I’ve been given a lot of unique opportunities in my life, and I’m delighted that coming to Stanford to study cyber policy is the next step in my journey.

My work with cyber has already taken me through the U.S. Army as an intelligence analyst and into tech companies like StubHub and eBay, where I was a financial crime investigator, and Meta, where I worked on investigative teams looking into issues surrounding the 2020 U.S. election, the military coup in Myanmar, Ethiopia's civil war, and the evacuation of Afghanistan.

It’s surreal in the best way to be working with scholars and advisors like Renée DiResta and Alex Stamos whom I’ve read so much research from over the years. Because Stanford is so connected to Silicon Valley, it’s a prime place to look at policy impacts in the private sector. I’ve already had a chance to see public policy close-up, and I want to look more closely at how we can better engage the private sector to bring about societal changes.

One of the places where I think we need to rethink our approach is digital security. I’ve worked a lot on fraud and online crime cases during my career, and we tend to treat those issues very adversarially: reducing either entire nation-states or groups and movements of thousands and millions of people to amorphous, shadowy, dark, evil bad actors lurking in the ether is not a sustainable way to grow as a community and species. There are definitely really bad people out there, and without question there are people who have been exploited, but thinking about the issue in pure diametrics can be very dehumanizing. For every dark web mob boss targeting the innocent, there are a lot of undereducated, marginalized people targeting each other in a basic effort to get by.

I think we need to start asking harder questions about the incentives and root causes that drive people towards these crimes in the first place. Is it a lack of education? A lack of opportunity? The need for more resources? How do we as a society want to deal with those issues? Instead of just playing the whack-a-mole game that digital security currently is, I think the braver approach has to come from understanding the societal factors that create bad actors in the first place. We have to change those paradigms and take on the work of rehabilitating people rather than simply demonizing and dehumanizing them.
 

While I was an undergrad studying in Australia, I did volunteer and fundraising work with other Indonesian students. Throughout the semester, we’d collect funds, and then there would be a trip where we would go back to Indonesia and visit the children at the foster house we’d been collecting funds for. Sometimes these kids would go on to go to school or get a job, but their situation always seemed so precarious. If the economy changed or the money stopped, they’d be right back where they started. There wasn’t a good safety net to catch people, and donations were never going to be enough to change the situation for the long-term.

Seeing this made me start thinking about the public sector and how to improve public services that can act as a robust safety net for people in difficult times. Earlier in my career, I was very focused on empirical-based recommendations. I felt that as long as the data was convincing, that would be enough to create change. What I’ve realized is that good policy advice isn’t enough — you also need political will to implement the policy, driven by a well-informed public who can hold their elected policymakers accountable to deliver the changes they wish to see .

However, currently people find it difficult to understand the stances politicians take on certain issues and to keep track of whether they're delivering on their promises during their term in office. There’s not a very well-developed culture of people participating in policy making. I want to find ways of closing that gap between the people and their policy makers. 

That’s a massive challenge to tackle, but I know that learning more about governance and political frameworks with my MIP cohort will help me develop skills I can take back to Indonesia. There’s a big emphasis in this program on hands-on learning and experience outside of the classroom. It’s very focused on designing a solution, then testing it in the real world, then going back to redesign and test, redesign and test, until you get something that can actually make a difference. I’m confident that my time here is going to be invaluable for building public participation in Indonesia’s democratic and policymaking process.
 

My journey towards climate adaptation and mitigation is deeply personal, shaped by my lived experiences in the coastal cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Mombasa, Kenya, where I grew up. My mission is to treat climate change as a sustainable development issue and implement policies that holistically alleviate its impacts on vulnerable populations in Sub-Saharan Africa and the world. At Stanford, I hope to explore how science, technology, business, and society can work together to make this possible.

I’ve had the privilege of contributing to the development of renewable energy, water, and land conservation projects at different scales while working for a global non-profit (The Nature Conservancy), a multinational company (Schneider Electric), and an intergovernmental organization (The United Nations). Additionally, I had opportunities to engage in projects that address local problems of environmental and economic insecurity in various towns and villages in Tanzania (Zanzibar and Tanga), Cameroon (Bamenda), and the United States. These opportunities enabled me to collaborate with a wide variety of stakeholders in business, government, and civil society, thereby helping me hone technical and interpersonal skills relevant to the environmental field. 

As I continue my studies at Stanford, focusing on international policy, my goal is to channel my experiences, skills, and commitment to creating meaningful change. One of the exciting things about MIP is being amongst a nexus of people with tremendous talent. Tapping into this rich and vibrant community will help transform me as an aspiring leader in the climate space.
 

