Andrew Watrous (Jackson Institute for Global Affairs) spent the summer of 2016 in Washington, DC, as a Harold W. Rosenthal Fellow in International Relations. He was one of 30 students nationwide selected for the program, which was established in 1977 in memory of a Congressional staffer who was the victim of international terrorism while on official duty.

Watrous worked in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of International Monetary Policy, where he was responsible for a portfolio of countries and policy areas. While working there, he contributed to a policy speech delivered by senior leadership, wrote and cleared several internal memos, and authored a report to Congress.

“I was lucky to have the opportunity to work with colleagues from a variety of Treasury’s offices that deal with international affairs,” he says. “I became very familiar with International Monetary Fund methodology and analysis. My work was wide-ranging. On a typical day I might be learning about (for example) the U.S. Government’s latest thinking on the international financial architecture or the process of formulating multilateral policy communiqués.”

His summer experience enhanced his education in many ways. “While reading International Monetary Fund reports sharpened my understanding of the balance of payments or debt sustainability analytics, working at Treasury also taught me broader process-oriented skills, like how to initiate and shape policy conversations by carefully framing policy memos.”

Born and raised in New Jersey, Watrous graduated from Princeton University with a major in Public and International Affairs. After college, he lived in Morocco and Egypt for three years, conducting political science research on a Fulbright grant and studying Arabic. He then worked in the private sector in Washington for three years, focused on North African trade policy and political/economic analysis before coming to Yale in 2015.