Foreign Service Calls

As graduation day approached, Aissata Traore ’13 “frantically” applied for so many summer internships that she’d nearly forgotten about the application she’d sent to the U.S. State Department. “One day, I’m in my dorm room taking a nap, and I get a phone call that’s clearly not from America,” she recalled. “They said, ‘We want you to interview for a job in Rwanda.’ ” Traore, who graduated magna cum laude with degrees in international relations and women’s and gender studies, figures it took about four months for her to earn the necessary security clearance to take the internship in the Central African country of Rwanda. She had to explain every stamp in her passport, not an easy task for a world traveler who was born in Moscow while her mother served in the U.S. Navy. She also had to account for every telephone call she’d placed to a foreign country. Since both her parents were born in the West African country of Mali and she still has many family members there, it was a … [Read more...]