5 minute read
Putting Her Future on the Map
By Erica Levi Zelinger
Jade Umstead had hopes of using her 2024 degree in criminology and justice studies to produce crime maps to build safer communities.
But since finishing her coursework, Jade, criminology and justice studies ‘24, is reorienting her career path and taking an alternative route. She’s now working toward becoming a diplomat.
“No matter how many times I change my course or make a stop along the way, I know my destination remains the same: opportunity.”
Jade isn’t quite sure where the GPS of life is taking her, but she is pretty good at mapping things out. Receiving the Gilman, Freeman-ASIA, and Boren Scholarships, and Rangel Graduate Fellowship during her time at Drexel has been the (plane) ticket to South Korea, Taiwan, grad school and even her first job.
“This is my 10-year plan,” she says. “I have already mapped out 10 years — two years of grad school and five years in the foreign service. Elementary school taught me to round up so that’s 10 years for me.” says, offered a less conventional route to a first job in the federal government.
“I didn’t want a stepping-stone job — these fellowships offer a more direct route into federal service.”
Just reaching out to Undergraduate Research & Enrichment Programs about fellowship opportunities is a big step, but so worth it, Jade says; the benefits from the staff’s years of experience hosting mock interviews, going through tens of essay revisions with applicants, brainstorming and bouncing ideas. “I sing Kelly [Weissberger’s] praises since I haven’t lost once.”
Jade knew she didn’t want to start off working at a police department or security company, so fellowships, she
“Jade has worked with me on so many applications throughout her time at Drexel,” says Kelly Weissberger, associate director of Undergraduate Research & Enrichment Programs.” Some were opportunities she discovered at the last minute, and she forged ahead without hesitation, undaunted by the short turnaround time. I have so much admiration for her ability to leap into new things confidently; it has definitely paid off.”
For an overachiever with high academic integrity, her mapped-out plan not only included criminology and community-based courses, but also learning foreign languages. At first, she was dead set on taking Spanish and going to school in Spain. Then she started with Korean.
“I thought studying abroad was the main reason I came to college,” Jade says.
But as a COVID college kid, “trying to make sure I even had a career track while the world was ending,” was challenging. Receiving the Gilman Scholarship and Freeman-ASIA award to Korea allowed her to escape life.
“When I went to Korea, I was only 19,” she says. “I went out there with false hope that it would solve my dilemma of who I was and what I wanted to get out of life.”
She found herself having an identity crisis as an exchange student at a cut-throat and academically overwhelming, STEM-heavy institution. Though she enjoyed her numerous elective classes in Korean fiction, Korean law, Korean film and Korean language, her poor judgment and sometimes confrontational ways landed her in some dangerous situations. There was a xenophobic and anti-Black sentiment in Korea that was so overt, she asked herself, “Why am I doing this for the sake of cultural exchange? Everything was not what I wanted it to be.”
She came back to Philly with some new goals: prioritizing her mental health, being more intentional about how she chose her friends, and reevaluating whether she still wanted a career with a global component. Jade credits the supervisors she worked under as a resident advisor in the residence halls, and to Drs. Cyndi Rickards, Ashley Dickinson Kris Unsworth and Robert Kane, because they believed in her.
“Even before I saw myself as anything, they saw the potential in me. They took it upon themselves to nurture that.”
Not sure if returning to Asia was right for her but tempted by Kelly’s pitch to apply for Boren, which invests in linguistic knowledge for aspiring federal government employees, she went for it. For her final six months at Drexel, she studied the Mandarin language in Taiwan.
“I keep getting lucky,” she says.
“With Gilman, I took a baby step — I go abroad, I have a tumultuous time. That transitioned to Boren, and I wondered, ‘Can I do the international shebang again?’”
She had to come at it from a different attitude.
你不是我的菜.
That’s Jade Umstead’s favorite Chinese expression. It means, “You’re not my cup of tea.”
That’s an indirect way to say, “I don’t like it,” and Jade has discovered in her travels abroad there is plenty that she doesn’t like.
She’s prioritizing stability, learning to let go, and now with Rangel, which funds two years of grad school, offers two internships and asks for a five-year commitment to foreign service, having these fellowships rounds out her resumé in a way that one co-op couldn’t.
She completed her degree while abroad in Taiwan, so when she returned, she went to live with her sister in Maryland before starting a Congressional internship. She’ll then head to Johns Hopkins for grad school.
