 I'm going to get us started and welcome everybody to the second annual pitch competition co-sponsored by the Program and Practical Policy Engagement here at the Ford School in our Graduate Career Services office. I'm Liz Gerber, I'm the director of P3E and I see lots of people who have helped make this event happen. I apologize in advance if you are one of those people and I miss you but I'd like to thank the P3E staff, Maryam Nagarin and Cindy Bank, the GCS staff, I see Jennifer, I see Peter, I think I see Claire. Sorry if I've missed anyone. It took a lot of people to bring us all together here and for a really exciting event. I'd also like to thank our good friends and sponsors Phil and Kathy Power who are serving for the second year as judges. I will hand it over in a moment to Peter who will give a proper introduction to all of the judges but just want to recognize Phil and Kathy for their generosity in supporting the Ford School's engaged learning. We are all very grateful and this kind of event allows us to sort of see all the great engaged learning internship experiences you guys are all having. So could everybody please join me in thanking the amazing staff who's helped bring us together. But you did not come here to listen to me, you came here to listen to Peter. No, right. Peter Vasher really and Cindy Bank really sort of led this the work in organizing this and I hand it over to Peter to get us going, thanks. Yeah maybe he came to hear me very briefly and then we'll kick it to our students. But thank you for coming to our second annual policy pitch competition, very excited about that and we have a very full room which is fantastic. But we appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with our friends in P3E and thank you to our staff for working hard to make this happen. Jennifer, Claire, Casey, Shiyu and Elizabeth for being here and supporting the event today. Thank you to our judges who I'll introduce here shortly and then also thank you to our student presenters. So thank you for having the courage and the confidence to come up and deliver your pitches today. So if we could have them a hand at the outset. All right, so our judges right up here, but we have Kathy Power of the Power Foundation and she is also a community volunteer with such organizations as Planned Parenthood and the Humane Society if you're on Valley. We have Kathy Hand. We have Phil Power who is a BA from the University of Michigan 1960, a former newspaper publisher and served on the U of M Board of Regents from 1987 to 1999. He is a member of the Ford School Committee as well. He was the owner of Hometown Communications Network, an award-winning group of 64 community newspapers in Michigan and the Upper Midwest. Phil founded the Center for Michigan in 2006, a think-and-do tank that encourages greater understanding and involvement in policy issues among Michigan citizens. He also helped found the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce and served as Vice Chairman of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. So I can give Phil a thank you. Next up we have Alusha La Samuel. He is a division administrator for Michigan Medicine and also the chair of the Ford School Alumni Board. Alusha helps lead division finances, human resources, operations, research administration and faculty affairs for Michigan Medicine. Prior to this he was a business manager over at Beaumont Health in Royal Oak where he helped lead the integration and strategic planning for women's and children's services across the organization's eight hospitals. He's also been instrumental in leading the reunion that's coming up in a couple weeks here at the Ford School. So thank you. We have Nikki Sunstra. She's responsible for developing innovative solutions to strategically leverage and advance interactive communications at the University of Michigan. She leads the social communications office and strategic oversight of the president's public engagement and impact initiative. These efforts, along with the university's social integrity project, each aim to ensure that all online communications provide additional value to university stakeholders while mitigating institutional risk, elevating brand perception and educating users of all ages and around the globe of the lasting impact of these critical tools. And prior to the University of Michigan, she worked developing and coordinating the state of Michigan's statewide social media footprint. So thank you for being here. And last but not least, we have John Zeraldo who's the president of Commonwealth Consulting and former vice president of program and strategy at the Skillman Foundation where he led their vision and strategy in support of the development of program team members. He brings significant experience from the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. Most recently serving as a VP at Skillman, a senior program officer at the William Davidson Foundation and also as president and CEO of Lighthouse in Oakland County. He also was the director of programs at the Guidance Center and a founding executive director of the Thompson McCauley Foundation. John holds a BA in philosophy from Detroit's Secret Heart Seminary and an MPA from the Ford School of Public Policy here at the University of Michigan. John's also a lifelong Detroiter and die-hard Red Wings Tigers and Lions fan, which I appreciate. All right, I know you've heard enough from me and we will get started by just a couple housekeeping logistics on the evening. So we have 11 presenters here today delivering their pictures and throughout the evening I'll be popping in to give a quick fun fact about our judge's time to recoup their thoughts so you hear from me a couple times. But these fun facts will be focused on internships career development and other fun