Over the past two years, the Scrivner Institute of Public Policy and Korbel School have proudly partnered with the Aspen Institute to offer a Denver Dialogues panel at the Aspen Strategy Group’s annual Aspen Security Forum (ASF), the premier national security and foreign policy conference in the United States. This past July, the Scrivner Institute and Korbel School, in collaboration with the Aspen Strategy Group, convened a special edition panel at ASF entitled “The End of Soft Power?”, exploring the state of soft power in the contemporary global context.

This summer, the Aspen Institute generously extended four complementary passes to Korbel students to join Korbel Dean Fritz Mayer and Scrivner Institute Director Naazneen Barma at the Forum. After applying to receive one of the passes, Korbel students Omar Aittakalla, Micah DenBraber, Norair Hevorkian, and Hans Schaler were selected to attend the 15th annual Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, CO. The students made the most of the wonderful opportunity to engage with experts in international security and diplomacy, learn about the most pressing global issues from domestic and global leaders, and to network with policymakers, diplomats, and scholars.

Student attendee Omar Aittakalla, who is in the International Development graduate program, reflected on his experience: “Attending the Aspen Security Forum has been one of the most enriching experiences of my summer. The opportunity to engage with leaders who have shaped, are shaping, and will shape the future of global security was truly unparalleled. I had the privilege to converse with a diverse array of experts, including seasoned policymakers, influential thought leaders, and rising stars in the field…Topics ranged from the strategic implications of space and cybersecurity to the geopolitical dynamics of great power competition. These discussions not only deepened my understanding of the difficulties we confront on a global scale but also instilled in me a sense of optimism…"

"As I reflect on my time at the Aspen Security Forum, I am left with a renewed sense of purpose and a deeper appreciation for the collaborative efforts required to navigate the complexities our world is facing and will continue to face in the future.”

Micah DenBraber, another student attendee, said: “Attending the 2024 Aspen Security Forum was truly life changing. As an undergraduate international affairs major at Korbel, it was exhilarating to engage in conversations with top policy and business professionals in the national security space. A highlight of the forum was attending the Google AI security breakfast, where the new multi-stakeholder standards initiative, the Coalition for Safe AI (COSAI), was announced. This initiative brings together AI developers, industry leaders, academics, policymakers, and civil society organizations to promote the safe and responsible development, deployment, and governance of AI technologies. One of the most memorable moments for me was approaching a panelist during the AI security dialogue, where my initial nerves gave way to forming a valuable connection with someone who offered to support my BA thesis. As I enter my final undergraduate year, I’m excited to leverage the insights and connections gained at ASF to pursue opportunities in the global governance of artificial intelligence. I’m incredibly grateful to the Scrivner Institute and the Korbel School for facilitating this unmatched exposure to the nation’s leading national security practitioners and granting students such transformative opportunities.”

The Scrivner Institute and Korbel School are proud to partner with the Aspen Strategy Group in offering a transformative experience for our students and connecting a new generation of foreign policy leaders to ASG. We extend our thanks to the Aspen Strategy Group for their generous invitation for Korbel students to attend the Aspen Security Forum this summer and look forward to this mutually beneficial partnership in the years to come.

By: Sylvia Morna Freitas

The Institute for Security Studies African Futures (ISS) has released a new article about how the unprecedented shut-down of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will affect African countries. Using the Pardee Institute’s International Futures forecasting platform (IFs) to model the cut in assistance, the ISS found that 5.7 million more Africans would fall below the US$2.15 extreme poverty income level in the next year should the Trump administration continue with its sweeping aid reduction. 

Author and Founder of the ISS, Jakkie Cilliers, provides detailed context on the reliance of several African countries on U.S. aid and delves into the changing landscape of U.S. foreign aid policy. The U.S. provides 26% of all aid that comes to Africa. The largest component of which is spent in the health sector to combat deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and more. Outside of the health sector, U.S. aid to African countries supports agricultural productivity and economic growth, bolsters security, promotes democracy, human rights, and governance, and improves access to quality education and social services.  

