DiplomacyRISE

Launched in 2021, Meridian’s DiplomacyRISE equips students and early-career professionals to become the next generation of American leaders abroad by providing them with practical training in the skills of modern diplomacy. This ranges from negotiation, protocol, cross-cultural communication, and multilateral practice — all vital skills to modern diplomacy.

What sets the program apart is being in the room where open diplomacy happens. Capitalizing on our network with the Washington's resident diplomatic corps and the International Visitor Leadership Program, Meridian empowers fellows to learn diplomacy not only from American officers but from foreign diplomats posted to Washington and emerging leaders visiting from abroad. How better to learn diplomacy than from those who live it, both here and abroad.

Our suite of programs is organized in two pillars.

• International Affairs Career Pathways: One of the biggest barriers to getting into diplomatic career is access and opportunity. This program creates pathways for students to explore and thrive the field of in international affairs. Meridian has brought fellows from across the country — 12 states and 18 institutions so far, a third of them community colleges — to learn how the Foreign Service actually works from the ambassadors and officers who have served in it.
• Diplomatic Skills Training: Equipping leaders from critical sectors — science, technology, innovation, the private sector, and state and local government — with the diplomatic insight, networks, and skills to solve global challenges. Since 2022, four consecutive cohorts have come to Meridian to learn what their technical expertise looks like at a negotiating table, and 92% of 2025 participants left more interested in a diplomacy career than when they arrived. The impact is real.

Past programs

• From the summer of 2022 through 2025, Meridian partnered with the National Science Policy Network on a Diplomatic Skills Training for Emerging Scientists course, giving scientists, physicians, and engineers interested in international practice the soft skills that are central to diplomacy. Across four cohorts, PhD candidates and early-career scientists trained in negotiation, protocol, and multilateral diplomacy, and heard from practitioners at the State Department, the National Academy of Sciences, the British Embassy's Science & Technology Network, and Moderna.
• In summer 2023, Meridian offered a paid summer enrichment and mentorship program in an effort to expand access to global education and international affairs careers to community college, transfer, and non-traditional students. The Community College Global Affairs Fellowship was held in partnership with Global Community College Transfers and Community Colleges for International Development through the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
• In the summers of 2024 and 2025, Meridian hosted the first two cohorts of the Meridian-Cox Foreign Service Fellowship for Emerging Leaders, a fully funded enrichment and training program seeking to expand awareness of Foreign Service careers to students from across the United States. Underwritten by the Una Chapman Cox Foundation in collaboration with Community Colleges for International Development, the fellowship took students inside the federal foreign affairs agencies — State, Commerce, the Peace Corps — and into embassies in Washington.

DiplomacyRISE is currently directed by Dr. Elizabeth M. H. Newbury, Senior Director at Meridian in the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Space. For more information about DiplomacyRISE, please email diplomacyRISE@meridian.org.

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