Raina Davis: Reflections at Graduation

Davis. a 2020 Harvard Kennedy School graduate, was a Belfer International and Global Affairs Student Fellow

Raina Davis graduated in May 2020 from Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) with a Master in Public Policy. A Belfer International and Global Affairs Student Fellow while at HKS, she worked previously as a research coordinator at Columbia University in the Office of Global Centers and Global Development. For two years she worked at Columbia’s Global Center in Amman, Jordan, conducting research trips in Tunisia and traveling throughout the Middle East. She also has a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University.  

Davis’s areas of study include American foreign policy, cyber security, and public-private cooperation on issues of national security. Davis says the class that influenced her the most at HKS was Eric Rosenbach’s Cyber and Info Ops: War, Peace and the Space Between. “This course introduced me to the fascinating area of national security and technology, which become my intellectual focus over the next two years,” says Davis.  “The course also introduced me to an extraordinary cohort of individuals, who became some of my closest friends at the Kennedy School.” 

Davis is proud of the research she participated in while at the Belfer Center. She credits her work in the Middle East as the reason she earned the fellowship, but is grateful that the fellowship allowed her to explore a multitude of new topics. One of these topics led to co-authoring a paper about disinformation in Taiwan and South Korea after a field trip with two other BIGA fellows to the region. 

The BIGA fellowship “made my HKS experience,”  Davis says.  “I felt like I had a home at the Kennedy School and a support system behind my intellectual pursuits.”  She gives special thanks to Aditi Kumar, Eric Rosenbach, Rose Garcia, Karen Ejiofor, “and everyone else who supported the BIGA fellowship!” 

Davis's advice for future Kennedy students: “Split your time between classes, events, and extracurriculars (RA positions, PICs, etc). Choose classes by the professor, not the topic (that’s what the core is for!).” 

On a personal note, Davis says it was Rosenbach who introduced her to her wedding planner, something that “definitely had an impact!”  Also, she says, by starting her new job early - as Director of Research & Analysis at the National Security Commission on AI - she was able to live with her husband for the first months of their marriage—“a strange insertion of normalcy in a pandemic that otherwise has turned lives upside-down.”