In January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid executive order, which led USAID to suspend operations by award recipients. According to the models, the sudden loss of funding to these development sectors will have a considerable impact on the future of Africa. In this assessment, the ISS African Futures modeling platform used IFs to model a scenario in which aid to Africa is reduced by 20%. By 2030, they found that 19 million more Africans would be considered extremely poor as a result of the aid reduction. ISS tested an alternative scenario where Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was used to replace the loss in aid. They increased FDI to the same volume to see if it could offset the loss but found “no evidence.” For the poorest countries, FDI increased inequality and poverty in the short and medium-term. Further findings include a dramatic decrease in the sub-Saharan economy by $4.6 billion and a rise in mortality and displacement throughout the continent. Cilliers offers alternative solutions that serve both the U.S. desire to reform its aid policy and African leaders as they navigate this geopolitical shift.  

The IFs platform is the only open-source, global model that covers 188 countries and integrates data to forecast a range of interconnected variables across human, social, and natural systems. With a database that goes back to the 1960s in key areas—such as agriculture, economics, governance, health, and more—the IFs is a tool that allows researchers and policymakers to explore the way different policies will shape the future up to the year 2100 and can be used to model the potential consequence of aid loss to several African countries.  

The importance of ISS’s work with Pardee’s International Futures model comes from its ability to forecast how the change in U.S. foreign aid policy will impact Africa. This will allow leaders in African nations and across the world to prepare themselves for the course ahead. It also enables ISS and other researchers to plumb the depths of aid reform and explore how alternative aid policy could better meet the needs of our global future.  

Read the full article here. 

Making career moves while serving in the U.S. military can be tricky. “A lot of people still do it,” says Daniel Doerr, a Veteran and alumnus of the Korbel School, “even though you could be deployed and pulled away from your degree at a moment's notice. But graduate school at Korbel was worth it.”

Military service is something that appealed to Daniel from a young age. There were Veterans and active military personnel in his family, and moments like the September 11th attacks compelled him to join once he was an adult. “It’s always been about protecting people for me,” Daniel says. “That’s been a huge driving force in my life.” He began his military career in Fort Benning in Georgia — now known as Fort Moore. After deployments while on active duty in Afghanistan and again while in the Reserves to the South Pacific, he took a quick pivot to medical sales. After a break from the military, he relocated to Colorado, where he would soon re-enlist and serve at Fort Carson.

Through peers in the Denver area, he heard about the Korbel School and its expertise in security. It was an easy decision to enroll, even though he knew his military service would always come first. Thankfully, circumstances allowed him to pursue his degree uninterrupted.

Daniel graduated with his M.A in International Security in 2022, the same year his military service ended. His career trajectory has been unconventional. He’s stepped away from planned career paths for personal matters and has shifted focus once or twice. When prompted to give advice to others considering graduate school while mid-career, Daniel says to just go for it: “It was a really rewarding experience. I found community at Korbel, but since I was older and already established in Denver, I had community outside of school, too. I was similar in age to a few of my professors and had life experiences they didn’t. My professors felt like peers — peers who taught me a lot along the way.”

As an officer in the military, Daniel spent his time at Korbel side-by-side with students who had served in completely different capacities. “A good example is my peers coming in from the Peace Corps,” he says. “On the surface, the Peace Corps and the Army are diametrically opposed in their approach to foreign affairs. But we approached things with an open mind, and I’m proud of my friends in the Peace Corps and me for creating a space for open and safe dialogue. We ended up having excellent conversations about some difficult subjects, and in the end, I now approach security from a more well-rounded standpoint.”

For Daniel, Veterans Day can be challenging. “It’s a time to reflect on my own combat experiences, both positive and negative,” he says. “It tends to be somber as I think of the friends that I’ve lost, much like Memorial Day. But it’s a day to embrace the feelings and emotions that I carry with me, and also a day to pay homage to all those who’ve served. If I’m honest, it’s also a day to pat myself on the back, thinking how wild of a ride it was and how much I learned through it all.”

Daniel is currently a Physical and Digital Security Advisor for RedBag Inc. He works toward providing safety and security for K-12 school teachers, allowing him to continue protecting others as he did in the military. His security experiences — both in the Army and at Korbel — have given him unique perspectives that help him improve the safety of kids at school.

