Davis Tyler-Dudley
Davis Tyler-Dudley is a recent Harvard College graduate passionate about exploring the future of U.S. foreign policy and the world order it impacts. Davis currently works in the Washington, D.C. office of the global management consulting firm McKinsey and Company. In the future, he intends to pursue a joint JD-MBA degree to gain the skills necessary to succeed as a leader in both business and government.
Davis is a strong believer in the power of empathetic leadership, cross-cultural communication, and interdisciplinary approaches to global issues. His experiences at Harvard, both academic and extracurricular, have helped shape this perspective. Davis studied an interdisciplinary major similar to other universities’ Philosophy, Politics, Economics programs, focusing much of his coursework on international affairs and US foreign policy. He minored in Mind, Brain, Behavior, another interdisciplinary field that seeks to apply scientific findings from psychology and neuroscience to societal issues. In his coursework and research, Davis has worked to use the multifaceted lessons of these interconnected fields to better understand issues of leadership, decision-making, strategy, conflict, and cooperation in international affairs.
As a culmination of some of these academic themes, Davis researched and wrote a 135-page magna cum laude awarded thesis project – Crouching Eagle, Hidden Dragon: How the History of US Hegemony Shapes the Contours of a New Rivalry in Latin America. The project examines how historical factors shape the thinking of politicians and strategists throughout the Western Hemisphere as they navigate the intensifying geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. It includes content drawn from interviews with dozens of experts and Latin American political leaders conducted in Spanish and Portuguese.
During the summer sessions in between academic semesters, Davis has taken advantage of opportunities offered by Harvard to learn valuable pre-professional skills, practice his language abilities, and gain experience working with people from a variety of different perspectives and backgrounds. In 2018, Davis worked with the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Chile on strategies for using artificial intelligence and data-mining technology to overhaul the government’s digital infrastructure. He was lead author on this Spanish-language proposal, which was adopted as official policy after a meeting with the President of Chile and a presentation to the Vice Minister of Finance. In 2019, Davis studied abroad in Paris with SciencesPo and led a bilingual English-French team in the creation of a social impact-oriented startup project, BonVoyage. The project aimed to apply research from psychology, neuroscience, and computer science to combat sexual assault and sexual harassment in Paris’ public transit systems. The project received an award from UNESCO and, after a presentation to the Mayor of Paris, was adopted for future implementation by the RATP Group, the city’s public transit operator. In 2020, Davis was selected for an internship with the U.S. Department of State, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, transitioned to working on Covid-19 response projects with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Since his freshman year, Davis has been deeply involved in extracurricular activities with the Harvard International Relations Council (HIRC). As part of his work with this organization, Davis led Harvard’s traveling, competitive Model United Nations team and helped host international relations-focused conferences in the US, India, China, the UAE, and Latin America with thousands of attendees. These conferences included the largest Model UN conference in the world in Boston as well as a number of impact-oriented charitable efforts, such as a $40,000 initiative to improve clean drinking water access outside of Hyderabad, India. Davis and Sherman met in April 2020 when Davis was elected President and CEO of the HIRC, which Sherman has advised for multiple years. As President, Davis managed the organization’s transition to virtual programming and spearheaded new initiatives to bring better global affairs-focused educational access to students in multiple Asian countries, working with international partner corporations such as Worldview Education in India, Alpha Partners Education in China, and The Global Citizen Inc. in Southeast Asia. He also oversaw the implementation of a new venture, the IRC Academy, which aims to provide free online access to educational content for students seeking to improve their skills in topics such as public speaking, organizational leadership, debate, and diplomacy.
When not working, traveling, or conducting research, Davis enjoys singing, playing piano, practicing foreign languages, photography, and golf.