Sabbatical Fellowship

Sabbatical Fellowship

The Sabbatical Fellowships is one the Foundation's longest-running programs. Learn More About our Current Fellow cohort and our Past Fellows

Featured Fellow

Sandy Jacobs received her first telescope in 1986 to search for Halley’s Comet in the night sky.  While the Challenger explosion tempered her early interest in space exploration, it reemerged when NASA’s New Horizons mission captured her own children’s imagination.  Sandy then led the development of the Department’s first space diplomacy slate of expert speakers and facilitated U.S. Speaker Programs at diplomatic missions around the world to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. 

During her Cox Fellowship, Sandy looks forward to exploring the work of public and private sector “space ambassadors,” using digital storytelling to augment the contributions of past, present, and future leaders of space exploration and commercialization.  She also looks forward to connecting with educators and university students interested in foreign affairs.

Sandy’s Foreign Service career, which includes assignments in India, Tajikistan, Estonia, Washington, and Uzbekistan, has focused on bridging the gap between public diplomacy and policy advocacy – especially in exchange programs, cybersecurity, and human rights.  She began her career at Citigroup as a Leadership Development Associate and later Assistant Vice President, then answered a personal call to public service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine and a Program and Training Officer at Peace Corps HQ.

Meet Our 2022-2023 Fellows

Leslie Moeller

Leslie Moeller is committed to strengthening the Department of State as an institution for the benefit of U.S. foreign policy and the colleagues who implement it. In an era of increasing globalization and citizen empowerment, there is an enormous amount of cultural, financial, and political exchange occurring at the state and local level outside traditional bilateral and multilateral channels.  The need to bolster subnational ties has taken on even greater importance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through her fellowship, Leslie will examine U.S. municipalities’ foreign outreach and identify concrete steps that our embassies and consulates can take to better facilitate relationships between U.S. cities and their counterparts abroad.  She likewise intends for these recommendations to enable individual Foreign Service officers to foster new connections across the United States. Leslie joined the Foreign Service in 2006 and has participated in several Department-wide and management reform efforts over the course of her career.  Her work with large teams of both U.S. and foreign nationals in crisis and non-crisis situations has shown her both the practical and human impacts of organizational inefficiencies and the successes dedicated colleagues can achieve despite them.  She has served in Washington, D.C., as well as in Mali, Afghanistan, India, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia.

Sandra Jacobs

Sandy Jacobs received her first telescope in 1986 to search for Halley's Comet in the night sky. While the Challenger explosion tempered her early interest in space exploration, it reemerged when NASA's New Horizons mission captured her own children's imagination. Sandy then led the development of the Department's first space diplomacy slate of expert speakers and facilitated U.S. Speaker Programs at diplomatic missions around the world to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. During her Cox Fellowship, Sandy looks forward to exploring the work of public and private sector “space ambassadors,” using digital storytelling to augment the contributions of past, present, and future leaders of space exploration and commercialization. She also looks forward to connecting with educators and university students interested in foreign affairs. Sandy's Foreign Service career, which includes assignments in India, Tajikistan, Estonia, Washington, and Uzbekistan, has focused on bridging the gap between public diplomacy and policy advocacy - especially in exchange programs, cybersecurity, and human rights. She began her career at Citigroup as a Leadership Development Associate and later Assistant Vice President, then answered a personal call to public service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine and a Program and Training Officer at Peace Corps HQ.

Past Fellows

  • Richard L. Jackson, John H. Kelly, Robert Tynes 1981
  • Lionel A. Rosenblatt, John J. Taylor 1982
  • Douglas S. Kinney, Michael Michaud, David Morrison 1983
  • Jo Ann Hardee Collinge, Laurence E. Pope, Robert Immerman 1984
  • Mark Hambley, Luciano Mangiafico, David Sloan 1985
  • Timothy M. Carney, Jeannette P. Dubrow, Raymond F. Smith 1986
  • Manuel Barrera, Larry G. Butcher, Mark A. Tokola 1987
  • David T. Jones, Edmund Van Gilder 1988
  • John M. Evans, Christopher J. La Fleur, Bismark Myrick 1989
  • Peter D. Eicher, Theresa C. Jones 1990
  • Donald C. Johnson, Ronald W. Mortensen 1991
  • Anita S. Booth, David D. Pearce, Donald E. Terpstra 1992
  • Sally V. Slocum, Inez G. Kerr 1993
  • Laura Livingston 1994
  • Soching Tsai 1995
  • Daniel Russell 1996
  • Karen Volker 1997
  • Brian L. Browne 1998
  • Elizabeth Ewing 1999
  • Patricia H. Scroggs, John L. Withers II 2000
  • Kathleen Kavalec, Kirsten Ann Schulz 2001
  • Mark Bezner, Vonda Kimble Delawie 2002
  • Lois A. Cecsarini, Marc D. Koehler 2003
  • Lynne E. Donovan, Bruce P. Kleiner 2004
  • Samuel C. Laeuchli, Karen M. Morrissey 2005
  • Lora Berg 2006
  • John Pommersheim, Ava Rogers 2007
  • Karen Choe, Katelyn Choe 2008
  • Catherine Rodriguez, Howard A. Van Vranken 2009
  • Kelly Adams-Smith, Margot Carrington 2010
  • Kim Dubois, Jennifer Johnson 2011
  • Wendy Barton, Steven Newhouse 2012
  • Aaron Sampson, Maeve Dwyer, Rebecca Ross 2013
  • Louis Fintor, Sherry Zalika Sykes 2014
  • John Espinoza 2015
  • Margaret Diop, Luis Mendez 2016
  • Amy Storrow, Christopher Teal 2017
  • Menaka Nayyar, Arati Shroff 2018
  • Jeremy Beer, Christine DalBello 2019
  • Ann DeLong, Claire Smolik 2020
  • Gillian Apfel, Manju Sadarangani 2021