Since I was a little kid, I’ve been interested in what’s going on around me, and why things are the way they are. I come from Peru, and in an emerging economy like that it can be more obvious when public services don’t work. Everyone has stories from friends or family or firsthand experience of the difficulties they’ve had in accessing public services. I think that instilled a desire to solve issues of poverty and inequality very early on in my life. I’ve been asking those sorts of questions – What is this system? Why is it this way? How can we make it better? – for a long time.

I’m trained as an economist, but I believe we’ll only be able to find solutions to the major issues facing the world if we take an interdisciplinary approach. Yes, we need economic tools, but we have to combine those with frameworks from political science, international relations, law, education, public health, etc. We have to understand how the institutions who administer these frameworks function, and what we can do to change them when they’re not serving their purpose effectively.

And we also need to be open to learning from each other and making sure many different voices and perspectives are part of these discussions. We especially need young voices and youth participation in public policy. One generation may be in a position to make the policy, but it's the younger generations who will live with them. If we’re not helping them learn now, how can they be effective policy makers later?

I’m looking forward to my time in the MIP program as an opportunity to expand my knowledge and my network and make the kinds of multidisciplinary connections that will make me a more effective leader and mentor. The people here come from so many different backgrounds, and talking with them and learning from them is going to give me even more tools for how to approach these problems. 
 

My work experience is at the intersection of dual-use startups, venture capital, and the federal government. I most recently worked for Booz Allen Ventures, which is the corporate venture capital fund of Booz Allen Hamilton - focused on defense tech startups that can support national security missions. I supported the deal process end-to-end, from sourcing defense tech startups to developing business cases and facilitating value creation for portfolio companies. Prior to that, I supported several Department of Defense (DoD) teams, scouting dual-use startups based on certain use cases and technical requirements. I also conducted research on foreign investment in the U.S. startup ecosystem, assessing foreign influence within specific technology sectors.

My work experience has provided me with a deep understanding of and familiarity with the defense tech sector – both startups with dual-use applications and associated government needs and priorities – and how critical commercial technology is to supporting DoD efforts and ensuring national security.  

With rising geopolitical tensions in the world and China positioning as a great power competitor to the U.S., it feels like a great opportunity to be at Stanford and study international security and policy. At Stanford, my research interests revolve around venture capital and dual-use startups that support national security, opportunities/mechanisms to bridge the "valley of death" in the U.S. government, and adversarial capital/foreign investment in the U.S. I was drawn to the MIP program at Stanford because there are so many opportunities to research these areas and study them in depth from leading experts.

The MIP program also has a mission-oriented structure and mindset that really resonates with me. There are programs like the Gordian Knot Center at CISAC and classes like Hacking for Defense that are working in this same space: identifying private sector solutions for public sector needs. I’ve seen how good venture capital investments can accelerate startups that strengthen the DoD, and how good innovation, technology, and defense policy supports national security. I’m excited to continue working on these areas through my time at Stanford.
 

As an active duty Army officer and Downing Scholar, I intentionally pursued the MIP program at FSI because of the opportunity for personal growth, among the other unique aspects of studying at Stanford. A decade of military service taught me the simple truth that one will experience the most growth in the challenging territories outside of one’s comfort zone. Today, while passionate about International Security or Government & Development (two of the specializations offered by the MIP program), the Cyber Policy and Security track resides the furthest outside of my comfort zone and, therefore, offers me the greatest opportunity for personal growth.

In the military, the geometry of warfighting is divided into domains as a way of organizing and analyzing them. Admittedly, the cyber domain is the one I’m currently least familiar with, but the area that I feel is going to have the biggest effect on my ability to make and influence military decisions in the future. I’ve already witnessed how exponential growth within the cyber domain can expand the array of options for policy makers but, conversely, also create a new front of domestic vulnerability that U.S. national security and democracy is far from immune to. As I continue in my service, I want to be able to provide the best possible recommendations and make the most informed decisions possible. So, I’m here at Stanford to grow, discover and cover my blind spots.

More broadly, I understand this opportunity to reflect on my first decade of service while studying at Stanford is rare and well-timed. Today, I'm at a career-juncture where I’m now expected to understand the policy and strategic purpose behind the operational and tactical tasks at hand. That comes with a lot of responsibility. I’m more frequently in situations where I’m either directly making the decision or being asked, “What do you think about this?” by senior leaders. As a leader at any level, I want to be able to provide the best military advice possible, and I want to have a clear understanding of where my own decisions are coming from. Am I being objective or subjective? Do we have a clear end-state? Are we walking into a familiar and avoidable trap? I know the roots of many of these questions reside in policy. Therefore, I seek to build more of a mental foundation in the development of effective policy through a hands-on educational experience.

