HWS News
2 February 2015 • Alums Anthony ’10 Awarded Rangel Fellowship
Gary Anthony ’10 is the latest HWS alum to earn a prestigious Rangel Graduate Fellowship through the Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Program, which aims to attract and prepare outstanding young people for careers in the U.S. Foreign Service.
Funded by the U.S. Department of State and managed by the Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center at Howard University, the Fellowship program supports extraordinary individuals who want to help formulate, represent and implement U.S. foreign policy through a career in the Foreign Service. Anthony was one of only 22 students, including David Luna ’14, to be awarded the fellowship in 2014.
Anthony, who was named an alternate when he applied for the Fellowship last year, is currently an M.A. candidate in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. After a strong fall semester at Georgetown, where he plans to specialize in terrorism and substate violence, the Rangel Program contacted him and offered him a fellowship in December, as one of the program spots had become vacant. As a Rangel Fellow, he will receive approximately $90,000 in benefits while pursuing his master’s.
“After taking Middle East Politics with Professor Stacey Philbrick Yadav and spending a summer in Egypt in 2009, I became fascinated by the intersection of politics, religion and state and non-state actors in the region,” Anthony says. “Since that time I have sought to become more knowledgeable about the region (right now, I am taking Politics and Security in North Africa). While at Georgetown, I want to specialize in terrorism and counterterrorism, and I hope to work on those issues in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region as a Foreign Service Officer.”
After he graduated from Hobart with a degree in international relations and political science, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa, Anthony joined the NYC Civic Corps, an AmeriCorp program run by the Office of the Mayor of New York City. Through the program, which places recent graduates in non-profit organizations and government agencies as full-time, professional volunteer coordinators, Anthony worked with the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement House, Inc., a non-profit organization based in the Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing complex in North America. The organization’s mission is to build and strengthen underserved communities in Western Queens, serving seniors, families and immigrants in the community.
“As the volunteer coordinator, I was responsible for developing organizational practices to enable Riis Settlement to recruit and manage volunteers serving in a variety of programmatic and administrative functions,” Anthony says. “At the end of term, I had successfully implemented a streamlined volunteer application process, including the use of an online volunteer management database and developing volunteer retention and evaluation policies. After completing my term of service in 2012, I was re-hired by Riis Settlement as the Executive Assistant, where I provided administrative and project support to the executive director and continued to oversee the agency’s volunteer management program.”
After supervising two cohorts of NYC Civic Corps members assigned to the agency, Anthony had had “a great experience, and I developed key management skills,” but his “passion has always been in international security and U.S. foreign policy.”
To Anthony, Georgetown’s Security Studies Program stood out, with its national reputation and challenging curriculum, which he says “places a premium on not only understanding theory but giving students the practical tools for analyzing and developing solutions to real life crisis in international security.” While applying to the program, he consulted Scott MacPhail, the Salisbury Center‘s Fellowship Adviser, about scholarship opportunities for graduate school students, which is how he first heard about the Rangel Fellowship.
During his two-year tenure as a Rangel Fellow, Anthony will participate in two internships. His first internship, this coming summer, will have him working on Capitol Hill for a member of Congress involved in U.S. foreign policy.
“The internship will entail attending meetings and other forums to gain in-depth knowledge about the legislative branch is involved in shaping U.S. foreign policy,” says Anthony, who will simultaneously attend workshops and other meetings with foreign diplomats and officials from the State Department, the Executive Branch, and non-governmental organizations, to explore policy formulation and implementation.
As part of the program, each Fellow also receives mentoring from a Foreign Service Officer throughout the duration of the fellowship as well as during his/her early employment at the State Department.
Looking forward, Anthony says, “As a Foreign Service Officer, I want to enter on the political track. Political officers, as they are known, are responsible for communicating with foreign government officials, as well as analyzing political events in a country in order to determine the impact such events will have on U.S. interests. While my placement largely depends upon the needs of the Foreign Service, I want to do my rotations in the Middle East and North Africa. I hope to make this a long-term career, where I can rise through the ranks within the Foreign Service.”