Wide-eyed and amazed, Nila Pillai (12) joined several of her peers in attending a lecture taught by one of her idols, Gina Bennett, the woman responsible for gathering intelligence that ultimately led to the capture of terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
This incredible opportunity, as Pillai described it, was one of many lectures she experienced during her seven-day stay in Washington, D.C., for the Leadership Initiatives National Security & Diplomacy Internship. According to Leader Initiatives Summer Internship Programs, the program allows students to work with experts in national security to create and implement security strategies in places of need.
The project Pillai found most impactful from her week in D.C. was creating a proposal to help Ramat Polytechnic, an American university located in Nigeria, which was struggling with terrorism.
“Our main project was that we helped a university in Nigeria called Ramat Polytechnic, combat bomb threats from a terrorist group that’s against Western ideals,” Pillai said. “We were able to work together with our whole program to get a grant of $7,000 to collectively make a solution to implement in the college. We found that part of the issue was that they only had about five security guards and a campus of around 20,000 students. The proposal was created through meetings with program mentors and calls with the college, and just currently in the process of being implemented.”
Pillai said she had no hesitation or reservations when signing up for this internship because of her passion for political science, which has been developing since her early years of high school.
“Since sophomore year, I’ve just found politics, government, and diplomacy really interesting,” Pillai said. “ I constantly found myself reading articles and studying further.”
Pillai found that this internship encouraged her plan to major in political science or international relations.
“This definitely solidified what I want to do in my future, especially because I found the week that I spent in Georgetown super-interesting and enlightening,” Pillai said. “Surrounding myself with people who wanted the same things as me and were understanding [of] my career goals really helped me focus on what I wanted to do.”
Along with learning more about political science, she also learned about working in a group setting. Pillai said this aspect provided her with some of the most valuable lessons from the entire experience.
“Throughout the internship, we worked on our project in a group of 6 people,” Pillai said. “At first, I found myself taking over a lot of the work, but then I realized that all of those people were there for the same reason I was, so I decided to let go of all of that burdening responsibility.”
During her time in D.C., Pillai gained knowledge and insight toward her future, and was able to grow alongside peers sharing those same visions for the future. She said she created meaningful bonds throughout her trip.
“By the end, our group got really close and became more connected throughout the project,” Pillai said. “They were a really great group of people who all took time out of their summers to be there for the same reasons I did, and I’m still friends with a lot of the people I met there because of all the memories we created during that experience.”
