Lauren H. Lovelace participated in the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) program at Tufts University under the guidance of Director (and Mentor Extraordinaire) Sherman Teichman (1990-92). This EPIIC experience redirected her academic trajectory and inspired her professional life in public service.
Lauren is a career Foreign Service Officer and currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, focusing the Indo-Pacific region. Her previous diplomatic assignments include Public Affairs Officer (PAO) in Chennai, India; Director of the Transatlantic Diplomatic Fellowship program; PAO Dublin, Ireland; Executive Director of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council at Georgetown University; PAO and Acting Deputy Chief of Mission, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Assistant Information Officer, Cairo, Egypt; Political Officer and Staff Assistant, New Delhi, India; Vice Consul, Mumbai, India; Special Assistant on UN Reform at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York; and speechwriter to the Secretary of State and Bureau of European Affairs leadership on transatlantic security. Lauren previously worked as an advisor to the Chancellor of the New York City Board of Education on school design and worked to develop schools for underserved communities in Harlem and Newark at the not-for-profit The Learning Project.
Lauren is a graduate of Tufts University (BA94), the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy (MALD95), and the University of Kentucky (MPA98). She is the recipient of the State Department's Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards. She was a Transatlantic Diplomatic Fellow to the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and a National Security Education Program/Boren Fellow in St. Petersburg, Russia. She is the Founder of the Edward M. Kennedy Center for Public Service and the Arts in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Lauren speaks French, Arabic, and Russian. She is a native of Kentucky.
Lauren provided one of the most compelling moments I can remember of my thirty plus years at the helm of the Institute. In our "Confronting Political and Social Evil " symposium of 1991, Lauren was a first-year student. She magnificently played the harp to accompany former prisoner of conscience Alicia Partnoy's reading her poignant and powerful poetry, which was introduced by Majorie Agosín. It took but several hours of a drive back and forth to Wellesley to meet with Marjorie for me to understand and witness the transformation of what such immersive exposure could mean for Lauren as a student and myself as an educator.
Decades before we explored the future of Russia in EPIIC, she travelled there in 1992 to conduct her prescient research theme — “Economic Growth vs. Environmental Security: The Future of Russia." Then, years later, as a seasoned professional, she accompanied another exemplary alum, Matan Chorev, in a dialogue on US foreign policy with a wonderful friend and ally of the Institute, the Hon. Les Gelb, in the wonderful garden of another friend and generous benefactor of the Institute, Edward Merrin.