Launched in January 2018, the 24 members of the Elliott School’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion are composed of students, faculty, and staff. The council’s purpose is to advise the school’s leadership on specific activities and initiatives to implement related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We recently caught up with Gillian Villarroel, a first-year student pursuing a major in International Affairs. As the council’s youngest member, we asked what inspired her to get involved.

Q. How did you hear about the diversity and inclusion council at the Elliott School?
In high school, knowing that GW is a Predominantly White Institution (PWI), my equity and excellence counselor advised me to seek opportunities where I could connect with the multicultural community in college. As an Elliott School student, I signed up for the Diversity and Inclusion Newsletter. I received the newsletter promoting the council and applied!

Q. What made you want to be a part of it?
I wanted to be a member of the council because I have a lot of passion and drive for the goals of the diversity action plan. I wanted to bring my values of hard work, confidence, and ambition to my school community. I grew up living in two worlds and learned how to embrace my Bolivian heritage within my American lifestyle. I felt my background could help to inform discussions and programming. I was very excited when I received my acceptance email!

Q. Have you had previous experiences either negative or positive that make the issue of diversity and inclusion important to you?
Growing up my life was surrounded by the realities of diversity and inclusion. Often, I felt like an outsider in school trying to find a community where I could feel a true sense of belonging. As a minority student, it seemed like a negative thing at first, but as I grew, I learned to love my culture. I was able to perceive things through the lens of my heritage that perhaps my peers weren’t able to. 

In my experience as an intern in my county’s school and community relations office, I did a lot of event planning. I gained experience with voicing my opinions. I have participated in different advocacy days and programs, both in Washington D.C. and Virginia, and I have found a true passion for advocacy.

Q. What are your personal priorities to accomplish as part of the council?
Sometimes, finding opportunities can be a struggle because I don’t see myself reflected in the programs I wish to participate in. A personal priority of mine is to continue to support the diversity and inclusion initiatives at Elliott by providing outreach to underrepresented students who feel the same way. Being in the U.S. capital, there is so much opportunity, but as minorities, it can be a struggle to feel you are capable enough to participate. I want to be able to provide minority students with confidence. I envision in doing this, that Elliott not only becomes more diverse, but our entire community benefits. 

Q. What, if anything, has the council done thus far that makes you feel it is making a difference at GW?
The council has truly been such a blessing, I look forward to going to every meeting. I feel that I am able to voice my opinion in an open space where I can be heard. The council currently has many working groups meeting in order to achieve goals and initiatives that are needed in the community. I am fortunate enough to be a student co-lead for the working group on student retention and recruitment. Good things take time, but I will feel that the council’s work has made a difference at GW.

More about Gillian Villarroel
Gillian is the first-year class representative for the Elliott School Council on Diversity and Inclusion as well as a Student Co-lead for the student recruitment and retainment working group. Gillian is a part of multiple student organizations on campus, including the Organization of Latin American Students (OLAS) where she is a freshman representative, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) where she is a marketing director, and IGNITE where she serves as a freshman representative. She is a member of the Dean’s Council for Multicultural Recruitment, a part-time barista at a coffee shop, and serves as an AmeriCorp member for Jumpstart. Gillian enjoys advocating for those in her community, reading, traveling, and a good cup of coffee!

Has the disruption in your life and school caused by the Covid-19 pandemic had an effect on your career goals? 

If the pandemic has taught me anything, it’s that my circumstances and the world around me are capable of drastically changing without warning. Thus, I must spend my time intentionally and treat the present moment as one that could shape my future — this doesn’t have to wait until graduation to start happening. I would love to work as a public diplomacy officer in the U.S. Foreign Service, so the disruption has allowed me to become anchored in studying for the Foreign Service Officer Test. The feeling of not doing anything productive right now has also reinforced the idea that as long as I am involved in things I care deeply about —  human rights, public diplomacy, international education, gender based violence prevention, and writing —  I am going to be more than happy.

Assuming the GW campus is open in the fall for students to return, what things do you imagine will be different?

I imagine that a collective sense of gratitude for DC will be present like never before. I also foresee professor-student relations becoming a lot closer; I’ve been very lucky to have the professors I do during the online continuity period, and there is such a sense of “missing each other.” I think that will carry on into the fall.

Can you name one negative and one positive from your experience ?

I am glad GW is keeping us safe, and as an incoming RA for the 2020-21 school year, I know that the residential administrative team has a very challenging job right now! However, I could only bring home one suitcase! I am working this summer and have no access to my professional clothing, which has been something that actively stresses me out.  On the positive end, I have many things to be grateful for! I would like to especially thank Elliott’s own Profesor Qazi; she has been a tremendous source of comfort, encouragement, and light in this stressful time. Professor Qazi has struck the right balance between giving students flexibility and compassion while also challenging us in all the right ways. I would not feel as prepared or excited for my future had I not been in Professor Qazi’s class during the online period!  Another positive is that the Writing Center has pretty much seamlessly transitioned to an online platform! I work as a consultant there, where I hold individual appointments, virtual cafes, and a virtual writing support group. I love how passionate and driven GW students remain even though the world feels as though it is falling apart. The Writing Center has been a home to so many, and getting to see my clients and my peers has been one of the happiest parts of lockdown for me. 

Your college years are some of the most socially active years of your life. How has self-isolation been for you and your friends? 

