Rebekah Montgomery is already an accomplished leader. For 21 years, she was an officer in the U.S. Air Force.

She was a transport pilot working with coalition partners across Africa, Europe, and much of the Pacific doing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. She was also involved in operations, and took on some challenging assignments. 

Now retired from the Air Force, Montgomery is starting a new career. She wants to help people who are new to local communities to thrive despite complex challenges, and before humanitarian situations occur.

It's still early in her career pivot, but she knows that she wants to focus on immigrants and refugees. She wants to foster cooperation between newcomers and existing community members. She wants them to bring out the best in each other and themselves to build better communities. It's a high aspiration and a complex one.

To prepare for that career change, she entered the Master of Development Practice (MDP) program, offered by the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, in 2023. It will teach her to adapt her already considerable abilities to global development in non-military situations. It will expose her to new potential roles where she might do the kind of work she dreams of doing.

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Photo: Bruce Silcox