Jane Wobb Gamble ’81
Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Department of State
Since 2006, Jane has worked for the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer and has received meritorious and superior honor awards. She helps Americans in distress, monitors the treatment of imprisoned Americans, aids sick and injured U.S. tourists, and repatriates the remains of those who have died in distant lands.

“As Foreign Service Officers,” Jane explains, “we advance U.S. policy around the world, and our jobs require that we develop an intimate understanding of the countries and cultures in which we serve. The qualities of a successful officer are qualities that so many Ellis alumnae possess: a deep curiosity about other cultures, an interest in international
issues, and the love of foreign travel.”

Jane describes her interest in foreign countries as “a bit extreme.” At age 16 she began traveling the world on her own, starting with trips across Great Britain and later Europe and the Middle East. Shortly after Ellis commencement, she flew to Fiji and crewed on a 38-foot yacht to New Caledonia and then to Australia, where she worked for eight months to earn her airfare back home.

Defying expectations, Jane has a penchant for adventure in every aspect of her life. She switched majors and colleges numerous times, studied acupuncture in Mainland China, and lived on an island in the Pacific Northwest running an organic farm. She earned her master’s in urban planning in 2001 from the University of Washington in Seattle and worked in Seattle city government until 2006. Then tragedy struck when her younger brother died suddenly at age 34.

“When Kurt died, my internal world changed forever,” Jane says. “To make sense of that I felt my external world needed to be completely different as well. Through a series of events, I joined the Foreign Service—where day-to-day life is guaranteed to never be the same.”

Jane’s husband, David, not only agreed to the adventure, but decided to join the service as well. Now, the husband and wife team serve in tandem. The life of a Foreign Service Officer is exciting for many reasons, not the least of which is the thrill of living overseas, speaking different languages, and learning new cultural norms. The job presents some unique challenges. While working as a consular officer in Madagascar’s capital city, Antananarivo, Jane’s primary responsibility was assisting Americans traveling or living in that country.

Late one night, she saved a life.

A local hotel concierge called to say he was loading an 82-year-old American woman, who had arrived gravely ill, in a taxi and sending her to the embassy so she would not die in his hotel. Jane met the taxi at the embassy and sped the woman to a nearby hospital, where administrators demanded $1,500 up front even though they weren’t equipped to treat her. Jane and her team learned that she had medevac insurance and worked swiftly to transport her out of the country.

“Though we had no diplomatic relationship with the Government of Madagascar at that time, we were able, after intense negotiation, to compel authorities to permit the medevac flight from South Africa to land,” Jane says. “The American citizen arrived safely in Johannesburg where she stabilized and survived.”

Another incident involved a young American woman traveling alone in a remote country Jane does not wish to name. The woman arrived at the embassy reporting that she had been raped by her tour guide. Working closely with local nonprofit organizations and the Peace Corps, Jane quickly organized AIDS, pregnancy, and gonorrhea testing as well as full medical treatment. She also compelled the tour company to refund the woman’s money, and pursued charges against the guide.

Working with vulnerable populations comes with the territory. In Mexico, Jane successfully enabled a number of Americans serving long prison terms for minor drug convictions to enter the Treaty Transfer Program, allowing them to return to the U.S. to complete their sentences closer to their families and away from the dangers of the Mexican prison system. “They were almost always low-income people who had been caught transporting small amounts of drugs across the border,” she explains. “These people had no idea that they were being set up by drug cartels.”

Thanks to intensive language training from the Department of State, Jane is fluent in Spanish, French, and Portuguese. To date, she has been posted to Chennai, India; Monterrey, Mexico; Antananarivo, Madagascar; and Rio de Janeiro. For the last two years, she has been based in Washington, D.C., where she now oversees the government’s bilateral relationships with Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor) and covers environmental issues in partnership with Indonesia. She’s happy to be near her 28-year-old daughter, Sarah, a National Park Ranger also based in D.C., who has earned her master’s degree in foreign policy from American University.

How did Ellis influence her career?

“The great gift of Ellis,” Jane says, “is that it instills in its students boundless confidence. We were taught—along with a lot of history, math, and English—that we could make of this world whatever we chose. In my life, it just never occurred to me to hold back my aspirations. And although I fit no one’s idea of a cookie-cutter bureaucrat, I find I am a successful American diplomat living my dream.”

If you are interested in a career in Foreign Service, Jane recommends starting with summer internships at Department of State offices and embassies overseas. Opportunities can be found at www.state.gov/careers. “It’s an extraordinary career for women with an unquenchable curiosity for the world around them,” she says. “We’re able to explore the world and also do tremendous good.

Dr. Carly Reed ’02
Assistant Director, Office of Global Engagement, La Roche College
Carly graduated from Ellis knowing she wanted to live and work abroad. Her fearlessness and curiosity, coupled with a healthy dose of good luck, led her to a career that has taken her around the world and now back to western Pennsylvania.