Today’s world offers no shortage of international policy problem-sets. One of the reasons the MIP program at FSI was so appealing to me was the environment it creates for hands-on learning opportunities to grapple with some of these problems. Dr. Fukuyama’s Policy Problem-Solving Framework and the MIP’s culminating capstone project offer tangible and solution-based opportunities to hone the skills I’ll take back to the Army. Lastly, Stanford houses a potent mix of people who have been policy practitioners, who have worked in government either here in the U.S. or abroad, and who are leading scholars in their field. Additionally, in this small and talented cohort of 28, another highlight to the MIP is our ability to frequently and directly interact with the faculty leadership and grow together. I’m excited by the opportunity for growth this all creates for me to not only share what I’ve learned in my career so far, but also to have that directly challenged and get feedback from my peers and professors. This experience will undoubtedly be invaluable when the time comes to step back into military service. 

I was born and grew up in Uganda. I have also been lucky to travel and live in other African countries — Kenya and Botswana — as well as European countries, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. These adventures have helped me understand first-hand the diversities that exist between the Global North and the Global South. They have also taught me that in the journey to advance the socio-economic transformation of the Global South, international development partnerships play a vital role in complementing local development efforts.

Although the economic impediments that developing countries face are many, they are not impossible to address. Tackling them requires that we implement every viable intervention, national or international, big or small, private or public, that creates a positive change on people, systems and institutions. I have always been impact-driven and I would like to continue influencing the positive changes towards sustainable development from the international development perspective. This, in addition to my background career in the international development space, was a driving factor in wanting to join the Stanford community and pursue further studies in International policy.

Like many development economists, I am interested in a series of thematic areas but mostly, technology economics, energy, climate change, development finance, and the political economy aspects of developing countries. For example, I am interested in how we can use safe and secure digital solutions to promote financial inclusion, access to high quality education and health services, reduce inequalities, and create job opportunities in the Global South. This will be possible by bridging the gap between policies and practices, and by learning from the success stories already making an impact.

I am looking forward to both courses on technology policy and being able to observe the innovation ecosystem of Silicon Valley. I hope to learn how ideas in Silicon Valley might apply to developing the African digital economy, especially in supporting the African homemade digital solutions in a practical way.

To understand where I am now and why I’m so passionate about what I’m doing, it’s important to have some context about where I came from. I grew up in a really rough background. I was in foster care for most of my young life, and I only formally completed sixth grade before dropping out. I went to part of ninth grade, but when I was sixteen I became homeless with my young son.

Eventually, I did get my GED and tried going to community college for a while. But the processes for getting financial aid and registration were so difficult and frustrating to navigate that I became disillusioned with the entire system and dropped out. The systems weren’t just unhelpful; they were actively hurting. I got my resources together and got a van, and we went back on the road.

One day, I stopped in a Walmart parking lot to rest, and I saw some people passing out flyers and gathering signatures for a petition. I was so curious; I had never seen anything like that before! They invited me to their meetings to learn more. That lit a fire in me that changed everything. It was so much more than having an income for the first time in my life. It was about representation and having a voice. It was about voting to change things. It was about people having power.

My goals now are focused on food security and creating policies that prioritize basic needs. After my experience with working in canvassing, I went back to community college. Once there, I started to find students who were hungry and struggling with food. After doing some investigating, I learned that almost 60% of the student body had experienced some level of food insecurity in the last 30 days. That realization turned into a campaign to provide $20,000 in emergency food aid and serve hot meals on campus twice a week. The work we started was eventually adopted and transformed into the state-wide Hunger Free Campus initiative in Minnesota.

So many problems facing our societies have their roots in poverty, want, and broken systems that fail to serve people. There’s a real divide between people who need help from systems and the policymakers and people in power who are making the systems and moving things forward. I’ve lived the reality of one side of that equation. Everything I’ve done since at Yale and Cambridge, and what I’m doing now at MIP, is to try and build bridges and bring a different kind of context and perspective to the other side. I’m excited to work and learn from faculty like Marshall Burke and Roz Naylor at the Center for Food, Security, and the Environment, and to keep learning how to make policies and that work for people.
 

My interest in cyber started where it does for a lot of kids: with video games in high school. I found a coding modification for one of the games I liked playing that allowed me to get unlimited money. It was great for my success in the game, but it also made me really interested in how the software and programming worked. That got me into coding, which gave me the background I needed to eventually co-found Firo, which is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency.

That emphasis on privacy is important. Blockchain technology is very secure, but it still has some privacy issues that we need to think about more. We don’t want to be in a situation where in twenty years, cryptocurrencies and blockchains have the same kind of privacy concerns we’re currently seeing in our social media data.

Most people have probably heard about blockchain in the context of cryptocurrency, but it has the potential for many more other applications. One of the big issues in the world right now is finding ways to make it easier for more people to participate securely in democracy without interference from regimes or with questions over election integrity or voting security. Secure and private blockchains could be used in those situations.

