 have former fellows as speakers, and I know that there are many of them also online watching. We've enjoyed hosting the fellows so much, and they have truly enriched public knowledge on the field. I'm Christine DeBrye. I've been working on developing and overseeing the fellowship program, Public Knowledge, for seven years. First under the leadership of Gene Kimmelman, who launched the program and is here with us today. And now with the leadership of Chris Lewis, who has added his own ideas and approaches to growing the program. We'll hear today about how fellowship training is a gateway to jobs and public policy, and ultimately a way to add your voice to the conversation, as laws are being made. Our program focuses on opening doors to people from all backgrounds, increasing diversity in the field, and creating opportunity. Two-thirds of the 22 fellows hired into PK's program up until 2020 were female, almost two-thirds were people of color, and over one-third were from families where at least one parent was born outside the U.S. They have gone on to leadership positions on the Hill, the FCC, across the tech policy field, and as you'll see today, even the Nevada State Senate. At this point, we've hosted two dozen fellowships and dozens of internships and externships, and our goal is to continue to create more opportunities. As part of our work, we also created a project to examine diversity across the tech policy field and learn more about how to increase diversity and inclusion. You'll hear more about that during the program. At this point, I'll kick it over to our moderator. He was a two-year fellow at PK and is now leading tech policy at Common Cause. Thank you, Yosef. Thank you so much, Christine, and so public knowledge for hosting this really timely discussion and for inviting me to moderate. As Christine mentioned, my name is Yosef Gattachu, and I'm the Media and Democracy Director at Common Cause. Before my time at Common Cause, I had the pleasure of working at public knowledge as a fellow for about two years. So really the fellowship program is near and dear to my heart for a couple of reasons, but before I get into my experiences there, I just wanted to share that when I was in law school, I was really interested in a career at the intersection of law, policy, and politics, and really trying to figure out how to make systemic changes that impact real people. But I didn't really know how to do that. I didn't know what skills I needed to do that. And I was lucky enough after law school to land a fellowship at public knowledge where I realized what I wanted to do and I'm doing now is to be an advocate and to do advocacy work to learn about all aspects of advocacy to make real change. And so over my two years at public knowledge, while I did a decent amount of legal research and writing, I got a great education and great training in all other aspects of advocacy work. So things like talking to the press about key policy issues or organizing coalitions and bringing in diverse stakeholders into coalitions or engaging in a number of film meetings to affect legislation in Congress or talking with regulators at the FCC or the FTC. These were all things that I really had a great experience and learning about at public knowledge as a fellow. Things that I didn't really realize played a role in the public policy aspect of how laws get passed and how policies get enacted. And that's really the second part of the fellowship that really changed my perspective on issues and over my eyes to how to make change. It's the strategic thinking. And that's what I always credit PK for, is how do we think strategically about making policy changes and advocating for key issues? So while we learn about coalitions and talking to Hill staff and building a Hill strategy or filing comments at the FCC, the question and the issue for me has always been how do you bring all these pieces together? How do you do these things in a cohesive way where you have a strategy in place where you are making that change that you want to see? Or you are making an impact in one type of policy or another? And these are the types of skills that I'm doing now and taking on now in my current role at Common Cause. The idea is that I'm building campaigns and campaigns based on advocacy where I am organizing Hill meetings and figuring out a Hill strategy. I am talking to diverse stakeholders to figure out how can we form a coalition to make a change in a key policy issue? How do we bring folks to the table that aren't always at these policy tables? And doing it in a way where I'm utilizing all the skills that I've learned at PK. And the last point I want to mention is that the fellowship program isn't something that ends with me or with individuals. What I've learned is that you always want to pass it on and use the training and skills you've learned to bring on the next generation. So I've been fortunate enough to hire my own fellow at Common Cause who I am hopeful is learning some of the skills that I learned at PK. And I'm passing down a way where he is understanding what it means to be an advocate, what it means to be a public policy or public interest advocate to make change in ways that others can see and follow your lead. But enough about me. I just want to turn it over to this all-star lineup of panelists who all had unique experiences in fellowships and the public interest advocacy space at large. So we have Chanel Hardy, who is currently the civil rights head at Google. Jean Kimelman, who is the former public knowledge president and currently at the DOJ. Dallas Harris, who is the state senator at Nevada. And see on test five, we just completed a fellowship at public knowledge. I want to start with Chanel. And I'm hoping you can just share some of your experiences as a fellow and what your career trajectory has looked like over the years. Hi, everyone. It's good to see you today. And USF, I would definitely say when you say the all-star panel, we definitely include you as part of that. For folks who have not followed USF's work closely, you are missing out. He is definitely one of the key leaders present and future of ensuring that we have communications and telecom and media and insert all the words, tech, policy, world that really benefits all of us. So it's a privilege to be with you today, as always. And with the rest of this panel, I was a fellow for PK. And I like to think of myself as probably kind of an outlier, which I think