Dr. Hilary Matfess, Assistant Professor and Director of Korbel’s International Security Degree, never planned to study gender and war. However, a series of unexpected obstacles early in her career forced her to rethink her approach and ignited a passion for uncovering overlooked narratives—one that continues to fuel her work today.

“I love telling my students how I started this work because my entire career is an exercise in serendipity and mistakes,” she said.

From Serendipity to Passion

Dr. Matfess, who has taught at Korbel since 2021 and is an affiliate of the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy, examines how women mobilize for war globally with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. She looks at what they do in non-state armed groups, “which is a clunky academic term,” she explained, “for any group that’s not ‘official’ state military.” Her work explores why women join these groups, their roles, and their personal experiences within them.

“When I was getting my master's degree, I had the opportunity to work as a research assistant tracking political or social violence in Nigeria,” she said. When she arrived to study Boko Haram, Dr. Matfess found that she couldn’t access the armed men at the heart of the conflict. “I was ambitious enough to think I’d get to the bottom of Boko Haram as a 20-something. Turns out, insurgencies are very good at staying hidden. I was really frustrated that I couldn't sit down with the people that I thought were at the heart of the war, which would be armed young men my age or younger.”

Fortunately for Dr. Matfess, what started as a roadblock became an opportunity that would shape the course of her work for years to come.

“Through other activists, practitioners, and academics, I landed interviews in displacement camps and with people who fled the crisis. Mostly women. Really embarrassingly, I treated them like a consolation prize at first, but they revealed conflict dynamics that I didn't see reflected in any of the narratives around Boko Haram. From then on, I became obsessed with shedding light on this under-explored dynamic of how armed groups function.”

Bringing Women’s Experiences from the Margins into the Light

Much of Dr. Matfess's research feels like assembling a puzzle with missing pieces. Alongside Associate Professor Meredith Loken, who teaches at the University of Amsterdam, she built the Women’s Activities in Armed Rebellion (WAAR) Dataset—tracking women’s roles across more than 350 rebel groups worldwide. The challenge? “Women’s experiences are often tucked away in offhand comments or footnotes, if they’re mentioned at all. It can be hard to track them down.”

Women’s experiences reveal how policymakers need to respond to crises and how counterinsurgency responses should adapt. “Bringing women’s experiences from the margins into the light — that’s the work. It’s essential to understanding not only conflict itself but also how we build more effective policies for peace.”

Celebrating Women’s History Month: Honoring Women's Stories in March and Beyond

For Dr. Matfess, Women’s History Month has been less about grand gestures and more about reaffirming why her work matters daily. “It’s a reminder of the power of global women’s networks, activism, and what’s possible when we center gender in building political movements and communities of care,” she said.

Her perspective is a call to action—one that acknowledges both progress and persistent challenges. As she points out, “We’re living through a backlash moment on gender equality, and it’s exhausting. We need to rebrand more inclusive institutions as meritocracies because that’s what they’ve always been. It’s not about political correctness. The best person for the job only emerges when the playing field is actually level.”

Dr. Matfess brings this same urgency and dedication into the classroom. As degree director for International Security, she prepares her students for careers ranging from defense and intelligence to advocacy and policy analysis, emphasizing that security extends beyond military might to include human security, gender justice, and economic stability.

Her students, in turn, fuel her optimism. “They care so much about the world, and they challenge me every day with fresh questions and new perspectives.” Their passion and curiosity reflect the change Women’s History Month and work like hers seek to inspire—not just in March, but every day. To learn more about Dr. Matfess's work, visit her website here.

Women’s History Month is a moment to reflect not only on women’s achievements but also on the untold stories of women whose experiences are often pushed to the margins—including those in conflict zones. To learn more, visit the official Women’s History Month website, or check out Korbel's initiatives through our Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative (IGLI).

Dear Friends of the Korbel School,

As we reflect on Korbel's fall quarter, it is perhaps good that we have time to catch our breath and find ways to recharge before the New Year. It has been an eventful fall! As always, the school was buzzing with activity, in our classrooms and outside of them as we grappled with all that is happening around the world.

