Class of 2020 First-Year Fellow: Taylor Lane '20

Taylor Lane '20 hails from Dunn Loring, Virginia and graduated from George C. Marshall High School with an IB Diploma with academic distinction. She has received numerous awards for her community service work, including the Presidential Service Award, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Girl Scout Gold Award. Her passion for global health issues has taken her volunteer work to Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and, most recently, Swaziland. Taylor has also interned on Capitol Hill and studied abroad at the University of Salamanca in Spain.

At Dartmouth, Taylor is pursuing a major in Government with a minor in Public Policy. She is a member of the Great Issues Scholars Program through the Dickey Center and the Dartmouth Sing Dynasty acappella group.

As a Class of 2020 First-Year Fellow, Taylor interned at the Congressional Research Service: Defense and Trade Division (CRS) under the mentorship of Mary Beth Nikitin ’96. As a research assistant, Taylor’s job entailed supporting the analysts in the defense policy section of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade division in CRS. She helped them prepare them for meetings with visiting experts and congressional clients by researching the office or organization, looking at the questions the visitor sent in advance of the meeting, and researching any information related to these questions that the analysts might need. Additionally, Taylor assisted with the writing of reports covering North Korea’s missile tests, the Conference on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the Global Health Security Agenda, and the Global Health Security Initiative.

According to Taylor, one of the most rewarding parts of her fellowship was becoming more confident in her professional pursuits. “Prior to this internship at CRS, I knew I wanted to study international relations. However, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to study political economy issues or defense issues. Working at CRS, I came to realize my passion for defense policy issues, specifically nonproliferation issues. At Dartmouth, I plan to take more classes in the Government department geared towards the study of nonproliferation so I can gain even more knowledge about these issues. I now aspire to attend graduate school so I can study these issues at the depth of the analysts I had the privilege of working with this summer. Additionally, working at CRS further confirmed for me my desire to work for the federal government. I loved getting to see the impact my work made on policy makers and how it helped them make the most educated decisions possible.”