In the late 1950s, Steinem spent two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow, where she worked as a law clerk to Mehr Chand Mahajan, then Chief Justice of India. After returning to the United States, she served as director of the Independent Research Service, an organization funded in secret by a donor that turned out to be the CIA. She worked to send non-Communist American students to the 1959 World Youth Festival. In 1960, she was hired by Warren Publishing as the first employee of "Help!" magazine.