is exactly right. I came to PK's fellowship after completing law school, where I thought I wanted to be a public defender working with juveniles. I had taught fifth grade in what was then called inner city DC. All my students were on free breakfast and free lunch. You can imagine there was some really challenged environments that I was seeing. And it was clear to me that simply being the best teacher I could be while certainly tremendously impactful, didn't begin to touch the systemic nature of the challenges that we're holding my students and their families back. So I went to law school as part of my journey to better understand how systems and power impact the opportunity of people like myself and my community. And so after law school and seeing something similar, I spent a year as a student attorney in a clinic with public defender service and just really saw again, incredibly laudable, necessary work with outcomes that were for me disheartening at best because you were still working inside horrendously flawed systems. And so I was kind of at the end of my law school career, fundamentally rethinking what I might want to do. I thought policy might be the next possible journey to explore. And so had the opportunity to interview for the Consumer Reports Fellowship under Jane Kimmelman. And that was an opportunity for me to... It was kind of funny. I'm sure Jean will say when he gets a chance if he comments on it, it was an opportunity where I was thinking all kinds of things mattered. None of them were consumer issues. And I laugh to this day about how the consumer movement has just not been effective in helping BIPOC folks to see the ways in which these issues are fundamentally issues of justice. So I talked about being interested in education and criminal justice reform and economic opportunity and fairness and ended up learning about, among other things, telecommunications and media policy. And as soon as I began going through back then boxes of papers and, of course, being on the web online as well, I really saw that in all the rooms that I was in. There were very few people who looked like me, young, female or a person of color. And so it immediately was like, this might be a thing. And as someone who has always been a passionate bookworm and lover of film media in all the ways that we tell stories, it was clear to me that those who have the power to tell the stories have the ultimate power. And so I was extremely passionate about that opportunity. What I would say was most meaningful for me and the fellowship were one, had that fellowship opportunity not existed and had kind of like the happy accident of me even finding out about it occurred. It would never have occurred to me that there was a career path for me in tech, telecom, media or policy, other than at the very, very highest level. I'd not had a family member who was doing it or friends. And so it really opened up a whole new world for me. What I think was great about my manager at the time, Gene, is he really did kind of say, go try things and make mistakes and get out there. And of course, I did do that because I was in rooms with being significantly less experienced than most of the people in the room, but it allowed me to learn quickly because there's nothing like being thrown in the deep end. And by the end of my one year fellowship with Consumer Reports, I really had developed a strong network across the kind of multicultural political community in DC, in particular those who were engaged in issues of telecom and media policy. I had, of course, built a network within the consumer world and just frankly built up a good body of substantive knowledge. And then in addition to that, I was given the opportunity to just kind of follow around with the other advocates within the organization and learn from them. So everything from backup cameras and medical malpractice and debt reform, bankruptcy reform, all of those different types of things, and to see experts in action. And the final thing that I think was meaningful as you talked about, USF was the opportunity to have substantive work products that I could really stick my teeth into and be able to demonstrate at the end of the time that I had really made a contribution to the organization. And the last thing I would say about that fellowship experience for me is it actually also helped me recognizing the value of my voice as a person who I don't want to say underrepresented or whatever, a BIPOC person, that I had a unique point of view that was necessary even as a young person because my experience, to the extent that I spoke up and acknowledged things that were happening enriched the conversation. So I think all of those things were important. And as I, what it did for my career trajectory is just send me in a career trajectory that buried all of my interest, passions, and skills to go into politics and policy to make a difference. And so I went on to work at the Federal Trade Commission on Capitol Hill in leadership at one of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organizations and ultimately to Google, where I'm continuing to work with all of these communities and to advance this work in a way that allows me to continue to give back to fellowship programs. So I continue to support in and partner with organizations like PK to fund fellowship programs and to really bring together networks of fellows so that we can continue to support each other. I have so many more thoughts but I'll stop there for now. All of that is super helpful. I did want to pick up on one thread you discussed earlier. You had mentioned that when you were a fellow for Gene, you saw how you were one of the very few young people, woman, person of color in this space. How was it interacting with other colleagues and trying to get your thoughts and ideas in the conversation? And as your career has progressed, how do you think about getting more diversity into the policy space specifically around tech issues and how fellowships kind of impacted that? Yeah, well, I will say some of this is probably my own personality and some of this is probably having Gene's support. But I was fairly assertive about just kind of being speaking up and contributing my opinion because I felt there was a safe space to do that. It didn't always have produced the result I might have wanted but I was able to be heard. I remember Free Press was having one of their conferences and I was chosen to be part of a group of people