Pandemic Politics: Lean on your team
Leah Matchett
‘We were half-way through my first ever FSF conference when I realized that all of the panelists were women. It was the first time in my life I had seen a panel made up entirely of women, without the point of the panel being to talk about women. It was so… normal to listen to these brilliant women. They were, after all, the experts. And that very normalcy blew my mind.’— Leah Matchett, Stanford University
Over the past month, the Future Strategy Forum has teamed up with International Affairs to produce the Pandemic Politics series. To conclude this series, we want to share our lessons as an organization focused on amplifying the expertise of women, encouraging and facilitating mentorship, and creating opportunities to bridge the academic-policy divide. FSF and initiatives like it have grown as spaces both to encourage graduate students of all genders, and to lift up the amazing amount of knowledge and expertise of women.
We hope that sharing our learnings and successes will help anyone changing the status quo of international security in government and the academy. There is a lot more to be done and so we want to conclude the series with a few comments on how we can make small differences in our own communities to make national security a better and more diverse space.
1) Get a team
We have found that the most motivating thing in the world is to surround yourself with brilliant competent women. FSF would not be what it is today without the incredible work of our graduate student team. On hard days and deadlines, it is friends and co-workers who get you through. FSF would be a significantly less impactful organization, if we as the graduate student team had not had the opportunity to lean on one another and count on each other’s care, dedication and good humour.
‘CSIS partnered with the Kissinger Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and PhD students from MIT to create the Future Strategy Forum (FSF) in 2018. FSF relies on a team of both established and next-gen national security practitioners and academics. Our commitment to featuring the expertise of a diverse group of women and incorporating graduate and PhD students is key to the forum’s mission and strengths. Our goal of amplifying the voices of women experts was publicly noted when a defence reporter, after watching five all-women panels said the forum just dispelled any notion that there are no women available to discuss hard security issues.’— Kathleen Hicks, Center for Strategic and International Studies
2) Mentor up, down, across and sideways
A key part of what FSF does but also what FSF has done for many of graduate team members revolves around mentoring. Asking people for their advice and insight is one of the best ways to learn how to manoeuvre around this field. So… ask people for coffee and follow up with them. Be genuine and honest. There is a community ready to help you. If you work in international security, for example, reach out to organizations like GirlSecurity and NatSecGirlSquad. FSF would not have happened without the incredible help of Kathleen Hicks at CSIS and Frank Gavin at the Kissinger Center, who encouraged our founders Sara Plana and Rachel Tecott to dream bigger than a single conference, to think about what we could do in one year, in five and in ten.
‘It is key to provide emerging scholars with a forum, both for vertical and horizontal networking and to present, discuss, and workshop their own research. It is critical that the academic community find ways to inspire students, promote the work of early career scholars and produce policy relevant research that speaks directly to the pressing national and global policy challenges we face.’ — Francis J. Gavin, The Kissinger Center at Johns Hopkins’
3) Find yourself diverse allies
Finally, find yourself some allies. Make sure that you surround yourself with a wide circle of different and diverse people and organizations, this way you know that you will get a range of perspectives and advice. Behind the scenes, FSF relies on a wide network of partners who work tirelessly on everything from websites to twitter. If you want to do something big, find a few people who want the same thing. You are better off working together.
‘BTG has been delighted to partner with the Future Strategy Forum. Working together has been key to efforts to connect national security scholars with leading practitioners, showcase women in the field and build vertical and horizontal networks across the policy–academic gap. We look forward to continuing to collaborate on this important dimension of incorporating emerging scholars and practitioners into the experience of engaging in policy-relevant research and discussion.’— Naazneen Barma, Bridging the Gap
We hope that this series has been interesting, insightful and maybe even inspiring for you. I can say that it has been an honour to help create. We hope that you have a little more reason to create something yourself and cannot wait to see what you come up with.
Leah Matchett is a PhD student in political science at Stanford University. She holds a BA in global studies and geology from the University of Illinois and an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford. She is a Marshall Scholar and a Knight Hennessy Scholar.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.
The Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies works in foreign policy and international security.
Bridging the Gap (BTG) is a multi-university initiative for training, research, and outreach to bridge the gap between academia and the policy world, with a focus on foreign policy and international relations.
In August, International Affairs has teamed up with the Future Strategy Forum for the ‘Pandemic Politics’ series on US politics and the COVID-19 pandemic. This series is made possible by The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the Bridging the Gap Project (BtG).
All views expressed are individual not institutional.
