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Ironically, an experience at the John F. Kennedy School in Enfield, Connecticut led Danielle Lussier to the John F. Kennedy School in Cambridge. As a student at Enfield's Kennedy Middle School in 1990, Lussier had the opportunity to take part in a class field trip to the Soviet Union. It was just months before the final collapse, and Lussier was struck by the nation's contrasts-the lack of visible poverty and the openness of Russian people alongside empty food shelves and lack of social vibrancy. "There was an enormous similarity and disparity with my own understanding of communism and multi-cultural relations," she says. The trip started her on a career as an expert in Russian affairs.