Syracuse Sun

International travel and a desire to help others have fueled an interest in public service careers for Maxwell School graduate students Julia Liebell-McLean and Mael-Sanh Perrier. Liebell-McLean spent 18 months living in Saint-Louis, Senegal, teaching English as a Fulbright scholar and freelance instructor. Perrier’s experiences include an internship in France, a deployment to Haiti with a humanitarian organization, and a month teaching French and English in Vietnam.

Perrier and Liebell-McLean are pursuing dual master’s degrees in public administration and international relations and are the Maxwell School’s latest recipients of Robertson Foundation for Government fellowships.

Robertson awards are among the most generous available to professional graduate students at the Maxwell School, covering full tuition for two years of study, a living stipend, health insurance, and assistance in finding a summer internship. In exchange, fellows agree to work in the U.S. federal government for three of the first seven years following graduation. Since the program began in 2010, it has funded 39 students, including Liebell-McLean and Perrier.

Julia Liebell-McLean

From New Jersey, Liebell-McLean graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in culture and politics, along with minors in French and francophone studies and African studies. While pursuing her degree, she interned remotely with the Office of Central Africa, part of the Bureau of African Affairs at the U.S. State Department. She drafted activity reports and biographies for foreign dignitaries and helped plan trips for senior diplomats.

That experience, along with nine months spent in Senegal in 2022, furthered an interest in international affairs that Liebell-McLean held since childhood. Growing up in a town with a large first-generation population exposed her to diverse backgrounds from an early age.

“I was sort of jealous of my friends who got to travel abroad to visit family, and it made me curious to live outside the U.S. and become familiar with other cultures and nations,” says Liebell-McLean.

Liebell-McLean looks forward to combining classroom instruction with experiential learning opportunities to develop skills needed for her career. She is especially interested in diplomacy, security studies, the francophone world, West Africa, and Central Africa. She hopes to work for the U.S. State Department as a foreign service officer.

“I was raised with the Jewish value of tikkun olam or ‘mend the world,’ so I think those experiences helped instill the idea of service as well,” she says.

Mael-Sanh Perrier

Perrier was born in the United Kingdom but raised in New York City. After high school, he took a gap year to travel; besides France and Vietnam, he visited China to study martial arts. He then attended Georgia Institute of Technology where he spent three years in the Army ROTC program. He interned with the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations and worked as a strategic partnerships intern for Atlanta city.

Perrier paused his academic pursuits for one year to join Americorps as a full-time teacher’s assistant at a youth mental health facility's education department. He became a therapeutic drumming instructor there while also joining Team Rubicon which deployed him to Haiti after an earthquake hit there in 2021.

He returned to college in August 2022 earning his bachelor’s degree by December 2023 majoring materials science & engineering while minoring Middle Eastern & North African studies . His aspiration lies within homeland security aiming towards helping underprivileged communities build emergency management capabilities into their infrastructure .

“I’m naturalized immigrant wanting give back this country serve our people thanks all opportunities I’ve had,” says Perrier.

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