of color attending and had to comment on my experiences of the conference. I was fairly skating. When you're young, you're pretty you know, no holds barred, which I think is a mixed blessing. And so, you know, I had quite a an analysis about what I saw and continue to see as a tension between kind of the quote-unquote public interest tech world and the civil and human rights world that has been working on many of the same things for many, many years and calling it something different. And so I talked a lot about that. But I think that what I again learned and I continue to see this throughout my career is there have been spaces where I've been like I have nothing like there is no comparison. We're just in totally different worlds in terms of the credentials that I'm bringing to this room and that others are bringing and that's not about whether I am, you know, talented or skilled. It's about literally I'm sitting at a table with a bunch of economists and I'm not an economist. And yet I would have something that I could offer because things just don't occur to people outside of their lived experience in most cases. And so the fact that you can say something that seems really obvious in a room full of people like you and actually kind of cause folks to think is why it's so critical for us to have diversity in terms and why it's so critical to be heard. I think that one of the things that we can do to create lasting impact with fellowships is to grow it beyond a pipeline program. We really have to be thoughtful about, you know, having a permanent career path for fellows, often within organizations. And we need to ensure that the same interest and passion and DEI that created led to the creation of a fellowship program actually is part of the guiding principles of leadership of the organization or else we have a disconnect. And what I mean by that is it's fascinating to me, again, I'm not picking on I have many wonderful friends in the consumer movement, but it's fascinating to me that despite seeing fellows in the consumer movement over the years that were people of color, this it's still an incredibly, incredibly non diverse movement that has so much impact on so many different people of various backgrounds. And I think a lot of that is we're still using the same terminology. We're still going to the same places to look for people. And then we're surprised that it's not having an impact. One of the things that has really motivated me in thinking about the the kind of informal fellowship program that I run is the way in which I've heard leaders talk about what is now the environmental justice movement and how, you know, climate change, the climate change movement used to just appear to be about the baby seals. And why don't brown people care about the baby seals? Well, what about the brown babies? Nobody seems to care about the fact that we have brown children who are dying of asthma and lead poisoning and having horrendous life outcomes because of the same issues that are facing the baby seals. And once we could kind of create that get rid of that artificial barrier, we really saw, of course, the tremendous leadership that we've seen really coming up under the manner of environmental justice. And so I like hearing terms like tech justice or thinking about tech and tech policy issues as social justice issues, because of course they are. And I just always think about the fact that the air the issues areas that most impact so many of us are intentionally not particularly interesting and talked about in complex ways so that if you don't have a particular pathway in, you know, it seems like this is not something that we're going to we're going to focus. Oil we get tobacco we get we got to understand and we're starting to understand I think some of the issues around tech, telecom and media. So does that answer your question? Yes, yes. All right, good. The key messages lived experiences are critical to some of these policy decisions and fellowships are one of the ways that we can get more of that into the space. I want to turn things over to Gina who created the fellowship program at PK and has really done a lot of work around creating fellowship programs and mentoring fellows. So please, Jean, share your thoughts with all of us in terms of the fellowship program you started and where you see the fellowship program going in the future. Thanks. Wow, this is just awesome seeing all of you. Gosh. Well, you guys speak for what this is all about better than I ever could. So I have to start off with a little disclaimer. I'm currently working in the Justice Department. I'm a Deputy Associate Attorney General for the Associate Attorney General, Vanita Gupta, which so I'm not speaking up after the Justice Department at all. I just have to say that, but I'm just thinking of Vanita Gupta as you guys are talking and how this all fits together. So I don't think I can add anything to what you've said and what I'm sure Dallas and Seattle are going to say about diversity. That's a piece that was a total goal of creating a fellowship program, but my personal experience is what drove me and I'm so glad that it could become part of a diversity discussion because I came out of law school and I got thrown into public citizen advocacy position I knew nothing about and just it was an immersion crash course in understanding regulatory agencies, the court cases that were relevant to them, Congress and doing not one issue, not two issues, but like five issues at a time. It was just an unbelievable experience and I thought that's something that really helped shape and mold me and give me opportunities and I wanted other people to have that. So I'll stop there for a minute and just say of course there have been fellowships for forever and of course people have mentored other people for forever and it's no big deal on one level. But what I found was in trying to create a program that as much as I kind of gave everyone else that opportunity to have that same experience that Chanel described and Joseph you described a little bit, it was as much a learning experience for me to just see how people could fit into what was going on and how people from diverse backgrounds could teach me of what I wasn't even thinking about or what I wasn't seeing. Think about a la carte Chanel. I stepped into so many messes myself, you guys stepped into some of your own, but what really came out of it in the first instance was after having done it at Consumers