Title:Creating transformational opportunities for global public service leaders

During his more than 30 years as a distinguished professor in the practice of diplomacy at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service (SFS), The Honorable Donald F. McHenry (H’81) noted that there was not as great a variety of students as he hoped, and that the courses of study were at times too narrow. “Many of the issues the world faces are not limited to a single academic discipline,” says Ambassador McHenry, a former United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations and long-time global statesman.

Looking at a future of climate disruption, global health issues, and immigration challenges, Ambassador McHenry, now a professor emeritus, believes it is vital to bring together students from a wide range of countries in order to develop policy and thought leaders who will solve problems in different regions of the globe. To this end, he provided financial support to establish the McHenry Global Public Service Fellows Program three years ago. His gift enables select SFS graduate students across all disciplines to practice holistic multilateral problem-solving and acquire the skills needed to become transformational leaders in global public service.

Directed by the School of Foreign Service Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, the program has two missions. First, it recruits extraordinary fellows from among the eight SFS master’s programs, offering them intellectual and professional skills development as a complement to their academic studies. Second, it provides competitive levels of financial assistance.

As Ambassador McHenry describes it, “The Fellows Program promotes an interdisciplinary approach to international affairs in a time when most problems can only be resolved multilaterally. It is important for anyone who wants to work in international affairs to recognize the commonality of a problem and to be able to exchange views on a resolution or management of the problem.”

Although Georgetown has world-recognized programs of study in the School of Foreign Service, many first-rate students across the world are unable to afford them, Ambassador McHenry points out. Georgetown, he says, needs to be able to attract students from minority groups, low-income groups, and people who have not had the opportunity to travel the world in their undergraduate or graduate education.

“We have to broaden the participation of those groups in every aspect of our educational system,” he says. “We want to see a multiplier effect; we want to see them out in global public service, our diplomatic service, international commerce, and international and regional organizations.”

Now in its second academic year, the program has challenged these now 10 students to learn to work together to see connections between their areas of interests—domestic, global, security, environmental—and how these challenges are affected by a variety of forces.

McHenry Fellow Genesis Torres-Alcantara, who will graduate from the SFS Latin American Studies program in 2023, was accepted to Georgetown in 2018 but had to defer for a year for financial reasons; one year later, she was still unsure whether she could attend.

“Without this fellowship, I would not be at Georgetown,” she says. “It’s been a real blessing to just be able to focus my attention on my academics and career development without the stressors of finances.”

Cohorts meet weekly for professional skills development workshops and events, while receiving individualized mentorship opportunities. Torres-Alcantara says she gained valuable skills in her first year from practitioners who offered her cohort advice on public speaking and memo writing.

“The workshops forced us to negotiate, listen to each other, and communicate clearly,” she says. “It was really interesting to see how our skills developed over time.”

Thanks to Ambassador McHenry’s vision and generosity, students like Torres-Alcantara are getting exposure to different forms of global public service leadership. She and her peers are learning to connect dots as they devise solutions to the global problems they will have to confront and fix.