The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) is dedicated to fostering talent from within, frequently bringing on board former interns. Having commenced her journey as an intern in February 2022, Sofia Romansky successfully moved from intern to full-time Strategic Analyst by 2023, exemplifying her growth from an intern to an esteemed team member. In this conversation, Sofia shares insights into her professional path and experiences at HCSS with Alessandra Barrow, who also transitioned from an intern to her role as PR and Communications Assistant.
Hi Sofia, can you share a little about your experience going from an HCSS intern to a full-time employee?
So, my internship started on the 1st of February 2022, coincidentally three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. At the time, I was in the second semester of my first year of my master’s at Leiden university in international relations and diplomacy (MIRD) and as part of the master’s we get a full semester off to do an internship and I picked HCSS. From very early on in the internship, a lot of our understandings and assumptions about the world order word changed. And because of my Ukrainian-Dutch-American identity I found myself kind of in the centre of it all. I immediately had a relatively unique role to play, where I had the capacity to translate from Ukrainian and Russian sources directly, as well as, kind of elaborate on some of the things that we were seeing. All interns at HCSS have the opportunity to write a ‘snapshot’ which is a short paper written with an analyst on a topic of their choice. For my snapshot I ended up writing a full report on my own findings about the use of information in the first seven months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The snapshot had a lot of impact, and I was invited to give presentations on the findings of the report and acted as a kind of bridge between the Ukrainian and the Dutch perspectives. In the end, I extended my internship so that I stayed until December, which allowed me to do further presentations and it was around this time is when HCSS first mentioned me potentially coming back as an analyst. At the time I still had to finish my thesis so I asked if I could come back in September and they said yes, and here I am now..
Wow that is quite a journey, can I ask, what initially attracted you to the internship?
When I graduated from my bachelors, at the university of Amsterdam, in Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics (PPLE) I didn’t have any experience in any of the fields that I had studied for, and I had only worked a customer service job. So, when I applied for my masters, a big reason I applied was because it had a dedicated time period for an internship. In truth, I already felt a little bit disillusioned about the job opportunities in the field of international relations in general but also social sciences as a whole. In the fact, I thought that my two main options were either policy making or academia, that it was kind of this dual path and I had to pick one of them. But my master’s is run in collaboration with the Clingendeal Institute, who partners with HCSS on a lot of projects, and that way, I discovered the world of think tanks. There is actually a general lack of awareness in Dutch universities related to think tanks. I learnt that think tanks can be very niche but they play a critical role, with an impact on policy through information and awareness raising, but also the kind of research rigour they provide on important topics. So, I really liked that in a think tank I could potentially cater to my strengths on both academic and policy sides, I could write and research but also have an impact. I know my work will not just be shelved away and I think that’s really what makes think tanks like HCSS stand out.
How did your role and responsibilities evolve from your time as an intern to becoming a full-time employee? Can you share some specific projects or experiences that stand out during this transition?
I feel like I experienced a very natural development in going from an intern to a full-time analyst, I had a very gradual growth of responsibilities and an introduction into what it meant to do more and more for the company. When I was an intern I was very much doing the back end of things, just looking over papers, writing literature reviews, but then as I started working on my own snapshot-report. I also understood what it meant to think in the big picture, plan ahead and make your work accessible to an audience. I didn’t really have to think about that when I was just writing literature reviews and as I went to do presentations about my work, I also developed experience dealing directly with people. Now that I am an analyst, I do these kinds of interactions all the time. I’m reaching out to experts over e-mail or directly going to conferences and representing HCSS and I feel like if I hadn’t had some of these experience during my internship then this would be a lot more challenging. I mentioned already the report I wrote, this was the most important experience in this transition. I feel like if I hadn’t taken the initiative myself to suggest my idea or if HCSS had not respected me to pursue it, then I wouldn’t be where I am now. It was through the process of writing and presenting the findings of my snapshot, that I showed myself what I was capable of.
Ok nice, what would you say makes HCSS stand out as a great place for young professionals to start their careers?
This is my first full time position in the field that I studied for, and I think that starting here will give me a lot of advantages for my future career. HCSS is quite small which means that every individual who is involved in the team will have a lot of responsibility and as a young professional you have a lot of opportunities to expand your network and show what you are capable of. At the same time, I think is HCSS very much a team of generalists and that means that you’re always going to have the opportunity to learn new things. That is really great because you will not be in a position where you immediately have to limit yourself. For example, in the first two months of being an analyst I have continued to learn basically as much as I have during my master’s while also then being able put the things I learnt into immediate practise. So, you don’t forget how to learn, and you are always able to keep discovering new things. I think that this is a very important foundation that will continue to help me wherever I go.
Learn more about the HCSS internship programme here
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