User:Mss455

Séhzad M. Sooklall

Will this be the prologue to my memoir one day? By publishing my story on Wikipedia, I hope to use this medium as an interactive platform to keep in touch with the people who have come in my life and share my academic and professional experiences with them. My Web site features a more extensive account of my work and includes a virtual portfolio with links to research papers, presentations and other projects.

How it all begun? The pursuit of the American Dream drove me here. A son of immigrants living in Paris, France, I wanted to go further and discover the West on my own. In 2002, I left home to attend Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and four and a half wonderful years later, I graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Mass Communication program with a concentration in Public Relations and a minor in International Relations.

I am currently working at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans as Program Coordinator in the Department of Internal Medicine for the Sections of Gastroenterology, Rheumatology and Endocrinology. I am a dynamic, fast-paced and multilingual young professional, with strong and creative writing skills that can target multicultural and diverse audiences. I have interned for two nonprofits in the Baton Rouge area and also did an internship at Diane Allen and Associates, a high ranking advertising and public relations agency in the state of Louisiana.

In addition to my internships, I also worked as Development Specialist at Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and later on as Information Systems Manager at the Advance Baton Rouge Charter School Association. During that time, I was also concurrently pursing a Master of Public Administration degree at LSU in the College of Business, and even if I had completed all the core courses and required number of electives by May 2011, I decided to continue on for two more semesters to pursue a research internship with Dr. Carole Jurkiewicz, who is working on a symposium on Gender Inequities in the Global Context to be published in the journal of Public Organization Review.

In the summer and fall of 2010, I also completed a Public Administration Internship at the Louisiana Serve Commission in the Office of the Lieutenant Governor. My project consisted of the research, design and production of an AmeriCorps Member Development Program in the following areas: Diversity Appreciation, Disability Inclusion, Citizenship, and Conflict Resolution.

I see myself as an ardent, passionate and highly-skilled young professional with a proven academic record and diverse work achievements in multiple sectors. My focus now is to prepare for further graduate study at a leading research university in the United States, which will pave the way for a future career in academia.