Category: Student news

For Maria Fernandez (MPPA/MBA ’15), the connection between poverty and climate change is clear. And this summer Fernandez is working to mitigate both.

Fernandez is a fellow with the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps, a national program that places trained graduate students in companies, municipalities and universities to identify potential energy savings for the host organizations.

She is working at the Roanoke Electric Cooperative, in rural north-central North Carolina. It is one of about 900 rural, nonprofit electric co-ops throughout the United States, and distributes energy directly to commercial and residential customers.

Fernandez will spend the summer identifying energy efficiency projects for key commercial accounts at the Roanoke co-op. She will propose strategies to reduce demand for electricity during peak periods of the day and research ways that the Roanoke co-op could make use of the U.S. Department of Energy’s demand response program.

Diminishing the amount of fossil fuels released into the atmosphere is a big motivating factor for Fernandez. And while some argue that reducing energy output would hurt the economy, Fernandez disagrees. By the end of her first day on the job in North Carolina, she already saw specific ways that improving energy efficiency in this high-poverty region could potentially have a positive impact on the local economy.

“In a region where a few dollars returned to members can feel like Christmas, there is great urgency to find ways to reduce wasted kilowatt hours and to prepare an accurate and compelling business case to get customers to say YES to energy efficiency,” Fernandez wrote in a recent Environmental Defense Fund blog post. “Money saved can be reinvested in more retrofits, in improving the local economy, in education…the list goes on, creating a virtuous cycle that can improve the quality of living and reduce carbon emissions.”

Fernandez has seen the connection between poverty and environmental degradation before. During her time at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as part of her business degree studies, Fernandez traveled throughout Southeast Asia. Experiencing the region’s environmental and development challenges first hand “reinforced my commitment to work towards a more fair global economy that is less dependent on fossil fuels,” Fernandez said.

After completing her summer fellowship, Fernandez will return to the University of Massachusetts Amherst and finish her master’s degree in public policy and administration, before embarking on a career to clean up the globe through economic justice.

When 1^st Lt. Gordon Adams (MPPA/MBA ’14) learned last week that he had been chosen as a Presidential Management Fellow, he was covered in mud.

Adams, a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps, was at a two-week training course in Virginia when he got a text message from classmate Chris Palmer (MPPA ’14) congratulating him. He’d been outside all day, completing the fieldwork needed to become certified to coordinate air support missions and call in artillery and mortars. So while he had his cell phone with him, Adams hadn’t had a chance to check his email.

“It’s probably not the typical way PMF finalists find out about their selection,” says the Deerfield, Mass., native.

But then, Adams isn’t the typical PMF finalist.

His studies were put on hold last year when he deployed to Uganda to support the African Union Mission in Somalia. During his seven-month deployment, Adams led a team of Marines, Army and Navy personnel to train Ugandan soldiers. They were preparing the Ugandans to fight against Al Shabaab, the Somali militant group behind last year’s Kenyan shopping mall attack.

That attack was just a few weeks after Adams returned to the United States. And he started classes at the Center for Public Policy and Administration just a couple days after returning home. Since then, Adams has remained active in the Reserves while carrying a more-than-full course load.

He has distinguished himself as a student by integrating at every turn his military experiences with his academic responsibilities. For example, Adams is focusing his capstone on U.S. drone policy, and he completed his internship at the Veterans Affairs facility in Northampton.

“I’d like to leverage all of these experiences I’m having now into some sort of defense, law enforcement or intelligence career,” Adams says.

To that end, he is hoping to land a position through the Presidential Management Fellows Program with the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The two-year program gives finalists the opportunity to work in a federal department or agency while receiving leadership and professional development training.

Adams is among the fewer than 10 percent of PMF applicants to be named finalists, but he knows neither the job nor agency where he will end up working. At the end of April he will attend an orientation in Washington, D.C., and learn which positions he’s eligible for. But the uncertainty doesn’t seem to faze him.

