Hiwot joined the Queen's University Faculty of Law in September 2018. She will be applying her doctoral work at Queen’s Law to help improve the lives of people with disabilities. Admitted into the school’s PhD program as an “exceptional faculty leader” from the University of Gondar in Ethiopia, she has received a Mastercard Foundation Scholarship at Queen’s University to complete her studies. Hiwot’s research focuses on why Ethiopia still has disability discriminatory legal and institutional frameworks against international human rights standards.
Hiwot holds an LLM degree in Human Rights Law from Addis Ababa University and has worked over six years as a lecturer and the Director for Disability Studies and Service Directorate at the University of Gondar, where she focuses on creating conducive learning and working environments for students and employees with disabilities.
She is a fellow of the Mandela Washington Fellowship (USA) and the Young African Leaders Initiative (Kenya), where she was trained to be a leader.