Hasti Sadri Reflects on her Ansari Fellowship Experience with the Brookings Institution
PAAIA’s 2024 Ansari Fellow, Hasti Sadri, is a rising senior and Honors Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill. Sadri is majoring in Political Science and Peace, War, and Defense, with a minor in Conflict Management. Below, she reflects on her internship with the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Communications team.
“Coming to DC as an Ansari Fellow, I was excited to be in the middle of policy innovation at the Brookings Institution. Being on the Governance Studies Communications team, I had the chance to interact with all the commentary and research we produced and market it for our website and the press. With the anxious lead up to the November elections, there were always new ideas and thoughts being pushed around the office.
One of my favorite parts of the summer was working on updating our Presidential Primary tracker each week. It combined my love for coding, social media analysis, and data visualization. I loved learning to work with a new program.
Being able to work at a think tank like Brookings helped me develop my knowledge on various policy issues, and I am grateful for the support that the Ansari Fellowship provided me during my summer internship. Connecting with other Iranians in DC helped me feel more at home in the city. One of my favorite experiences with the Fellowship was speaking on a panel for PAAIA’s Civic Leaders Summit, talking to Iranian high schoolers about my college and internship experiences.
Going forward, I hope to continue working in the policy world and gain more experience working within foreign policy. The Ansari Fellowship has helped me hone my communications, media relations, publication, editing, and research skills. I hope to continue working on these as I finish out my tenure as an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.”
August 27, 2024
