By Jamie Hendrickson (MA, REEES)
We at REEEC would like to highlight Lucy Pakhnyuk, a REEES alumna and a former FLAS Fellow in Ukrainian. Lucy earned both her B.A. in Political Science and REEES in 2015, and her M.A. in REEES in 2018 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. While at Illinois, she also served as a Program Associate at REEEC from 2017-2018.
As a first-generation Ukrainian-American, Lucy has been drawn to the REEE region from an early age. A Russian heritage speaker, she studied Ukrainian as a FLAS fellow to connect both to her “culture and identity” and her deep interest in “politics, especially comparative politics and international relations.” This interest in politics stems from a fascination she’s had with the Orange Revolution in Ukraine since 2004. Though she was only 11 years old at the time, she recalls “feeling a deep sense of awe and admiration for the power of collective political action that Ukraine had demonstrated to the world.” When she came to study at Illinois as an undergraduate, she was originally a Political Science and Slavic Literatures & Languages double major, but she ended up switching her second major to REEES because she felt that the “the interdisciplinary nature was more compatible with Political Science.” This appreciation of the interdisciplinarity of REEES eventually led her to starting the REEES M.A. program in 2016.
After earning her REEES M.A. in 2018, Lucy began working at Eurasia Foundation (EF), a nonprofit international development organization based in Washington, D.C. EF implements U.S. government-funded programs in the democracy, human rights, and governance technical sector across the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and China. Starting there as an Administrative Coordinator in 2019, Lucy has very recently worked her way up to serving as a Senior Business Development Associate. In her role at EF, she supports “all aspects of the proposal development process to secure additional funding for new and existing programming. As Senior Business Development Associate, I have contributed to several successful USAID and Department of State proposals for a diverse range of projects across various technical and geographic areas, including Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Balkans.” A large part of Lucy’s daily work of proposal-writing now includes researching and writing—two skills that she “really got to hone during my time at REEEC.”
Further crediting her job competence in these areas to the education she received from her REEES B.A. and M.A. degrees, Lucy believes that her time at Illinois “has played an instrumental role in my professional success and the quality of work I’m able to produce.” She believes that “the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of REEES has helped me adapt to the high-paced and ever-changing work that I do at EF. When you’re writing proposals, you have to quickly become an expert in the topic you’re writing about, whether it’s educational exchange programs in the Arctic or anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.” As a REEES BA and MA student, she completed coursework “across a diverse range of disciplines, which has helped me become an agile researcher. At the same time, I developed in-depth regional knowledge and language skills, which have definitely helped in my work at EF, since so many of our programs are based in the former Soviet Union. And of course, FLAS certainly enriched the quality and breadth of my education, because I was able to devote enough time to my coursework and Ukrainian language studies.”
When asked for any kind of advice that she might have for prospective REEES students interested in the medley of career options available for this region, Lucy gave her perspective: “I think that a degree in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies can prepare someone for a number of different paths, from academia to international development to the foreign service. It’s important for people to keep an open mind about what their path will look like post-graduation. When I was an MA student, I didn’t know that I would end up living in D.C. and working in international development, but that’s where I’ve ended up and I’ve found that I really enjoy this line of work. Another piece of advice I would offer,” she concluded, “is to not be afraid to ask for help and reach out to people! Ask your professors, friends, and colleagues to look over your resume and job applications. Connect with and message people who have the job you want on LinkedIn—seriously! People are a lot more receptive to these sorts of things than you’d think.”
Lucy now lives in Washington, D.C., and in her spare time enjoys reading sci-fi and fantasy novels and exploring national parks and museums. In the fall of 2019, her article titled “Foreign Agents and Gay Propaganda: Russian LGBT Rights Activism Under Pressure,” that stemmed from the Major Research Paper she completed for the REEES M.A. degree, was published in Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization. We at REEEC wholeheartedly congratulate Lucy on her professional success and hope to see even better things for her in the future.
For more information about Lucy, please see here for her LinkedIn. Jamie Hendrickson, the author of this profile, just earned her M.A. in REEES from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.