Intern Summit at the Dept of State

The special badge we got that we then weren't allowed to keep!

Our escort required badge - at this point I have now had
3 different colors of this badge from the 3 different time I have visited
the Dept of State and I have no idea what the colors mean cause the
badges always say the same thing


The room we were in for the speech and Q&A panel discussion
It's the diplomat receiving room of the State Dept

On Thursday I went to an Intern Summit at the Department of State which was pretty cool! One of the best parts was that I got to leave work early, pretty much right after lunch, because we had to be at the State Dept at 2:15pm to get cleared through security before 3pm.

The Intern Summit had a few different parts. After we got cleared through security we were escorted in groups of 10 to what they called a Bureau Information Fair which was where several Bureau's from the State Dept + the Peace Corps + USAID (which I guess is technically a bureau of the State Dept) + a few of the fellowships were there! Unfortunately they did not have a Pickering Fellowship table so I could not go and talk to them about it, but I still learned a lot from visiting the other bureaus. The one bureau I am most interested in right now is the Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration because it is all about helping countries deal with the inflow of refugees and trying to work with the country so they won't send them back, and also help the communities be able to afford to take them in. I think the mission of the bureau is great and what they do is so important! I also learned a bit more about USAID and the Peace Corps and also got some handouts on all of that and on the Foreign Service!

After being at the Bureau Information Fair for about an hour we were escorted into the Loy Henderson Auditorium to listen to our keynote speaker and also our panel participants.

Our keynote speaker was Jacob J. Lew who is the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources and they call him Secretary Clinton's alter ego. It was actually pretty neat that he came to talk to us because he just was nominated for a new position as the Director of the United States Office for Management and Budget which is pretty major. It is an office he previously held under Bill Clinton where he operated at a surplus for 3 years so he is definitely the right person for the job! Anyway apparently his staff told him that he needed to start deleting things from his schedule because he didn't have time for everything, and they asked him if it was really that important to come and speak to the interns, and he said that there was no way he was going to delete this speaking engagement from his schedule! I thought that was really cool that he felt talking to us was so important!

He talked to us a lot about the importance of serving in the Federal Government and public service in general. It was a really good speech and it was cool to meet another person who is pretty high up in DC!

Then we also had a panel of speakers - we had one from the State Dept who was in the foreign service, one who from the State Dept who was in the civil service, one from USAID, one from the Peace Corps, and one Presidential fellow (a fellowship for grad students).

It was nice to hear from people representing all aspects of what we could do and I learned a lot from their speeches and also people's questions.

Then we had a reception and then finally headed home about 7pm! And then I had to pack for the wedding because I had a flight the next day around 12:30pm, but I had to leave my apartment at 8:30am to take a metro, and a bus to the airport.