Adventures in Service

If not for the encouragement of her GSU Spanish professor, Lee Hitchcock Lacy (B.A. '70) might never have traveled abroad after graduation - and if not for that experience, she might never have embarked on a 30-year career with the Peace Corps.

"I had such excellent professors ... they gave me the confidence to buy that first ticket to Barcelona," Lacy recalls. "I traveled through Spain and Europe and realized that I wanted to know more about different countries and cultures."

Since then, Lacy has worked in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Pacific. Her career began in Samoa, where she lived in a thatch-roofed house and taught English to middle-schoolers.

"That experience changed the way I view the world and informed my personal and professional choices until now," Lacy says.

After she completed her two years in Samoa, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the Corps' evaluation unit. From that point forward, she mostly operated out of the States, with occasional long-term assignments abroad.

One of her favorite sojourns was in Nepal. "It is such a beautiful country, and the people are so warm and open," Lacy says. And while each country offered its own unique culture, she saw that people everywhere "want the same basic things - security, stability and a chance to work for a living."

As her most recent assignment as director of the Armenia Peace Corps was winding down, Lacy planned to retire, but then "one more great adventure" beckoned. She began working for USAID in Afghanistan. "I am working as part of President Obama's civil surge and helping manage programs to stabilize the country," she says. "It is a great opportunity and a huge challenge."

But after this, she says, she's coming home for good. "I am a new grandmother and I want to be closer to family."