things about career aspirations and for those in the audience I actually have pulled some data that you shared with us a couple weeks ago so you may hear something that you have shared in your first couple weeks of school here at Ford. But without further ado we welcome our first pitch presenter, Monica. Hi everyone and thank you all so much for being here today. My name is Monica Anderson and before I came to grad school I worked for about three years as a case manager working with young adults who suffered serious mental illness. I absolutely loved the work. I loved the interpersonal work. I love doing social work. But over time I was increasingly frustrated with some of the systems that social work exists within and some of the disconnect that I was seeing between who is making mental health policy, who is implementing it, and who is receiving these services. And I really wanted to do something about it but I couldn't figure out what the right career path was. Unbeknownst to me at the time dual degrees exist and I am now a second year dual degree student with the School of Social Work as well. When I was looking for an internship last year I was really thinking about agencies that inspire me and that I really like. I ended up cold emailing the executive director of the New York City Office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness also known as NAMI. NAMI is the largest grassroots mental health organization in the country. They are unique in that they serve not only those living with mental illness but also their family and their loved ones. To my shock the executive director responded to me also and said that they wanted to have a little bit more focus in public policy and that they might have a spot for me. NAMI New York City has a full-time staff of 12 people, a budget of just over a million dollars and they reached 13,000 people last year. They're an incredible office to see what they can do. The beauty of working in such a small office also was I got to work all summer directly with the manager of public policy and advocacy. I got to really help shape what our priorities are, what we wanted to be pushing, what we wanted to be working on. I did everything from breaking down the data of who is using our services to researching legislation to helping organize a rally to help save a hospital that was at threat of closing. One of my biggest projects though and what I'm really very proud of is from start to finish I researched, wrote, created and delivered an entire campaign plan that NAMI NYC is still using in order to pursue the passage of a bill that is currently stuck in committee in New York. The bill would require all teachers in New York to receive training in mental health, eating disorders and behavioral disorders. And considering 50% of all mental illness show signs by the age of 14, this is super important info for teachers to have. All of my work came together in my last week of my internship when we did what we called an Advocacy Week. My supervisor and I traveled throughout New York City. We hit three of the five boroughs. We met with almost a dozen elected officials. We talked to them. We told them what NAMI does. We gave them statistics about how many of their specific constituents had used our services. We pitched this education bill to them, asked for their support, and in general we built relationships with the elected officials so that we could keep pursuing good mental health policy. The New York legislature is not back in session until January. I wish I had the vacation of New York legislature. So I'll see what happens with that education bill then. And I'm looking forward to hearing if it can finally move out of committee. In the meantime I'm not sure what I'll do after I graduate. I kind of like the unknown also. One thing I did learn this summer which surprised me is that I really don't like New York City. So I probably won't end up there. But what I do know is I want to keep doing work like this. I want to keep advocating and talking about mental health and really speaking on behalf of organizations that I believe in such as NAMI. Thank you so much. All right and we now welcome Carl. Three years ago my wife and I bought the four unit apartment building where we were living. As part of our commitment to make our building affordable for our low-income tenants we participated in a home energy weatherization program. This means we improved our building's energy efficiency in order to save our tenants money on their electric bills. This experience sparked my interest in energy policy as I enrolled at the Ford School. Nevertheless last year I really struggled to narrow down my internship search. I'm a generalist so I like a lot of things. In fact when I met with Jennifer from Career Services and she asked me what I wanted to get out of this experience the best answer I could give was I want to solve really big problems. I landed an internship with the Michigan Energy Office in the Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy. The Energy Office acts as a bridge between federal and state grant programs and local stakeholders. They work on projects that promote clean energy and reduce energy waste. I worked on a series of pilot programs in three communities that combine solar energy credits with home weatherization programs for low-income families. Our program had three main goals. We wanted to reduce electricity usage, reduce energy burdens for these families, and improve their home health environment. And this program fit me perfectly. I got to work on two really big problems. Affordable housing and climate change. And it jump-started my experience in energy policy. Most exciting was the way I was able to see how the skills and knowledge I learned in my first year at the Ford School applied to my internship. I