From Carnegie Mellon University Athletics

Carnegie Mellon University men's tennis alum Josh Pinckney had his eye on a Fulbright award during his undergraduate days.

Now two years post-graduation, Pinckney will be immersed in the Spanish culture in Madrid, Spain, thanks to being a 2023 Fulbright Award winner.

While Pinckney was serving and slicing the tennis ball in matches for the Tartans, he was studying international relations and Spanish and working a as peer health mentor for student-athletes as a Plaidvocate. Pinckney is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, and spent some of his high school and college years traveling abroad.

"After having been an exchange student in Argentina and Kenya in high school, I came to CMU knowing the enrichment that comes from being immersed in different cultures and learning other languages," said Pinckney. "I always knew I wanted to study abroad during college and got the chance to spend six weeks in Spain in the summer of 2019, between my sophomore and junior years at CMU."

Pinckney yearned for more time abroad and applied for a Fulbright ETA (English Teaching Assistant) award to Guatemala during his senior year but fell just short as a semifinalist in 2021. Now after two years of applying his international relations and Spanish degrees at Accenture, Pinckney will get his opportunity to learn, grow on his own, and leave a mark on a new community.

"I applied for a Fulbright because I wanted an opportunity to spend a longer amount of time in a foreign country, learning how to be a humble guest, figuring out how I respond to the challenges of being an American abroad, all while helping others gain access to more of the world through learning English," said Pinckney. 

When reapplying for the Fulbright scholarship, Pinckney had to make a clear choice about the country where he truly desired to spend time. For while he'll be there as an English TA for bilingual classes in various departments such as business, technology, and international relations at Camilo José Cela University, his stay abroad will also serve the purpose of acquiring knowledge he intends to bring back to the U.S. where he plans to attend graduate school.

"Spain stood out as a country akin to ours both in terms of domestic politics and its international affairs," said Pinckney. "I feel like there's almost a kind of gap analysis to be conducted when comparing our two countries along the lines of how we go about handling things like healthcare, political extremism and climate policy, just to name a few areas. I'm hoping my time there will allow me to draw insights about the U.S. (and Spain) and our many policy challenges that I otherwise would never be able to make."

Pinckney has this to say about how Carnegie Mellon influenced his decision to apply for a Fulbright award a second time:

"Being such an international university, my perspectives on a variety of subjects were constantly broadened by conversations with classmates, teammates and friends in my time at CMU. All of my experiences at CMU—both curricular and extracurricular—taught me the necessity of de-centering oneself and having a truly global perspective when attempting to problem-solve, especially for problems that don't impact you most directly. 

My research project in Professor Baruch Fischhoff's class Decision Science in International Relations reinforced this lesson. I researched the efficacy of certain World Health Organization immunization programs in the global south and found that lack of cultural competency led to major setbacks and exacerbated the health crises in those countries. 

That consideration dovetailed perfectly with my own faux pas while studying abroad in Spain just a couple of months after my research was published in CIRP. So I saw the Fulbright program as a way to further refine my ability to practice cultural competency."

Pinckney will be in Spain for a full academic year and looks forward to learning more about its healthcare system after developing a strong framework for understanding the business and technological aspects of providing care with his work at Accenture with health sector clients in its Tech Strategy and Advisory practice.

Upon returning to the U.S., Pinckney will be enrolling at The Fletcher School at Tufts University to get his master's degree in diplomacy and plans to take advantage of the ability to cross-register and take courses at other Boston-area institutions like Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, as public health has been his primary international policy issue interest for years.

"Spain's healthcare system isn't perfect but it's one of the best," added Pinckney. "My hope is to augment my current knowledge with lessons from Spanish healthcare policy and practices to reimagine how Spain, the U.S. and others can collaborate to improve health outcomes in developing nations."