Elena Lesley worked as a Senior Research Specialist for ISS in 2014 researching national strategy development. Before coming to ISS, she completed a master's in Global Affairs at Rutgers University, where she served as a Raimondo Fellow at the Eagleton Institute of Politics and conducted research for her thesis on memorial sites in Rwanda and Cambodia with funding from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. Prior to pursuing graduate study, she spent a combined two and a half years in Cambodia as a Fulbright Fellow and Henry Luce Scholar. During that time, she created a blog following the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal, while writing for publications such as The Phnom Penh Post and the online version of Granta. She has also worked as a story editor at Tunisia Live and reporter at the St. Petersburg Times/Tampa Bay Times in Florida. She graduated from Brown University with a bachelor's in Political Science and is currently a PhD student in anthropology at Emory University.