“All of us at Ellis are instilled with a sense of wanting justice for the world,” Carly says. “It is not an elite school that insulates you from the world, but a place that inspires in all of us a connection to and awareness of the world.”

After earning her bachelor’s degree in peace and conflict studies from Colgate University, Carly began working for The Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD). The FSD places college graduates and professionals in meaningful internships within local communities around the globe. Its ultimate goal is to initiate projects that will continue long after the volunteers leave. As FSD’s program coordinator, Carly moved to Puno, Peru, and began matching interns with host families and providing onsite support. She fell in love with the work.

“After Peru, I knew I wanted to remain in international development,” she says, “and I knew I needed more training.”

So she enrolled in Georgetown University’s public policy graduate program. It was while researching topics for her master’s thesis that she found information about female child soldiers in Uganda. This chance discovery set her on a course that changed her life. “Much of my interest in gender and politics comes from Ellis,” Carly says. “For female child soldiers, apart from the horrors they contend with, I was interested in how they reintegrate and live fulfilling lives.”

After Georgetown, Carly was one of only nine people, and the only American, accepted into a human rights Ph.D. program at Scuola Superiore Sant'anna in Pisa, Italy. Fully funded by the Italian government, the program brought together academics from across the globe. A colleague there suggested she extend her research to Colombia where, for more than 60 years, FARC guerillas have been recruiting girls as child soldiers. With recommendations from her academic supervisor and assistance from Ellis Spanish teacher and World Language Department Chair, Jack Gaddess, Carly was accepted into a six-month visiting scholar position through the United Nations’ Humanitarian Studies Institute.

In Colombia, she quickly learned that a great deal of research about female child soldiers already existed, but had been published entirely in Spanish. She read voraciously and engaged in hundreds of interviews with people involved in the reintegration of child soldiers in Colombia. By 2013, Carly was connected to Taller de Vida (Workshop of Life), which provides social services and support to people affected by the conflict in Colombia.

“The young women I interviewed were 18 and had left the FARC, but the average age of recruitment was around 12,” Carly says. “I was struck by the fact that, though many had joined ‘voluntarily,’ their willingness to fight was a reflection of poverty, difficult situations at home, and broken political systems. The FARC rebels were often the only ones providing basic services and a community to these girls.”

In August 2014, when she returned to Pittsburgh to write about her findings and finish her dissertation, Carly learned that La Roche College's Office of Global Engagement was hiring key staff.

“La Roche states overtly that it has a collective responsibility to consciously and holistically diffuse internationalism through the community and academic programs,” Carly says. "Its mission is to engage minds and embrace the world."

Carly got the job, and more. She was uniquely qualified to help facilitate the college's annual Global Problems, Global Solutions Conference as well as run its two-week summer training program on global development and humanitarian aid. Her responsibilities at La Roche also now include helping students—20 percent of whom are international—connect and succeed at the school and to think beyond the campus. And she successfully defended her dissertation in July.

What’s next on the horizon? She’s working on a micro-loan program via www.Kiva.org through which La Roche students will select and fund small businesses in Latin America. Carly is also introducing freshmen to an immersive exhibition that will enable them to experience the challenges immigrants face when looking for housing or a job. The exhibition just returned to La Roche after a six-week stint at Pittsburgh City Hall. Carly plans to lead a service learning trip to Ecuador over winter break and also hopes to continue working closely with Taller de Vida and support the girls from afar—perhaps with the help of Ellis.


Maura Lewandowski ’10
Peace Corps Volunteer
By September, Maura will be stationed in Mozambique as a Peace Corps education volunteer. She chose this country because it will not only challenge her to learn a new language (Portuguese) but to also learn more about herself and her place in the world.

Maura admits to being drawn to the Peace Corps for what she describes as “purely selfish” reasons. “I spent my junior year of college abroad at La Universidad de Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain, and with the World Learning School for International Training (SIT) in Managua, Nicaragua,” she says. “I could not wait to go abroad again.”

While in Salamanca, she immersed herself in the Spanish culture and language, volunteering in an elementary school as the after-school English teacher. She returned from Spain with a newly sparked sense of adventure that took her to Nicaragua the following semester, where she pursued an original research project that called upon her to interview farmers in the rural regions of Matagalpa.

“My time with SIT helped me to see the world in a more global, less American way,” Maura says. “Speaking to these farmers, I developed interpersonal skills that helped me to relate to people with whom I may have little in common.” Her project prompted her to talk to the people of Matagalpa about their relationship to the government and enabled her to gain a better understanding of the effects of the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution in their lives today.

She credits her language classes at Ellis for igniting her interest in cross-cultural exchanges. “I loved those classes because they gave me the chance to communicate with a wide range of people regardless of their backgrounds,” she says.

Maura also grew to appreciate the importance of becoming a good global citizen. “Ellis was so special to me,” she says, “that I spend a lot of time attempting to spread that community spirit in each new experience I have. I cannot wait to see where my Ellis-girl mentality will take me next and I am excited to be changed by the people I meet in Mozambique.”