Certainly, though, the US election commanded much of our attention. I recognize that many of you had strong feelings on election night. You care deeply about the issues on which we work: peace and security, human rights, economic opportunity, environmental sustainability, and democratic governance.

A few days ago, a friend sent me a speech that Madeleine Albright gave in Prague shortly after the 2016 election. She said:

Democracy is a messy business that requires patience, hard work, flexibility, and the acceptance of its inherent imperfections. It also asks us to live peacefully as neighbors with people who are different from us and whom we may not even like. What most of us discover, and what I hope we will discover once again, is that we share more in common than we think, and that we are stronger as a people if we overcome our superficial differences and unite around our shared interests and ideals. 

Her words seem to me as wise today as they were eight years ago. Secretary Albright asks that we reflect humbly on the lessons to be learned from elections and that we redouble our efforts to engage with others who do not share our views.

Of course, Madeleine didn’t mean she would stop fighting for the things she believed in. Nor should we.

As we come back together in 2025, we will stand firm for our core values—justice for all, equality of opportunity, respect for all persons, the value of public service, the importance of community, and an unshakeable belief in evidence, expertise, and the value of education—and carry on with our mission to do our part to make the world safer, fairer, greener, and more democratic.

Sincerely,

Natalie Dunn, Principal Investor at LvlUp Ventures, is dedicated to supporting startups in their earliest stages, focusing on entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and the potential to create significant impact. Passionate about problem-solving and business building, she brings a founder's mindset to her work, emphasizing social impact and the pursuit of meaningful change.

Dunn began her higher education journey as a tennis player at the University of Denver, but her passion for addressing global challenges led her to the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. "I've always been drawn to more humanities versus STEM," she says. "I was incredibly passionate about some of the global problems that we're still dealing with—everything from gender inequity to human rights and the global economy."

Inspired by professors and intellectual depth at Korbel, Dunn declared International Studies as her major, pairing it with minors in Spanish, economics, and business. She credits her Korbel education for shifting her mindset and expanding her lens to evaluate companies, sectors, and industries critically and positively.

She is proud of her diverse ethnic background as a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, with Mexican, Danish, and Irish heritage, and embraces her identity as a queer woman. Reflecting on the intersectionality of identity, she acknowledges its profound influence on her work and worldview. "It's important that we take time to reflect on what identity means and how it impacts everything around us," she explains. She is particularly passionate about educating others on the lasting impacts of colonization and its continued role in shaping societies globally.

Dunn found a sense of community at the Korbel School beyond DU's vibrant sports culture. She connected with students and professors eager to discuss deep, meaningful topics like climate change, politics, and global economics. These experiences helped shape her approach to evaluating global challenges, a perspective she continues to draw upon in her work today.

Dunn also maintains a strong connection to her Native American heritage and community. Her family plays a significant role in fostering this bond, particularly her older sister, a Dartmouth graduate who majored in Native American studies, and her grandmother, who resides on the Pascua Pueblo Yaqui Reservation in Arizona. This fall, Dunn participated in the El Tour de Tucson with members of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. She rode in honor of a cousin who recently passed and to raise awareness about diabetes and diabetes prevention. Dunn emphasizes the importance of understanding and honoring the past, reflecting on the legacy of her ancestors. “I appreciate how we hold space for folks that have come before us,” she shares, aspiring to inspire the next generation by continuing the tradition of strong Indigenous women in her family.

Navigating male- and white-dominated fields like venture capital hasn't been without challenges. "While these industries are working towards becoming more diverse and inclusive, there is still a long way to go,” she says, “and I’m hopeful I can be a steward in supporting those initiatives.” Once a shy and soft-spoken individual, Dunn has worked hard to find her voice and take up space. Inspired by her mother and sister's strength, she has developed a clear sense of her core values, tackling the challenges of advancing meaningful change with determination and resilience.

Dunn plans to focus on social impact and problem-solving for good. "I want to gear the next decade of my career toward creating a better world," she says. Her advice to others: find what fills your cup, pursue work aligned with your passions, and leverage your unique talents to make a difference.