want to give you three examples. First I was working on an analysis of our Cherryland pilot. And I wanted to answer question number one. Were our subscribers using less electricity? Which turns out is a really difficult question because temperature variations from year to year can affect how much a household uses. And we didn't have data on whether they were using air conditioners or portable heaters. So I used an econometric solution from program evaluation. I regressed electricity usage on temperature data and I found, yes, our subscribers are using less electricity. Second, I wanted to solve this data problem. So I wanted to create two new surveys. A pre-survey and a post-survey for future pilot programs. But I'd never created a survey before. So the energy office paid for me to attend a survey course. And when I did that I was able to start conducting these surveys with the participants of our second pilot program. Finally, as we were preparing for this second pilot program we wanted to try something new with financing. And there was a lot of debate among our stakeholders about whether a short term or a long-term financing option would be better. I used a lesson from Microeconomics about the future value of money to prove that the long-term option was not only better for all of our subscribers but also better for the electric utility. This experience allowed me to work on two really big problems and helped me plug into the energy policy circuit. It built on my experience as a landlord and helped me to apply my skills from the Ford School. But best of all I was able to directly connect with the people who were benefiting from our program. This survey reminds me that even though I don't know exactly what big problems I want to tackle after the Ford School, it's the people whose everyday lives are impacted by these big policies that need to inform the solutions. Thank you. All right this is one of those times where I'm going to say a few words. And actually it starts out with trivia. So I want to leverage the quant skills in the audience. So you'll see that we have 11 presenters tonight. And you will see that you have a cheat sheet in front of you if you have a program. But just guesses from the audience in terms of combined mileage. One way for each of these students from Ann Arbor, so adding up from Ann Arbor to Detroit. Ann Arbor to Lansing for all 11 students. Seeing the reach of these 11 presenters and in the Ford School what that total mileage may be. Do we have any guesses? We can go over under here. We're just a number. You don't have to throw out a calculator but you can use one if you want to. But any guesses? Okay John is guessing 50,000 a little less than that. 11,000. All right. A little more than 11. All right. We're going to go with 17 as the closest guess. Not price is right rules. But the correct answer is 15,527. So nice guessing them over here. And all right we're going to we are going to bring it bring it back together though and get started with pitch number three. But just two points on distance and again in geographic reach of Ford School policy impact. So at the graduate level the furthest international destination was in Dilley Timor-Leste which is 9,505 miles from Ann Arbor. And we had two students that were there at the Asia Foundation. And then domestically we had one student in Honolulu, Hawaii, Hawaii, Appleseed which is 4,445 miles from Ann Arbor. So just some geographic trivia because I like maps if you've been in my office. But thank you for playing Ford Fun Facts Trivia. And Afrasal come on down. Thank you Peter. I think I contribute like 9,000 miles because I'm from Indonesia. Good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Aprisal. I'm a second year MPP student and I'm from Indonesia. One year ago September 4th, 2018 it is the first day I stepped my feet here at Will Hall to pursue graduate study in public policy. And then 25 days later a 7.4 earthquake hit Central Sulawesi Indonesia. It followed by two tsunamis and at least three liquefactions. That disaster destroyed Central Sulawesi, my hometown. It killed more than 4,500 people. Some of them are my friends. Some of them are my neighbors. And at least 173,000 men, women, children lost their homes. Five months later I received an email from Direct Relief in Santa Barbara California offering an internship as a research intern for a disaster relief program. Direct Relief is a humanitarian aid organization with a mission to improve the life and health of people affected by disaster and poverty without regard to politics, religions or ability to pay. I was surprised to receive this email because first I was not applying for that position and they actually created that specific position for me. And the second because the disaster relief program was actually in Central Sulawesi in my hometown. My internship focused on two main things. The first one I have to analyze and map the disaster impact after eight months and how the government policy were being implemented especially in the area of housing, health and international aid. I travel across Central Sulawesi especially to the remote areas where government support seems unavailable. I talk to the refugees asking them what's it's needed right now and the most pressing challenges they currently face. And I put all of my findings and document everything and create an interactive map using ARGIS online for the public to see. The second focus of my internship is to work together with local governments and communities and university to come up with a plan to build healthcare infrastructures. I evaluated at least nine budget proposals from local governments. I drafted two grant agreements and two memorandums of understanding. Yeah I found that at the end of my internship I successfully organized a signing ceremony