State Department Summer

A facility with Portuguese helped Anne Huber ’14 land an internship at the U.S. embassy in Lisbon.

While some of her peers were spending their summers lying on the beach or flipping burgers, Anne Huber ’14 (Bloomington, Minn.) found a more exotic occupation: working at the U.S. embassy in Lisbon, Portugal.

It was no fluke that Huber ended up in Portugal. She’d spent the year following her high school graduation as a Rotary Youth Exchange student in Arapongas, Brazil, where she learned to speak Portuguese. A semester of an advanced conversation and grammar class at Mac, combined with a summer language program at the University of Massachusetts, had honed her skills.

That certainly helped her land the state department posting. “One of the main things they look for in summer interns is facility in a second language,” says Huber. “They don’t want to have to worry about you adjusting while you’re abroad.”

The international studies and Hispanic studies major discovered the opportunity while looking around online. “Google searches can do wonders,” Huber laughs. Because she found the information in late November of her freshman year, just a few weeks past the deadline, she applied as a sophomore.

One lengthy online application, one phone interview, and one 127-page security clearance later and Huber was on a plane to Lisbon, where she was lucky enough to secure a room in an embassy-owned apartment.

Once there she “did a little bit of everything” for the Office of Public Affairs, including background research for the ambassador’s speeches and postings on the embassy’s Facebook page, which were designed to show what life was like in Lisbon for a young American. The latter assignment “really forced me to get out and learn the city,” says Huber. “I don’t think I ever understood a city’s layout so well before.”

Toward summer’s end she worked on a project called the Embassy Intern Exchange, in which she connected with interns at other embassies and arranged networking events as well as tours. “It was fascinating to see how small the Norwegian embassy was,” she says, adding that the U.S. embassy in Lisbon is huge, one of the largest in town with a staff of more than a hundred.

Huber, who will spend next semester in Seville, Spain, on a CIEE study abroad program, shared her state department internship experience with fellow Mac students at an Oct. 9 seminar.

After her summer at the embassy, says Huber, “the foreign service is a really interesting career option for me.” The internship gave her a prime opportunity to talk with people about why they joined the foreign service, she says, adding that embassy staff members come from every possible profession. “There’s no rule about who does it.”

As for Portugal itself, says Huber, “I had no idea what to expect but I fell in love with it—and have every intention of going back.”