Of all the places David Holmes thought life might lead him after graduating from Pomona College in 1997, the desperate, devastated landscape of post-war Kosovo was not one of them. But now he couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

Holmes works for the U.S. Department of State as a political officer, promoting human rights and helping the society to rebuild in the aftermath of a brutal civil war.

"I didn't know what I wanted to do when I left Pomona, but I have found it," says Holmes, who has been named Pomona College's Inspirational Young Alumnus for 2004.

"It is a life lived in a true spirit of adventure," he says. "It's one that gives me the enviable opportunity to promote the rights of threatened minority communities, to fight the modern-day trafficking of persons, to help shattered families and to promote human rights and a path toward progress and peace."

Holmes, a former ASPC president, returned to campus in April to accept his award and, he hopes, to inspire other Pomona College students to consider a career in public service, particularly in the Foreign Service.

When a student at Pomona, Holmes had applied for law school and planned to go into politics, but, he says, he always felt that there were other possibilities open to him. Today he credits Pomona with giving him the opportunity to study abroad at Oxford where he learned about his passion for international relations.

"Too many people at Pomona think they have to go to graduate school straight away and their only options are law, medicine, business. But that's just not true," says Holmes. "There are so many options out there for serious careers where they can do what they really want to do without having to compromise who they are in order to pursue a type of career that they think is okay."

After graduation from Pomona, Holmes worked as a consultant to several organizations, including the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. In 2000, he received a master in management degree in economics and international politics from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and, in 2002, a master in public affairs from Princeton University. While at Princeton, he helped to teach a "Practical Ethics" course with bioethicist Peter Singer. Holmes served as a long-term election observer for the Albanian Parliamentary elections and was a NATO team leader in the Partnership for Peace Office in Albania before becoming a foreign service political officer for the U.S. Department of State in 2002.

The Inspirational Young Alumni Award was established to honor Pomona College graduates of the last decade for their dedication, perseverance and consistency in following their vision of the inscription on the College Gates: "They only are loyal to this college who departing, bear their added riches in trust for mankind." Nominations can be made by faculty, staff, students or alumni of the College, and the winner is chosen by a committee of current students.