CJ Dixon MIA ’19 on the Master of International Affairs

Prior to attending SIPA I started my professional life as an Army officer. About partway through my career I decided to pursue information warfare, propaganda, counter propaganda, and my foray into that particular career field is what led me to SIPA and pursuing a career in cybersecurity. 

Ironically, SIPA wasn’t my first choice when I was applying, but then I came to Columbia and then I had a chance to sit down and talk with Professor Healey. He talked to me about information warfare, strategic communication, policy and technology, and cybersecurity from a policymaker standpoint that all these other programs that I had been looking at didn’t have. 

SIPA’’s vast amount of classes allowed me to build a curriculum for me and unique to me. I know there’s a lot of decisions to be made when students decide to come to SIPA. 

I chose to be an MIA specifically because I wanted to sell myself as a professional on foreign policy and national security. Being an MIA student, allowed me to sit through the Conceptual Foundations in International Affairs and really explore and drill down to those theoretical concepts, those theoretical IR theories that truly informs foreign policy. 

Being a SIPA student helped me become the professional that I am today, and I can’t be more thankful for that.