The Stanford MIP program was actually the only program I applied to after I made the decision to come back to school, because of its unique focus on both cyber policy and cybersecurity, which are equally important, but not the same thing. I have technical experience in cyber security from my time in the military and my study at Johns Hopkins. The piece I’m missing is the cyber policy and thinking about how cyber interacts with society and government. MIP felt like the best place to learn about those kinds of issues and decision-making processes.

I’ve been cultivating a focus on West Africa and development in that region for a while now. Before coming back to school, I was working with Chemonics International, USAID’s largest implementing partner, on programs aimed at improving Haiti’s judicial sector, countering violent extremism in Mauritania, and facilitating agribusiness investments in the DRC.
 
Before Chemonics, I was in Benin as a Princeton-in-Africa Fellow, where I worked for the African School of Economics’ Institute for Empirical Research on impact evaluation of donor-funded programs. Being involved with the end results of a project made me more curious about the earlier phases of program development. How do donors choose where and how to intervene? Can programs truly align with both U.S. policy and host countries’ goals and priorities?

As a U.S Pickering Fellow, I am on my way to becoming a Foreign Service Officer (FSO), and I am excited to apply the knowledge I gain from Stanford professors with expertise on policy development and African affairs to obtain answers. I plan to study and work within West Africa’s economic sphere, hopefully collaborating with entrepreneurs, governments, and the private sector to improve the business-enabling environments in various countries, bolster the sustainability of private supply chains, and amplify the voices of women experts working within this realm.

There’s a freshness and flexibility at MIP that really appealed to me, as I wanted to tap into a network of people who have diverse interests and can provide a holistic perspective on these issues. Groups like the Stanford African Entrepreneurship Network have connected me to other like-minded individuals who are working towards Africa’s growth and sustainable development.
 
I’ll be working as an FSO for at least five years after my graduation, and I know I want to keep focusing on West Africa and Haiti. As a Nigerian-American, I am excited to approach my studies at Stanford through a lens that not only reflects African Studies with humility and interconnection, but also amplifies the voices of young continental Africans pushing these questions forward.

I had the opportunity to work for about four years at the Embassy of Mexico in the United States. It was while I was in Washington D.C. that I really started to think about and realize what a big topic cyberspace is. It’s so common in our lives, but we still don’t really understand a lot of the specifics about it. If you were to lose your phone, for example, you’d also be losing your bank account information, your email, and your contacts. Everything is so connected, the world is deeply embedded in the cyber domain, and because of this, we need more insight into how intersections between social phenomena and new technologies work.

Cyberspace and technologies come with this duality. On the one side, they are tools for growth and for progress, but on the other side, they can be very dangerous. For example, parallel to the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw digital platforms become key avenues for political engagement as electoral campaigning went completely online. But all of this misinformation and lies about elections, and the pandemic itself, came out of that space. There’s a gap and a disconnect, sometimes, between what’s happening in the private sector in the companies that are building and running this tech and what’s happening in the public sector with understanding and responding to and regulating. These things evolve so fast that it can be hard for the legislation to keep up.

I’m particularly interested in understanding how online misinformation relates to political participation and influences vaccine hesitancy among minorities, especially Hispanics, Mexican Americans, and Mexicans living in the United States. Because Mexico is a very interconnected country in terms of access to social media, I seek to understand how communication technologies influence public issues in my country. There is already data showing that traditional policy issues like migration, gender violence, healthcare hesitancy, and civic participation are migrating from the physical world and changing and morphing in digital spaces. It is urgent that we understand that a lot better than we do.

There are a few places in the world that do what the Cyber Policy Center here at FSI does. We have these toolkits for traditional policymaking and solution finding, but we’re going to have to develop new toolkits for these new challenges, and places like the Cyber Center are actively trying to do that. To paraphrase Dr. Erin Meyer’s work, in a world that’s ever more connected, you cannot do things just the Mexican way, or the U.S. way; you have to figure out how to lead in a global way. We’re not going to opt out of interconnectedness, so let’s figure out how to work better together in these spaces.
 

I started my undergraduate career later than most, and because of that, I had an outlook to be very purposeful in how I spent my time. I wanted to work on something that was challenging and that I would find endlessly interesting. I chose political science and the Middle East, which led to an internship in Jordan. That turned into six years of work experience with a technology company that was using data and analytics to understand and quantify what was going on in digital spaces.

Through that work, I really started to appreciate the full implications that AI and other emerging technologies have in foreign policy. These technologies aren’t just something we need to contend with as threats and opportunities out there in the world. We need to understand how they’re changing the way we perceive others and ourselves.  

Six hundred years ago, the Gutenberg printing press completely transformed societies. The internet is doing the same thing today, we just don’t have a very clear understanding of what that process is creating. But based on what we’ve seen politically and geopolitically the last few years, it’s obvious we need to get our hands on the reins more and get better answers to these questions. 

I’m particularly interested in how technology is shaping the ways we’re learning to think about China and other emerging geopolitical powers. The international system is changing. It’s becoming less hegemonic and moving toward something much more multi-polar. How actors perceive one another is increasingly consequential. Technology is shaping those perceptions at multiple levels. 

Part of the appeal of coming to MIP was that the leadership and faculty here seem to align a lot with having a cross-disciplinary understanding of the full geopolitical system. And like others have said, being in Silicon Valley and having that proximity was a big draw for me as well. It’s another window into how the bleeding edge of technology is having an impact on policy and other aspects of the world, so coming here seemed like the natural choice.

I’m coming to the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy program from the Department of Personnel and Training, Government of India. Even though I’ve been out of university for about ten years, my process of learning has never stopped. I bring a lot of experience through interaction with people in public leadership, using negotiation and leadership skills, but I want to better understand the process of making data-driven policy. The flexibility of the MIP program and the manner it encourages students to learn across disciplines is, therefore, very appealing to me, as it allows to frame my own learning goals.

I’ve always had a great amount of respect for the environment and an interest in natural resources. Energy touches all of our lives in some way. In my culture, we consider the environment and its resources to be divine. These are gifts given by generations after generations to human beings, and as such we need to conserve them and find ways to ensure a more equitable distribution of energy, so that everybody has access to this necessity.

These are global issues that are going to need global participation to address. When I see places like the island nations, they contribute so much less to the greenhouse gasses, but they are most affected by climate change issues. I want to put myself in a position where I can help visualize policies that mitigate these regional disparities and create more equity.

These are big challenges, but it is possible for people to make a difference. There are so many inspiring stories from all over the world of ordinary people taking the initiative to help conserve and preserve their local resources and educate their communities. When we’re thinking about our policies and how to make them, we have to remember that the data and number crunching are only part of it — it’s people that give them life. Many people are already doing the work. It's our responsibility to learn from them and value their experience.
 

When I was born, my parents were already in a position to retire. This meant we did a lot of traveling, and I got to go a lot places and see a lot of things many people don’t get to experience at such a young age. I think those experiences really instilled an interest in me about the world and international systems. Then when I was an undergrad at Spelman College in Georgia, I had a really transformative class from a truly incredible professor who opened my eyes to how many career paths there are in foreign policy beyond just being a diplomat. I’m a very action-oriented person, and I want to be on the ground helping make things happen and in the room disrupting the tired, one-note strategies we keep trying.

I had an opportunity to study abroad as a paralegal in Cape Town, South Africa, and I want to use my time at FSI to build on the deep connection I formed with Africa. In too many discussions, I think the unique experiences and opportunities of Africa are left out of the conversation, and that's not the correct way to build actual, meaningful relationships.

I’m interested in becoming a Foreign Service Officer so I can work on initiatives aimed at generating greater stability in African states and bring more meaningful dialogue between those communities and their relationship with the United States. I'm also very interested in the security issues currently unfolding in northeast Asia. My goal is to be in a position where I can bring a fresh perspective to the decision-making processes affecting both these regions of the world.

I’m pursuing a joint degree with MIP and the Law School. This is actually my second time back at the Farm; I was here for my Bachelor's in International Relations, too! That set me up to do a lot of work with refugees and immigrants seeking asylum. I had a really powerful experience working with the Refugee and Immigrant Program at The Advocates for Human Rights through the Jesuit Volunteer Corp, where I ran the intake process to connect asylum seekers to pro bono attorneys.

I was pretty set that work in these kinds of humanitarian spaces was where I wanted to make my impact, but then I had an experience reading a U.N. report on climate control, and it really hit me in a way it hadn’t before how serious the impacts of the climate crisis will be, and how impactul these small changes of literal degrees will have on migration patterns and community displacement. That really started a shift in my thinking and a desire to work more directly on environmental policy, because that’s going to affect so many other parts of the human condition. I also married a climate scientist, which has definitely affected my interests and thinking!

I want to help design policy systems that protect the rights of migrants, particularly in the U.S. Understanding the systems-level needs is really important, but I want to keep it grounded in the relationships of what the immigrant experience is actually like. That’s one of the things that was unique and appealed to me about MIP; it wasn’t just a general policy program, but had options that would allow me to gain the technical expertise I’m looking for while also really emphasizing the interdisciplinary approach and bringing in lots of different perspectives and areas of expertise.

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I grew up in the Dominican Republic, which is an experience I really cherish both for how it allowed me to be close to family and for the perspective it’s given me in thinking about U.S. policy. My family was pretty much apolitical, and I wasn’t raised with partisan viewpoints. I’ve really appreciated being able to learn from both sides during my university experience at Florida State and as an aide at the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s been an incredibly unique experience to serve and work there with Congressman Adriano Espaillat of New York City during both impeachments of former President Trump and the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection.

