Kelly Thomas received an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Religious Liberty Essay Contest for her paper “Teaching a Man to Fish: The Role of International Religious Freedom in Establishing Stable Democracies Abroad and Achieving US National Security Objectives.” Originally from Maine, Kelly is a senior in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University studying International Security. Her specific research examines the relationship between state-sponsored religious persecution and religiously driven terrorism, and the implications of that relationship for U.S. foreign policy. Kelly currently works as both a research intern at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Political-Military Analysis as well as a research assistant for the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.