Michael Seche is a California native currently residing in Washington D.C., and attending American University in the School of International Service (SIS) as an undergraduate student. His major is in international studies with a concentration in global security in the Middle East as well as a minor in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).

Michael's extensive travel throughout the world, as well as having taken up residence in two very international cities, has cultivated the formation of his truly global perspective on politics, culture, and life. This perspective has guided Michael's professional work and interests from an early age, and is what drives him to focus on international cultures, economies, and politics, today. It wasn’t until the summer of 2011 that he began to be truly passionate about international studies and the Middle East. In the middle of a two-and-a-half-month tour of Europe and North Africa, Michael visited Marrakesh, Morocco for the the first time. Then, the following summer after participating in the west coast Model Arab League, Seche went back to study MSA in Meknes, Morocco with the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations. Following his study experience, Seche moved from Sonoma County, California to Washington, D.C., where he now studies at the American University in the School of International Service.

His academic career is primarily focused on political Islam, political violence and civil wars, insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, Arabic, Islam, and the Middle East and North Africa. Additionally, he’s studied economics, finance, business, and human relations. Driven by the mystery and misinformation that surrounded Islam and the Arab world after the 9/11 attacks, Seche became more and more interested in the MENA region as a response to the general lack of understanding of that area by the American media. As his research and knowledge expanded, Michael became interested in the economics and politics behind terrorist and insurgent groups and how they interact within the context of a greater society. After having first studied political violence, civil wars, rebellions, and insurgencies, Seche went on to concentrate on Islamic terrorist groups, particularly those within the Middle East and North Africa.

Seche continues to work on his Arabic, and in the future hopes to learn the Egyptian and Moroccan dialects, as well as Farsi.