Moiyattu Banya-Keister, MSW is a PhD candidate at the New York University (NYU) Silver School of Social Work. Moiyattu has 15 years of clinical experience and leadership with community-based organizations working with women and girls across Africa and the United States (U.S.). As a survivor of the decade long civil war in Sierra Leone which occurred over 20 years ago, Moiyattu values the importance of contributing to peaceful societies for women and girls in Sierra Leone and across Africa. She Co-Founded the nonprofit organization Girls Empowerment Sierra Leone which she served as Executive Director for over a decade.
Moiyattu’s interests are in global mental health, community-based participatory research and mixed methods. Moiyattu focuses on adolescent and young adult mental health services and interventions research.

In particular, her interests center on supporting communities that have a history of trauma and gender-based violence in Africa. Moiyattu is focused on the development and implementation of culturally relevant multilevel interventions that foster and nurture mental health and wellbeing among girls and young women on the continent. Her secondary research interests include improving mental health outcomes of refugee and first-generation immigrant African youth in the U.S. Moiyattu’s interdisciplinary training in social work and public health shape her research agenda. She holds an MSW from Columbia University School of Social Work. She completed her undergraduate degree in Public Health at Rutgers University. Moiyattu currently conducts research as part of the Youth and Young Adult Mental Health Group at the NYU Silver School of Social Work and has contributed to papers relating to young adult mental health. She has several papers in preparation and under review relating to adolescent mental health and global mental health.
Recently, Moiyattu was selected as a LEAD global mental health fellow as part of Washington University’s Brown School of Psychiatry in 2023. In recognition for her work in Sierra Leone, Moiyattu was also named one of the ‘Top 100’ African women making an impact in the lives of women and girls by Okay Africa. Moiyattu was also selected as part of the NYU Urban Doctoral Fellowship, a highly competitive fellowship that fosters collaboration and scholarly discourse among a diverse group of faculty and students engaged in urban research. Moiyattu serves as an advisory board member of the Dreamer Girls Project at Yale University. She recently was awarded as an NYU Changemaker Fellow by the Bañuelos Family. Before arriving at NYU, Moiyattu served as an adjunct professor at Temple University Gender Studies department and Columbia University School of Social Work.