“Everything I’ve done since joining the Marines has been part of a journey,” Adams says. “This is another part of that journey.”

Over the holidays, Orlando Cordero (MPPA ’15) gave Springfield youth a big gift. Or, rather, many, many gifts.

Cordero helped establish Hope for Kids last December and now sits on its board of directors. This new nonprofit organization works to meet the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of at-risk youth in Springfield. The first big project Hope for Kids undertook was to provide and deliver Christmas gifts to children who have a parent in prison.

For this project, Hope for Kids partnered with Angel Tree, a national program that allows churches to donate presents to children with imprisoned parents. Through donations from churches and other faith-based organizations in the Springfield area, Hope for Kids was able to give gifts to and visit with each of the region’s children with a parent in prison. Cordero himself visited 15 families around Christmastime.

Meeting the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the city’s youth is a lofty goal. But Cordero’s coursework at the Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA) has helped him, through his role on the board, to set realistic goals and begin developing an effective organization. The class that has proven most helpful so far was Nonprofit Program Management, taught by Associate Professor Brenda Bushouse.

“Through that class, I was able to see how nonprofits work, and all the pieces that need to come together,” Cordero said. He found especially useful the units on program development, resource allocation and collaboration with outside organizations and partners. “I’m really thankful for that foundation,” he added.

Christmas may be over, but Cordero and others involved in Hope for Kids will continue to build on that foundation. Their next big project is hosting a series of Valentine’s Day banquets for children and their parents in various Springfield neighborhoods. “We want to let kids know they’re loved,” Cordero said.

He is reaching out to faith-based organizations throughout the city to secure spaces to hold the dinners. In addition to donated food and labor to staff the banquets, Hope for Kids has gotten residents at local senior centers to agree to knit hats for children who attend.

Cordero’s workload is picking up again now that CPPA classes are back in session. But this Springfield native plans to stay active on the Hope for Kids board throughout his time at CPPA. “There’s a lot of need in the local area. It’s a privilege to give back,” he said.

Anna Ivanova (MPPA ’13) would like global investors to put their money where the mouths of America’s undernourished are.

Later this month Ivanova and two students from the Isenberg School of Management will pitch their Food Forward Impact Fund during the final round in this year’s International Impact Investing Challenge. For this competition, hosted by the Kellogg School of Management and supported by the Rockefeller and MacArthur foundations, graduate students from around the world design potential “impact investment” vehicles that would have a positive and sustainable effect on the environment and/or on society.

On April 26, the 12 finalist teams will present their plans and defend them before a panel of judges at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C. Ivanova’s teammates are Spirit Joseph (MBA ’13) and Maria Fernandez (MBA ’14). Together, the UMass team has conceived of the Food Forward Impact Fund, which would finance programs to promote healthy eating choices and improve access to affordable and nutritious food in low-income communities throughout the United States.

“Food access is a very big problem right now and it was interesting to see how impact investing can be applied toward solving it,” Ivanova said. She became fascinated with the concept of impact investing after attending a social enterprise conference at Harvard last year through the UMass chapter of Net Impact.

Ivanova, a Fulbright fellow from Siberia, has a keen interest in innovation and market-based solutions to social problems. She put that interest to work last summer during an internship at the World Bank’s Information and Communication Technology Sector Unit. This semester Ivanova is deepening her knowledge of impact investing as she completes her capstone on social impact bonds, which are relatively new ways of financing social programs “in which government agencies pay only for real, measurable social outcomes — after those results have been achieved,” according to the Center for American Progress.

And though such public-private collaboration is not a mandatory criteria in the funds created for the International Impact Investing Challenge, Ivanova’s real-world experience can only help her team meet two of the competition’s main requirements: Each project must be both innovative and feasible. In addition, each team must use thorough financial research to show how its proposed investment vehicle would make a significant positive impact on the planet.

