2024 Rappaport Policy Fellows
Name: Karen Alfaro
Graduate School: Brandeis University
Agency: Boston Office of Recovery Services
Project Description: Karen had the privilege of working with the Office of Recovery Services at the Boston Public Health Commission. During her time there, she contributed to two significant projects: revitalizing the overdose rescue training program and collaborating on the Boston opioid settlements. As part of the overdose training program, we partnered with Audio Chemists, where she had the opportunity to take a leading role in managing the meetings. For the opioid settlements, she co-designed a participatory process for the review committee, created review committee packets, assisted in drafting a memo for the city, and participated in presentations.
Name: Muram Bacare
Graduate School: Tufts University
Agency: Boston Planning and Development Agency
Project Description: Muram will work on a variety of urban design projects this summer at the Boston Planning and Development Agency.
Name: Paulina Casasola Mena
Graduate School: Tufts University
Project Description: At the DOER, Paulina explored the barriers to accessing low-income electric discount rates and evaluated various discount models to reduce energy burden. Her research focused on identifying the most equitable approach for designing, implementing, and funding discount rates. Her final report highlighted best practices from other states and culminated in policy recommendations, including new funding streams to sustain discount rates and improved outreach and enrollment strategies to increase participation. Learn more about DOER’s policy division here: https://www.mass.gov/orgs/energy-policy-planning-analysis-division
Name: Marie Davidson
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: Office of Early Childhood, City of Boston
Project Description: Marie interned at the Mayor's Office of Early Childhood in the City of Boston, supporting various initiatives and collaborating with Mayor Wu's Senior Advisor for Partnerships to explore public-private partnership opportunities. Marie worked alongside the director of the Office of Early Childhood to outline the office's strategic priorities and current initiatives and align these with potential investment opportunities. She created materials for future partnerships to attract funding and support, aiming to enhance the office's to ability to deliver impactful programs to families throughout Boston. Marie also coauthored a report summarizing the findings from the 2023 Child Care Census Survey, helping the office assess the pressing needs that parents and guardians face regarding early education and care and share these results with participating parents. Throughout the summer, she represented the Office of Early Childhood at various City of Boston events, including Mayor Wu's Coffee Hours, to engage with families about the Office’s programs and help ensure that families are connected with child care.
Name: Julia DeAngelo
Graduate School: Boston University
Agency: Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics
Project Description: Julia will work on a joint project between the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics and the Boston Public Health Commission.
Name: Tyler Engler
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: Massachusetts Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience
Project Description: Tyler will work on a variety of projects at the Massachusetts Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience.
Name: Joshua Gladstone
Graduate School: Boston University
Agency: Massachusetts Office of Environmental Justice and Equity
Project Description: Throughout the summer, Josh spent my time applying a disability lens to all the ongoing internal projects and external evaluations of other team’s work that comes through the Office of Environmental Justice and Equity (OEJE). The nature of our office is to help provide an equity lens based in the environmental justice principles, definitions, and policy goals laid out by the state to all environmentally related work based in the EEA. As such, he spent my time providing considerable feedback on how projects such as the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness 2.0 program, Trails for All, Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s Flood Assessment, and others on how they can be sure to incorporate aspects of accessibility and accommodations specifically for people with disabilities that is often overlooked throughout environmental programming. Additionally, Josh created a presentation detailing language, definition expansions, resources, and the application of Disability throughout Environmental Justice to the internal team of OEJE, and after engaging in discussions, made a connection with state level disability entities to establish a working relationship for future intersections of disability and environmental work to ensure the sharing of expertise beyond his placement.
Name: Jane (Ja Kyung) Han
Graduate School: UMass Boston
Agency: Massachusetts Climate and Resilience Team
Project Description: Jane will be working on defining expertise in equitable engagement and climate justice in order to prepare a list of vendors/facilitators for the Massachusetts Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) 2.0 program and 2) assisting the MVP team on creating a resiliency playbook, incorporating lessons learned from past MVP projects and projects at other locales.
Name: Emek Karakiliҫ
Graduate School: UMass Boston
Agency: Boston Equity and Inclusion Cabinet
Project Description: This summer, Emek joined the City of Boston’s Equity and Inclusion Cabinet. His project focused on evaluating the cabinet’s existing definitions of crucial terms such as precariousness, wealth gap, and financial health. Emek examined each component of these definitions to understand how they are applied to different communities and researched the impact of these terms on communities and their significance in enhancing economic well-being and presented a set of policy recommendations that will serve to operationalize the definitions for the departments in the Equity and Inclusion cabinet. Emek also provided, short-, medium- and long-term policy and research support as needed when it comes to economic upward mobility work.
Name: Anika Kumar
Graduate School: Brandeis University
Agency: Boston Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement
Project Description: During her time as a Rappaport fellow at the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Advancement, Anika advanced the Community Needs Assessment process to inform the Office’s strategic plan for 2025-2029. Guided by Community-Based Participatory Action Research principles, we prioritized community engaged decision-making in developing the research design and methods. A core aspect of the project and a major milestone was the formation and launch of a Community Advisory Committee (CAC). Composed of leadership from different immigrant-serving, community-based organizations, the CAC is instrumental to informing the research process. Concurrently, Anika reviewed best research practices and convened relevant partners to help guide the process, as well as developed preliminary timelines and data collection procedures.
