Spring 2023 Young Global Professionals

Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center

Ajitsaria is a graduate of Macalester College, where she majored in environmental studies with an emphasis in international development and minored in political science and data science. Prior to Macalester, she attended the Mahindra United World College of India, where she received a scholarship to attend Semester at Sea, which provided her the opportunity to sail to 10 countries. While at Macalester, she has had more than five internships spanning the sustainability and social impact space, while also serving in leadership roles in the campus student government and South Asian student organization. Outside work, Ajitsaria enjoys making art, dancing, reading, and spending time in nature.

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Arkalji is a graduate student at American University’s School of International Service, pursuing an MA in international economic relations: quantitative methods. She received her BA in politics and international affairs from Wake Forest. During this time, she researched the influences on Brazilian political decision-making for minority groups and studied in Washington, DC, and Venice. She interned at the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute, where she researched Federalism in Brazil and the United States and the response of both countries to COVID. Out of the office, Arkalji enjoys hiking, planning trips, attending concerts, reading books about geopolitics, and trying new restaurants.

Global China Hub

Boyle is a master’s in international affairs candidate at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, with a BA in international and comparative politics from Reed College. Previously he worked as an executive assistant to a United Nations ambassador and as a research assistant for an academic book project on advanced security topics. He has conducted research at think tanks in Washington, D.C., and his hometown of Taipei, Taiwan, including the Project 2049 Institute and the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation. In his free time, Boyle can be found playing basketball, writing, or sitting on a bench at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center

Bronstein is a graduate student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, pursuing a master’s in international affairs with a concentration on energy and the environment. She previously worked as a research analyst at Blue Compass Strategies. She has BA in political science and global studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she interned at the World Federation of United Nations Associations and the Earth Day Network and worked as a research assistant for a project examining local onshore and offshore resource extraction. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, reading, and seeing live music.

Global China Hub

Bryant is a senior at Columbia University studying East Asian studies and mathematics. Originally from Moscow, she lived in Shanghai before moving to her current home in the Adirondacks. She has performed research for various think tanks, including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, and Carnegie China. These engagements solidified her interests in Chinese domestic and foreign politics, Central Asian security, and Sino-Russian relations. She will matriculate at Oxford University this fall as a Rhodes scholar and pursue an MPhil in global and area studies.

Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center

Cartwright is a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, pursuing dual degrees in city and regional planning and environmental studies with concentrations in ecological land use planning and resilience and adaptation. He has worked as a water resource analyst at the Water Center at Penn, conducting research on water system infrastructure, policy, and funding, as well as developing a strategic stormwater plan for the city of Pittsburgh. He has a BS in mechanical engineering and a minor in economics from the University of Texas at Austin. Cartwright lives for exploring the outdoors, caring for plants, running, seeing live music, and getting lost in stories.

Atlantic Council Development Team

Christianson is a sophomore at the University of Southern California, majoring in international relations and global business, with concentrations in Eastern Europe and finance. She has served as director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the Trojan Knights, the university’s oldest student organization, which volunteers both time in the community and spirit on campus. She minors in Spanish and Russian and helped found USC’s first multilingual literary journal, Trojan Bloom. Previously, she worked as an advocacy consultant for the American Heart Association. Christianson enjoys spending time with her siblings, watching Bollywood movies, and hiking.

Cyber Statecraft Initiative

Ferguson is a second-year master’s student in the security studies program at Georgetown University concentrating in technology and security. Previously she worked for various defense contracting companies and was an Arabic linguist for the US Army from 2014 to 2019. She completed her undergraduate studies at George Mason University in international relations and a minor in intelligence analysis. In her free time, Ferguson volunteers as a running coach for elementary school girls, bakes cookies and savory breads, and enjoys napping with her two cats.

Africa Center

Gorman is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, where she is pursuing an MA in global security studies with a concentration in strategic studies. She received her BA from Duke University, where she double majored in public policy analysis and international comparative studies with a regional concentration in Africa. As a senior, she completed a thesis on the Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria for which she received high honors. In her spare time, Gorman enjoys Olympic weightlifting and cross-training, cooking, and spending time with her cat, Loki.

Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs

Gronemeyer is a third year at the University of St. Andrews pursuing a joint degree in modern history and Middle Eastern studies. Over the past year, she has focused on nuclear disarmament in the Middle East as a program associate at the Middle East Treaty Organization. She is also involved in St. Andrews student life, holding leadership positions in the Foreign Affairs Society, St. Andrews’ United Nations Association, Protocol Magazine, and the Law Review. She is particularly interested in the application of international humanitarian law in non-international armed conflicts and proxy wars in the Middle East.

Atlantic Council Development Team

Heverin is a senior at the University of Maryland majoring in marketing with a double minor in sustainability and global poverty. As a member of the Social Innovations Fellows program at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, she interned at the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute, a nonprofit that develops online courses to educate both cacao farmers in emergent nations and Westerners about the chocolate supply chain, while promoting fair trade within the industry. This past summer, she was a member of the Fund for American Studies, a nonprofit leadership organization with a global perspective, where she interned at Advocacy Associates in Washington, DC.

