In many ways, I was not a typical Russian student. Although I grew up in multi-cultural Brooklyn, NY, through childhood, as far as I understood, everyone around me was “American,” or trying to be. My time in France had awakened awareness of life beyond my city and country, as well as a desire for adventure and travel. But when I started my Russian language course, I had limited knowledge of the history of the Russian Empire, the revolution, the Cold War, life in the Soviet Union, famous Russian literature and art, or even where the country was on a world map. I decided to study Russian merely because the department and its professors offered just the experience I was looking for: a small and comfortable academic space on campus, with knowledgeable and passionate mentors, eager to impart their love of Russia onto their students and attentive to developing individuals’ intellectual interests.

Learning Russian requires dedication—if not to the language itself, then to curiousity and people. Because I was not the type of student to learn a language by reading poetry late into the night, I trained my tongue and ear “on the ground.” After my first semester of studying Russian, I set up an independent, month-long homestay in Moscow over the January period. I spent the summer after my sophomore year studying the ecology surrounding Lake Baikal with the Wellesley Baikal Summer Program. I lived in Siberia during a semester of junior year. Each journey provided as much insight into Slavic mentality, history and culture as into my own. I grew deeply compassionate towards Russians, seeing their despondency at the loss of their empire, their ideals, and so much more. And that’s when I became committed to improving the lives of disregarded majorities, the poor and disempowered, around the world.

During the past five years, I have worked on international development and humanitarian issues in Georgia, Morocco, Ukraine, Russia, and Switzerland. I finished a Fulbright Fellowship in Ukraine, collaborating closely with the UN, its NGO partners, and the Ukrainian government. I visited various NGOs in the North Caucasus for the purposes of my research and conducted all my field work in Russian (and some in a bit of Ukrainian!). As a result, I produced a paper proposing mechanisms to adequately protect to Chechen refugees in Ukraine, which was published by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and translated into Russian for wider use.

I also worked at the Ukraine office of the International Organization for Migration, facilitating legislative reforms to ensure that migrants’ rights were respected. In Moscow, I investigated local businessmen’s attitudes on civil society and corporate social responsibility while working as a salestrader at a Russian investment bank. This experience increased my understanding of the great challenges still obstructing social equity in Russia and the complexity of Russia’s international relations. Currently, I work on the West Africa Desk for UNHCR, investigating the support West African legislation lends to refugees choosing to locally integrate into society from refugee camps, in order to promote stability and peace in the region. I recently participated in a conference on climate change and development, whereby I led eight journalists from all over the world into Mauritania, through the desert, and along the coast. As of autumn, I will attend graduate school at Harvard, where I plan to study religion, conflict resolution and consensus building.

Though at Wellesley I sometimes worried that my major was too narrowly focused, I have always been grateful for the depth of experience I obtained from my studies, and the professors from whom I had the chance to learn. At every step of my career, both during and after Wellesley, my professors in the Russian, Anthropology and History Departments have guided and supported my work. The intellectual relationships and friendships I formed with them propelled my interest and successes in international diplomacy and development.