Current Fellows

2025 Rappaport Policy Fellows 

Name: Chet Agni
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: Boston Equity and Inclusion Cabinet
Project Description: Chet Agni worked in the City of Boston’s Equity and Inclusion Cabinet, where he led an inventory and compliance initiative around the City’s equity-related work to ensure alignment with Civil Rights law and best practices. He reviewed hundreds of ordinances and program documents to evaluate their relevance to federally protected classes and also led biweekly project team meetings with city attorneys and cross-departmental staff, coordinating discussions to advance the project’s goals. He concluded his fellowship by producing a report that highlighted key insights from the process and recommended next steps for continuing the initiative.

Name: Christopher Baidoo 
Graduate School: Boston College School of Social Work
Agency: Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate
Project Description: Christopher evaluated Massachusetts’ efforts to prevent online child sexual abuse by reviewing state and federal law, academic research, agency reports, and current state-level initiatives. He drafted a policy memo summarizing findings and making recommendations to close prevention gaps and reduce both victimization and perpetration. He also contributed to a statewide landscape analysis of youth violence prevention programs. 

Name: Emilia Charno
Graduate School: MIT
Agency: Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources
Project Description: Emilia Charno is a Master in City Planning student at MIT studying how to localize benefits of the clean energy transition. This summer, she worked at the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources. Emilia completed independent research on geothermal energy solutions—fossil-fuel-free infrastructure that uses the Earth’s shallow crust for heating and cooling. Emilia also supported siting decisions in the deployment of the Merrimack Valley Renewal Fund.

Name: Akash Chopra
Graduate School: Boston College Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences
Agency: Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Project Description:  This summer, Akash served as a Rappaport Fellow with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in the Office of Student and Family Support. He played a key role in supporting the coordination and evaluation of DESE’s Student Voice Grant Pathways, designed to empower youth leadership and amplify student voices in district-level decision-making. Akash conducted school site visits to assess the implementation of grant-funded initiatives, such as 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) High School Internship Program and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) supports, offering evidence-based feedback to enhance state oversight. He also contributed to vendor and agency meetings, supporting the development of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Birth to Higher Education Framework, spanning social-emotional supports from birth through higher education and adult education. Additionally, Akash was involved in planning and evaluating data collection tools and surveys to track grantee outcomes and assess the effectiveness of funded initiatives. His contributions in this area were instrumental in providing actionable insights that informed continuous improvement strategies and future grant-making decisions.

Name: Ali Epstein
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: Boston Mayor’s Policy and Planning Group  
Project Description: This summer, Ali Epstein worked with Mayor Michelle Wu’s Policy Team on several key initiatives. The first focused on how to expand FutureBOS, the City’s program focused on connecting high school students with summer job opportunities. To help expand this program to main street businesses, Ali engaged directly with local businesses across Boston–knocking on business doors, conducting surveys–to understand their barriers to youth employment. She developed new policy proposals for how the City can help small business owners hire more youth in years to come. Ali also spent the summer helping the Mayor’s Office consider the impacts of autonomous vehicle (AV) taxis on city streets. This involved researching the impact of AVs in peer cities, and by exploring policy frameworks that can protect impacted workers, residents, and vulnerable communities. In addition, she supported key policy needs as they surfaced, including contributing to the Mayor’s response to fast emerging federal actions and evaluating RFI proposals on ideas for attracting creative businesses to Downtown Boston. While wide-ranging, these issues all tied back to Ali’s interest in forming municipal policies that uplift residents and communities.

Name: Bernadette Hicks
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities
Project Description: Bernadette Hicks spent the summer working at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. She focused on the Diversion Program, which aims to get families at immediate risk of homelessness into permanent housing instead of entering emergency shelters. She helped plan, coordinate, and facilitate a series of listening sessions and focus groups across the state to learn directly from stakeholders about their experiences with the Diversion Program. The listening sessions were complimented by a literature review of diversion programs in other states and cities, background research on the current state of the Diversion Program, and analyses of data and the creation of data visuals to depict trends in the program. Bernadette then summarized the findings from the listening sessions and the data analyses into a report with recommendations on how the Diversion Program could be improving going forward.

Name: Grace Kyei
Graduate School: University of Massachusetts Boston School of Nursing
Agency: Boston Public Health Commission
Project Description: Grace Kyei worked at the Child, Adolescent, and Family Health Bureau, Boston Public Health Commission in Summer 2025 as a Rappaport Public Policy Fellow. Her work focused on three core projects: developing and evaluating 24 maternal and child health innovation ideas grounded in the socio-ecological model; conducting a landscape scan of MCH program structures in major U.S. cities; and leading a multilingual environmental health survey in Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood. Her contributions produced policy recommendations to enhance equity, sustainability, and community responsiveness in MCH programming.