between direct relief, the vice president himself coming to Indonesia and also the government of Central Sulawesi province and also government of SIGI Regency, Palu City and Donggala Regency and also University of Muamadiyah. All of these stakeholders they finally agree and I'm so happy to that they finally agree to build a hospital and aid public health clinics in Central Sulawesi. My takeaway from this internship well apart from gaining 20 pounds for the last eight weeks probably the new interest that I found toward disaster management policy and it has grown since I started the semester here in Ann Arbor. Today September 17, 2019 one year later I am standing here in front of you all and I'm wearing this traditional hand woven clothes from Central Sulawesi. I'm celebrating one year studying public policy in the US and I'm also mourning for the day the disaster happened in my hometown. Central Sulawesi still has a lot of things to do to recover from the disaster but I would like to take my last 10 seconds to extend my gratitude especially to Fort School Public Policy and also Graduate Character Service for bringing me back to my hometown and also for direct relief for most importantly giving a new hope to Central Sulawesi. Thank you and God bless you all. All right let's welcome Brooke. So I'm gonna start with a question who here has ever written an email? Now raise your hand yeah absolutely all right probably all of us right I think some of you might be writing ones right now I'm kidding but just think about how integral email has become we use it to communicate to apply to jobs to ask questions heck an email probably invited you to this very event yet if you've never sent an email it can present a major barrier so if this were an email I should have started with a greeting maybe dear judges maybe dear audience but then you have to introduce yourself so my name is Brooke Bossigal and I'm a senior at the Ford School. Two years ago my co-founder Ayakutma and I started an organization called Revive. It was 2017 and we are entering into the sixth year of the Syrian crisis while Syrian students were pushed out of classrooms and joined what's called the lost generation or a group of students who due to longevity of conflict have been out of school for five plus years I was sitting in this room in my second year of university reading about them now I went into policy because unlike other degrees where we would stay in that ivory tower studying the effects of the refugee crisis board students are equipped with the skills to roll up our sleeves and actually start something to go out and do something and make a change so we did recognizing limitations since we couldn't teach all of fifth grade or pay for everyone's tuition couldn't even really pay for our own we made it our mission to focus on those smaller things like emails cover letters job applications things that we take for granted but that present legitimate barriers to refugee students on a daily basis through revive we partner with organizations that are embedded in the community to conduct needs assessments and develop culturally relevant curriculum to date we've had five workshops in over four different cities in the u.s and turkey and are looking to expand to Lebanon in the spring so this summer I realized that individual change without institutional change is not simply enough refugee students could learn how to apply to colleges but if colleges couldn't learn how to accept refugee students then barriers like how someone could be fluent in five languages but maybe only proficient in English or requiring high school transcript from schools that have been destroyed by war present really serious barriers they inhibit enrollment and discourage applicants so moving forward through a partnership with a school of social work I'm looking to address the application process itself to make it easier for refugee students to apply to college now we skipped through a couple steps in our lesson but you end the body of your email with your request and a conclusion I urge you to share and learn what you have learned I urge you to share what you learn with those who have not had the same opportunities as you and learn from their experiences as well because what I've learned through my work is that at the end of it all we're sitting in this room sending emails for no other reason than circumstance and fate and the students I work with through revive deserve the same opportunities that we've received every bit as much as we do so we should give them that chance thank you for listening comma Brooke Bossigl and send all right this is one of our brief breaks again but back to geography so I want to take a moment to focus on our undergraduate students and through the hard work of the forest school and generous donors at the undergraduate level we were able to support 37 students across a variety of sectors on internships in summer 2019 and these undergrad internships were in five countries seven different states ten different cities and all policy sectors so we checked all our boxes when it came to nonprofit management advocacy local state federal government you'll hear from another undergrad here shortly but getting to miles again and our reach again at the Ford school so domestically at the undergrad level the furthest domestic internship was at a non-profit in San Francisco 2,358 miles from Ann Arbor and the furthest international undergrad internship was in Kazakhstan which is 5,811 miles from Ann Arbor so we're gonna get to some more fun stuff here momentarily such as me passing it over to herson my name is Herzon I'm a second year MPP and I'm from Chicago this summer I had the honor of working for Detroit public schools community district which is dedicated to serving all students in Detroit and I was assigned to