AUGUST 6, 2025 – More than a dozen university students toured the Pentagon yesterday and got a rare chance to speak with Defense Department insiders about how DOD operates, all with an eye toward inspiring young Americans to pursue careers in public service.
Their visit was part of the department’s “Beyond the Battlefield” academic outreach initiative.
“Beyond the Battlefield is an important element in the department’s outreach with America’s future leaders, showcasing the military’s many roles in defending the nation while providing a deeper perspective into the defense policymaking process,” said Jonathan Evenson, DOD community engagement specialist.
About 16 students and staff with the Harold W. Rosenthal Fellowship in International Relations and the Future Leaders in Public Service Internship Program met for discussions on the department’s mission, priorities and initiatives, and to talk with current DOD employees about foreign affairs and defense policy careers.
“We hope to provide them with the opportunity to learn more about public service careers, [and] pathways to inform whether or not they’d like to go into federal or any type of public service in the future,” said Stephanie Sonkin, program manager at the Partnership for Public Service. “And we do have a lot of interest within the Rosenthal Fellowship cohort, specifically on international affairs and national security.”
This summer, most of the program participants are interning with federal agencies or Congress, Sonkin said.
“The hope is just to give them greater exposure to the [Washington,] D.C., area,” Sonkin said. “A lot of them do not live in the [area,] so this is just a great opportunity, as part of visiting Washington, D.C., as a whole.”
Program participant Mael-Sanh Perrier is doing an internship at the Pentagon this summer within the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy, where he is assigned to the strategy and resources team within the Office of Global Partnerships.
“We focus on security cooperation efforts between the DOD and other militaries around the globe,” Perrier said. “They’re the policy side of security cooperation, [and] work closely with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.”
His role, he said, is to support that team in their efforts.
“I help develop guidance documents — which is actually what I’m doing right now, for the authorities the DOD uses to conduct some of those security cooperation activities,” Perrier said.
A native New Yorker, Perrier attends Syracuse University and is pursuing a master’s degree in public administration and international relations. He said his work at the Pentagon aligns with what he’s learning in school.
“It bridges the gap between how government is administered, [and] ultimately the link between the actual operations that happen and the legislation that gets passed in Congress,” he said. “It aligns very well.”
Working at the Pentagon over the summer, Perrier said, turned out to be different than he thought it’d be.
“I’d say working at DOD has actually been, honestly, a much better experience than I expected,” he said. “I thought that [the] Pentagon would be more strict, more stuffy, in some ways. I found it to be a very fun place to work, even as a younger guy. The respect people have for each other and the respect they show you, even as an intern, especially in this office, has been very impressive.”
As for the work he’s doing, he said he was unsure about that as well, but doing policy work within DOD, Perrier said, turned out to be something he might do in the future.
“I had low expectations of a pure policy role. … I felt like OSD policy and other policy positions were kind of a black box; you couldn’t see into it much from the outside,” he said. “To an extent, this [work] has reinforced my idea that I do love policy, and I do like this side of things … actually working in the position you … see all the processes that back it up, and all the research, all the time that is spent working in a very relational way with different offices, different teams. I found that to be much more engaging than I thought it would be.”
By C. Todd Lopez, DOD News