Name: Stephane Labossiere
Graduate School: Northeastern University
Agency: Boston Mayor's Office for Immigrant Advancement and Massachusetts Office of Refugees and Immigrants
Project Description:  Stephane has worked on several projects as a Rappaport Fellow. His two main projects include an internal report and a grant he is currently writing with staff members for the Massachusetts Office of Refugees and Immigrants.The internal report documented the experiences, challenges, and successes of a pilot program for shelter transition led by the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement (MOIA) in partnership with the Boston Rescue Mission (BRM) and other City agencies. The report aimed to provide insights to strengthen future immigrant integration efforts and outlined how the continuation of the pilot program deepened trust between service providers and migrant communities. This was particularly achieved through Haitian-led mental health, legal aid, and education sessions. Through extensive interviews with staff members and other stakeholders, Stephane highlighted that participants increasingly engaged in self-advocacy, relied on peer-to-peer support networks, and utilized wraparound services when these access points were culturally competent and localized. However, he noted that gaps in coordination and case management consistency still hindered optimal outcomes, indicating a need for citywide infrastructure reform in immigrant support.

The second major project for the Fall of 2025 involves a grant proposal for The DRIVE Program, led by the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants (MORI). This program aims to address a critical barrier to refugee self-sufficiency: the lack of transportation due to the absence of a driver’s license. With a sharp reduction in Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) from 12 months to 4 months, newly arrived refugees face increased pressure to secure employment sooner.The DRIVE Program will equip refugees in Central and Western Massachusetts with the tools, language support, and cultural competencies needed to pass the Massachusetts Learner’s Permit and Road Test. This will enable them to achieve sustainable employment and access educational opportunities.

Name: Brian Le
Graduate School: MIT
Agency: Boston Department of Innovation and Technology
Project Description: Brian Le worked with the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Innovation and Technology on Boston’s permitting transformation initiative, a multi-year effort to modernize and streamline the City’s permitting processes to make them simpler, faster, and more predictable. His fellowship focused on building construction permitting, where he conducted in-depth research on how peer cities structure and coordinate their permitting operations, including approaches to centralization, coordination, conflict resolution, and third-party certification. Drawing from national best practices, he developed a set of twenty policies and strategies for Boston, ranging from incremental process improvements to full-scale structural reforms. Over the summer, Brian produced policy memos, bench-marking analyses, and case studies. He used his research to facilitate an executive workshop with cabinet chiefs, senior department leaders, and the Mayor to identify priority strategies for the future state of Boston’s building construction approvals. His work will inform Boston’s upcoming strategic planning and the development of an implementation roadmap for permitting reform.

Name: Sophie Lewis
Graduate School: Boston University
Agency: Massachusetts Executive Office of Education
Project Description:  Sophie worked with Robert LePage at the Executive Office of Education designing programming to support high school students in their transition to post-secondary training. She compiled summaries of transition programming which exists across the state and worked with stakeholders to identify gaps in programming for communities. Sophie designed three programs with differing levels of intervention depending on the college going culture of the intended community. She worked to leverage work-based learning and free community college initiatives to help students to connect post-secondary qualifications to the possibility of increased wages and more relevant learning opportunities for students seeking vocational training. 

Name: Djoulissa Louis-Jean
Graduate School: Harvard Graduate School of Design
Agency: Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs
Project Description: Djoulissa Louis-Jean worked at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs under the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program. During her time there, she utilized her background in urban planning and public health to develop online guides to aid municipalities in understanding the impacts of various climate hazards on human health as well as explore projects to build climate resiliency. Djoulissa also crafted a policy memo advocating for e-bike infrastructure and a communications strategy to promote decarbonization and community wellbeing. Additionally, she developed a report identifying themes amongst MVP grant funded seed projects.

Name: Shelby Mueller
Graduate School: University of Massachusetts Boston School of Nursing
Agency: Boston Mayor’s Office of Women's Advancement
Project Description: Shelby Mueller worked with the Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement and the Office of People Operations during her Rappaport Fellowship, focusing on family-supportive policies for City of Boston employees. Drawing on her experience as a mother of young children, she conducted comprehensive research on two critical areas: paid parental leave and lactation support. Her research examined how Boston's current paid parental leave policy for city employees compared to peer municipalities across the United States, identifying best practices that could inform potential improvements. Additionally, she evaluated Boston City Hall's existing lactation support services against evidence-based standards and developed recommendations for enhanced implementation. Her work culminated in presentations to both the Equity and Inclusion Cabinet and Human Resources leadership, providing actionable insights to strengthen the city's support for employees who are starting and growing their families.

Name: Hugo Rengifo
Graduate School: Tufts University
Agency: Boston Department of Innovation and Technology
Project Description:  Hugo worked on two projects for Boston. The first was a comprehensive assessment of current city-funded digital health equity tele-health grant projects to evaluate effectiveness, identify best practices, and develop strategic recommendations for future funding cycles amid significant funding uncertainty. The second was a systematic review of all digital equity-related grants across different city departments to understand collaboration opportunities and eliminate duplicative efforts. 

