Mapped Out

Kevin Doyle ’16 is headed for a life in the foreign service, and his path is as clear as a road on a map

Kevin Doyle '16 is serious about his career, about his plans to make his mark in the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service. And the seed was planted where the tree will likely one day grow.

“I met my first foreign service officer (FSO) on my first trip to Russia and immediately fell in love with the idea of becoming a FSO,” Doyle says of a career that will take him around the world. “It seemed like a career tailor-made to my personality and interests.”

When Doyle was in high school, he participated in the state department’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth program, and he ended up in Russia at age 17, “with absolutely no knowledge of the Russian language.”

“Since then, I've become deeply interested in Russia and Russian culture,” says Doyle, who notes that his advisor, Assistant Professor of Russian Alyssa DeBlasio, and the Center for Global Study & Engagement helped him find his way. “There are so many problems in the world today that will only be solved with joint U.S.-Russian action, and that’s something that I find fascinating.”

For anyone trying to keep track of where Doyle’s interests have taken him recently, and what the near future holds, a bullet list might come in handy:

• Summer 2013: The Russian and international studies major interns at the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute at the U.S. Army War College.
• Summer 2014: Doyle studies in Azerbaijan.
• Fall 2014: He participates in the Dickinson in Russia program (on a Gilman Scholarship).
• Spring 2015: He’s in Kyrgyzstan at the School of Russian and Asian Studies (on a Boren Scholarship).
• Summer 2015: He’s in Washington, D.C., interning with Sen. Jeff Sessions, from Doyle’s home state of Alabama.
• Summer 2016: Through his recent state department Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship, Doyle will participate in an internship at the state department in D.C.
• Summer 2017: That internship will continue at a U.S. embassy abroad.
• Between 2016/2017 internships: Doyle will be immersed in a master’s program for international relations, as is required for the Pickering Fellowship, and then it’s on to FSO training.

Doyle says he looks forward to interacting with a wide and varied swath of people and learning new languages (and deepening his understanding of the languages he already knows), all while operating on behalf of the U.S. government.

“I come from a family where almost everyone has served in the armed forces,” he says, “so I see this as my own way of giving my talents to America.” 

Learn More

• Department of Russian
• Department of International Studies
• Center for Global Study & Engagement
• "Speaking in (Critical) Tongues"
• Interns in Action
• Latest News

Published June 23, 2015