I have worked for the past year as a research assistant to Peter Bergen, CNN’s national

security analyst and International Security Program Director at the New America Foundation,
supporting him in preparing materials for upcoming book, a landmark report on terrorism since
9/11, and other research projects. I worked before that as a research assistant for David Kilcullen
through his role as a Future of War Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. I worked on
projects relating to Russian intervention and interference in eastern Europe with particular
attention paid to Russian military exercises, order of battle, and information operations. Dr.
Kilcullen and I have used our research projects to build on and provide a deeper conceptual
understanding of the relationship between hybrid warfare, weapons of mass destruction, and
terrorism in an age of renewed great power competition.
Before this, I was a research and teaching assistant for Mark von Hagen, former director
of the Melikian Center at Arizona State University and former director of the Harriman Institute
at Columbia University. We worked on designing and developing the content and structure of
courses that involved oral history assignments and role-playing exercises in which students
adopted the persona or avatar of an individual that lived through or influenced significant
historical events that occurred in eastern Europe and Russia during the 20th Century including
the world wars, the Holocaust, and postwar Soviet occupation.
Prior to my experience as a research and teaching assistant, I served as a private tutor to
the Saudi royal family. After advertising my services as an English tutor, I was contacted by the
Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C. and given the task of tutoring and mentoring a member of
the Saudi Royal Family that was pursuing graduate study in the U.S. in preparation for a
diplomatic career. It was through this experience that I was encouraged and became interested in
pursuing a major in political science and a professional career in public policy.
I have built on these experiences through fellowships and scholarships from the Hertog
Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute to study national security and foreign policy in
in Washington, D.C. with distinguished scholars and practitioners including Frederick Kagan,
one of the architects of the ‘Surge’ in the Iraq War, and Daniel Blumenthal, who popularized the
phrase ‘maximum pressure’ to describe a strategy addressing the North Korean nuclear crisis.
My research projects and career goals have been focused in national security and foreign
policy out of a desire to further contribute to the survival and spread of American values and
interests here at home and abroad.
My professional ambitions after university are to pursue a career in the foreign policy
establishment and to that end I am an aspiring diplomat. I envision myself building on my
projects and accomplishments in academia and think tank research to develop the requisite
experiences and connections to work on policy in Washington, D.C.