Union and coming to public knowledge and wanting to build it, I had to hire somebody to actually structure this program and run it and that's Christine de Bray who has done a phenomenal job doing that and it was the learned experience of you can't just throw everybody in the soup and just expect them to just manage everything. There's got to be guidance, there's got to be a framework around it, there's got to be back and forth, there's got to be a feedback loop where people who are fellows aren't afraid to say what's going wrong and what they're not letting to learn and what they don't know and I'm sure it's not perfect but it should be ongoing, it should be for every time we do this we should figure out how to do it better and so I really learned from all of you guys and that's a really critical part of this and whether that changes the power structure and the diversity dynamics of organizations, I'm sure not enough but I think it's a critical element to build those paths for all of this really talent and excitement of young people coming in to influence how organizations run and think and are changed over time but today I also want to talk about something else that I just has come to me as you know the times change, the environments change and what jumped out at me as I was reflecting back on the fellowship program is almost everybody who comes to public interest I mean we're disadvantaged we're not the money people we're not we're not the people in power almost everybody comes with ideology as on their sleeves it's what's driving them it's their passion and whatnot and what I felt like that my role was and of the program that I was trying to build was because on the ground learning helped me navigate with the big law firms and the big companies that had power and the people who had insider knowledge was that you needed to build that into a program so that the people with that ideology could have the full opportunity to maximize their impact in the policy process and that's not by just going to parties with public interest people or people who are tech progressives or people who are your best friends it's having to deal with the enemy or the other people who you disagree with or however you want to care the people who are not like you and um and the fact of the matter is most people in congress are never going to be like you um and many regulatory agencies as well and it was the whole idea of creating frankly the best and the brightest the ivy league of doing advocacy is not in ivy league schools it should be in the halls of congress and in ngo's and in regulatory agencies and in the courts where you need them but it a lot of it is right there in washington for dc related stuff and then every state capital and you can go on that's the ivy league that matters here and a structure around it that um really enables the interactions the skill development uh everybody in an organization can contribute something to a fellow and a fellow can contribute something to everyone there and that's really the process that that's there when i look out there at all of you and many others who aren't on this i think of some of the most accomplished people in the policy world and who have traveled in different positions across different kinds of organizations government private sector but who um who have that unique set of skills that isn't book learned and taught that way that can't be learned that way that has to do with practicing policy taking risks learning from mistakes and building on it and i think that's what's really that this this is all about and so back to where i started you can have your own fellows you can have um uh uh you know summer interns you can have informal relationships but i've got to say that the the thing i am most proud about in terms of pk and all of you participating in this and many of you have worked through pk is the idea of a structure that can perpetuate this and can grow this over time and um and where people can use it as a model for other structures but we can't let this just be one-offs this has to be built into the system or i don't think you're ever going to change you're never going to have the chance to change the power dynamics that are at play you may never succeed but you got a much better chance by building this kind of a growth opportunity and skill development opportunity into all of our work so i'll stop there super helpful i want to pick up on one of the threads you said a lot of really insightful things and what really caught my attention was this ivy league of fellows concept of not having folks in ivy schools or other elite institutions but as fellows with their lived experiences making changes and really one of the things that i always refer to you as the godfather of fellows because you have just mentored and trained so many fellows over the years and pk to my knowledge is one of the few organizations that actually has a sustainable fellowship program but one of the things i'm noticing more and more is that as fellows go on to other organizations other groups are trying to approach them hire them and we're not actually getting new talents we're not actually getting more diverse people into this pipeline or structure that you talked about so the question really is how do we attract new talent both from individuals who can be great in this space but also on the organizational end to create these programs to give them opportunities well i i have not been able to crack that that not completely and i've gone to so many funders who you know i've described it as great idea but not programmatic that's not the way we fund um if i were talking about uh human rights in the global space people would get that it's capacity building but somehow when you call it fellowship training opportunities building the pipeline it doesn't resonate that way so i i wish philanthropy would embrace this but i haven't been able to you know crack that nut um i think we got to get in the schools i mean when i started at public citizen we were paid ten thousand dollars a year right out of law school it was a long time ago but ten thousand dollars wasn't much of that either the expectation was nobody was going to last more than two years because you couldn't live on it and so the only good thing we did was constantly recruit at schools because we knew we needed people now we did go to the ivy leagues and i wish we had done a lot more than that but it you know it's you've got to get out there