Joel Einstein

From Sydney, to the Middle East and back again to organise rock concerts with Wiz Khalifa, then working for Google and now the Department of Defence, Joel Einstein credits his degree at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs for getting him there.

Joel studied the Master of Strategic Studies (Advanced) at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC). He contributes making the move to several factors – how highly people spoke of The Australian National University, the perfect alignment of SDSC coursework with his interests, the Centre's close links to government departments, and the abundance of networking opportunities.  

I loved it because I was studying the things I enjoyed debating around the dinner table – topics such as the South China Sea, insurgencies, North Korea, and all the while experts in the field were walking me through it.

Joel was also able to further his interests in Indonesia. In his thesis titled ‘Analysing Australian Strategic Discourse on Indonesia in the Post Suharto Period, 1998 - 2016’ he presented the discord between how strongly Australia prioritises Indonesia, versus the number of times (and the way) Indonesia is being written about in literature.

Concurrent to his degree, Joel worked for Google where he managed relationships with stakeholders and ran training seminars for people to better understand and interact with Google products.

Directly prior to his studies at the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Joel had taken intensive Arabic and Hebrew language courses in Israel, Palestine and Jordan. When he returned to Australia, he worked for the NGO RockCorps which organises concerts with the world’s biggest names. But with a catch – the only way to get a ticket is to volunteer.

In 2018, Joel accepted a Graduate Program offer with the Department of Defence working in areas of policy linked to the subject matter taught at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.

Joel says that since starting in the workforce he has been able to successfully employ the ideas and concepts he was taught in the degree and that it has been very satisfying and validating.

Joel is excited about what the future holds, but for now he’s just looking forward to exploring his new field and to put what he has learnt at SDSC into practice.