By Amalie Little and Erica Kowsz
A little over a year ago, Debbra Goh (’24) graduated from Wes with a double major in Environmental Studies and Religion, and a minor in East Asian Studies to boot. She had been accepted as a James C. Gaither Junior Fellows in the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. But two years ago, she was a senior wading in the uncertainty that comes with graduation looming in the distance. Today? Debbra Goh works as a full-time research assistant at the Carnegie Endowment.
The Junior Fellows Program, run by the Carnegie Endowment, accepts 16 graduating seniors and graduated seniors from last year’s class into 12 area-specific or thematic programs to work as research assistants. Wesleyan can nominate up to two applicants to be considered.
Fellow seniors might be able to resonate with this feeling of uncertainty, looking at the horizon of the rest of your life—what to do, where to apply, and many other daunting questions. Associate Director for Fellowships at the Fries Center for Global Studies Erica Kowsz and I sat down with Debbra to ask her about experience with this fellowship—how and why she decided to apply, what her time was like
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you decide to pursue this fellowship?
I chanced upon this fellowship position as part of this… broader conversation with Erica about postgraduate opportunities that existed. At the point in time in senior year… I was also weighing between going to grad school and different opportunities.
Going into the application process, how did you imagine your career path to be, or how this fellowship might have helped you get there?
I think the pathway towards this fellowships decision for me was a little bit less conventional, I think, than perhaps some of my other peers in the Junior Fellows Program at Carnegie, who might have studied a little bit more of… government or foreign policy, and… international relations as their curriculum in college. I approached this fellowship from a lot more of the… climate and sustainability angle of work.
Do you think that your, kind of, non-conventional background going into the application has proved to be an asset?
On my first couple of days, I think the imposter syndrome is definitely real. Like, at the lunch table, and people are, like debating political theorists, and you’re like, what is going on? And also, like where am I?
But I’m really, really grateful, for the Wesleyan liberal arts experience. It really shaped the way I think and work, and I think part of coming from such an interdisciplinary approach towards… learning and researching has really helped me at Carnegie. My extracurriculars at Wes taught me a lot about how institutional change occurs, taught me a lot about time management and managing priorities, but also how to have fun through it all.
Goh worked with the Sustainability Office and Green Fund while at Wesleyan, work which fit well into the research the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics program was doing on a Climate Protest Tracker. She recently published her first solo publication , investigating civic backlash against clean energy development. Her other research can be found here.
Your article included a very in-depth case study in addition to the broader data from the long-term data gathering of the Climate Protest Tracker. How do these projects come about? We see the end product, but we don’t see what goes into it.
It was like the spinoff of two projects that I worked on. One of them was the protest tracker… to see how civil society and social movements react to, and influence climate policy. And the second was this really big paper on geothermal energy… and the geothermal paper… glossed over [the downsides to this technology] in some ways … I wanted to explore a bit more… and I had these case studies…So I just went up to my scholars and was like, hey, I want to write this piece… this is my… theory of what’s going on, and they were like… go for it. I think it was a bit more of an organic process… connecting different parts of… pillars of our research.
How often are you getting to work on things that you consider passion projects?
It definitely ebbs and flows…I think I’m lucky to be in a program that has really great scholars who are open to hearing my ideas and treating them as things that are worthy of being discussed, so it comes and goes, and I think there’s also a lot of space for working across programs, and collaboration with other people.
What specifically do you think is unique about this fellowship in comparison to working at another think tank?
It was really such a great experience having a cohort of people who are just at the same level as you are. I became friends with my cohort really easily, and it was really nice moving to a new city to have that sort of community element… a supportive community, not just outside of the workplace, but also within it.
I think one of the really nice things about Carnegie is that they see the Junior Fellowship Program as part of the mission ethos having the space to… train a new generation of… researchers. So, there’s a lot of professional development opportunities that come along with the fellowship program that are built into it.
Goh now works within the same program she worked with as a junior fellow (Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics) as a research assistant. She’s getting to continue research that she was interested in during the fellowship and tells us the day-to-day is quite similar to what she was doing before.
So, is your role now very similar to when you were a junior fellow?
It’s basically the same. As an organization, I think Carnegie has a uniquely special work culture to it that makes it a very hard place to leave.
What’s been one of the most challenging parts of your fellowship?
Navigating very different lines of work. I was exposed to all of the research that we did, everything from niche emerging clean technology solutions to climate mobility policies. Navigating between such different work streams was definitely a challenge.
And how have you liked living in DC?
Yeah, I think DC’s a really great city to be in. Great public transit, a really nice place to be a young person in. I enjoy the energy to it. There’s always new people to meet.
Goh is from Singapore and was the only international junior fellow in her cohort, so we wanted to ask her about her advice for other international students at Wesleyan.
What advice would you have for international students in thinking about this kind of opportunity—what are the advantages? Are there also challenges with taking this path?
It’s definitely something that is a lot less of an established path. I think there’s definitely comfort to be had in following a more traditional route more clarity and transparency into what the process looks like, especially for immigration and visa sponsorship. I didn’t really know anyone who was doing this much less anyone’s who’s not American doing it, and I think that was definitely a challenging process. More international students should think about it, because it’s such a great opportunity, and I think that my international experience has really benefited me in being in this space. It might be unconventional, but it doesn’t mean that such paths don’t exist, you know?
Regrets? Not really.
In retrospect, I think Carnegie is a great place to be, and it really aligned very closely with my academic interests, and long-term goals. I want to work within climate policy. Working at a think tank is a great way to get more involved in the space, and I love research, I love policy research.
I don’t really have, like, a 5- or 10-year plan; I have topic areas that I’m interested in. These are the issues that I care about, and these are the ways I think change can happen in these spaces. I think for me right now, I’m really enjoying the research process. It’s a very nice mix between scholarship but also practice. I get to do really comprehensive and deep research… then there’s… working to actually get policy changes that reflect the ideas you’re putting out there.
I don’t know if this is gonna be the rest of my life, but for… right now, it’s… a great place to be
Anything else?
The thing they don’t tell you about offices, is that they’re like… freezing.
Goh mentioned several times that she is more than happy to talk about her experience with prospective applicants—she has lots of advice, thoughts, and first-hand experience to share.
Reach out to fellowships@wesleyan.edu to be put in touch with Debbra by email and/or to have your questions answered by staff at Wesleyan’s Office of Fellowships. If you want to apply in the current cycle, apply online before the campus deadline on December 1.