2026 INSF Scholarship Recipients

Monday, July 20, 2026 (Arlington, VA)—The Intelligence and National Security Foundation (INSF) is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2026 undergraduate and master's scholarship program. This year, INSF awarded eight students a combined $65,000. Since 2021, the Foundation has awarded $275,000 in undergraduate and master's scholarships. 

"Each year, our recipients demonstrate exceptional curiosity, discipline, and commitment to our intelligence and national security mission," said INSA/INSF President Suzanne Wilson Heckenberg. "Their stories inspire us, and we are honored to help support their continued academic and professional journeys." 

Meet our 2026 Scholarship Recipients 

Investing in the Future of the IC Workforce - Master's
Underwritten by Nightwing

Ethan Connell
Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University

Ethan Connell is a student at George Mason University’s Schar School whose studies center on Taiwan’s maritime security and the broader Indo-Pacific security environment. Much of his academic work is conducted through the Taiwan Security Monitor, where he contributes research and analysis on developments affecting cross-strait and regional security.

He grew up near Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval complex, and watching sea power up close gave him an early fascination with how maritime strength and strategic warning underpin deterrence. Ethan's Filipino American background adds a personal dimension, giving him a family-rooted connection to the region he now studies professionally. These experiences have pointed him toward an intelligence career focused on cross-strait competition and the Indo-Pacific.

Ethan has published analysis in The Diplomat and the Center for Maritime Strategy and helped grow a student research team from eight members to thirty while expanding its coverage into seven new countries. As a Maritime Risk Analysis intern with the National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office, he assessed port security and tracked Belt and Road developments in real time, sharpening the analytic instincts he plans to carry into a career watching the waters most important to U.S. strategic interests.

Cassidy Gorrigan
Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University 

Cassidy Gorrigan is a master's student at the Bush School of Government & Public Service at Texas A&M University, where she holds a 4.0 GPA. Her path into intelligence has been shaped by fieldwork across Africa, Europe, and Latin America, where she studied how governance gaps and fragile institutions create openings for instability. That work began while she was studying in Switzerland and led her to communities across Madagascar, Kenya, Ghana, and Morocco, giving her a truly global vantage point on security challenges most analysts only encounter secondhand.

That fieldwork taught Cassidy to see security challenges through a human-centered, culturally informed lens, a perspective she now applies to her research on how extremist groups exploit weak governance in Burkina Faso. She brings that same on-the-ground sensibility to her graduate coursework at the Bush School, pairing rigorous policy analysis with the regional context she has gathered. Fluent in French and Italian, with a working knowledge of Russian, she is building exactly the kind of regional expertise and analytical rigor the Intelligence Community needs to make sense of the world's most complex and fast-changing environments.

Investing in the Future of the IC Workforce - Undergraduate

Alexsis Barkus
Howard University

Alexsis Barkus is an undergraduate at Howard University, born and raised in Wichita, Kansas, pursuing a degree in criminology and Russian language, driven by a deep interest in the intersection of U.S. intelligence and global human trafficking prevention. She developed an early interest in combatting trafficking, coming to understand it as both a humanitarian crisis and a national security issue, an interest that deepened during her travels to Kampala, Uganda. There, she witnessed how trafficking between African and Middle Eastern countries can go unaddressed due to inadequate legal protections, and she spoke with survivors whose stories challenged her to think beyond Western perspectives. 

At Howard, Alexsis maintains a 4.0 GPA while developing Russian language and cultural proficiency through an immersive curriculum funded by the National Security Agency. Howard's legacy of leadership and advocacy has shaped her view of national security as, fundamentally, the protection of human dignity and human rights. Beyond the classroom, she volunteers with ICT S.O.S., a Kansas-based anti-trafficking nonprofit; conducts research on human trafficking in Washington, D.C.; and collaborates with Wells of Hope Ministries in Uganda on a trafficking awareness and prevention curriculum for boarding schools serving children of incarcerated parents; work preparing her for a career disrupting transnational threats.

Meghann Barner
Southern New Hampshire University

Meghann Barner is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice with a concentration in Intelligence and Counterterrorism, maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA. Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area, she attended her town's annual September 11th remembrance ceremony each year, an experience that deepened her sense of duty to the country. Meghann chose criminal justice deliberately, seeing it as a less common but valuable path into the Intelligence Community compared to the international affairs and language degrees more typical of the field. It has algo given her a foundation rooted in upholding the Constitution. She points to her ability to see what others overlook, close attention to detail, and gift for quickly learning languages as the traits best suited to intelligence analysis.

