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PPIA Fellows/Alumni Profile

Impact of PPIA Program:

Before I attended the PPIA summer institute at Michigan, I was only focused on international relations and foreign policy. While I ultimately chose a career in foreign affairs, the public policy skills that I learned at Michigan have been invaluable. Some of the other PPIA fellows have been friends, colleagues, and contacts since the day we finished the program. And I have met a number of other PPIA alumni who I have had an instant connection with because of the program. PPIA helped me to grow, mature, and think in ways that I had not considered before. And I was also excited to be with a group of high-achieving, impressive, and motivated minority students who all had ambitious goals and a drive to succeed in life.

Biography:

Zaid A. Zaid is a rising second-year student at Columbia Law School where he is a Richard Paul Richman Fellow and on the staff of the Columbia Law Review. Zaid is currently working in the Office of the Legal Adviser on issues related to NAFTA and the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. On leave from the U.S. Department of State while pursuing his legal studies during the school year, Zaid is a Foreign Service Officer who served in Baghdad as the liaison between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council and as an officer in the Political Section of the U.S. Embassy immediately before starting law school. Prior to his tour in Baghdad, he served at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, first as Staff Assistant to Ambassador John D. Negroponte and then as the U.S. Coordinator for the United Nations General Assembly. Immediately before his time in New York, Zaid was the Staff Assistant to then Ambassador David Welch at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. A political officer, he was the first Junior Officer at the Department of State to study a difficult language at an overseas school. He has a had tour in Tunisia, and short, temporary duty assignments at the U.S. embassies in Syria and Jordan. He is the recipient of a Meritorious Honor Award at the Department of State and a Service Citation from the Coalition Provisional Authority. Zaid graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1997, and from the Fletcher School of Law Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1999. He was a Woodrow Wilson Foreign Affairs Fellow at both Georgetown and the Fletcher School, and he was also a Dorothy Danforth-Compton Fellow at the Fletcher School. A native of Maryland, Zaid has traveled extensively in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. He speaks Arabic.

Awards and Memberships:

Woodrow Wilson Foreign Affairs Fellow
Dorothy Danforth-Compton Fellow
Richard Paul Richman Fellow
Metropolitan Black Bar Association Scholarship

Advice and/or Recommendations:

Work hard, but play hard. Be ambitious, but be nice. Find a mentor who you can learn from and one who is willing to be a resource for you. If you don't like what you are doing, don't be afraid to change course.

Contact Information: zaidazaid@gmail.com