Amanda K. Beck (MBA ’20)

Amanda Beck’s assignments as a U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer have taken her to locations as diverse as Ecuador, Kosovo and Cyprus. She knew when she was in high school that she wanted to be a diplomat, influenced by admiration for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as well as by her own greater awareness of the wider world following the 9/11 attacks.

Amanda’s intellectual curiosity led her to UCLA Anderson to expand her perspective after 10 years in the public sector. A Forté Fellow, Amanda is also a vice president of Anderson’s Net Impact Chapter, organizing social impact consulting projects to pair MBA student teams with local nonprofits. When she returns to the State Department next year, she hopes to take on more senior roles and aspires to be an effective manager and empathetic coach.

 “Working for the government is fundamentally a team exercise,” she says. “There are no individual accomplishments.” Her professional experiences overseas remind her of the “tremendous responsibilities entrusted to me and my colleagues to represent our country faithfully, remaining ever-mindful of the United States’ influence on world affairs.”