Diamond Bar Resident Honored With State Department Fellowship

Diamond Bar resident and journalist Esther Joe has been awarded the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship, bestowed by the U.S. Department of State for those ready to enter the United States Foreign Services.

A UCLA alumna, Joe is a former radio anchor and television reporter that has covered controversial and sensitive ethnic issues and has interned with organizations in Ghana, South Korea, Switzerland, Brazil and Washington, D.C. She will be attending Emory University this fall.

This fall, this diverse new class—20 Pickering Undergraduate Fellows and 20 Pickering Graduate Fellows—will begin their journey to represent America in world affairs. Administered by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation for the U.S. Department of State, the Pickering Fellowships supports men and women whose academic backgrounds fulfill the skill needs of the United States Department of State and who are dedicated to representing America’s interests abroad.

Among them: a former director of village development projects in Cambodia, a missionary to the Czech Republic, a criminal justice major who helps HIV-positive individuals transition out of the corrections system, a co-founder of a peace building organization in northern Uganda, and several multilinguists.

The 20 Pickering Undergraduate Fellows are the 18th class of Fellows named at the undergraduate level. Selected in their junior year, these Fellows will receive financial support towards tuition and other expenses during the senior year and during the first year of graduate study.

The 15th class of 20 Pickering Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellows will receive financial support towards a two-year, full-time master’s degree program in a related field such as public policy, international affairs, public administration, or other academic fields such as business, economics, political science, sociology or foreign languages.

Fellows in both programs participate in one domestic and one overseas internship. They commit to three years of service as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. Department of State, contingent on their passing the Foreign Service examinations.

The Foreign Service, a corps of working professionals who support the President of the United States and the Secretary of the United States Department of State in pursuit of the goals and objectives of American foreign policy, are “front-line” personnel who can be sent anywhere in the world, at any time, in service to the diplomatic needs of the United States.