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When Carmen Ye talked about her experience of interning with a federal, she expressed gratitude to everyone who helped her get the opportunity. Speaking Saturday at the Queens Crossing Gallery in Queens, New York, at an event opening the 2014 application process for the International Leadership Foundation (ILF) internship program, Ye also said she never expected to get a fulltime job out of it.

"I bet my mom, who raised me in a low-income, single-parent household, could never have imagined me at the leading agency for development,"said Carmen Ye, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.

Ye was among about 30 Asian Pacific American college students selected by the ILF to spend eight to 10 weeks interning at a federal agency in Washington DC during the summer.

Ye spent the summer as a civic fellow at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). "When I came to Washington, I knew I wanted to dedicate a lifelong career to public service and public policy to empower the Asian American community,"she said.

She was surprised by the job offer that came from the same office she had interned for — the Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning. So the California native made the move across country and is now braving the East Coast winters.

When USAID launched its own Combined Federal Campaign in September, the head of Ye’s bureau asked her to be the agency’s campaign manager. "Now I am overseeing a fundraising campaign for 8,000 employees both in DC and at post, as we aim to raise $635,000,"Ye said.

"Every day, I am thankful for the chance to learn from energetic, brilliant, and friendly colleagues,"Ye said.

Ye is not the only one who has benefited from an ILF internship.

"I am always willing and ready to help, the same way ILF helped me three years ago,"said Wang Ruoyu, who took part in ILF’s Young Ambassador program in 2010 and is now a master’s candidate at Columbia University.