Global Energy Center

Joyner is a former US Army officer. During his military service, he led infantry platoons in the Fourth Infantry Division and Third Infantry Regiment, “The Old Guard.” He also served in numerous military staff positions and earned the ranger tab and the expert infantryman badge. He graduated from the University of Alabama with a BA in international studies and received a Fulbright research scholarship to study the Tamil Tiger insurgency in Sri Lanka. In his free time, Joyner is an avid numismatist and scholar of ancient Near Eastern glyptics.

Digital Forensic Research Lab

Khuu is a recent graduate of Stanford University, where she studied public policy and minored in data science and German studies. She currently works as an intelligence analyst in the Bay Area, researching on-platform abuse and extremism. Previously, she worked at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Stanford Internet Observatory, and the Stanford Center for Human Rights and International Justice. Khuu loves solving (and making) crosswords, reading (her friends’) poetry, and bouldering.

GeoEconomics Center

Meng is a senior at the University of Washington majoring in finance, global and regional studies, and information systems. He has interned at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where he studied public opinion on foreign policy, and at the Bipartisan Policy Center, where he examined business and competitiveness policy. He has also worked at Qualtrics and the Boston Consulting Group. Outside of work, he can be found cooking, hiking, and learning how to canoe.

Europe Center

Morris is a Marshall scholar at King’s College London and the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he is finishing a master’s degree in conflict resolution in divided societies. He also holds an MSc in the history of international relations from LSE. He previously worked at the National Democratic Institute and the Center for International Private Enterprise. After graduating from Georgia College with dual degrees in history and economics, he received a Fulbright to spend a year teaching and leading youth civic participation programs in the Republic of North Macedonia. In his free time, he enjoys long-form essays, street photography, and exploring new coffee shops.

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security—Forward Defense

Nunez graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA in history and is currently a second-year master’s in history candidate at Georgetown University. His capstone project is on the interplay of Maoism on Chinese foreign policy and Sino-European relations from the 1960s to the late 1970s. Prior to graduate school, he worked as a proposal coordinator for Inter-Con Security in both business development and business intelligence capacities.

Europe Center

Nycz completed his MPhil in politics and international studies at the University of Cambridge, where he wrote his master’s thesis on the Iran nuclear deal negotiations and public opinion. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s in political science and classical studies and a minor in ancient history. He most recently worked as a Pennsylvania community mobilization organizer with the Progressive Turnout Project in the 2022 midterm elections. He has interned in the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, the House of Representatives, and the Pennsylvania state Senate. Outside of work, Nycz loves to try new recipes, learn about local history, and explore DC.

Digital Forensic Research Lab

Perez Duque is a graduate student at Ohio University concentrating in Latin American studies. Along with her graduate degree, she will earn a certificate in development and another in gender, women, and sexuality. Prior to graduate school, she worked in the Indonesian Embassy in Quito, Ecuador (her hometown). More recently, she worked at Amnesty International USA, where she was a government affairs intern. Her most recent graduate research focuses on charismatic leaders in Latin America and how they relate to the regional rise of populism.

Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center

Simmons is a fourth-year student and research assistant at the University of Virginia, pursuing a BA in foreign affairs (prelaw). She has interned at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the National Endowment for Democracy, and InterAction, where she focused on US foreign policy, corporate accountability for human rights abuses, forced and child labor exploitation in supply chains, democratic backsliding, and development policy. She spent this past fall in Paris, where she produced three policy studies on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives for gender security in MENA and digital services regulation in European and Asian markets.

Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs

Vahdati has an MA from the University of Maine’s School of Policy and International Affairs. She also received her MBA from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Maine. She has served as a staff assistant intern in the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center for International Scholars and as a trade research assistant at Maine International Trade Center. She has conducted research and published articles on women’s political representation and gender-based violence in the Middle East, civil-military relations in the Afghanistan War, and peace-building initiatives in frozen conflicts in the Caucasus region.

GeoEconomics Center

Yin has completed her first year of her dual-degree master’s program at Sciences Po Paris School of International Affairs and will be going to Peking University after a gap year. She is studying international development with a focus on addressing the realities of uneven development, and has continued her passion for feminist issues with a master’s concentration in gender studies. She is drawn to complex global issues that require more scholarship, such as Chinese investment abroad or transformative gender policies in development, and wants to uncover how work in these areas may contribute to the sustainable development goals.

Global Energy Center

Zandi is currently pursuing a master’s degree in international affairs at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, with a concentration in international security and US foreign policy. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science from Villanova University. His interests include the geopolitical dimensions of energy policy and managing the clean energy transition. He interned at the Wilson Center and Green Powered Technology. In his free time, Zandi enjoys playing soccer, reading, and traveling.