Careers in Washington, DC

This year, Stanford Global Studies is holding a series of career development workshops for Stanford students. At this event, you will have the opportunity to meet with Stanford alumni who will discuss how their academic backgrounds are relevant to their current work and provide tips on how to pursue a career in Washington, DC.

This event is limited to Stanford students. Registration is required.

Register for the Zoom event.

Speakers

Andrew Lokay (International Relations and French ’20) is a senior research analyst at Beacon Policy Advisors, an independent policy research firm that advises institutional investment firms, corporations, and other clients. At Beacon, Andrew tracks and analyzes legislative and regulatory developments, including both domestic and international issue areas. Before joining Beacon, Andrew worked for a US Navy contractor supporting security cooperation. Andrew graduated from Stanford with a B.A. in International Relations and French, and he also earned honors through Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, where he wrote a thesis about the repatriation of Islamic State foreign terrorist fighters. As a Stanford student, Andrew studied abroad in Paris through the Bing Overseas Studies Program and completed internships with UNESCO, the office of U.S. Senator Mark Warner, and the State Department.

Jackie O’Neil is a research associate at the Thurgood Marshall Institute, the social science research arm of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF). She was previously a John Gardner Public Service Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute under the supervision of Dr. Kesha Moore. Prior to joining LDF, Jackie studied barriers to democracy based on contact with the criminal-legal system and held a variety of roles advancing civil rights and racial justice. Jackie studied political science, psychology and ethics at Stanford. She will receive a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2026.

Victoria Pardini is a program associate at the Kennan Institute, the premier U.S. center for advanced research on Russia and Eurasia and the largest regional program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. At the Kennan Institute, she manages scholar affairs and also manages programming on the status of women in Eurasia. She also researches issues of academic freedom in Russia and eastern Europe, particularly as it relates to national higher education policy. Prior to her position at the Wilson Center, she served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Ukhta, Russia during the 2015-2016 academic year. She has also worked in Ukraine and Kazakhstan for the State Department’s FLEX Program. Prior to joining the Wilson Center, she received her master’s degree in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University in 2017, and received a bachelor’s degree in history and political science at UC Berkeley in 2014.

Moderator

Paul Festa is Associate Director for the Program in International Relations. He earned a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Cornell University and master's degrees in East Asian studies and public and private management from Yale University. His academic work has focused on East Asia, particularly Taiwan and China, where he has lived for more than a decade. He has taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University, and at Stanford in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. Prior to attending graduate school, Paul worked as a corporate auditor/CPA in Hartford, Manhattan, and Beijing. He is also a translator of Chinese fiction and literary nonfiction, a Chinese tea enthusiast, and a technical scuba diver.