Twenty Yale University students have been named Kerry Fellows for the 2019-20 academic year, including three graduate students from the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.
Part of the Kerry Initiative led by former Secretary of State John Kerry YC ’66, the Fellows will collaborate with Sec. Kerry on leading-edge research aimed at developing real-world policy solutions.
The students represent several of Yale’s professional schools, including the schools of Medicine, Forestry and Environmental Studies, Law, Management, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Read more
The three Jackson graduate students named 2019-2020 Kerry Fellows are:
Captain (P) Anthony Formica graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2009 with a B.S. in International Relations and East Asian Area Studies. He commissioned as an infantry lieutenant in the U.S. Army and was first posted to Fort Wainwright, Alaska. While there, he deployed and led soldiers in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan before returning to the United States in the spring of 2012. He has also served in Louisiana, and most recently completed a three-year tour of duty with the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), stationed in Vicenza, Italy. His responsibilities in this unit took him across Europe, most notably leading paratroopers on a six-month deployment designed to reinforce NATO’s deterrent measures in Lithuania, as well as deployments and readiness exercises to Turkey, Bosnia, and Serbia. Anthony was selected as a U.S. Army Downing Scholar in the fall of 2017, and is focusing his graduate studies on the national security implications stemming from the interaction of social media, economic inequality, and political tribalism.
Hannah Heether is a second-year MA student at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Hannah graduated from the United States Military Academy in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics. After graduation, she commissioned as a Military Intelligence Officer in the U.S. Army. Hannah deployed to Afghanistan in 2013-2014 providing intelligence for a special operations unit, and later deployed to Iraq in 2017 with the 82nd Airborne Division. While in Iraq, she helped advise and assist the Iraqi Security Forces in the fight against the Islamic State.
At Yale, Hannah studies international security and foreign policy. She is a member of the Grand Strategy program, and active participant in the Jackson Salon club. Following her degree, Hannah will teach International Affairs to cadets at West Point before returning to the force.
Shobhit Kumar is a second-year MA student at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Shobhit graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors from Princeton University with an A.B. in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, earning certificates in Mandarin Chinese and Diplomacy. While at Princeton, he studied abroad at the University of Oxford and Beijing Normal University. His senior thesis examined judicial transparency in China and he won the Class of 1924 Award for most outstanding contribution to a public policy seminar. Shobhit has worked with the Brookings Institution, researching Chinese economic efforts in Africa, the Office of Taiwan Coordination at the State Department, and U.S. Embassy Beijing. Fluent in five languages, Shobhit studies United States foreign policy at Yale, with a focus on United States-China relations. Shobhit will enter the United States Foreign Service on a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship in 2020.