Zoe Nelson comes to CISA after obtaining her M.A. in Latin American and Hemispheric Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University; in her program she concentrated on migration and international affairs. She conducted multiple research projects related to sexual violence against women. Her team’s capstone project was titled Cybersex Trafficking: The Online Exploitation of Venezuelan Migrants in Colombia and their client was the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Previously, she was an Honors student at the Davidson Honors College at the University of Montana and received a B.A. in Political Science and a Minor in Latin American Studies.
Prior to being the Academic Assistant at CISA, she interned at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University where she assisted in rolling out the Center’s inaugural Climate Change and Implications for Defense and Security course. She also interned for the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute where she helped to develop teaching materials for foreign service officers working in both human resources and the Western Hemisphere. Her first internship was at an educational non-profit called The Montana World Affairs Council, which worked to bring the world to Montana, especially for Montana’s high school and elementary students, through academic programming.
Zoe grew up in Missoula, Montana and has fond memories of hiking, swimming, backpacking, and riding horses through Western Montana’s wilderness. In her free time, she loves walking her pug, Obi, sewing, playing video games, reading, watching the Seattle Mariners and Philadelphia Eagles, playing sports, and visiting friends