions.
Previously, Poorvika worked at the World Bank, UNDP, Atlantic Council, and auctusESG, evaluating gender-responsive supportive frameworks, artificial intelligence for development, and climate finance for conflict-affected states. She also conducted nuclear security research at Ridgeway Information, analyzing South Korea’s nuclear fuel cycle and defense strategy.
Poorvika’s approach to financial governance and human rights is deeply informed by decolonial and intersectional perspectives, recognizing how restrictive regulatory frameworks disproportionately impact women-led organizations, grassroots movements, and humanitarian actors in the Majority World.
An award-winning researcher, she received the Philip Noel-Baker Prize for her dissertation on global power asymmetries in gender politics discourses. Her research and writing on gender-responsive finance and geopolitical narratives of gender violence have been featured in auctusESG’s blogs, the Atlantic Council, and E-International Relations.
Poorvika holds an MPA from Columbia University and LSE, specializing in economic and political development, data analysis, and gender policy, and a BSc in International Relations from LSE. Learn more about Poorvika on LinkedIn.
The Howard S. Brembeck Fellowship was launched in January 2023 by the Fourth Freedom Forum Board of Directors and is named to honor the memory of the Fourth Freedom Forum founder, Howard S. Brembeck. He had a vision of multigenerational engagement on these issues and this fellowship will continue his legacy of promoting and supporting young scholars and future leaders whose work will also help to advance the Fourth Freedom Forum’s mission.
The scope of work for this fellowship is not limited to traditional views of state-centric international security, rather we encourage applicants to embrace the concept of Integrated Cooperative Security. That is: the collective promotion and attainment of sustainable peace, dignity, and well-being for all of humanity including active measures to safeguard the health of the environment. It involves a holistic, inclusive, and multi-stakeholder approach to preventing and addressing threats from intimidation and violence in all forms and from humiliation and human rights violations. It requires providing civilian-led protection from economic, food, health, ecological, personal, community, digital, and political inequities and insecurities, through the use of good governance initiatives, diplomacy, peacebuilding, harm reduction, development, advocacy, technology, and other peaceful means of governmental and non-governmental action without overreliance on the use of military force.