Growing up with a father who was a foreign service officer, Chris Grant lived in Italy, Argentina, and Poland, with a bird’s eye view of government service. He liked what he saw.

After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with a BA in history, Grant spent several years living in the Middle East, learning Arabic and working for a financial consulting firm. His interest in a career in the federal government persisted, along with a desire to bolster his education.

Today, Grant is several months into a joint degree program in public administration and international relations at the Maxwell School, while engaged in a research project on global black spots that seeks to map areas of the world outside any government control. He hopes to someday work in the State Department, perhaps following in his father’s footsteps. “I’m interested in the connection between international security issues and international development issues. Those fields are becoming more tightly integrated,” he says.

He’s received a prestigious boost toward that goal as an inaugural recipient of the Maxwell School’s new Robertson fellowship.

The timing couldn’t be better. According to Timothy “Bo” Kemper, executive director of RFFG, an unprecedented number of federal employees are nearing retirement age. “This ‘human capital crisis’ comes at a time when the federal government’s needs and challenges have never been greater, particularly in the international arena,” says Kemper. “Our goal is to help fill this gap.”

Earlier this year, RFFG was created using funds that previously fueled a similar program at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School — a program that since has been dismantled. The original program had been funded in 1961 by Charles and Marie Robertson, with the intent of preparing graduate students to enter government. Robertson was a Princeton alumnus who served as a Naval intelligence officer and had an interest in national security; his wife, Marie, an heir to the A&P supermarket fortune. Their offspring have established RFFG to serve Charles and Marie’s intentions, with new educational partners.

The foundation has a distinguished advisory board that includes former National Security Advisor Gen. Brent Scowcroft, former Virginia governor and U.S. Senator Chuck Robb, and John L. Palmer, University Professor and dean emeritus of the Maxwell School.