Ivanova and her teammates will spend the next few weeks fine-tuning their research and their case for the Food Forward Impact Fund.

Varun Shetty (MPPA ’13) has been selected to participate in a social and environmental entrepreneurship forum next month, to be held at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Shetty is one of 200 young potential business leaders from around the world who have been accepted to attend the Global Innovation Forum. During the three-day program, participants will collaborate to develop concepts for viable “constructive businesses,” which focus not only on making a profit, but also and equally on developing social and environmental benefits.

“The forum provides me with a great opportunity to network with international policy and business experts,” said Shetty. “In addition, it will help broaden my knowledge of entrepreneurship in general, building off of my own international development experience.”

As an undergraduate at Cornell University, Shetty spent a summer working on public health projects in the Indian state of Karnataka. His perspective as an economics major proved useful in this role, allowing him to help find ways to improve the efficiency of the public-private partnership that runs that state’s ambulance program. During his time in Karnataka, Shetty also partnered with a local microfinance operation to analyze the loan and savings statistics of some rural villages.

The Global Innovation Forum is sponsored by Athgo, a nonprofit that promotes young adults’ entrepreneurial efforts that maximize social and environmental returns. Athgo works closely with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Co-hosts of the forum include the World Bank, the International Telecommunications Union and the U.N. Broadband Commission for Digital Development.

The Center for Public Policy and Administration is the hub for interdisciplinary public policy research, teaching and engagement at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Its program is the 2011 recipient of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration’s Social Equity Award, created to honor a public administration, affairs or policy program with a comprehensive approach to integrating social equity into its academic and practical work.

Two students in the accelerated Master of Public Policy program have won this year’s Net Impact Consulting Challenge with a project examining ways to bring in additional revenue to a local community media access center.

Over winter break, Kyle Lunt and Nick Russo (both MPP ’13) surveyed the Apple software training classes that Amherst Media currently offers to the public. After also researching the offerings of other official Apple training centers in the Northeast, Lunt and Russo recommended that Amherst Media offer additional kinds of training courses and expand its marketing and outreach efforts so that more people know about the available classes.

After hearing presentations on Jan. 19 from a total of five teams of public policy and business students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the panel of judges named Lunt and Russo the winners. The annual Net Impact competition pairs graduate students with local nonprofits or socially and environmentally conscious for-profit businesses to analyze and provide recommendations for addressing a challenge faced by the organization.

And while Lunt and Russo are pleased that they won, they agree that what they learned during the project was more valuable than being named victors.

“This was a great opportunity to continue to flex my analytical muscles over break, while working with a client I really cared about helping!” said Russo.

Amherst Media opened as a community access cable TV station almost 40 years ago. While it still broadcasts local programming, the organization has become a full-service community media center in recent years, offering media equipment rentals as well workshops and trainings on everything from HD camera operation to mastering Apple’s creative software programs.

But enrollment has been consistently low in the official Apple software certification classes Amherst Media offers. By talking with staff at three successful Apple training centers, Lunt and Russo got a sense of what kinds of classes are popular with students and profitable for the centers. They therefore recommended that Amherst Media expand its course offerings to include certified Apple IT trainings, which consist of application development, server maintenance, operating system management and hardware repair certifications. Among other things, Lunt and Russo also recommended that Amherst Media develop relationships with the Amherst Chamber of Commerce and with journalism, communications and IT departments at UMass and other area colleges in order to advertise the classes to a larger pool of prospective students.

Lunt said he was grateful for the real-world experience that working on this Net Impact project offered him. “The policy analysis we may be doing upon graduation will potentially involve presenting our ideas to clients with tough time constraints, similar to what we were required to do for this project,” he said.

Both Lunt and Russo have a professional and academic background in media and took on the Net Impact project while also working part time at Free Press, a national media advocacy organization located in Florence, Mass. As members of the accelerated MPP program, both students are on track to earn their master’s degrees this spring, just one year after completing their undergraduate studies.