Lydia Hamilton serves as Director of Program and Staff Development in the Meridian Center for Global Leadership. She also leads the center’s journalism and media programs, which include the Central Asian Media Exchange program (CAMEX) and the Foreign Press Centers (FPC) programs. She first joined Meridian International Center in December 2018 as a Program Officer.

Lydia previously worked at the Institute of International Education (IIE) developing cross-organization applications and selection procedures and as a Program Officer for the Department of Defense-sponsored critical language programs. Prior to this, she worked as a Program Manager at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and served as Executive Director of the Association for the Study of Nationalities.

Lydia holds a Bachelor of Arts in Slavic Studies from Brown University and a Master of Arts in Regional Studies: Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe from Columbia University. Lydia was awarded an Alfa Fellowship in 2014 to support a year of professional experience in Moscow, Russia, where she worked on international student recruitment and partnership development at the Higher School of Economics. She speaks Russian.