Isabella Castillo is a candidate in the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program pursuing the International Development concentration. Before joining MSFS, Isabella served as a research associate at the University of Miami. In this role, she studied the effects of mindfulness on the cognitive performance (i.e., sustained attention and working memory) of Special Operations Forces as part of a DoD-funded study.

Isabella earned her B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, where she studied psychology and French. During her time at Johns Hopkins, through numerous undergraduate research grants, she conducted research on a digital intervention for anti-human trafficking efforts and completed her French honors thesis on urbanism and an ethnographic account of the city of Paris. Subsequently, she earned her Master of Biomedical Sciences from Duke School of Medicine, furthering her interest in health policy.

At Georgetown, Isabella hopes to continue exploring the intersection between global health, human rights, and disaster preparedness.