you know i think we need to go into the communities and show people and i know pk's been trying to do that hope others are of getting the opportunity in front of people i know that i would never have gotten my first job if i hadn't seen it in a newspaper um advertisement they public citizen wasn't coming and recruiting at uva law school i a lot of other people did but nobody looked like that and um we've got to do that so that's another part of the infrastructure of being able to get the word out there to schools and get in front of people that this is an opportunity and then you got to have enough money to make people have a decent um uh be able to make a decent wage on a first job at least like a clerkship level or something like that i mean you want people who are committed to public service at least um so that you're investing in the right kind of people and so government level salaries or or clerkship level salaries is what i would do i mean those are the things that jump out at me immediately but it it's not in anybody's day job to do this if you're just trying to make change or if you're trying to organize or if you're you know you've got your deliverables so it's got to be built into the structure of how you get build a pipeline of talent yeah i think that's the exact approach i like to see other groups emulate it's not just about let's rely on one or two organizations to create this program and then we can just take the talent they trained up and take advantage of that but let's also recruit find diverse talent and build our own fellowship program so we're all contributing to this ecosystem of diversity and public interest advocacy on that note i want to turn it over to Dallas Harris who i had the pleasure of actually working with at public knowledge for about a year so Dallas please share some of your experiences as a fellow if you can what did you learn during that time well it's great to see you yosef um just a quick little story before i jump into it um what was about a year into my fellowship at public knowledge and yosef actually came down to public knowledge and met with me when he was thinking about um this fellowship and i wanted to learn a little bit about what it was about if it was something he'd be interested in i kind of bullied him into applying and ultimately he came down to one of two who became the fellows from george washington the year after myself so i've been with yosef since he was an itty bitty baby lawyer and it's really nice to see the the advocate that you are today and you know i think that is really about public knowledge right i mean the way you you summarize your experience was mine um you know i i had to learn very quickly that when you don't have money you have to be smarter you've got to know the issue better and it's not enough to know the issue you also have to have the traditional advocacy skills to persuade people even when you have uh the right idea right like that is often not enough and that is something i use all the time my current position in in the state senate right that's something you learn very quickly um i had the privilege of learning about monopolies right i remember having tons of discussions about what it means to monopolize uh infrastructure monopolies aren't necessarily uh bad right they just have to be regulated in a certain way and that type of thinking and understanding about markets um really sticks with you in all kinds areas of life so um not only am i in the state senate that's only a part-time gig i'm actually an energy attorney at a law firm now uh and so i'm constantly dealing with issues related to infrastructure return on investment uh strict regulators like the public utilities commission and it reminds me often of my days going into the FCC participating in rule makings we have something called 233B but that's basically our administrative procedures act and so i know all pk fellows are are fairly familiar with that and you know these things are our life skills not just um uh professional ones and so uh you know when you have the opportunity to sit on panels uh to moderate panels to sit in the room with FCC commissioners to sit in the room with staff of congress members uh you know these are not experiences that everyone gets to have and so you know you take you take advantage of it i had the opportunity to be um on television i had the opportunity uh to be on the radio and that is all something um that has to be deliberately set up by someone like jean like christine uh and like ourselves and and again i've taken a lot of this with me i i kind of almost didn't realize it until now but in my last session i had uh five students from the university uh who kind of interned with me throughout session and i i i guess i'm kind of noticing that my inclination to do that probably comes from what i learned at at public knowledge and and being instilled with that idea of climbing the ladder and then of course making sure you're reaching back down and bringing others up with you super helpful so you know you actually showed me the ropes my first few months as a fellow at pk and i shadowed you and a lot of the work we were doing we did meetings together and the work comments together and listening on your press calls i think you're actually i'm not mistaken the first fellow at pk who got quoted in the new york times and it was a story where other advocates much more senior than us were also in this story so to me that was a huge accomplishment that you were able to do that so i guess my question is how did you maximize your time as a fellow the program was only two years and there was just so many things that we had to had a chance to work on but how did you navigate that period of time and what were some of the things you figured out in terms of this is the best way i can make change or this is the most effective use uh my time working on this issue or the other so i think um the the way that i tried to maximize my experience was to become a sponge i i spent a lot of time in herald feld's office uh learning about uh uh telecommunications not just policy but like the actual statute the history uh you know you spend time uh talking to everyone in the office who was unbelievably willing uh to share that knowledge with you even though they also have their own work that they had to get done in order to you know advocate in the way that we wanted to so you know really maximizing my experience was about listening and talking um and