Arelena Shala

Arelena Shala, from Prizren, Kosovo, is pursuing a master’s degree in international policy at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. She graduated from the United States Military Academy with a bachelor's degree in geospatial information sciences and a minor in Middle Eastern regional studies. She was the first Kosovar to graduate from the United States Military Academy. Arelena aspires to start her career as a military intelligence officer in the Kosovo Army, where she intends to lead an international effort in counter-terrorism in the Balkans security landscape. She interned at the Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California, where she worked with a Navy SEAL team on developing video-based methods of three-dimensional reconstruction of environments to improve military intelligence capabilities. She studied Arabic in Morocco, and worked on volunteer projects in The Gambia.