My name is Ernesto.
I'm a Foreign Service Officer
in the political career track.
So I was originally born and raised in Caracas,
Venezuela, and I moved to the United States
with my family when I was 18.
I had originally done a model of United Nations
in high school, which is where my interest in
diplomacy started.
And once I started college I knew exactly what I wanted
to do - I wanted to study international relations.
I started college in a community college because
when I first came to the United States with my parents and
my siblings I was not able to afford a full four-year
university, and I was also working full-time.
So I started working full-time and going to
school full-time, which was a challenge
but I got through it because I was studying
what I was passionate about - international affairs.
So in the beginning, starting college in Florida,
I attended Broward Community College,
or what was known as Broward Community College
at the time.
Now it's called Broward College.
And in the beginning it was challenging because I needed to
balance work and my studies and I wanted to
perform well in both.
I didn't want to let anybody down, including myself.
So while I was going to college,
I still had the idea of becoming a diplomat at some
point but it seemed like a very sort of difficult goal
or a far, far goal to reach, but I met a
diplomat in residence at my school
- Florida International University.
In his class, not only did I learn about the
State Department and the Foreign Service in general,
but also about the Pickering and the
Rangel Fellowships.
I come from a Hispanic tight-knit close family,
close community, and of course my parents in the
beginning, you know, would say things like, well,
are you sure this is something you want to do?
You're going to be far away from us and we want to keep
our children close to us.
Nowadays, we have Skype, we have Facebook.
We have all sorts of tools to keep in touch on a daily basis.
There is great support from the Pickering team,
and what I mean by that is that the moment you are
awarded the fellowship you are taken under their wing
so to speak, by a mentee and by a series of people on a
team from the Pickering team,
both at the State Department and the contractor that
takes care of running the program.
You're assigned a mentor - a current Foreign Service
Officer who is either also a Rangel or a Pickering fellow
who will help you navigate that initial process of
joining the Foreign Service and going not only during
the [INAUDIBLE] from this angle as a Pickering fellow,
which means that you - while you're in grad school you
also have commitments that you have meet for the
Pickering Fellowship.
The fellowship has had a tremendous impact in my
beginnings as a Foreign Service Officer, because I
- coming into the Foreign Service,
I knew what the major bureaus in the State Department are,
what some of the major offices with which
I will likely work in the future are and how to
navigate that.
The - also the fact that I was able to work in the
political section, economic section as an intern allowed
me to understand what the work I was getting into,
or yeah, the work I was about to begin was about.
The preparation and support the Pickering Fellowship
offers prior to taking the Foreign Service oral
assessment was crucial in my case and I would say that
perhaps without their help it would have a lot more
challenging and the ongoing support they provide,
even now that I joined the service and I am no longer
considered a Pickering fellow,
though in my heart I will always be a Pickering
fellow, the Pickering Fellowship continues to
follow-up with you; where you're at, what's your,
you know, what's your story, what is happening with you,
how else can we support you, and that's - I find that
to be wonderful.
You feel part of the community.
You are part of the community and they treat you
as part of the community.