knowing when to shut up and writing notes and uh and then saying yes right do you want to be on this panel yes uh do you want to uh go to this meeting yes right branching out into issues uh that you may not have known much about but diving in right uh you know jean mentioned being at public citizen and taking on on five issues you know that's that's how you you jump in and you learn right and and it's really a challenge to get both that depth and the breadth uh but you you find the balance because there's only so many of you and so many issues to cover and things to do and and so um be active uh keep your ears open and you know seek out mentors they're invaluable um talk to your colleagues you know i i think um having some fellowship amongst fellows was was really important and was a key part of the experience as well yeah i remember spending hours in herald's office just trying to accumulate every single piece of knowledge he was sharing with me so i i totally lost one you on that this one other question for you and i both went to law school together and you know how law school is it's very much i don't think like a lawyer case law legal research and writing but not so much on the advocacy side of things whether it's co-meetings or building coalitions how did you make that transition from a legal education to working as a public interest advocate in a fellowship yeah uh yo so that's a that's a great question i think it was with a lot of help um you know at public knowledge there's a lot of lawyers um who were also uh transitioning from that traditional legal legal work uh to the advocacy piece and so i spent a lot of time you know in meetings watching chris lewis uh do his thing even though he's not a traditional lawyer you know we we spoke spoke to uh phil uh barenbroek a lot um he's a lawyer and had come from a firm and so you know again i think it's about listening and and leaning on on people who are there to help and being willing to ask questions right um it is a different skill set and you're right you don't you don't learn it at law school um you you may learn trial advocacy but that's a little bit different when it's one on one and we're talking about you know issues that can get heated and passionate especially when you do have your own um experiences or or or you know things are particularly meaningful to you thanks i want to turn things over to ceo now who just completed a fellowship at pk and also wrote what i think is a really groundbreaking groundbreaking report on diversity and early career positions and fellowships so please see on share your experiences thank you yes it's good to see you uh so during my fellowship at public knowledge you know i'd like to research that was part of the uh technology policy diversity project and we believe this research was important because technology is increasingly integrated into our daily lives now and the policies that govern its access and its use uh can have a disproportionate impact on people of color so you know when we're having policy discussions about things like you know broadband access or algorithmic bias it's important that those discussions include people who have experienced the world differently because often they're going to offer very different perspectives on what those policy proposals should look like uh so as part of the project i sent a survey to nonprofits that had a focus on uh tech policy issues to learn more about you know what kind of early career opportunities they typically offer you know like internships and and fellowships and what the racial ethnic diversity looked like in those roles we wanted to learn also what steps organizations were already taking to try to increase diversity and how they would you know characterize their challenges and that in that area uh you know we we focused on early career roles um you know for reasons uh others have already mentioned uh they are foundational in helping people build professional networks that can propel them in their career uh they also offer people the opportunity to learn about a variety of tech policy issues under the guidance and support of senior experts uh in the field within the organization um so i'll i'll share some of the highlights from the report but i would encourage you all to read it if you haven't i believe there is a link in the event invitation uh that will allow you to take a look at it you know one thing we learned was that job opportunities are primarily circulated within tech policy groups and their networks so access to these networks is actually really critical uh if the originating networks aren't diverse you know mining them for job opportunities uh it won't likely yield a very diverse applicant pool um you know one thing to consider is expanding recruitment to a wider range of institutions including academic institutions that primarily serve people of color um in addition to sharing job announcements with you know minority surfing academic institutions organizations could also consider posting on site or virtual events uh to increase the visibility of these opportunities we also learned that for organizations that did offer early career roles the rate of pay was sometimes low um people who are not able to lean on their families for financial support um are less likely to pursue opportunities uh where they can't you know pay themselves or afford rent um so that is one area where we can make a meaningful difference and really change the career trajectory of someone aspiring to enter the tech policy space um we also learned that uh few organizations routinely collect data on recent adversities and roles and you know it's really hard to set goals for increasing diversity in your organization if you're not keeping data and looking closely at the trends in your organization data can help help an organization develop measurable goals so the the full report it's now in the chat I think it includes all the survey results and what I've learned from talking with thought leaders on diversity and I'd encourage you to read it and my hope is that it will inspire people to reflect on their own practices in their organizations and think about what they can do to try to increase diversity thanks for that yeah the report is is amazing and to me what makes it so unique is that civil society oftentimes likes to critique uh other institutions and rightfully so but oftentimes doesn't look at inward and look at some of the challenges they have with diversity and hiring