I was considering law school, but when I was accepted into MIP, I recognized I had the opportunity of a lifetime. I am very interested in technology and progress, particularly things like blockchain’s uses for development and America’s ever important role in outer space, and having the chance to be here in the middle of Silicon Valley to study and work on these emerging policy areas is an incredible opportunity.

While I was working in Washington, I saw firsthand how a lot of our government and policies struggle to keep up with emerging technologies. We need to address a lot of these issues and opportunities proactively rather than reactively. I’ve seen where a lot of the alumni of the MIP program end up and the kinds of things they go on to do, and I really see myself in their shoes. I want to be part of the new generation of policymakers that gets people excited about things like cryptocurrency and emerging markets and making technological opportunities available and open to all kinds of communities.

I’ve been an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army for the last 11 years serving in Light Infantry and Special Operations. My service has taken me everywhere from Alaska, to Georgia and Tennessee, to Washington, and across the Middle East and Asia on five deployments for both combat and contingency operations.

Coming from a military background, understanding cyber policy is something that’s increasingly important for security and defense. Being here at Stanford in the middle of the Silicon Valley ecosystem is a big advantage in really being able to delve deeper into those issues and creatively think about how to address them. But I’m also very interested in focusing on service and leadership development while I’m here at Stanford.

It’s important to me to diversify my experience and understanding of different topics, which is one of the reasons I chose to focus on cyber rather than international security. I’m hoping to use the MIP program to help myself think more about problem-solving frameworks. I’m very used to the military’s decision-making process, and I want to be able to take the frameworks I learn here through the MIP program back to the military to help diversify the ways we plan contingencies and find solutions.

I come from a family that always put service first; my dad is an activist and has worked as a governance lawyer in Kenya for years, and my mom was a career civil servant. So even though I started with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and spent a lot of time grappling with more abstract questions of governance and society, I’ve always been primed to want a career that’s outcome-driven and directly impactful in helping communities.

In my home community in Kenya, 70-80% of the labor force works in the agriculture sector. As I’ve thought about how to identify and address foundational needs, I think that focusing on sustainable agricultural development can be a lever that can help move other democratic goals and civic participation forward.

Because I’m so interested in creating real-world outcomes, the fact that so many of the faculty here are very practice-oriented was one of the things that really appealed to me about the MIP program. I’m already looking forward to the Policy Change Studio and learning more about how to turn theory into actionable policy!

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I was initially resistant to the idea of pursuing a career in agriculture. I’ve been around farming my whole life – my grandfather started off as a smallholder farmer, and my parents met while they were both pursuing PhDs in agronomy and biotech. I wanted to branch out, and was more interested in economic development and issues related to that.

But it dawned on me one day that a big part of economic and international development is agriculture-based, and that changes to the agricultural sector can have outsized impacts on everything else. When my brother came to me with a business idea he was developing for one of his MBA classes, that tipped the scale fully towards agriculture. We started Kisano, which is an ag-tech company that operates the largest high-tech vertical farm in India.

I’ve been in that business mindset for four years now, and I want to make sure I keep my thinking fresh and innovative. Coming back to school and being part of MIP is part of my plan for challenging myself and pushing into new ways of looking at energy systems and resource extraction, and how to effect changes that are equitable for both humans and the natural environment. I’m looking forward to being around people who are working on higher-level issues.

Stanford is a really unique place where solutions-oriented thinking and academics mesh; it’s very much about creating and doing here, which I think is really cool. I’m keeping my options open to whatever types of opportunities and new avenues of growth and development I find while I'm here on a different kind of "Farm."

The 24 members of the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy (MIP) Class of 2022 began their orientation “bootcamp” about two weeks before the beginning of one of the most unusual fall semesters in Stanford’s history. Many eventually arrived on a campus with few undergraduates, a mandatory mask policy, and daily health checks, while others will take courses remotely.

Nonetheless, all 24 are coalescing as a single cohort. Altogether, the 14 women and ten men represent ten different countries, including Germany, Republic of Korea, Kosovo, Ukraine, Chile, Estonia, Israel, Myanmar, Peru and the United States. Some have prior work experience, while others have served in the military or just completed their undergraduate degrees. Their academic interests range from disinformation and deepfakes, to humanitarian aid and natural resource management, to the link between failures of economic and political development and conflict. 

During the first week of classes, first-year students took part in virtual meet-and-greets with FSI faculty and the returning MIP Class of 2021, and some students attended Francis Fukuyama’s “International Policy Speaker Series” course in one of Stanford’s new outdoor classrooms. 

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies spoke to four of the first-year students about their backgrounds, passions, and dreams for the future. These are their stories.

Mikk Raud, 28 (Pärnu, Estonia)
I’m from Estonia, a small country in Northern Europe. Life was comfortable growing up, but I always wanted to spend time abroad to fully experience the world. I moved to Hong Kong after high school and military service to obtain a bachelor’s degree there, then moved to Beijing to pursue a master’s program in China studies. 

