The Office of Global Affairs is pleased to feature Antonia Romana Zito for our April 2025 edition of the Global Visionaries series. The Global Visionaries series highlights the UW’s global impact by featuring innovative, globally-engaged faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Antonia Romana Zito is currently a senior double-majoring in International Studies and History in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. Antonia was recognized as a 2025 Husky 100 and is passionate about advocating for migrants and refugees, being trilingual and making a global impact.
Antonia shares about her experience growing up in Panama, about conducting research on security and defense in Latin America and the Caribbean and what she is looking forward to about her career.
I am the proud daughter of an Italian father and a Colombian mother, and I was born in Rome, Italy despite me never living there. Up until the age of two, my parents moved around a lot because of my father’s work—eventually landing us in Panama City, Panama, the place that shaped me into the person that I am today.
As an immigrant, I have always lived a multicultural lifestyle because my parents and I all have incredibly different backgrounds. Beyond that, while in Panama, I was enrolled into an international school based off the American education system at the age of three. At the International School of Panama, almost all students were immigrants, and all students were multicultural and multilingual in the same way I was. So, while my parents were each teaching me their own cultural values, I was also absorbing a Panamanian culture and lifestyle, while my school gave me an American influence—all while I was learning about my friends’ different cultures as well.
Growing up in Panama—specifically, in a multicultural environment—shaped me to be an open-minded person who does not focus on what makes people different, but rather what aspects of our lives cross these cultural barriers. The differences in culture and language I was surrounded by are what pushed my curiosity of wanting to understand the world we live in. Beyond that, my experience in Panama showed me that the world is so much bigger than people think.
Above all, my American education whilst living in Panama heavily contributed to my ability to succeed once moving to Seattle—even though the culture shock was overwhelming at first.
Back in the fall of 2023, I had the privilege of being selected from a pool of applicants to travel to Washington, D.C. for a semester to complete my first internship. My academic and cultural experiences matched me perfectly with the research intern position at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (WJPC). At WJPC, I would aid professors at the National Defense University by engaging in thorough research on global topics concerning security and defense across Latin America and Caribbean nations. My skills were uniquely suited to this research position because of where I grew up, the previous work I had conducted at the UW, and my fluency in Spanish because they are a bilingual center.
Specifically, as a research assistant to Dr. Patrick Paterson, I focused on climate change studies as I helped him create the foundation for the WJPC climate change program–the first for a Regional Academic Center of the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense. Specifically, I had the special opportunity to create an official glossary containing climate change terminology, which has now been distributed to thousands of U.S. government officials. Other research projects I completed include graphic designing climate change vulnerability of Western Hemisphere nations, and projects relating to water data for the nearly three dozen nations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
I also had the honor of working with Dr. Erin McFee, who conducted quantitative research on a group of women in Colombia living under the FARC conditions through the gathering and analysis of their personal journals. Using the coding software MAXQDA, Dr. McFee and I would individually analyze these journals, highlighting various themes throughout them until we had at least 80% similarity between our codes. Once we hit 80%, Dr. McFee could then write a proper analysis paper commenting on the overlapping themes to understand what these women are commonly going through. This type of research was incredibly eye-opening, it was a timely, delicate process that left me with more than just basic research skills.
This internship was my first career-related work experience, giving me a sense of what it is like to contribute to hands-on work that is able to impact current events on a global scale and is useful within the U.S. government. My experience here was incredibly valuable and life-changing because as an immigrant, I did not think this was an opportunity where I could have such an involved role due to the limited views of American identity and who can be a part of government work. In D.C., it was a great opportunity to use my identify towards my career goals—I began to truly understand the gift I have and how it could show up in the world. For the first time, I was part of a team that valued my skills and made me feel a part of something bigger, and I knew I wanted to continue chasing that feeling.
My time in D.C. motivated me to delve deeper into opportunities that allowed me to use my skills to contribute to my community. The following quarter, I applied for a position within the Jackson School Student Association (JSSA). As the Director of Logistics and the newly appointed Vice President, I am presented with various leadership opportunities as I help JSIS staff with their career-focused events and host my own academic-focused events for students of all ages. Our events are typically informative: for example, we have hosted career events within the foreign service sector with the Diplomat in Residence Dara Yin or LinkedIn profile building workshops.
Overall, I am in charge of ensuring that my team and I can operate efficiently as we work with a fast-paced yet limited schedule, as we are bound to the quarter system. Through JSSA, I have the ability to create an environment in which students of all backgrounds can be properly informed of what their opportunities are both during their studies and after graduation. Moreover, I am also the representative for the JSSA on the UW Senate and act as a voting member.
As a student at UW, I have been given a space to develop a series of skills through my coursework that I then applied to opportunities that opened more opportunities for myself to grow. The experiences I have mentioned above made me feel valuable in a way I had never felt before—and while a lot of things are increasingly uncertain in our rapidly changing world—and as I mentioned above, I know I want to join a team which allows me to continue searching for this feeling.
My identity allows me to understand people in a unique manner and has opened more doors for me than I could have ever imagined. Where I used to feel culture or language barriers as a limitation, I now see the opportunity to build bridges through communication, understanding, and collaboration. Following the completion of my undergraduate degree, I have an ultimate goal of working for the UNHCR as I believe it would be a shame to neglect this gift my parents always spoke about. However, I would first work at a few NGOs with the same mission of protecting and advocating for refugees and all other types of migrants. I am looking forward to help people and to contribute to a bigger cause regarding equality and respect.