Aviva Schwarz was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to pursue a master’s degree in security and diplomacy studies at Tel Aviv University. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, with minors in Near Eastern Studies, Hebrew, and diplomacy. At Princeton, she was a fellow in the program on religion, diplomacy, and international relations. Her research focus was Near East regional studies and national security. Aviva’s senior thesis examined how intelligence communities learn from strategic surprise failures, and she examined the case studies of October 6th, 1973, and October 7th, 2023.

Outside of thesis research conducted in Israel, she was awarded research grants from Princeton to conduct fieldwork for other projects, including in the Philippines, Spain, Canada, and Ireland. She also interned in the U.S. House of Representatives and at an aerospace and defense firm in Tel Aviv. Aviva hopes to pursue a career in the nation’s service in the field of national security.