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Before I began at Stanford, I spent three years working in Hong Kong as a cybersecurity consultant — it was a good exposure in terms of building my technical capabilities within cybersecurity. But I would sometimes question my work and think, “What’s the bigger impact of my work on people and society?” In the private sector, you're helping companies save money, or helping them protect their data better. But I think in the policy and the academic world, the impact may be bigger, and it is possible to reach a wider audience. 

During my time in the MIP program, I hope to be able to explore the policy and the regulatory side of cybersecurity, while continuing to develop my technical skill set. I’m looking forward to being able to go in-depth on some of the topics, like disinformation and deepfakes, and to try to cultivate my own core passion within the cybersecurity sphere.

Eventually, I really want to go back to my country after complementing my China experience with that from the U.S. While being one of the most digitally advanced nations in the world, Estonia remains a small country, and has to navigate between bigger powers. Hence, we need to be very careful about how we interact with them, especially amid the ongoing technology confrontation and increasing polarization. History has shown that we can’t not take a side. We always have to go with someone, because otherwise we'll just be too small to survive.

Calli Obern, 26. (Madison, Wisconsin)
I went to Occidental college in Los Angeles for my bachelor’s degree and studied international relations and Mandarin. I developed an interest in climate policy while I was studying abroad in China.

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 I had been working at the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC, since I graduated from Occidental, and knew I wanted to eventually leave DC for graduate school. Being in Washington is incredibly valuable, but people there tend to develop an “inside the Beltway” mindset, and forget about all the incredible things that are happening outside of the area. I really liked the fact that MIP offers a specialization in energy, natural resources and the environment. I’ll be able to merge the international policy courses with the climate interests that I have, and I will be able to develop some quantitative skills here. 

At Stanford, I’d like to learn more about the foundation of how energy systems work and how to facilitate climate negotiations. I want to have a stronger expertise in climate policy, and to be able to recommend ways to combat climate change from both a mitigation and adaptation point of view. 

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke at Aspen earlier this year, and she was talking a lot about current threats to U.S. security, and one of them was climate change — how we are responding, and what it means for our alliances and for stability around the world. I think climate change is becoming increasingly more intertwined with security and international relations, and I’m excited to be able to combine those two interests at MIP. It feels like a very nascent area, but I think it's going to become increasingly more important.
 

Daniel Gajardo, 28. (Santiago, Chile)
I was born and raised in Santiago. It’s a huge, spread-out city, and I studied civil engineering there. After I earned a master’s of science in engineering, I started looking for ways to get myself involved in environmental issues and sustainability.

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I got a job at a company called Tres Ciclos, which is a B corporation, meaning that it looks for social and environmental impacts in addition to economic impacts. And outside of work, I'm a co-founder and on the board of directors of the Chilean chapter of the nonprofit Engineers Without Borders. We've grown a lot in the past four years, and we're really making an impact in communities — developing engineering projects in underserved areas.

I’m planning to specialize in governance and development at MIP and do a dual degree with the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program of Environment and Resources, which is a program at Stanford Earth that specializes in environmental issues. I have a strong interest in poverty alleviation and policy governance, so I'm trying to mix both worlds — I want to stand in the middle of environment and society and social issues and policy. I've been doing it from an engineering perspective so far, and at MIP I hope to expand my skills, language, and networks more into the social sciences.

I think the only way of solving something as complex as the environmental problems we have now is to have all of the sectors working together — private, public, nonprofit. That would be my dream objective, to see them working together, because I've already seen the private sector trying to do its own thing and public sector trying to do its own thing. It's hard to work that way. So hopefully I can be part of that collaboration.

Sarah Baran, 28. (Independence, Ohio)
I went to Georgetown University for undergrad, where I majored in government with a minor in education. I studied abroad in Chile and took part in a program that was centered around social justice and immersive education.

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I moved to Nairobi, Kenya, after graduating, and worked in international development and humanitarian crises in Africa for five years. I spent two of those years working on a drought response in Somalia, then spent the last year in Bangladesh in a small town called Teknaf, working on the Rohingya refugee crisis.

Up to this point in my career I've been working on direct service provision or coordination among organizations that are providing direct services in emergencies and disasters. I would like to continue to work in that space, but I’d like to have more of a policy perspective — I want to be able to bring some of the traditional policy training that MIP offers, especially on the quantitative side. And in a lot of these humanitarian crises, a very strong element that is present in all of them is around natural resource management, so the specialization in energy, natural resources, and the environment seemed like a great fit for me. 

For example, in Somalia we're dealing with a drought, and looking at more sustainable approaches in these kinds of crises. In places where communities are repeatedly facing disasters, we can work with them to help build their capacities to respond to disasters without as much external support, and a big component of that is the ability to look at it from the natural resource management and environment perspective. 

