Ms. Aster Zaoude is a Lycée Guebre Mariam alumni who went on to study law in Aix-en Provence and specialized in African Law at Sorbonne University in Paris.

Ms. Aster is a former Director of Gender and Development, UNDP/New York and has a long and enriching career at the United Nations serving in different capacities for 30 years before she retired and moved to her home country Ethiopia where she settled since 2011.

Besides many humanitarian and volunteer work as an outstanding member of Rotary, she has helped local organizations and charities serving women and disabled people. Ms. Aster established the Tsehay Zewde Memorial Scholarship to support the education of blind female students at Addis Abeba University in memory of her late sister Ms. Tsehay Zewde.

She is a Board member of Bahr Dar University and board chair of the university's College of Medicine and Health Sciences. Ms. Aster is also Board member of Ethiopian Center for Disability and Development and of Beruh Zega, a youth mentorship and leadership training organization. In addition to her multiple responsibilities, Ms. Aster has kindly agreed to continue serving as Board member of the Youths Mentoring Youths organization (YMY) founded in the US in 2012. YMY has been instrumental in guiding and mentoring over 750 young men and women in the Washington Metro area with great success.

Ms. Aster is passionate about YMY because she wants to see young people succeed through solid guidance and mentoring as she has demonstrated with scholarships and solid assistance she offered to over 400 blind students many of whom have successfully graduated from the Addis Abeba University and Bahr Dar University in different disciplines with degrees ranging from BA to PhD.