Claudine Kanku Page
MLI Class of 2005

Georgetown University
French
~ PPIA Fellow ~

Alumni Reflection Essay

The personal and professional growth I underwent during the Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship is invaluable. In my application to the program, I included an essay in which I expressed my hopes that PPIA would solidify my life's realities and the reflections that accompany them into professional ambitions. Throughout the 7-week program, PPIA fulfilled this very expectation. As a result of the hours spent in classrooms with highly knowledgeable professors, the numerous encounters with distinguished professionals, and the high intensity contact with fellow ambitious people, I am now better prepared to tackle missions in public service.

My career aspirations are largely shaped by my family's experiences of global inequality and international development. My Congolese mother is the epitome of unfound talent and raw energy that struggled within an impoverished environment desolate of opportunity. As the only female child in a largely patriarchal society, she had to fight for every educational and professional opportunity she received. My American father's dedication to public service represents the other side of the struggle. My father fought the common tendency in Carmel , California to become lawyer, an architect, or a doctor; he answered his call by entering the Peace Corps. Throughout his work in various regions of Africa , he became a symbol of self-less service and grounded determination.

My entire childhood forcibly revolved around my roots in a forsaken continent and my father's efforts to eradicate global disparities. I moved from Congo to Belgium because of a lack in adequate elementary education; my father's various Peace Corps obligations brought us from Congo to Rwanda to Burundi to Guinea ; Finally, I moved from Guinea to Washington DC because of a lack in adequate health care for my mother's condition. Needless to say, I have always been preoccupied by development policy as it pertains to people of the global south.

Through various high-school and university activities—leading Diversity Workshops, working for NGO's in West Africa , mentoring imprisoned adolescents, conducting human rights research-- I have struggled to establish my role in public service. Not until my completion of PPIA did I have a clear plan of action. With the guidance of public policy experts, I was able to funnel my interests into concrete and viable goals relevant to the current international context.

PPIA armed me with some qualitative and quantitative knowledge essential to understanding the global public policy atmosphere. For seven weeks, numerous bright professors combined economic, statistical, and political theories with conceptual elements of development and security policies. Their teachings allowed me to understand the magnitude of public service in relation to my personal experiences. Further, my exchanges outside of the classroom with a diverse pool of PPIA affiliates greatly benefited my definition of public service. Unique and worldly students and professionals alike validated my vision of the public service sector as encompassing of all religions, races, genders, etc.

I graduated from PPIA with a strong sense of self and determination. I feel refreshed. My knowledge has expanded. Life is much clearer. Profession is now synonymous with passion.

“As a result of the hours spent in classrooms with highly knowledgeable professors, the numerous encounters with distinguished professionals, and the high intensity contact with fellow ambitious people, I am now better prepared to tackle missions in public service.”