the office of government affairs my experience can be summed up by one of my favorite poems by Tupac Shakur and it goes like this did you hear about that rose that grew from the crack in the concrete proving nature's laws wrong it learned to walk without having feet funny it seems but by keeping its dreams it learned to breathe fresh air long lived the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared you see the students of Detroit Chicago and other struggling districts are roses and yeah we have bruised petals but people need to learn to celebrate our tenacity and our willingness to grow you see at second grade I needed an individualized education program which meant I was a special ed kid since schools since my school like resources there were time students like me didn't have enough I didn't have a proper classroom to learn separately from the regular students so we had a jump from the lunch room basement and closets at times but outside were other factors that played a role like the local gangs like the poverty and violent in my neighborhood but thereby the grace of God a consistent work ethic and a strong family foundation I'm able to be here with you today you see I believe we can't separate politics from public education the politics of compassion and decency is needed and it is the least we can do for our future leaders what happened throughout my primary education was political and it should not be the norm that is why I was so motivated to spearhead dpscd's legislative agenda by helping launch their bill tracker using share point I had to compile all legislation introducing the education committees which was well over 2000 bills so every department head can follow and follow the legislation that was related to their line of work additionally I summarize bills that would directly impact the choice public education system these build these these summaries were sent to my supervisor to keep her in the loop of all the the specific bills necessary I'm proud to have worked for an institution that like me has overcome so much despite critics calling it a failure you see it's not true that dpscd mismanages funds in fact it's on its third consecutive year with a budget surplus the number of fully staffed schools is increased from 22 to 44 and that's since 20 2017 this year dpscd managed to decrease chronic absenteeism by 7% it may not be much but it's heading towards the right direction don't get it twisted we don't want handouts or pity just stop pointing at our bruised petals instead help celebrate our willingness to reach the sun before coming to michigan I was the assistant to the Illinois deputy governor and chief operating officer and I had some doubt that education policy was still my interest but I am happy to have been relieved of that doubt after my experience in Detroit thank you all right let's welcome aloka hi everyone my name is aloka Narayanan and I'm a second year MPP originally from sandy miss california some of my earliest and fondest memories come from the sandy miss public library my local favorite place in my hometown i have vivid recollections of walking in the seemingly gargantuan double doors hand in my mother's on my way to the next fantastical adventure that is whichever book i grabbed first my mom who is now retired was a preschool teacher who worked part-time when i was a kid while my dad worked full-time as an accountant mom was there to drop me off and pick me up from school every day read me read to me every night cook healthy meals for the family and volunteer at my school whenever she got the chance as a result of my parents stable career and incomes I enjoyed the privilege of a childhood oblivious to the threats of food and security and homelessness my parents continued investment of time money and attentiveness are the reasons that i'm here today most of Detroit's children don't have the same opportunities that I did growing up due to simple truths of economic disinvestment some parents work two to three jobs a day with barely enough time to sleep let alone take their kids to the library 60 percent of Detroit children under five live in poverty and only 15 percent of children are reading proficiently by grade three when i point to key reasons for why i'm here today it all comes back to early childhood education and supports that i received that's why i chose to spend my summer working on a city-wide grade level reading campaign in Detroit i worked with brilliant Detroit a remarkable nonprofit in the city that builds kid's success neighborhoods where families and children are able to build steady healthy stable lives the initiative i worked on is called 313 reads and it boasts a systems level approach to ensure that more children are reading by reading proficiently by grade three during my 10-week internship i worked with brilliant Detroit and poverty solutions at the University of Michigan to strengthen 313 reads collective impact model in three ways first i interviewed nonprofit directors in Detroit to assess capacity for expansion of early childhood services and possibilities to build stronger referral networks between them second i researched leading practices used by grade level reading campaigns across the nation and education experts here at u of m to track progress on community-wide literacy goals finally i built an evaluation framework informed by all of the above that would allow nonprofits and community leaders alike to see how well the city was doing at accomplishing all of those goals i feel empowered every single day by the sincere efforts of my parents to build opportunity for me the closest intervention to the comprehensive supports that i and others in my position have received is a collective impact model which is essentially a comprehensive model for collaboration 313 reads involves partners