Alison McDonald serves as a Program Officer for the IVLP Collaborative Services team in the Meridian Center for Global Leadership. She first joined the GlobalConnect team as a Program Coordinator in September 2018 and more recently worked on the Central and Eastern Europe Journalist Fellowship program as well as the Pan Africa Youth Leadership Program. Alison previously coordinated exchange programs spanning a variety of subjects and regions, including the 2019 U.S. Congress-Republic of Korea National Assembly Exchange program, two cohorts of the Afghan Diplomat Training program, and numerous other programs for U.S. Embassies abroad. For the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of East Asian & Pacific Affairs, she has supported capacity-building programming throughout the region, including in-country administration of technical workshops in Bangkok, Thailand, and Hanoi, Vietnam focused on energy infrastructure, and coordinated a virtual conference for Mekong and other Asia Pacific countries on transboundary resource governance with attendees from government, academia, and the private sector. Before joining Meridian, Alison worked with the Smithsonian’s Office of International Relations, supporting their public diplomacy and visiting fellowship and internship programs, and worked as a Corporate English Language Trainer in Madrid. Alison holds a Master of International Relations from the University of Edinburgh and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Spanish from the University of Michigan. She speaks Spanish and some Russian.