A first-generation college student and mother of three, Meghann returned to school determined to build a better future for her children and to pursue the career she had once thought was out of reach. After completing a national security research internship at the Institute of World Politics, she was accepted early into a master's program in Strategic Intelligence, which she will begin in 2027. Drawing on her resilience and perseverance, Meghann hopes to bring a unique perspective to a community dedicated to protecting and serving the country.

Endowed Undergraduate Awards

Arya Baviskar
Letitia A. Long Intelligence Scholarship
Northeastern University 

Arya Baviskar is a 4.0 GPA undergraduate at Northeastern University pursuing a B.S. in Cybersecurity. Shaped by a deep appreciation for the security she has found in the United States, Arya is determined to give back through a national security career in cybersecurity and emerging technology. She is already doing the work: analyzing cyber threats for the Cyber Security Forum Initiative and contributing to machine-learning research with Oak Ridge National Laboratory tied to the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission. 

Arya also writes for Cyber Defense Magazine, translating complex AI security developments for a broader audience, and is completing a slate of industry certifications through Northeastern's co-op program to sharpen her technical edge before she graduates. Fluent in Marathi, German, and English, she brings a genuinely global, cross-cultural perspective to a field that increasingly demands one. That combination of technical skill, research experience, and cross-cultural fluency is steadily pointing Arya toward a career defending the critical infrastructure and emerging technologies that increasingly define national security.

Sylvanus O'Connor
Governor Tom Ridge Scholarship
American Military University

Sylvanus O'Connor is pursuing a bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity at American Military University, with a concentration in Wireless and Mobile Security. An active-duty soldier in the U.S. Army, he brings a unique path to that work: for nearly a decade before enlisting, he served as a Systems Administrator at the U.S. Embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone, keeping State Department systems secure and communications running; an experience that gave him a firsthand understanding of how much national stability depends on strong cybersecurity.

That combination has sharpened the adaptability, teamwork, and problem-solving skills the IC depends on, and fuels his passion for cyber defense, network security, and information assurance, with the goal of protecting the critical systems that mission operations rely on. He is pursuing his degree while continuing to serve on active duty, balancing military responsibilities with academic ones. Sylvanus's commitment to service doesn't stop at the uniform: he volunteers with veterans and their communities, living out his belief that service extends into the lives of the people he's sworn to protect.

Isaac Ormand
LtGen Vincent R. Stewart, USMC - Intelligence Career Pathways Scholarship
Patrick Henry College

Isaac Ormand is a student at Patrick Henry College pursuing a dual major in Strategic Intelligence, with a focus on Cybersecurity and AI, and Economics and Business Analytics. A first-generation college student from Vail, Arizona, Isaac has built a self-directed path into the intelligence and national security field through rigorous technical training, analytic work, and a deep commitment to service. He spent three years at the Arizona Cyber Warfare Range, where he developed offensive and defensive cyber skills, built lab environments, and tutored fellow students, and he earned an associate degree in Cybersecurity while still in high school.

Isaac serves as an analyst and systems developer for a GEOINT project. In this role, he conducts order-of-battle and command-and-control analysis while building AI-assisted open-source pipelines to support intelligence production, drawing directly on his dual-major in strategic intelligence, cybersecurity, and economics. With additional training through the Atlantic Council Cyber 9/12 competition and CySA+ and Security+ certifications, Isaac is preparing for a career as an all-source analyst to support the U.S. national security mission.

Reinventing Geospatial (RGi) Scholarship

Underwritten by RGi

Abigail Koch
Georgetown University

Abigail Koch is an undergraduate at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she maintains a 3.9 GPA as a major in Russian and Eurasian Studies. Her interest in counterproliferation took root when she compiled a dataset on Russian strategic nuclear deployments, and it deepened during a language program in Kazakhstan, where engagement with local communities gave her a firsthand look at the human cost of weapons of mass destruction.

Abigail has channeled that passion into serious analytic work, conducting a structured intelligence assessment on PRC infiltration of American universities for Project Maverick's China Desk and researching how more than 200 countries enforce export controls during her internship at the Institute for Science and International Security. Through this work, she has developed a keen sense of how intelligence gaps and enforcement gaps are often two sides of the same problem. She believes the power to enforce nuclear nonproliferation begins with good intelligence, and she is charting a clear course toward a career in the Intelligence Community, working to keep the world's most dangerous weapons out of the wrong hands.