For prospective Korbel students, Dunn emphasizes the importance of exploration and engagement. "Connect with professors and folks in the resource centers—they are very inspiring and keyed into amazing ways to get involved. Expand your community and network," she advises. Reflecting on her journey, she adds, "If I could go back, I'd get even more involved with the initiatives and people leading impactful change at Korbel."

From her Indigenous roots to her education at the Korbel School to her current role in venture capital, Natalie Dunn's story is one of embracing identity, pursuing passion, and striving to leave the world better than she found it.

Making career moves while serving in the U.S. military can be tricky. “A lot of people still do it,” says Daniel Doerr, a Veteran and alumnus of the Korbel School, “even though you could be deployed and pulled away from your degree at a moment's notice. But graduate school at Korbel was worth it.”

Military service is something that appealed to Daniel from a young age. There were Veterans and active military personnel in his family, and moments like the September 11th attacks compelled him to join once he was an adult. “It’s always been about protecting people for me,” Daniel says. “That’s been a huge driving force in my life.” He began his military career in Fort Benning in Georgia — now known as Fort Moore. After deployments while on active duty in Afghanistan and again while in the Reserves to the South Pacific, he took a quick pivot to medical sales. After a break from the military, he relocated to Colorado, where he would soon re-enlist and serve at Fort Carson.

Through peers in the Denver area, he heard about the Korbel School and its expertise in security. It was an easy decision to enroll, even though he knew his military service would always come first. Thankfully, circumstances allowed him to pursue his degree uninterrupted.

Daniel graduated with his M.A in International Security in 2022, the same year his military service ended. His career trajectory has been unconventional. He’s stepped away from planned career paths for personal matters and has shifted focus once or twice. When prompted to give advice to others considering graduate school while mid-career, Daniel says to just go for it: “It was a really rewarding experience. I found community at Korbel, but since I was older and already established in Denver, I had community outside of school, too. I was similar in age to a few of my professors and had life experiences they didn’t. My professors felt like peers — peers who taught me a lot along the way.”

As an officer in the military, Daniel spent his time at Korbel side-by-side with students who had served in completely different capacities. “A good example is my peers coming in from the Peace Corps,” he says. “On the surface, the Peace Corps and the Army are diametrically opposed in their approach to foreign affairs. But we approached things with an open mind, and I’m proud of my friends in the Peace Corps and me for creating a space for open and safe dialogue. We ended up having excellent conversations about some difficult subjects, and in the end, I now approach security from a more well-rounded standpoint.”

For Daniel, Veterans Day can be challenging. “It’s a time to reflect on my own combat experiences, both positive and negative,” he says. “It tends to be somber as I think of the friends that I’ve lost, much like Memorial Day. But it’s a day to embrace the feelings and emotions that I carry with me, and also a day to pay homage to all those who’ve served. If I’m honest, it’s also a day to pat myself on the back, thinking how wild of a ride it was and how much I learned through it all.”

Daniel is currently a Physical and Digital Security Advisor for RedBag Inc. He works toward providing safety and security for K-12 school teachers, allowing him to continue protecting others as he did in the military. His security experiences — both in the Army and at Korbel — have given him unique perspectives that help him improve the safety of kids at school.

Tom Rowe, a lifelong advocate of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB), received the Korbel Lifetime Achievement Award this year at our annual Korbel Honors—a fitting tribute to his extensive work in the field. As the founder and director of the International Career Advancement Program (ICAP), Rowe has dedicated the past twenty-seven years to supporting mid-career professionals from marginalized communities and over 40 years to the Korbel School.

Rowe's commitment to advocacy stems from his upbringing in Michigan, near Detroit and Ann Arbor, where his politically active family and their opposition to racism influenced him. "I grew up in and around Detroit," says Rowe, "raised by parents who were very active in the union movement and the opposition to Henry Ford, who was a racist and antisemitic. My father was also a Quaker, and I remember attending many meetings in Ann Arbor, discussing human rights and peace studies." After he graduated high school, Rowe attended the University of Michigan and pursued his PhD/MA at Berkeley.