from early education providers to pediatricians and food banks promising progress of other collective impact grade level reading campaigns gives me the inspiration to continue doing this work in Detroit after graduation i certainly will remain connected to the city and find new ways to contribute to the rise of new generations thank you all right get to hear from me briefly again so at orientation if you're a member back a couple weeks three or so i know so much has happened since then we asked our incoming mpp's a couple questions if you're a call being in our space 34 to our tiny room asking about your career aspirations and interests so one of those questions that we asked you if you recall is what will you do this semester to position yourself well to achieve your career related goals so i just want to let you know that we do read those and i'm going to share a couple responses with you right now so number one read the weekly emails thank you for doing that and showing up tonight uh go to employer information sessions self-reflection start early to figure out what organizations i want to internet go to programs again coming here check try to develop relationships with faculty and alums who have experience in international policy and i will challenge myself to develop stronger quantitative skills i will push myself to ask for help attend as many info sessions employer events as possible so that's just a couple that we captured but we are ready to continue with our program so pranav good evening my name is pranav govindaraju and i'm a senior here at the ba program at ford i came to michigan from san jose california where i grew up in the heart of silicon valley in a family of computer scientists and engineers so as you can probably guess i grew up with a passion for anything but computer science and engineering instead in high school i focused my time on activities like debate where i argued about things like the dot frank act and the trans-pacific partnership and i was fascinated you see i wanted to learn how governments design regulations to account for things that are as unpredictable and as multivariate as the free market it was a desire to answer questions like this that took me here to the ford school and eventually led to me applying for an internship at the federal reserve now just for some background on the federal reserve board or the fed the fed is basically the central bank of the united states it operates under a dual mandate from congress to ensure long-term price stability and low levels of unemployment now the fed also has to maintain independence and this just basically means that they don't check their twitter now i was hired to be a policy analytics intern in the division of supervision and regulation and as the name suggests this was the body that was responsible for supervising and regulating financial institutions so basically if any of the nation's banks were breaking the rules it was our job to find out now when i got to the fed i was tasked with a project to investigate atypical fluctuations in the derivative notional balances of systemically important financial institutions and to assess their purported effect on capital surcharge requirements when i got there i had no idea what those words meant but essentially i was being asked to assess whether or not some of the largest banks in the world were making their numbers look better than they actually were and now when i found out the gravity of this project i was terrified you see not only was i being asked to assess the efficacy of a federal regulation i didn't know how to use any of the statistical programming software they gave me and i didn't even really know what a financial derivative was so i was scared but my apprehension soon gave way to excitement you see i was being asked to investigate some of the largest banks in the world i felt like steve karel from the big short and as an intern this felt like an incredible opportunity and now by the end of my internship i was asked to prevent to division supervisors and managers my findings and so i gave an hour long presentation with graphs some numbers and some more graphs to basically answer the question is anything going wrong with the banks my answer was i don't really know there's not enough information and that was okay because in the process of investigating i learned more skills than i ever could have hoped for i learned more about financial policy and about words that i previously didn't know the definitions of than i ever could have imagined and i was even able to make recommendations on how the federal reserve board can make changes to its existing capital surcharge criterion again more words that i learned the definition of and i felt like i was making a difference and now i may not ever be able to see that impact materialized in the real world while i can't tell you definitively that i made a positive impact this past summer i can't tell you that i learned while i wasn't out there in the community i was at a cubicle in front of a computer learning i learned more than i ever could have imagined and i like to believe that in the realm of public policy that's the first step now i don't know what my second step is going to be i know i want to continue working with economic policy but i don't know whether that's going to be in the government or in the private sector but what i do know is that with my experiences at the fed i'm ready to learn more i'm ready to face the greater challenges and that's exciting to me thank you i appreciate it all right let's welcome brandon my name is brandon pierce i'm a second-year mpp student here at the ford school studying education policy and analysis methods uh being my uh my internship internship search knowing that i wanted to be in education policy but really open to what that