Major Fellowship Activities: Sturm worked on the Southwest Asia Regional Security Project as an assistant to Ellen Laipson, the President and CEO of the Stimson Center. Her primary responsibilities were to provide research support to Laipson and the other Southwest Asia staff. She served as the coordinator for the editing of the book Iraq and America: Choices and Consequences. She attended and took notes at the brainstorming and paper review conferences, provided commentary to her supervisor on the book’s content, and corresponded directly with authors as they submitted their chapters.
She researched and authored “Edging Towards Reform: Kuwait’s Security Sector” and “The Challenge of Holding Iraq Together” for the Stimson Center’s website. She also was a contributing writer and editor for a joint Army-Stimson report “Security Sector Reform in the Gulf,” a publication for the U.S. Army’s Eisenhower National Security Series. In the course of that project she researched and developed an Appendix profiling the militaries of Gulf nations. She reviewed and corrected publications in-house, and provided significant research and publications support to various projects including “Lessons from India: Confronting the Sociological Causes of Terrorism,” “Hurricane Katrina: Managing Multi-Level Complexities;” and “The United Nations in 2015: Some Alternative Futures.” She wrote brief summaries of Stimson’s programs and their impact on various public and private activities for online publication. Additionally, she served as an initial point of contact with subject matter experts, Ambassadors, diplomats, civil servants, intelligence, and military officials in conjunction with conferences, events, and projects.
She helped plan and organize several conferences, including “Iraq and America: Choices and Consequences Workshop 1,” “Security Sector Reform in the Gulf,” “Iraq and America: Choices and Consequences (Workshop 2),” “The United Nations in 2015 (whose participants included staff from the National Intelligence Council and the U.S. State Department),” and “Hurricane Katrina, Managing Multi-level Complexities,” the goal of which was to apply lessons learned from the Katrina disaster to a possible terrorist attack..
Current Activities: Sturm will begin her second year at an M.A. program in Security Studies at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service with a concentration in terrorism and substate violence in fall 2009. She is a recipient of the Truman Scholarship, which funds graduate study for people interested in careers in public service. She is also working part-time as a research assistant for Dr. Bruce Hoffman, a professor in the Security Studies Program. She was previously a Public Affairs Specialist with the U.S. Army Garrison Darmstadt, U.S. Army Europe. She wrote articles and news stories for the Army’s website. While serving at USAG Darmstadt, she was awarded the Achievement Medal for Civilian Service, as well as 1st Place for Contribution by a Stringer (Writer) in the IMCOM-Europe Keith L. Ware Journalism Award (2007).