An Eye Toward Ethical Workplaces Overseas

As an undergraduate at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Kelli Sunabe started off as a fashion design and merchandising major, focusing on affordable fashion and planning eventually to open her own retail shop. But her studies turned her attention toward what happens behind the scenes in the business of fast fashion—the ubiquitous brands sold worldwide—and the factories that produce their products.

“I was learning more about the supply chain and how the fashion industry functions, and I was really bothered by how workers are treated,” she recalls. “I wondered, is this the industry I want to go into anymore? I decided to learn more about what goes into companies’ decision making.”

Sunabe added majors in international business and human resource management. During a summer of field study, she visited companies in Japan, China and Vietnam and saw firsthand the inequities in labor conditions and, after completing her undergraduate studies, she returned to China as a Peace Corps volunteer. The experiences seeded a new aspiration: to pursue a career in international labor policy.

Enter the Maxwell School, where she is now pursuing dual master’s degrees in public administration and international rela- tions. “Because I’m very interested in government work and in practices abroad,” she says, “this was the perfect fit for me.”

Sunabe is one of four members of the 2020–22 M.P.A./ M.A.I.R. class who come to Maxwell as Robertson Foundation for Government Fellows. Robertson awards, which support top U.S. graduate students pursuing long-term federal government careers in foreign policy, national security and international affairs, are among the most generous and prestigious available to professional graduate students at the Maxwell School. Maxwell has been one of the foundation’s select university partners since 2010.

All Robertson Fellows at Maxwell receive funding for two years of study, covering not only tuition but a living stipend, health insurance and assistance in finding a summer internship. Sunabe and her Maxwell classmate Elizabeth Marin (see right) are co-funded by a gift from Joseph A. Strasser ’53 B.A. (History)/’58 M.P.A. and a matching grant from the foundation.

One year into her program, Sunabe is making the most of her opportunities. This summer, she has a State Department internship through the consulate in Wuhan, China, and she plans to follow with a Boren Fellowship to study Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan for the next academic year.

“My dream is to work for the Bureau of International Labor Affairs for the State Department, which oversees regulations and ensures that American companies treat workers overseas ethically,” says Sunabe. “I’m excited to see what I can do to help.”

RICKY CIERI is a summa cum laude Syracuse University graduate (2017, who majored in international relations and modern foreign languages) who spent his senior year in Brazil, funded by the NSEP Boren Award. He later worked in Spain as a Fulbright English teaching assistant, and through the U.S. Embassy’s Go American English after-school language program for students from disadvantaged families. He returned to Syracuse to work as an international program advisor and campus advisor for the State Department’s Gilman Scholarship. He hopes to work for the State Department, expanding government-funded programming to support students who wish to live internationally.

ELIZABETH MARIN graduated summa cum laude from Dickinson College in 2018, where she majored in Latin American studies and minored in Portuguese and Brazilian studies. Her family’s ancestry in Mexico fuels Marin’s passion for Latin America, and her interests in collaboration and empowering communities to create sustainable change. She has worked with organizations dedicated to refugee resettlement and emergency services relief for low-income communities of color. As a Princeton in Latin America fellow in Mexico and a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Brazil, she worked alongside educators and other stakeholders in public education. At Maxwell, Marin is exploring her interests in diplomacy, conflict resolution and international collaboration, hoping one day to create and enact just and inclusive education and immigration policy.

KATHERINE MAXWELL is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of California–Los Angeles (global studies, with minors in gender studies and German). While at UCLA she interned for U.N. Women USA’s Los Angeles chapter and spent a summer studying international organizations in New York City. After college, she taught English via Fulbright Austria; conducted policy research on gender issues for the European Institute for Gender Equality, an EU agency in Lithuania; and supported several federally funded research projects on health disparities among sexual and gender minorities at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. After Maxwell, she plans to focus on gender equity, international cooperation and policy reform in the United States and beyond.

—Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers