Prince Joel David Makonnen Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (Yoel Dawit Makonnen Haile Selassie; born 5 May 1982) is an attorney, businessman, philanthropist, writer, and member of the Ethiopian Imperial House of Solomon. He is the great-grandson of Haile Selassie I, the last Emperor of Ethiopia. Makonnen was born in exile in Rome and grew up in Switzerland and France, attending both the Collège du Léman in Geneva and Sainte Croix des Neiges in Haute Savoie. In 1999, he returned to Ethiopia with his mother, living in Addis Ababa. He moved to the United States and, in 2009, worked as the director of grants for Humanities DC, a non-profit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a legal intern at the United Nations in 2011 and worked as a law clerk in international trade and equal opportunity employment in 2013. Since 2017, makonnen has served as a legal aid and corporate counsel for Otsuka Pharmaceutical. He is the co-founder and director of Alchemy World Projects USA, an educational and entrepreneurship organization that serves impoverished youth in Ethiopia, and is the co-founder of the media company Old World/New World Productions, which he launched with his wife, Ariana Austin Makonnen. In 2021, he co-authored a children's novel with Kwame Mbalia titled Last Gate of the Emperor.
