GSPIA Student Selected for Exclusive Travel Fellowship

06/22/2010

Lauren Ackerman, MPIA ’11, was recently selected as one of 16 master’s degree students nationally to participate in the 2010 Japan Travel Program for U.S. Future Leaders sponsored by The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership (CGP), in collaboration with the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA).

Students representing schools from eleven universities including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Georgetown, American, and Tufts among others will depart for Japan in August for ten days, where they will meet with experts and leaders from think tanks, policy institutes, businesses, government, and non-profit organizations.  

The program is designed to foster a new generation of future leaders in the United States who are interested in achieving a greater understanding of Japan and its role in global affairs, and in engaging in dialogue and interchange with their counterparts in Japan.
 
Ackerman is a second year GSPIA Master of Public and International Affairs student majoring in International Political Economy. She is a recipient of the de Zafra Leadership Fellow, an editor for the Pitt Political Review and active in the Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership. She graduated summa cum laude from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Spanish. She has studied abroad in Thailand, Mexico, Guatemala and Chile. Her professional experience includes work at Johns Hopkins Medicine International in Baltimore, Maryland and Trade Chile, in Santiago, Chile. She is fluent in Spanish and speaks intermediate Portuguese and Thai. Her academic interests include globalization, international trade and emerging markets in the global economy.