His career path took an unexpected turn when his dissertation supervisor at Berkeley informed him about a teaching position in Connecticut, where he could work on his dissertation. While in Connecticut, Rowe also received a call from Josef Korbel, who was seeking an assistant dean. Although Rowe did not take the position then, this was his first contact with the Korbel School.

Rowe's activism against the Vietnam War created challenges in Connecticut, prompting his move to Virginia. After confronting issues of gender inequality in Virginia, he finally made his way to Denver in the mid-1970s. At the Korbel School, during many years as Associate Dean and then Dean of the School, Rowe made a special effort to recruit students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-serving institutions. Despite his success, he grew frustrated with the limited opportunities for credentialed Korbel School alums from underrepresented groups. Recognizing this gap and after several attempts to address it through existing channels, Rowe took the initiative to found ICAP in 1996, with funding from the Mellon Foundation. He was assisted in this by his wife, Emita Samuels, a former Director of Student Affairs at Korbel.

ICAP provides a comprehensive support network, including leadership training, career advising, mentorship, and policy analysis resources. It empowers professionals from underrepresented groups, with over 800 alums, including prominent figures such as the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officers of the US Department of State and leaders of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Texas ACLU, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and PepsiCo Foundation. The program's reach is far and wide, and its origin was creating a community for professionals to tackle issues like racism, ethnocentrism, and misogyny.

Each year, ICAP hosts its capstone program at Aspen Meadows Resort/Home of the Aspen Institute. The retreat allows participants to focus on personal and professional growth, career development, and broad policy issues. "My wife and I drove through the mountains looking for a place where people could step away from their daily lives," Rowe reflects, "focusing instead on themselves and each other."

Though Rowe is proud of ICAP's reach so far, he understands that commitment to programs like these is even more existential for marginalized communities in the years to come. "Issues of equity & inclusion have become politicized and controversial," Rowe says, "which is unfortunate because DEIB is about improving the quality of leadership and of folks' lives. It's ensuring that all talent of all populations in the United States is represented."

On the other hand, when Rowe gets discouraged, he thinks about how far we've come. "There really has been progress, and we will deal with this new backlash. We'll each step forward and renew our efforts. We may change some vocabulary and evolve, but we keep working. That's what we do."

To learn more about ICAP, you can check out its website here.

For alumnus Stephanie Trejo, the Korbel School quickly became a home that welcomed all aspects of her journey: her non-linear career path and her identity as a Latina woman, to name a few. Before Korbel, Stephanie wasn’t sure how to make her dream career possible. “Now, I’m finally doing it,” she says, “I have a career in International Trade. But for the longest time, I never had mentors or someone that could direct me to the right path to get where I am now.” Ultimately, Stephanie's leap of faith when she moved to Denver offered her the perfect path to a career in Washington, D.C.

Stephanie graduated in 2023 with her master’s in Global Economic Affairs, and while at the Korbel School, she worked as an Employer Outreach & Events Coordinator. She also landed positions at the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission as a graduate student. Stephanie explains that these incredible opportunities were only possible after faculty and staff encouraged her to embrace her non-linear background, rather than seeing it as an obstacle. “At first, I was intimidated by a lot of my classmates,” she says. “They had really impressive internships and really impressive job experiences. My experience was not very linear.”

Originally, Stephanie graduated with a degree in Philosophy from the University of El Paso, Texas, and wanted to be a teacher. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she wanted to do something different and took the chance to finally explore careers in International Trade. After finding the Korbel School and moving to Denver, she quickly found support in her Global Economic Affairs community. “It’s a great program,” she says, “There were times when it was hard to navigate a new career or new life step, so the support that Korbel provided — that helped me feel included — was really great.” At first, working with so many talented faculty and students felt intimidating, but her mentors encouraged her to move past that. “That’s one thing I love about Professor Ilene Grabel. She always gave you the opportunity to speak, and she was always engaged in what you wanted to say.”

