 Hi, welcome to this webinar on the Millennial Public Policy Fellowship at New America. And this webinar is designed to provide some information about a new fellowship opportunity at New America that is going to provide support to bring 10 young adults to work at our organization here in Washington, D.C. And I'm Reed Kramer. I'm directing the effort. I'm here with my colleague. I'm Savya Prescott with the Education Policy Program here at New America. And my other colleagues? I'm Shadi Bruce with Asset Building. I'm Cheyenne Pulemedja with Political Reform. Great. And we're basically going to answer four main questions about the fellowship. And hopefully we'll provide enough information for you or to share with others who are interested in this opportunity. And those questions are, what is the Millennial Public Policy Fellowship? What's the overriding idea behind the effort? What kind of organization is New America? And then how can people apply? All right. So specifically, what does the program offer? Very specifically, the program offers funding. It offers a community and a platform. Like Reed said, thanks to the support of the City Foundation, we'll provide each of the 10 selected fellows with salary and access to our employee benefits here at New America to show that they can fully engage in the larger New America community and pursue their projects while living here in Washington, D.C. New America is a dynamic organization focused on public policy and a constructive policy debate. A lot of great work is going on here that the fellows can learn from and they'll work together as a cohort to learn together. New America offers our staff support and leverage for joining public conversation including opportunities to attend our events here in the D.C. space and also to write and potentially publish on their work. We think this is a good combination for a great opportunity. If you're interested in working in a dynamic organization engaged in contemporary public policy discussions impacting millennials and rising generations, you should apply. Great. Yeah, we'd love to see your applications and really to emphasize some of the overarching ideas behind the effort. It's to create an opportunity to get people who wouldn't otherwise be able to kind of come to an organization like this focused on policy. We want to create a dynamic experience where people can learn from each other, add value to public policy research, and develop their own sense of how they can contribute to constructive public policy discussions. And this might lead to someone to pursue some of this work in the future, maybe a career, maybe additional educational opportunities that are related to public policy. And another theme is really to consider some of the unique generational issues that are faced by millennials and their younger siblings. There's a lot of different work going on at New America. You'll see the range of policy programs that are participating. And we want to look at that work and how they might interact together to create a set of ideas that can be constructive for the rising generation. And I guess I wanted to say a little bit about New America as an organization. You certainly can look at the website and see the kind of work that we produce. You can read our full mission statement and dig into some of the material, the papers, the events, the convenings that we've been a part of. But we're basically, traditionally when we call a think tank, we'd be called a think tank. We also call ourselves a civic enterprise because collectively we're committed to renewing American politics, prosperity and purpose in this kind of unique digital age. Our aspirations are to generate big ideas, bridge the gap between technology and policy, and also curate a public discussion that we think can be really constructive and is important. So sometimes we look like a research institute, other times we look like a technology laboratory. We're certainly a media platform and some have called us a venture capital fund for policy ideas. We have a number of fellows programs and this is the latest one that's designed to focus on kind of young adults and people just starting their career. We dig into policy details, but we also want to get ideas that might work at scale that can be transformative in important ways and meet the challenges of our time. So we think this is an interesting organization. We think this program could make it even more so. What other ideas about the organization? Any other thing you want to add about New America? I think what important thing to know about New America is that it's a place for opportunity, which not everywhere is in D.C. New America is a really great place for people to come who have ideas or who are working to explore ideas further and to have a platform to dive into those and really do concentrated work in that area and make a difference, I think, in those areas. So if you're looking to explore a specific idea or want to learn more about other ideas that we do or other ideas that could complement the work that we do already, this is a great opportunity. What else can we say about the organization? Well, building on what Sabia said, I feel like New America is full of people who genuinely care about your professional and personal well-being, so they want to see you succeed and if you ever reach out to someone to say, like, I need help with this research project or, you know, like, I'm having trouble balancing my work priorities. Like, people want to help, which isn't something that you can say of all work environments. I think another thing that's unique to New America is probably the sort of environment that we have around writing and how much opportunity people, including junior staff, have to write. We have our weekly newsletter, which is called the New America Weekly, but we also do publishing a variety of outlets, and this is a place where if you have an idea and you want to write that, you can, you know, reach out to people and people will help you with that and help you place it and nobody's going to tell you, you know, you can't write because, you know, you're junior staff or you don't have the perfect skills to write that piece. People will work with you and make sure that, you know, you can write something that you're proud of. Yeah. I'll start off with the deadline, which is April 3rd, 2017. Yes. And next we'll answer a few frequently asked questions, but first I will note that you can send any questions about the application process itself before April 3rd to mppfellowship at newamerica.org, and the core application involves composing a personal statement, as well as a statement of policy interest to give us, to give you an opportunity to describe to us what your policy interests are and what you'd like to work on here at New America and to give us an opportunity to get to know you better through your policy interests and your personal involvement in the policy space and in whichever space you're interested in as a program here at New America. So yeah, we can run through some frequently asked questions now and a lot of the resources are on the website. If you don't get your questions answered, please let us know. We'll get back to you. I do want to just emphasize three important things about the Millennial Public Policy Fellowship. Selected candidates must be 24 years old or under at the start of the program, and that starts in August. So the cutoff date is on the website and the date is firm, so we won't be able to take people that are older. The second thing, what are we looking for in an applicant? And again, there's more information on the website, but in two sentences I'll say that we're looking to identify and support promising young adults interested in deepening their engagement in public policy. Successful candidates will show themselves to be creative thinkers who are committed to constructive policy reform and positive social change. And then another additional set of details. Fellows must live in D.C. through the duration of the fellowship. The program starts August 28th, 2017, here in D.C., and will end on June 30th, 2018. Another question that we have is, what are some tips for crafting a good application and what are some of the qualities that we're searching for in our applicants? And the book of the application is made up of a statement policy interest and a personal statement. So these two components are definitely the most important ones. The statement of policy interest is your opportunity to tell us about the policy issues that not only interest you the most but that you believe you have the ability to impact. The personal statement is, on the other hand, an opportunity for you to tell us your story and how you've gotten to where you are today. So we don't want a resume, we want your story. You have to identify which policy program you're applying for, for a fellowship, and the answer is really, really, really no. We're going to look at your application. You're selecting some areas of interest and you're going to write about those, your interest, and then we will kind of assign your application to one of the policy programs and they'll take a closer look at the application. So not sure if that actually was a clarifying answer, but the point is you don't have to select a specific program when you're applying, but you do have to identify some of your issue areas of interest. So those are some of the frequently asked questions. Please check back with the, check into the website. A lot of the answers are there. There's room to ask more questions if they arise as you're preparing your applications and we look forward to hearing from you. There is an email link on the website, mppfellowshipatnewamerica.org, and we will promptly get back to you. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck.