Yordanos Goitom was born in Eritrea. As a child, she witnessed the impact that civil war (militarism) had on her family. The civil war tore her family in terms of mortality, having to immigrate to unknown countries as a refugee, and to be scattered throughout the diaspora. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Political Science and Minored in International Studies as result of her own experience and wanting to bring light to colonization.