Lauren Brackmann will receive a B.A. in International Relations and a minor in News Media and Society from the University of Southern California in December 2018. She is currently interning in Amman, Jordan with The Jordan Times, while studying Arabic as a recipient of the Boren Scholarship.

Lauren is interested in foreign policy in the Middle East and public diplomacy as a tool for countering violent extremism (CVE). She has been involved with CPD since 2016, working as an Events and Programming Intern and Blog Contributor, as well as covering CPD-related events for the USC Annenberg Media Center as a JEDI (Journalism and Emerging Digital Innovation) reporter on the international beat. Prior to joining CPD, Lauren interned at the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations and participated in the U.S. Department of State’s global initiative, P2P [Peer to Peer]: Challenging Extremism, receiving Honorable Mention on behalf of her USC team for their creation of an online text-based role-playing game.