While on some days, I do feel as though I am “missing out” on the college experience I had envisioned for myself, I remind myself that the entire world is missing out on things right now. Every person I’ve kept in contact with is missing out on things they had planned for themselves, and in a way this collective grief has made it a bit easier. I am back in my hometown of Oxford, Michigan, a rural community an hour north of Detroit (former gravel capital of the world!). My friends and I “get together” by reliving college memories through videos and memory journals. When The Strokes released their new album, I hosted a virtual listening party. In Professor Rollberg’s Russian Literature course (one of the best classes I have ever had the privilege of taking!) each week we get to discuss some amazing works, and I’ve really appreciated this time of “togetherness” with such an amazing class. 

Have you worked or begun a project outside of school that you might not have otherwise?

I have been doing a lot of writing! Thanks to GW’s Professor Annie Liontas, I’ve been able to look at this pandemic narratively. She’s encouraged me to keep writing through this experience and it’s definitely helped me cope with everything this pandemic has caused. Her kindness and talent has definitely made a WORLD of difference to me during this time!  Another passion-project of mine is my second-grade pen pals. My mother is a second-grade teacher, and so for the last few years I have been pen pals with her students. I think I have upwards of 90 at this point! Her current class got their school year cut short due to the virus, and keeping correspondence with them has brought me infinite joy throughout this time, truly. They are living through something so paramount at such a young age, and we are able to be there for each other in a lot of different ways.  One of my favorite museums is DC’s National Postal Museum, naturally! On the outside of the building there is an engraving: “Messenger of sympathy and love / servant of parted friends / consoler of the lonely / bond of the scattered family / enlarger of the common life.”  I’ve been thinking a lot about this message during GW’s online period 

Is there anything else that you would like to add?

I just want to give a big thank you to my professors right now, who have tremendously succeeded in making the online continuity period as meaningful as it could be and more. GW students are all so resilient and unique, and while I do feel uncertain, I certainly don’t feel alone. 

Faith Caldwell, ESIA BA ’71, was a college sophomore in Pennsylvania studying to be a foreign service officer, but had always wanted to come to Washington. When two friends told her they were attending the George Washington University in the fall, one as a transfer and the other as a graduate student, they asked, “Why don’t you come with us?”

So she did.

“I went down with them on a visit trip and turned right around and applied,” says the former Elliott School Board of Advisors member. GW accepted all of her credits, so Caldwell came in as a junior.

“The School of International Affairs was very small at that time,” she recalls. “It was strictly a two-year program for juniors and seniors, and I just dropped right in. The classes were engaging, the students were all very single-minded, and I made friends in the dorm. It was just a great, great transfer experience.”

After graduation, Caldwell married and spent a year with her husband in West Berlin. They then moved to upstate New York, and Caldwell earned a master’s degree in public administration with a specialization in judicial administration from NYU. While in the program, she landed an internship with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. “I look back on that now, and it turned my career around.”

Caldwell’s experience had such a profound effect on her life that she established the Caldwell Endowment for Study Abroad at her alma mater. Funded by a bequest intention in her will, the gift will provide funding for students to defray costs of internships and study abroad experiences.

In addition to establishing this endowment, Caldwell offers generous and ongoing support to GW’s Knowledge in Action Career Internship Fund (KACIF). She designates these annual gifts to Elliott School students. 

“I want to be able to support the students,” she says, “so when I found the Knowledge in Action Fund to support internships, I was really pleased because that’s right where I want to be. It’s not hard for me to make those gifts because I know they’re supporting a great cause.” 

The study abroad focus is especially important for Elliott School students, as Caldwell explains.

“If we’re going to be international relations specialists, I think we need to be able to see the world from a different perspective,” Caldwell says. “And the only way we can do that is by going somewhere else. Whether it’s for a short term or a semester or a year abroad, that exposure to a different lifestyle, a different perspective, a different view of the U.S., is so important, because it helps us balance our viewpoint of the world.”

On March 16th, when President LeBlanc announced GW would extend the virtual learning period through the end of the spring semester and cancel all on-campus events for the rest of the academic year, it seemed the Elliott School’s vibrant events scene would have to go on hiatus. 

Indeed, 17 live events between March 16 and April 4 were cancelled or postponed. 

Then, as students and faculty transitioned to an exclusively online learning platform, so too did the Elliott School’s signature events.

Like our fellow universities around the world, we leveraged the internet to offer programs on a broad range of topics  — from The End of Authority: Politics in a Post-Truth Age with Ray Suarez to Promoting Ethics and Leadership in International Organizations with Jorge Dajani, the Chief Ethics Officer of the World Bank Group. 

While these programs offered perspective on continuing global themes, we also zeroed in on the many ways the pandemic is affecting people and organizations around the world. Through the Elliott Experts Weigh In series, our faculty and alumni offered insight into such topics as the European response, financial markets in crisis, transatlantic relations, and the global economic system. And the Elliott School Diversity and Inclusion team ran several webinars, including Anti-Asian Racism and Strategies for Inclusion and Microaggressions: Toxic Rain in Educational Institutions, to name just a few. 

We recorded many of these programs, and you can view them via the Elliott School’s YouTube channel. While we hope to soon return to live programming, for now, it’s nice to know you can still experience opportunities to hear expert opinions from the comfort of home.