Monday, June 30

A GW alumna who dedicated her life to humanitarian work died after a bomb blast in Sadr City, Iraq last Tuesday.

Nicole Suveges, 38, a 1998 recipient of a master’s degree in international development from the Elliott School of International Affairs, was one of ten people killed in the blast. She was in Iraq as a civilian employee with BAE Enterprises, working with U.S. Army commanders to better understand Iraqi culture and society.

Suveges’ father, Edward, recalled his daughter as an intelligent, strong-minded woman who loved to talk and had many friends.

“She was good on debating things,” he said. “We’d just go back about politics or so many things. When we were on vacation, we would argue about what road to take.”

He added that his daughter’s experiences at GW helped shape her interest in international development.

“She took away quite a bit from (GW),” Suveges said. “I think that’s where she kind of made the change to work in international relations.”

Nathan J. Brown, GW professor of political science and international affairs, said that he remembered Suveges as “bright, enthusiastic and friendly.”

After leaving GW, Suveges joined the Army Reserve and was sent to Bosnia, where she worked on economic development issues. She later joined the Johns Hopkins University department of political science to obtain a doctoral degree. She was working on a dissertation entitled “Markets and Mullahs: Global Networks, Transnational Ideas, and the Deep Play of Political Culture,” according to the Chronicle for Higher Education.

“She was interested in writing on how ideas move across boundaries through international networks – a fairly abstract topic, but one which she wanted to research in very concrete ways,” Brown wrote in an email.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry said that Iraqi officials in the same building as Suveges were the intended target of the attack, according to the Associated Press. Major General Mohammed al-Askari, a defense ministry spokesperson, told the Associated Press that the presence of Americans had been “by chance.”

In addition to her father and mother, Rita, Suveges leaves behind her husband, David Iverson, whom she married in 1992.