Students & Alumni

Cassandra Bales has always had a passion for international relations and diplomacy.  After two years at Cottey College in Missouri, where she was in the top ten of her class, Cassandra majored in international relations at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, which is located in Baltimore.  She graduated summa cum laude.

If you met the young and unassuming IWP student Mike Webber, you might not guess that he has already overseen 50 employees and a million dollar budget, traveled the world, and interned at the State Department, Department of Defense, and the UN. You would easily discover, however, that Mike loves to learn, particularly about history,…

I became interested in intelligence and national security while attending Fayetteville State University as an undergraduate student of political science. Towards the end of my senior year, I realized I wanted to pursue a career in the Intelligence Community…

Cyber-security is among today’s most critical national security issues. Fortunately for the United States, cyber-security is precisely where the passion and talents of IWP alumnus Robert Jones* rest. His accomplishments at the Department of Defense have led to official recognition by the Department for his “patriotic attitude and eagerness to ensure that his abilities are…

New IWP student Jubal Biggs brings a wealth of experience to his studies at IWP – he has fought terrorism in the Middle East even before 9/11, run for City Council in California, studied in Israel, and worked on Capitol Hill. What brought him to IWP? And what will he do next?

It’s a Washington, D.C. tradition: every summer, some of America’s brightest young students and graduates flock to the nation’s capital to intern in Congressional offices, nonprofits, and think tanks. Some of them have no ambitions beyond expanding their resumes and sampling the District’s nightlife; the wiser members of this cohort, however, seek niches for themselves…

Dr. John Lenczowski didn’t necessarily have entrepreneurship in mind when he founded The Institute of World Politics, but apparently he succeeded in the case of one IWP student. Irene Karedis, after attending Dr. Waller’s Public Diplomacy and Political Warfare class, was so inspired by the discussion about communicating to people through images, that, in April 2008, she founded her…

In college, Chris Deckert was dead set on attending law school in the New York/New Jersey area, where he had grown up and gone to school. He was working on a double major in history and political science, but considered his love of these subjects as more of a hobby than a professional interest. Now,…

IWP student William Stiles always knew he wanted to go into the field of intelligence, but did not know how to go about achieving this goal.  After coming to IWP, he gained the skills to become an intelligence analyst, and now he works for the U.S. Secret Service. 

Paris Michaels appreciates the emphasis put on history in the IWP curriculum.  He even feels that, “You couldn’t be a patriot if you don’t understand [IWP’s] curriculum… And you don’t understand the curriculum without an appreciation for the history of the nation and the history of the world.”