Representing 14 different countries, the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy (MIP) first-year class is a diverse group. Of the 8 men and 21 women, some have worked in government, some have served in the military, and others just completed their undergraduate degrees. Their academic interests range from migration; to clean energy; to women’s, children’s and LGBTQIA rights; and they spend their free time woodworking, practicing Kung Fu, and listening to true-crime podcasts.

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies spoke to five of the incoming first-year students about their backgrounds, passions, and dreams for the future. These are their stories.

Serage Amatory, 22. (Chouf, Lebanon) 

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I’ve also made two documentary films — one is about the transgender community in Cairo, and the second film tells the stories of five male victims of rape and sexual assault in Cairo. I enjoy talking about issues that other people don’t want to talk about. I get a lot of disapproval from people all the time, but that's what motivates me — I want to be speaking about people who don’t have someone speaking about them. Someone has to bring attention to things that aren't in the mainstream, and that's what I like to do.

The Master’s in International Policy program here is amazing, and I love that you have the option to specialize in a topic — I’d like to study something concrete and know exactly what I'm going to be doing with it after I graduate. I studied really general topics in undergrad, and now I feel like it's time to augment my general education with something that's more specific. I came in with the expectation that I'm going to be specializing in governance and development, and while I still want to do that, I also really think I might want to take some cyber classes now. So we’ll see — I’m just really happy to be here.”

Maha Al Fahim, 21. (Vancouver, Canada and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates) 

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Now I'm working on a novel. It's called "Shaolina", and it's set in China. The novel explores gender dynamics and financial and physical power. I traveled to China last summer to do research for the book, and I got to train with a Shaolin monk for 8 hours a day — we would wake up at 5 a.m. and run through the mountains, it was crazy. It was so cool to immerse myself in the experience like that. For me, Kung Fu is not just a sport, it’s a way of life. I've learned so many life lessons from Kung Fu: patience, perseverance, and balance, to name a few.

I love how Stanford is focusing on the future of policy, because as issues get more complex, you need not just qualitative skills, but also quantitative skills. And you need to be able to think creatively and innovatively. Our cohort is small — around 30 students — and I really like it. There are people here from very diverse backgrounds, and it has been really cool to hear so many different international perspectives.” 

Angela Ortega Pastor, 25. (Madrid, Spain) 

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I'm an economist by training, and that impacts the way I like to look at the problems within the energy field. Such as, 'How can we get consumers and companies to want to transition to clean energy? Does it mean that we need to put policies in place, or regulate the market? Or are pure economic incentives going to do the trick?' There are a lot of professors at Stanford who have done research in that sphere, so that was also a big push for me to come here.

I really like Stanford so far. I've found that people here are very welcoming and happy to help. I was a bit worried about that - when you move somewhere new, you sometimes worry about cliques and how focused people will be on their own lives. But everyone that I've encountered has been really nice and helpful. It's made feel like, 'OK - I can figure out how this place works and eventually feel at home.'”

Craig Nelson, 37. (Minneapolis, Minnesota) 

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Overall what I hope to learn here is a better way for the American Army to help to implement the policy that I was a part of as the U.S. Army's forward-deployed unit in Europe. I was able to see where policy derived by our elected officials is actually implemented at a tactical level. I’d like to go back to the Army and implement that policy with a refined understanding of where it comes from and how it's generated.

Before social media became as ubiquitous as it is now, I think people were in groups based largely on where they're from - a certain area code, or a neighborhood, or a school. Now it's possible to identify with a group completely without respect to geographic location, and I think that's because of social media. I'm interested in how that drives security policy - how does that change cyber security policy, and how does that change the way that my country interfaces with its allies and its partners?

When I go back to the Army, I hope to be in a position of greater responsibility and leadership. And I think that this experience will broaden me in a way that I would not have achieved if I had stayed in the operational Army and done a more traditional job following what I just did in Italy.”

Sievlan Len, 23. (Toul Roveang Village, Cambodia) 

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My interests right now are in migration, development, and education. And I’m interested to learn about how the three interact, and how we can make the most out of migration. I'm so excited to explore the interdisciplinary aspects of the Master’s in International Policy program, because I've always felt that you can't separate these issues one from another — migration itself is very interdisciplinary, there is both a political and an economic side to it.

I come from a village in Cambodia, and I'm one of the luckiest in that I had the opportunity to pursue higher education. One of my dreams and goals is that everyone in Cambodia — including girls — have equal access to education, and at least to finish high school, and have the opportunity to pursue their dreams in universities if they’d like to. Where I grew up, I saw a lot of potential not being fulfilled because of people’s circumstances — poverty, or elders not valuing education. I really want to see that change. I want everyone to be able to reach their full potential.”