looked like i'd come from the nonprofit sector and pretty small nonprofit and so i was hoping to go someplace bigger either district or state level my search became a little more focused when my partner who had been getting her MBA in baltimore all year got an internship in boston and so i didn't know anyone in boston so i immediately talked to peter and peter was able to connect me with a couple of alumni and before i knew it the chief of staff at bps was sending all my contact information out to all the directors at central office and so within a couple of weeks i had secured a summer internship and so when i was at bps i worked on the team of recruitment cultivation and diversity and so this is a team of about 10 that implements and designs programs to recruit retain and develop educators of color in the district and this idea is is spent off research that proves that students of color do better when they have teachers that reflect their ethnicity and students of color make up about 60 of boston public schools and the teachers are roughly 80 white so these programs are actually the same programs that i wrote about in my public policy 510 paper and was like super excited about like what would that look like in detroit and so these like fellowship opportunities networking events ways for people that have been underrepresented in traditional teacher preparation programs to get access and become teachers at the district so as an intern i did a lot of capacity building at the district i was able to flex a lot of the skills that i'd learned in my first year here at Ford did some strategy memos around recruiting different demographics i designed a data tracking tool using excel and i can now really say that i'm like proficient in excel on my resume and that is going to be continued to be used for many programs and it's a program evaluation on different recruitment events i even downloaded stata onto my computer and i'd have it open and my team members would walk by and be like oh my god what are they making you do and i was like no no no i like this this is fun to me and so i was able to look at how effective this pre-screening process was at identifying high quality candidates of color and getting them into the pipeline faster and i was able to show that that it was making a significant impact there and my team was really wonderful i got to connect on many different issues so i looked at the new union agreement that had just gotten ratified there was a new superintendent and had a transition team coming in i got to learn all about the budgeting process that was about to get started but there's one conversation that i had that really sort of like was my turning point of the summer and that was with my director talking about sort of where the progress of these recruitment efforts have been over the last several years and and she mentioned that a couple years ago they had hired 100 of the african-american graduates at the harvard school of education that was one student and so it it really spoke to me like these these programs are so important but they can't have the impact that they need to have just at the district level and if it's difficult for boston public schools which is an incredibly well-resourced large urban district that pays their teachers six figures and you get a tenure after your fourth year teaching what chance does a district like detroit have a detroit where you know recruiting teachers of color isn't the biggest issue it's recruiting anyone to come fill a teacher vacancy in the in the building so my experience this summer really reinforced that the policies i'm interested are more at the state level and that's where i plan to continue my journey and years ahead thank you all right i'm going to deliver a pitch to uh just kidding on that one but i am going to share some more feedback from our incoming MPPs so one more question that we asked at orientation how do you want to use your degree in future endeavors and opportunities and here is some of your feedback so being able to use data to promote global social justice having worked on the ground in my field and seen the problems i want to use my degree to affect real change on a wider level than the individual gain policy and analysis skills to inform partnership development between the public and private sectors promote economic security and opportunity in detroit poverty alleviation gender equality and running for office travel the world provide for my family and my dogs and serve the public good avril come on down sending reports to ceo mary barra driving autonomous vehicles in the proving ground having meetings on a boat my name is avril pakash and these are just some of the highlights from my summer at general motors in detroit so my goal at the ford school was to specialize in the regulation of emerging tech i wanted to create economic and political infrastructure that allows regulation to keep up with the fast pace of innovation that spurs growth and here at ford i used the stpp certificate to explore the policy landscape of emerging technologies like autonomous vehicles because mobility impacts every aspect of your life from an individual to the community work family quality of life so you might have heard of gm um they're the largest automaker in the u.s. they produce vehicles in 37 countries and their branding lineup includes uh buick cadillac chevrolet and gmc so gm envisions a future of zero crashes zero emissions and zero congestion and they're committed to an all electric future and they're actually the first american automaker to mass produce an affordable electric car so it's a long been a dream of mine to work for an american automaker because the big three are such an integral part of what makes michigan michigan and this rule gave me a behind the scenes understanding of why