Recent Berry College graduate Amanda Sophia Ashley has won the prestigious Pickering Fellowship.
The Pickering Fellowship is funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars. The program is a national competition that provides undergraduate and graduate students with financial support, mentoring and professional development to prepare them academically and professionally for a career in the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service.
Ashley was awarded up to $75,000 toward her master's degree, which she is earning in global studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is one of 19 other graduate Pickering fellows selected for 2016.
With the Thomas R. Pickering Fellowship, all fellows complete two summer internships during graduate school, one with a bureau of the Department of State in Washington D.C. and the second at an embassy abroad. Upon graduation, Ashley will be commissioned as a Foreign Service Officer and posted overseas as a U.S. diplomat at different American embassies across the world.
“I am thankful for the opportunities I have had and grateful to everyone at Berry and elsewhere that has helped shape me into the determined person that I am” said Ashley, who is from Macon, Ga. “I see this fellowship and career with the Department of State as a way for me to make a meaningful difference in the world through foreign policy.”
For more information about the Pickering Fellowship please see: http://www.twc.edu/thomas-r-pickering-foreign-affairs-fellowship-program
###
Written by Public Relations Student Alexi Bell
