Divinity School alumnus to prepare for foreign service on Rangel Fellowship

Sean Massa ’18 M.A.R. has won a competitive fellowship to support study for a master’s degree in an area relevant to foreign service.
Sean Massa ’18 M.A.R.

Sean Massa

Sean Massa, who earned a Master of Arts in Religion at the Yale Divinity School in 2018, has been awarded a 2022 Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellowship in a competitive nationwide process.

The fellowship, funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by Howard University, is awarded annually to about 45 accomplished individuals who wish to pursue careers in the Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State. It will support Massa through a two-year master’s program, as well as extensive professional development opportunities, including internships, mentors, and skills training.

As part of the Rangel Program, Massa will intern with a member of Congress on issues related to foreign affairs in the summer of 2022. During the following summer, the U.S. Department of State will send him overseas to intern in a U.S. embassy or consulate to gain hands-on experience in U.S. foreign policy and the work of the Foreign Service. Upon completion of his study, Massa will become a U.S. diplomat in 2024.

Massa, who is from San Jose, California, is of Mexican, Japanese, Native Hawaiian, and Apache heritage. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015 and has studied abroad in Vietnam, South Africa, and Brazil. After graduation, he received a Princeton in Asia fellowship to teach at Atma Jaya University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and later interned with the U.N. Information Centre and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

As a Yale graduate student, he served as the diversity and inclusion chair of the Yale Graduate and Professional School Senate. In 2018, he moved to Hong Kong on a Yale-China internship and volunteered with Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps.

I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for my mentors, who helped me find strength in my mixed identity and discover my passion in life: building bridges of mutual cooperation and understanding that span cultures and nations,” Massa said of his Yale and Penn experiences.

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