Name: Grace Reynolds
Graduate School: Boston University School of Public Health
Agency: MassHealth
Project Description:  Grace worked with the MassHealth team at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) to study how high heat days impact emergency department (ED) utilization and acute health events among MassHealth members. Using Medicaid claims data, Grace explored whether extreme heat leads to increased ED service use and examined how factors like pre-existing conditions and demographic factors may shape patterns of service use. Grace used these data to help MassHealth better understand which populations are most vulnerable to heat-related health risks and inform policies that may improve support for those most affected. As part of the project, Grace completed a literature review, developed and carried out a data analysis plan, and presented her findings to the MassHealth team at the end of the summer. She also contributed to a related initiative analyzing hospital emissions data, a new reporting requirement for Massachusetts hospitals beginning this year. As part of this work, Grace set-up an Excel workbook to analyze the data and quantify greenhouse gas emissions at hospitals throughout the state.

Name: Hannah San Sebastian
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Development 
Project Description:  This summer, Hannah San Sebastian worked at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Development (EOED) as a Rappaport Public Policy Fellow. She conducted research on AI applications in both the public and private sectors and developed a strategic product plan for BeaconAI, EOED’s forthcoming AI-powered business inquiry tool within the new Business Front Door initiative. Her plan addressed product design, user input pathways, quality assurance measures, and user experience personas, helping to accelerate the tool’s rollout and ensure it meets the needs of businesses across Massachusetts. Hannah also synthesized and organized state and nonprofit resources for small businesses, creating a comprehensive reference to support business access to public programs.

Name: Harry Shanmugam
Graduate School: Harvard Medical School
Agency: MassHealth
Project Description: Harry worked at MassHealth, Massachusetts’ state Medicaid agency. While at MassHealth, Harry contributed to two projects aimed at supporting the most vulnerable patients in Massachusetts. He analyzed various policy options to lower prescription drug prices for the Commonwealth, working to model the impact of various interventions in peer states in Massachusetts. He also contributed to the state’s efforts to close its uncompensated care pool’s shortfall, working to identify and analyze means by which the state could shore up its safety net.

Name: Jennifer Tan
Graduate School: Simmons School of Social Work
Agency: Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance
Project Description:  Jennifer Tan worked at Massachusetts' Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) this summer as a project manager for a pilot program between DTA and the Department of Children and Families (DCF).The pilot program strives to bridge communication between the two agencies to bring better outcomes to the families that they serve. Jennifer created materials and made contributions to essential documents (consent form, data collection sheets, etc.) that will be used by both agencies. She ensured that all important milestones were met and collaborated with stakeholders to successfully prepare the pilot to launch in September 2025. In addition to working on the pilot program, she also had the opportunity to connect with clients of DTA’s work and training programs, learn about policy work and other important roles, and meet with individuals doing similar work in California.

Name: Andreas Theodoropoulos
Graduate School: Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy
Agency: The Massachusetts AI Hub   
Project Description: Over the summer, Andreas worked with the Massachusetts AI Hub, part of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, where he became deeply involved in a range of initiatives. He contributed to ecosystem development and equity in AI by supporting efforts to foster inclusive innovation and strengthen the ethical foundations of AI deployment, which allowed him to gain a richer perspective on the intersection of technology and social impact. He also participated in the AI Innovations Models Challenge, an experience that enabled him to explore cutting-edge approaches to AI development while collaborating with peers on forward-thinking solutions. In addition, he took part in the AI Hub Hackathon, a highlight of the summer, where he thrived in a fast-paced and creative environment and witnessed ideas being transformed into tangible outcomes in real time.

Name: Jacob Winn
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: The Lab @ MassDOT
Project Description:  Jacob Winn was a Public Policy Fellow at The Lab @ the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (“The Lab @ MassDOT”) focusing on Autonomous Vehicles. Over the course of the summer, he completed a research project designed to build a prototypical public policy foundation for an “AV-Ready Massachusetts”, namely, looking at the laws, regulations, and practices that MassDOT, the state government, and the State Legislature could adopt to be prepared for any introduction of Autonomous Vehicles to Massachusetts roadways. His final product was a detailed research report with a nationwide scan of state-level AV policies, a stakeholder analysis, and recommendations, alongside an executive briefing memo. As a Fellow, Jacob also organized and hosted a series of four virtual Lunch Talks, inviting speakers from across the country to speak to state and municipal employees (transit planners, data managers, first responders, etc.) about AVs and their potential impacts.

Name: Nancy Yee 
Graduate School: Harvard Graduate School of Education
Agency: Massachusetts Executive Office for Administration and Finance 
Project Description: Nancy served as a project manager with the Inter-Agency Early Education and Child Care (IAEECC) Task Force in its second year, advancing progress on the 29 recommendations outlined in the Year One report to strengthen Massachusetts’ childcare ecosystem. Her fellowship focused on one of the most complex recommendations: expanding access to workforce benefits for the early education and childcare workforce. In this role, she managed the recommendations’ implementation by tracking progress, engaging diverse stakeholders, synthesizing research, and presenting actionable paths forward. She also supported key governance activities, including PMO, Steering Committee, and Task Force meetings, and contributed to the Year Two report documenting the Year 3 recommendations. Nancy concluded her fellowship by drafting a proposed retirement pilot to expand access to retirement for EEC workforce that leverages the state’s existing CORE plan as a foundation.