so while environmental policy is not my career focus um the path to vehicle electrification rests on emerging technology and that experience allowed me to explore this policy area that's in my interest so based out of the renaissance center in detroit i was an intern for the global public policy team and i worked on the energy and environment portfolio so over the course of my internship i basically helped gm strategic planning process by uh addressing global regulatory changes some key regulations at the heart of my team's work included federal fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards so over my 12 weeks i had to examine california's greenhouse gas emissions modeling to clarify their assumptions i'd analyze federal fuel economy data to isolate market trends i also had to evaluate california's bifurcation or split from federal rulemaking you might hear about that tomorrow in the news um and i also had to monitor presidential candidates policy that affected gm's portfolio so this role allowed me to put my graduate studies in emerging tech regulation to practical use the fourth school emphasis on quantitative research and analysis allowed me to deliver impactful reports directly to ceo mary barra and the rest of the senior leadership team with confidence my internship included several aspects unique to the policy team i discovered a new legal strategy that gave gm a competitive advantage i also got to test drive their autonomous vehicles these would not have been possible on any other team within gm because global public policy is able to have touch points on such nascent issues that just aren't possible on business development or on the legal team for instance and we had our bi-monthly meetings on a colleague's boat i guess that was fun um the experience confirmed my goal to pivot into the private sector and it really opened my eyes to the multitude of opportunities and innovation that's present in the auto industry i really believe that combining business acumen with my passion for public policy can help me promote the constant innovation and stay true to my personal values and ethics of uh being ensuring equal access to opportunity in the digital age so thank you so much john good evening everyone my name is john martinez and i am here today partly due to luck and mostly due to a hardworking determined mother who wanted to provide a better life for her children than the one that she had my family was able to do the impossible break the vicious cycle of poverty which we like countless others have faced for generations my roots informed my devotion to the alleviation of poverty an issue that is driven by multitude of factors which i am prepared to do my part in addressing throughout my life before coming to ford i focused on uh mitigating health disparities in the city of detroit related to lead poisoning and asthma the number of roadblocks faced by families inspired me to come here this past summer i had the privilege to work for my community once again by interning for the detroit mayor's office whose mission is to serve though the residents of the city there i work for the lean team who focuses on supporting city managers increasing the impact of their programs through the use of such tools as a damaic framework which is a data-driven improvement cycle that stands for defined measure analyze improve and control we work on many issues ranging from simplifying procurement to improving emergency service deployment essentially it's the mayor's consulting team but saying the word consultant in the city is like saying voldemort at hogwarts you don't want to do that through the lean team i had the opportunity of working on one of the mayor's policy priorities supporting a workforce development pilot titled detroit job readiness event this pilot streamlined various services to bust barriers to employment such as expungement tutoring and gd attainment into one bundle this was made possible with an agreement with fiat christler to provide detroiters who participated in the program priority hiring for their new g-plant that opens next year i had a key role in crafting training staff and implementing this pilot throughout this throughout the summer by the end we were able to serve over 9 000 detroit residents through the program during exit interviews hope radiated from the face of these residents many of them told me that this was the first time in their lives that they felt that the city was working for them moments like this fuel my drive to serve and help those in need as we speak thousands of detroiters are applying for those jobs available to them thanks to the pilot which the city plans to expand and continue and hopefully serve as a framework for others to use my fingers are crossed that when the smoke clears and the g-plant opens its doors next year thousands of detroiters will be given the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty my experience this summer reinforced the vision i came here to pursue and reminded me the importance of working with a great team and a passionate mentor also to my surprise the dynamic nature of consulting might be what's right for me i know this won't be the last time that i play a role in working to improve the lives of those in my community thanks to the doors that ford is open to me thank you can we have all our presenters please stand and can we give them one more round of applause well thank you everyone for coming out supporting your fellow peers here at the ford school it was a very incredible evening that is continuing so what we are doing is we're going to ask everyone to clear the room and start the reception in the doors behind you so if we could have our presenters head out there once the room is cleared our judges will deliberate and we will announce right outside in five minutes