“From the moment he stepped into my American Experience classroom, I knew Godo Yannick Seri was a man on the move,” said Mount St. Mary’s University Professor of English Peter Dorsey, Ph.D., “because he was deeply curious, transparently honest, totally engaged and full of Mount Spirit.”
Members of the Mount’s student life team similarly saw Seri’s, C'12, potential: they “detected in me,” he explained, “the light of leadership the first semester of my first year and continued to power the engine.” That year, he founded and launched the Global Leaders Alliance, became a Mount delegate for the Model Arab League, and began his three-and-a-half-year journey as a resident assistant.
“That’s the beauty of the Mount,” Dorsey added. “If you want to get involved, if you want to develop your skills, there
are plenty of opportunities to jump right in.”
But Seri was just getting started. In his junior year, he tutored his fellow Mount students in economics and French and joined the Mount’s Federal Reserve Board Challenge Team. In his senior year, he received the Mount St. Mary’s Leadership Award. By then, he had made a lasting, distinctive mark on the university’s culture and its students.
But he had help. Seri is particularly grateful to both Alejandro Cañadas, Ph.D., and John Larrivee, Ph.D., both professors of economics from the Richard J. Bolte, Sr., School of Business. “I engaged with them for hours,” Seri remembered, “debating one-to-one and developing ideas whether in class or during office hours. Somehow, they always made time for me.”
Seri enjoyed the benefits of two majors: economics, from the Bolte School, and international relations, with a concentration in international politics, from the Mount’s College of Liberal Arts. He credits his academic advisor, Kristen Urban, Ph.D., from the political science department, for being the “architect” of his ambitious program.
“She helped me to craft forward and enroll in the specific classes needed to finish well and on time,” he said. “The Mount paved the way for me to thrive.”
And thrive he has. After graduating in 2012, he immediately completed a master’s degree in international affairs and international economic relations at American University. Soon after, he took his talents to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Department of Commerce, which uses its vast statistical data to help the U.S. and other countries identify, address, and solve problems collaboratively. Confident of the skills he strengthened at the Mount “to go anywhere and speak to anyone,” Seri worked his way up from being a survey statistician, to an international programs analyst, to a programs coordinator and analyst. During this journey, he transitioned from the Decennial Directorate to the International Collaboration Program Staff (ICPS), which over the years managed the Census Bureau’s international efforts within the U.S. statistical system and with the international statistical community, especially with nations categorized as More Developed Countries (MDCs). Working with other federal agencies, especially the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Seri creates and manages MOUs with many organizations, coordinates with Global Program Visitors, and administers the International Travel Authorization system. He also developed, implemented and oversees the Global Collaboration Portal (GCP), a database that compiles statistical, diplomatic, economic and geographical information about more than 150 countries. Reflecting on his career journey, Seri describes “a great adventure with new opportunities and greater challenges that lead to growth and happiness.”
Inspired by the Mount’s versatile core curriculum, Seri loves books, libraries, and ideas—their sources, their evolution, and the means by which they become tangible extensions of the human self. “Ideas and dreams can become reality,” he believes, “it is just a matter of action and perseverance.”
His fascination with the ways ideas meet reality also contributed to a growing passion for photography—for capturing nature’s beauty and its “unstoppable metamorphosis.” In June of 2023, he found he had over 10,000 photographs in his digital collection. Included were images captured on trips to Canada (2013), Jamaica (2015), St. Lucia (2016), Washington, D.C., states up and down the east coast, and Maryland cities like Bowie, Silver Spring, Waldorf, and Damascus. “What will I do with all these pictures?” he asked himself.
One of his favorite Bible passages is, “No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house” (Matt. 5:15). Inspired by this truth, Seri wanted to share his photographs with the world and dreamed of designing and building a physical gallery to exhibit his work, but he knew he must wait for the means to do so. His solution was to create an interactive virtual museum, the Samuel Ralphian Seri (S.R.S.) Explore! Nature Virtual Museum, which exhibits his stunning photographs in categories such as aquatic and non-aquatic birds, flowers and plants, rabbits and hares, reptiles, insects, rodents, wildlife spaces, and much more. By conducting beta tests with Mount alumni, other friends and colleagues, as well as professors and family members in several states and internationally, Seri gained valuable feedback and plans to officially launch his Museum this year.
In this virtual environment, one can gather with classmates, friends, family members, colleagues and others, globally and locally. There are opportunities to talk, chat, and even hold videoconferences. The Museum also provides key facts, trivia questions and various music genres to keep visitors engaged as they explore and learn. It even has a souvenir shop that allows visitors to purchase copies of his work along with mugs, mouse pads, wall decorations, and more. Seri’s goal is to immerse visitors in a dream that has become a reality and to inspire others to realize their own talents.
On Monday, March 9, at 4 p.m., Seri will visit the Mount’s Palmieri Center for Entrepreneurship to deliver a talk entitled, “Yannick Seri Globalizes the Museum,” describing the process by which he developed his vision. His talk will take place in room 323 in the Knott Academic Center. Directed by Garth Patterson, Ph.D., the Palmieri Center provides Mount students the opportunity to innovate and implement their creative ideas.
Two more of Seri’s many favorite Mount professors are philosophers Richard Buck, Ph.D., and Michael Miller, Ph.D., whose patience and teaching artistry gave Seri a deep understanding of the philosophical roots of today’s world and the political DNA of modern society. Their use of Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” prompted him to develop his own philosophy of happiness. “The key,” he said, “is to reach within oneself and bring to the world the gifts God implanted, some obvious, others a little hidden.” These are inspiring words, but there is little hidden about the light he shines upon the Mount.