Meet the LGBTI in Foreign Affairs Fellows

Dominic Bocci is a deputy director of the David Rockefeller Studies Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is focused on furthering civil-society involvement in policymaking and mainstreaming global LGBTQ+ rights in U.S. foreign policy. He is a former Fulbright Fellow to the United Arab Emirates, a presidential associate at the American University in Cairo, and a CFR Term Member.

Hector Brown is a career Foreign Service Officer and has been serving as a Peacekeeping Advisor in the State Department Bureau of International Organization Affairs since November 2019. Before the Peacekeeping Office, Hector served at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York as a frontline negotiator in the General Assembly and the Economic & Social Council, as well as serving as the mission’s Election Officer.

Shawn C. Bush Jr. is an American diplomat. Prior to joining the U.S. Foreign Service, Shawn was an aide to now-Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, foreign policy fellow in the office of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and contributor at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he supported the launch of “Model Diplomacy,” a simulation of the National Security Council.

Erin Clancy is a career Foreign Service Officer with over a decade of service and expertise in national security, the Middle East, and multilateral diplomacy. She is currently serving as the lead negotiator for Syria at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York. Erin received the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award in 2019 for her role in negotiating the successful evacuation and repatriation of over 400 members of the Syrian Civil Defense out of Syria.

Dr. Jaz Dawson is a Policy Analyst with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Her current work focuses on refugee resettlement, community refugee sponsorship, and complementary pathways to protection. In 2019 she gained her doctorate from the University of Melbourne and has published a number of pieces queering international relations theory and international human rights law with a focus on the externalization of refugee policy and refugee credibility assessment.

Luca Franza is the Head of the Energy, Climate and Resources Programme at Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), Italy’s leading foreign policy think-tank. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Clingendael International Energy Programme (CIEP) in The Hague (The Netherlands) and a lecturer in the Energy Master of the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) – SciencesPo. He holds a PhD from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands).

Vincent Garneau is the Executive Director of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, The Honourable Chrystia Freeland. Originally from Roberval (Québec, Canada), he studied Economics, European and Russian Studies, and holds a Master’s degree in Legal Studies and International Relations.

Jonathan Garon is the Director of Commercial Affairs at the UAE Embassy’s Trade & Commercial Office in Washington, DC. For the past four and a half years in this role, he has focused on promoting and expanding the UAE-US commercial relationship, specifically concerning the private sector.

Crysta Gonzalez is an active duty Naval Officer stationed at the Fleet Intelligence Detachment in Washington D.C. From there, she deploys to carrier strike groups around the world to provide operational intelligence to executive-level commanders in support of the United States Navy’s global operations. She is a 2018 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Political Science with a minor in Spanish.

Hammad Bassam Hammad is a career member of the Foreign Service. He currently teaches foreign policy at Georgetown University as a State Department Rusk Fellow. He previously served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State, where he advised the Deputy Secretary on the Western Hemisphere, foreign assistance, human rights, migration, counter-narcotics, conflict prevention, religious freedom, and trafficking in persons.

Rashima Kwatra is the International Advocacy Advisor at RFSL – The Swedish Federation for LGBTQI Rights. She manages and executes the organization’s international advocacy portfolio focused on the United Nations, leads policy advisory with governments, intergovernmental bodies, public and private sector actors, and capacity building programs for activists from the Global South and East.

Ryan Lee is a speechwriter and strategic communications advisor at USAID, where he crafts executive communications and official remarks for USAID leadership overseeing more than 11,000 staff in 120 countries. Ryan has written speeches and led creative storytelling campaigns about the COVID-19 pandemic, the Venezuela regional crisis, blended finance, human trafficking, and the power of innovation and technology to improve millions of lives across the world.

Coco Lim (she/her) currently works as a Program Associate at Freedom House on the Latin America and Caribbean team, with a focus on Venezuela and Colombia. She earned her Master’s Degree from New York University, Wagner School of Public Service with a focus on International Policy and Management where she also served as the Co-Chair for the International Public Service Association.

Andrea McNamara is the Information and Technology Program Management Team Lead in the Office of Humanitarian Business and Management Operations in the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In this role, Ms. McNamara is responsible for maintaining the Bureau’s operational capacity and ability to respond to disasters by providing IT support, systems, services, and innovative solutions.

Danielle Neighbour is a Foreign Affairs Officer with the U.S. Department of State, where she serves in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) covering transboundary water governance in East and Southeast Asia as well as combating wildlife trafficking in Latin America. Previously, she was a Schwarzman Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum, where she researched wastewater and water policy in the United States and China.

Jake Nelson (he/him) is a Foreign Service Officer, currently working as the desk officer for the European Union at the U.S. Department of State. He previously served as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin and vice-consul at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers. He received an MA in European Studies from Yale University (with the support of the Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship) and a BA in French studies and music from the College of William & Mary.

Juan Felipe Rivera Osorio is a Colombian attorney who graduated from Universidad de los Andes. His postgraduate studies have been directed to Government and State interests and its relation with LGBT rights. He has a Law Specialization in Public Management and Administrative Institutions and a Master in Public Law for Public Management, both from Universidad de los Andes. Within Colombia, he has participated in the strategic litigations of cases before the Constitutional Court.

Elizabeth Radtke is a Canadian-Greek young professional currently working in Ottawa, Ontario. Part of the 2019-2021 cohort of the Advanced Policy Analyst Program, she is spending two years rotating through four Canadian Federal Ministries: the Department of Finance, the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Privy Council Office, and Global Affairs Canada.

Danko Runić is a Senior Project Officer working on the rule of law portfolio in the Council of Europe Office in Belgrade, focusing on international legal co-operation aimed at strengthening independence and accountability of the judiciary in Serbia. He previously held posts in non-governmental organisations dedicated to raising critical awareness and building open and free societies, working on issues related to human rights in the post-conflict region of the Western Balkans.

Yaron Schwartz is Associate Director, Private Sector Partnerships at the Tent Partnership for Refugees, the personal foundation of the CEO of Chobani, where he is responsible for mobilizing the business community to support refugees worldwide. Yaron has led Tent’s efforts to motivate companies in the United States, Latin America and Jordan to support refugees, its advocacy engagement in Malaysia to help refugees gain the legal right to work and its initiative with the Human Rights Campaign to encourage companies to mentor LGBTQ refugees.

Jesse Sperling (he/him) has over a decade’s experience in international development and human rights campaigning, advocacy and programme development. After working on community mobilisation projects in rural Guatemala for a year, he moved to London to study a master’s degree in Global Politics. Jesse then worked at Save the Children UK, where he managed complex, multi-donor advocacy grants and designed and implemented a global campaign on child nutrition.

As the Department of State’s lead military and policy advisor on Women, Peace, and Security in the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues (GWI), Rachel’s focus is on gender integration in civilian-military affairs, liaising between DoD, State, and other partner militaries to institutionalize and deepen understandings and lenses around gender and intersectionality as they are applied to practice, programs, and engagements.

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