early career positions what one of the things that uh I know you mentioned and Jane mentioned I think Chanel mentioned is the salary piece uh a lot of times these fellowships pay very little I know when I was uh looking at fellowships in law school most of them that I saw paid a stipend or nothing or uh very little PK who was actually one of the ones that uh paid a livable wage so I was wondering if you had any recommendations or could talk a bit about how the report looks at ways that organizations can meaningfully pay fellows or compensate them in ways that they can actually pay their bills the reason I discussed compensation in the report is that um you know it's I want people to understand that this is a place where you can really make a difference in somebody's career choice you know if we don't offer a sort of a prescription on what exactly to pay interns and fellows but what I'd say is this you know if you live in major city I think about what it costs you to live there comfortably you know rent commuting costs food and and use that understanding to inform your compensation structure even if the opportunity is only eight weeks 10 weeks or 12 weeks that's still a really long time for someone who comes from an economically disadvantaged background it's a really long time to for someone to have to support themselves uh a wage that will will not really allow them to take advantage of the opportunity we have a few minutes I did want to open it up to everyone and was curious if folks wanted to just share one or two memorable stories that they have based on their experience as a fellow or their time mentoring someone who was a fellow open to anyone who has a story they want to share so I'll share one thing while people are thinking of their experiences the other side of this is for a lot of organizations and I remember this even for some coming in at PK saying you were going to put a lot of resources because we want to pay people well into fellowships for someone who's only going to stay one year or maybe two years I tried to push this two years but for a lot of the staff it was wait a minute we got to spend all our time training them and you're taking away from the work that we're doing and how is this really gonna these people are gonna you know they're wonderful but like we don't have the time we don't have the energy you know it's like it was not structured into the system and I think you got to take that into account here that you're putting people into a broader ecosystem and what I found and and I'm Chris Lewis is a perfect living experience of this and he's now embraced all this is that you can show pretty rapidly that fellows add value and that and staff get it and when they see that that is the way it works they love it and you know and Chris has built this in now that that I left PK and I think it's a you know again any one person's can be you know can be more difficult can be you know take more time but I feel like it's kind of like built into the DNA now at PK that everyone sees this as value add all the way around even though people leave and and and and you mentioned kind of some kind of a the pilfering in the public interest community cross but that's a good thing is because what that means is that Olivia Mott-Wine who was my first fellow ended up at National Consumer Law Center and you ended up at Common Cause and it's and it's it's what builds the broader ecosystem of all our relationships both within the public interest community and outside look at Chanel at Google I mean these are the relationships that will matter for all of us to be effective and so you know I think you know it's kind of funny when you see people move from the oh my god I got to train another one to the wow it's so wonderful having this new you know energy and these great you know interesting people come into our organization I kind of saw a sea change over time as you built the the program out. I'll just follow up on that by saying I think my you know when I think about the memorable experiences for me they were really where I was allowed to start building things in a way that really it's not an exaggeration to say laid the groundwork that I could draw upon for the rest of my career so you can imagine working in corporate even though this is my first corporate job 95 percent of the informational interviews I do with folks are allegedly about the issues and things like that and they're ultimately about how quick can I get a job in corporate and I think folks are always surprised how much I push back on starting your career in corporate because especially as people of color how many places are there where you are and I'm not saying that this is can be taken for granted across fellowships I think we're talking about kind of what it looks like to have a strong fellowship program where you can be given the space and the time to really develop your voice around a set of issues that are important to you and build a record that you can draw upon to demonstrate expertise it's kind of like what I loved most about I apologize my dog going is going crazy in the background um what I love most about online content creation early days where and going back to Jean's anecdote about a la carte that you could actually expose yourself to an audience and prove to all of those who said there's no audience for your content I mean like everybody who's told Issa Ray like there was no audience for her content is cooking themselves now right but that actually was a moment um and to be able to say look I am going to be able to write a paper because they need me because there's not enough people um so I can help write a paper um and share a um a authorship with Jean Kimmelman and Mark Cooper right like stuff like that that you can use the rest of your career um in such a short time as a fellowship is just really really tremendous and so I think there's huge value for there was huge value for me as a fellow and I think so much value if those who are creating the programs can really provide that space and allow fellows to take risks I just think this can't be overstated the importance of that I'll give you one more um one of my first fellows at consumers union young gentleman named Mr. Phillips uh he asked him why he was got that interesting first name and he said his father wanted to make sure he was respected uh he came in with a project at consumers union because we did consumer advocacy and said there are no reasonable grocery