A Career Made and Re-Made by Peace Corps Links
Korite (Eid) 2018
Preparing for my service
As an undergraduate, I wanted to work in international affairs. After attending a school-hosted career panel hosted by an Azerbaijan RPCV, I quickly realized that Peace Corps service would be a great way to live, work, and learn with the communities that I would serve throughout my career. During my undergraduate studies, a South Africa RPCV served as an instructor for a summer program; after graduation, a Malawi RPCV I worked with and a Togo RPCV I knew through a family friend graciously provided informational interviews about Peace Corps service. These conversations over a period of years helped me envision myself as a Peace Corps Volunteer and someone who could dedicate my career to global service. With their insight and encouragement in mind, I embarked on a new adventure as a Community Health volunteer in Senegal from 2017-2019.
Transition back to the US and jumpstarting my professional journey
After two years in my Senegalese community and many new experiences to shape my point of view, it was time to think about next steps. A Senegal RPCV helped me prepare my application for a fellowship program with GlobalGiving, a crowdfunding platform for nonprofits (sadly, this fellowship program no longer exists). Thanks to her assistance, I won this fellowship and started work at GlobalGiving less than two months after returning to the US. As it happens, one of the other Fellows that year had served in Senegal with me and neither of us knew the other had applied.
I applied for the Thomas Pickering and Charles Rangel Fellowships for graduate school support as a pathway into the Foreign Service. A fellow Senegal RPCV who had won this fellowship helped me with my applications. Thanks to her support, I was offered interviews for both fellowships and after the interviews, I was waitlisted for the Rangel Fellowship. While I did not ultimately complete a fellowship, this experience taught me that RPCVs are always eager to support those coming up behind them.
Finding community back home
The COVID evacuation of all Peace Corps posts worldwide – volunteers ripped from their communities of service into a scary, pandemic-era unknown – was absolutely heartbreaking. I immediately identified a way I could use my particular position to give back to the Peace Corps community: I promoted my GlobalGiving fellowship as a suitable early-career opportunity for evacuated Volunteers looking for their next step.
After my own fellowship came to an end, I started graduate school at Georgetown University, through the Global Human Development Program that was, at the time, led by Dr. Steven Radelet (RPCV Western Samoa). Approximately a third of my classmates are RPCVs, with whom I delighted in many important conversations about how our experiences informed our approach to international development and social justice; the alumni community includes many Peace Corps connections as well. Further, a Georgia RPCV made a Facebook post about a seasonal, part time job at a party store that helped financially support me through graduate school.
Joining the global diplomacy and development sector
A friend and fellow Senegal RPCV referred me for my first job after graduate school, working on a State Department-funded project, and I worked on a team with her and another Senegal RPCV friend. I’m grateful for her support navigating the path to entry into international affairs and development, and that this job became a way to stay connected with people I served with. Eight months later, I joined a USAID contractor to work on global health projects, returning to my roots in community public health.
Paying it forward in a time of tumult
In February 2025, executive orders dismantling USAID resulted in my sudden furlough. Having stepped into a high-visibility promotion just four months earlier, the furlough became an abrupt end to the entire vision I had for my forward career trajectory. Thinking that my next opportunity would come from an interpersonal connection rather than an online application, I began attending nearly every in-person job-loss support event in DC and being open about my need for employment.
Through one such event, I met Jonathan Keenan (RPCV Cameroon), founder and executive director of RPCVnexus, who continues to offer complimentary resume reviews to all RPCVs affected by the sudden job cuts. Looking to build my skills and lean hard into the RPCV community that gave me so much over all these years, I began volunteering with RPCVnexus in mid-March. I was exhausted – networking at in-person events nearly every day after multiple years of primarily remote work is quite an adjustment! – yet determined and hopeful.
In April, after two months of furlough, an Indonesia RPCV made a post in the RPCV/W Facebook group about a temp-to-hire procurement role with Georgetown University that I accepted and am currently serving in. Despite Georgetown’s ongoing hiring freeze, the role converted to a term role with benefits (hooray for health insurance!) at the end of September 2025.
What’s Next?
The Peace Corps community is behind nearly every lucky break in my life since close-of-service. Leaning into my Peace Corps connections – friends from my own cohort, fellow RPCVs in my graduate program, my regional group (RPCVs of Washington, DC), and of course, RPCVnexus – has enriched my life through community, friendship, connection, mentorship, and then some.
Two truths hold simultaneously: I can be disappointed in losing my previous career and also grateful for the experiences I’ve been able to have and people I’ve met since then. My time at RPCVnexus has allowed me to develop both my skills and organization capacity in nonprofit financial and legal compliance, fundraising, event planning, leadership, and partnership cultivation. I recruited and onboarded RPCVnexus’s first-ever interns, and even supervised two, fulfilling a longtime professional development goal. I’ve developed RPCVnexus’ relationships with other organizations and projects supporting fired federal and international aid workers. RPCVnexus gives all of our staff – including you, should you choose to join us! – the flexibility to create your own opportunities and pursue your own passion projects, all in support of one of the closest-knit communities there is.
It goes without saying that RPCVs are some of the most creative, resilient, loyal, and adaptable people one could meet. As part of the growing movement that is RPCVnexus, I remain committed to ensuring that RPCVs around me and after me benefit from the support system that guided and enriched my life in all the years before and since my service. Wherever I go next, and wherever you go next, RPCVs will almost certainly be involved!