Stephanie’s career counselor also helped her see that many of the Korbel School’s most successful students and alumni had non-traditional paths, too. Once Stephanie discovered the International Career Advancement Program (ICAP), everything clicked. ICAP is a mid-career, professional development program designed to bring greater diversity to senior management and policy making positions in International Affairs. Their annual, two week-long seminar in Aspen is a cornerstone event for many leaders in the industry seeking community, and Stephanie got to take part as a Program Manager supporting the event. “Up in Aspen,” she says, “they talk about career development, career history, and all their journeys in the government." For Stephanie, this experience helped her form invaluable connections to pursuing her career in International Affairs. “Sometimes, as a woman of color, a Latina, it is really hard to find good mentors, especially those who work in the government.”

When asked about Hispanic Heritage Month, Stephanie maintained the importance of community and celebrating each other’s accomplishments. "Anyone can achieve their goals with hard work and perseverance," she says, and for Stephanie, prioritizing strong connections with mentors and following their advice is one of the most important parts of the journey. "Mentees, treasure your mentors along the way, really make sure to value that connection. Treasure it because that will take you so far. Sometimes, there are a lot of obstacles, even though the world is changing for people of color, especially women. But having this month to recognize us and our hard work is really cool, because I feel like we are seen, we are heard, and we are recognized.”

Stephanie currently works as an International Trade Analyst for the U.S. Department of Commerce, and she plans to apply to be an ICAP fellow once she meets their mid-career benchmark. To learn more about ICAP, you can check out their website here.

For current graduate student Alejandro Chavez, connecting his career with a sense of community and belonging is one of his biggest priorities. “My identity has always led me to be passionate about issues of immigration, economic opportunity, and education for the Latino community,” he says. As the Korbel School celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re spotlighting Alejandro’s experiences as a graduate student, dance troupe member, and advocate for migrant communities.

After completing his undergraduate degree, Alejandro spent some time working for a non-profit in Denver. He would eventually return to the Korbel School to pursue his master’s in International Studies with a focus on Latin American Studies. He is also balancing a part-time job as an Employer Relation Assistant for the Office of Career and Professional Development (OCPD) and coursework for his certificate in Public Diplomacy. Both give him experiences that cut across his major — whether with other faculty members or employers looking for International Studies and Policy students in the area.

“Coming to DU during my bachelor’s,” says Alejandro, “I had a narrow idea of how I wanted my career to pan out, which was very focused on the federal government. As I get older, I have this strong passion for my community and culture, and so cultural diplomacy feels like a very strong fit for how I want to see my career proceed.” Alejandro is one of many students at the Korbel School who take advantage of the flexible, diverse curriculum that helps graduate candidates discover new passions and reconnect with old ones. For Alejandro, working with Professor Rebecca Galemba and a non-profit called Centro de Los Trabajadores Colorado — the only day laborer center in Denver — was one of those pivotal turning points. Together, they helped create an integration program to benefit Venezuelan migrants who were newcomers to the state.

Beyond his advocacy through the Korbel School, Alejandro also partakes in local dance and theatre that celebrates the heart and soul of Mexican heritage. “Both my grandfathers are immigrants from Mexico, and both my grandmothers grew up in a small town in southwest Colorado,” he says. “Growing up here in Colorado myself, I was part of Folklórico groups as a child. I got reconnected to that community in 2021 through friends that were starting their dance company here in Colorado.” Alejandro is a dancer in ArtistiCO and has performed in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House — with future performances on the near horizon.

Even though Alejandro attributes many community connections to his time at DU, he acknowledges there is a long way to go. “I think there are definitely some moments when you feel that imposter syndrome seep in,” he says, “especially when you first arrive on DU's campus. Often, I see that I am the only person of Latino descent in the classroom. But in this specific graduate program, I was grateful to have a lot of international students and students of color in my cohort.”

Alejandro was recently selected to join the 2025 cohort for the Capitol Fellowship Program with the Colorado Latino Leadership Advocacy Research Organization, which provides public policy training to college students. His next ArtistiCO performances will be at the Gates Concert Hall on December 2nd & 3rd, titled Fiestas Navideñas. To reserve tickets, follow this link. To learn more about Alejandro’s journey and his relationship to Hispanic Heritage Month, follow this link for his full interview.