stores in most of the neighborhoods that I've lived in and that all my friends live in and we need to do an analysis of this we need to figure out how to do something about it and my first reaction was wow that's interesting that's not what we do at consumers union and then I stopped and thought well why don't we do that at consumers union and that was exactly the kind of thing where I is like wow what did I just create here I just I don't know but I just learned something that I really should have been thinking about all along probably should have known it in so many ways automatically but it wasn't my day-to-day lived experience so that was kind of that really jumped out at me as you can see it's stuck for for probably 25 years yeah it's always amazing how many things pop out when you have new people in the space presenting ideas so we have a few minutes left I do want to turn things over to Chris to close this out but thank you so much to all the panelists here who shared their experiences presenting ideas and discuss how we can grow fellowship programs in the future which I think we all support Chris take it away sure first of all thank you Yosef and all of you for participating in this event I learned so much working with each of you I hope folks really take heart the stories and lessons that you shared because this is how we build a field in the public interest field and in tech policy that does what's right for everyone in our country Yosef folks trying to poach you because you're that good so thank you for taking the time to moderate we were happy to tell folks how good you are we're glad they tried to poach you Chanel my friend thank you for speaking in here because folks don't know is just how much mentoring Chanel does across the field she is not just someone who works in corporate at Google but she helps connect so many people and we also thank you for making sure that we had funding for our fellowship program this past year thanks to you and Google for that gene I can't say enough about what you started here and and by the way thank you for shouting out Christine gene because she is so humble about the work that she does gene folks he had he had this big vision for where we to take this and he connected people to make it happen Christine makes it run every day and having to fill Jean's big shoes at the top of the organization I learned that very quickly and what gene said about how we have to make sure that you don't just throw people in the deep end we've refined over time and I think you said it accurately Jane you know we've created with Christine's leadership mentorship assignments with our staff and folks really do embrace it because they have a vested interest in their mentee doing well and learning the skills and then having them go off and and be a part of their broader network that network building is incredibly important if we want to continue to create a field not just early careers but throughout the ranks of public interest so so thank you gene for all you did thank you for being here I know you have a lot going on in the Department of Justice and then in Dallas and see on thank you guys you guys are shining examples of what you can go on to do along with Joseph coming out of our program and we hope to continue to come back and we want to build off of the work that you've done see on and folks can help support that here at public knowledge and at other organizations it's fascinating and this is why I wanted to talk just at the end here and share how many folks are talking about fellowship programs now we have built in seven years of public knowledge a program that is sustainable in the future we're trying to to to firm up that sustainability and so proud to say that with the support of of the family of Sherwin side our former legal director we've created this Sherwin side Memorial fund folks can give to support that fund thank you to Lordus and Dr. Kong for helping us create this fund but this Sherwin side Memorial fund will be used to support internships and in the future fellowships as far as as long as as long as public knowledge is available we we want to have this fund working to support livable wages for folks to come in and learn what it means to be a public interest advocate we just started this August in Memorial of Sherwin side our legal director one of the few people of color at public knowledge when I joined the organization someone who taught me about all sides policy that I hadn't learned about and someone who really cared about bringing folks along so we hope folks will check it out and we're going to continue to promote this fund so that what we've now branded our PK trains program which combines fellowships internships and other opportunities can continue to live on so just really proud of what you all have done we're trying to carry the baton forward gene and continue to build a field that looks like America last thing I'll say and then we'll wrap this up this is the last in a series of webinars celebrating our 20th anniversary and as appropriate we started with our founder teacher son and her co-founders not to leave out David and Laurie but now we've kind of moved through the issues and the work of the organization to to what really I think is you know our fellowship program PK trains is the most exciting thing that we've added in the last several years and we have a forward-looking event to wrap out the 20th anniversary year that we hope folks will check out this is our public knowledge 2020 visionaries event it's going to be held at 2pm on December 16th and you'll should be able to find information about it on our website but this is looking into the future we want to honor and recognize young talented influential people in tech policy like the folks here who've come through our program and celebrate how they're going to shape technology policy into the future so we hope to join us on the 16th to wrap up our 20th anniversary year and we hope to continue to follow follow public knowledge in all the ways that you can as we go into the new year in 2022 because we have so much important work to do subscribe to our YouTube channel this is available on our YouTube channel as are all the other 20th anniversary videos and lots more so just wrap up by saying thank you to all of you for participating and we look forward to seeing you at the next event on December 16th thanks everyone where's Christine Debright Christine come back there she is thank you Christine