Francesca Bentley was born and raised in Illinois and spent her later years living in several areas of the North and Southeast. She recently graduated from Spelman College, where she attained a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Psychology. During her undergraduate matriculation, Francesca worked as a Peer Recitation Facilitator for the Department of African Diaspora Studies and served as Spelman College’s Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Reporting Fellow for 2020. While working for the Pulitzer Center, Francesca published a piece on African refugees’ and asylum seekers’ perspectives on American racism.

Additionally, Francesca studied abroad twice while at Spelman, once in Barcelona, Spain and once in Cape Town, South Africa - where she worked as a paralegal. In the summer of 2020, Francesca assisted U.C. San Diego’s Center for Peace and Security Studies team in gathering information on foreign countries’ nuclear platforms. For much of this year, Francesca worked as a research assistant with an MIT professor to create datasets detailing companies’ stances and reactions to racial and social justice issues that will eventually be made public to consumers. Francesca is exploring her interest in coercive diplomacy through the MIP's International Security specialization, in hopes of using her knowledge acquired through the MIP program to become a Foreign Service Officer in order to generate greater stability in African states and strengthen the U.S.’ relations with said communities.