Name: Nicole Labkoff
Graduate School: Harvard Chan School of Public Health
Agency: Office of Senator John Keenan
Project Description: During her fellowship, Nicole Labkoff worked in State Senator John Keenan’s office, where she provided key support on health care-related legislation. She played an integral role in reviewing and drafting amendments, with two of her amendments successfully incorporated into the Senate's final legislative package. Her work spanned various policy areas, including long-term care, substance use, and insurance reform. Nicole also drafted talking points for the Senator, explaining the amendments and aiding in floor debates. Additionally, she conducted an in-depth research project examining the public health impacts of establishing an online lottery in Massachusetts. Throughout her fellowship, she actively participated in hearings, neighborhood meetings, and constituent engagements.
Name: Emily Li
Graduate School: Tufts University
Agency: Boston Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement
Project Description: Emily will be working on cooperative ecosystem building and small business engagement outreach and needs assessment for the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement.
Name: Catherine May
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services
Project Description: This summer, Catherine assisted the Strategy Team of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services in improving the delivery of wrap-around supports within the pre shelter system (which includes temporary respite centers, family welcome centers, safety net sites, and clinical and safety risk sites). She researched and developed recommendations for how the state could deliver clinical and case management services to better align with both best practices and overarching policy priorities. This work culminated in assisting with the design and rapid rollout of a new clinical and case management model in the state’s pre-shelter sites.
Name: Matthew McLellan
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: Massachusetts Executive Office for Administration and Finance
Project Description: Matthew McLellan spent his Rappaport Public Policy Fellowship working in the Executive Office of Administration and Finance. Specifically, he worked for the Undersecretary on the Transportation Funding Task Force. The task force was created by an Executive Order signed by Governor Healey earlier this year. Its goal is to provide the Governor with a toolkit to address sustainably financing the transit system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In his work with the Undersecretary, Matthew helped with strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and financial analysis for possible future funding solutions. While he joined the team after the task force’s creation and before its end this December, he looks forward to seeing how his work helped shape the final product.
Name: Calah McQuarters
Graduate School: Brandies University
Agency: Boston Planning and Development Agency
Project Description: Calah will work on three projects this summer. (1) A focus group series with BPDA employees and residents aimed at understanding the current communication/engagement gap between the BPDA and community. Final deliverable will be a tool kit that can be used by the BPDA to guide future comms/engagement efforts. (2) A set of high level visual materials designed to inform the community on BPDA work and shifts occurring in the BPDA as a result of the impending transition. (3) Possible additional support as needed including assistance with storytelling work and other projects as they emerge throughout the fellowship term.
Name: Shaakira Parker
Graduate School: Brandies University
Agency: Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care
Project Description:Shaakira will be working at the MA Department of Early Education and Care. Her primary project will be around developing a guide/toolkit for educators and programs to accompany/operationalize EEC's updated Suspension and Expulsion Policy (draft policy currently undergoing review) - thinking through what it should look like, resources to be included, outreach, and dissemination. They also talked about a potential secondary project around the development of a “roadmap to special education support services” for community partners that are part of the Community Preschool Partnership Initiative Grant.
Name: Megan Siebecker
Graduate School: UMass Boston
Agency: Boston Age Strong Commission
Project Description: Megan will work on helping to conduct their updated needs assessment so that she can get a more scoping overview of the work they do, and also doing a more independent mapping project of dementia services and supports in Boston to add to their Dementia-Friendly initiative and make these services more accessible to residents.
Name: Justin Tran
Graduate School: Simmons School of Social Work
Agency: Boston Mayor’s Office of Housing
Project Description: In the Supportive Housing Division of the Boston Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH), Justin developed an interactive dashboard using PowerBI, a data visualization tool, that captures several key metrics related to individual homelessness in Boston including, but not limited to, first-time homelessness, long-term homelessness, returns to homelessness, and the experience of homelessness generally across race, gender, age, and other demographic categories. Justin also supported the initial development of a permanent supportive housing model to identify and project the number of permanent supportive housing units needed to move the most vulnerable individuals out of homelessness. For both projects, Justin spoke with key stakeholders and partners within service provider organizations, state agencies, and other MOH divisions to better understand current gaps, needs, and relevant data metrics.
Name: Nicole Wong
Graduate School: MIT
Agency: Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources
Project Description: This summer as a policy fellow on the Renewables Team at the Department of Energy and Resources, Nicole conducted research and mapping to ensure low and moderate income communities can access solar benefits. To understand the state of solar deployment in these communities, she mapped all residential solar systems in Massachusetts and analyzed what percentage (35%) overlap with environmental justice block groups. She also conducted 26 semi-structured qualitative interviews with diverse stakeholders ranging from solar and affordable housing developers to environmental justice nonprofits to understand top barriers to accessing solar for low and moderate income communities. In particular, Nicole focused on identifying best practices to lower cash flow barriers for small, under-resourced nonprofits and create equitable pathways to allocate solar benefits to tenants of multifamily affordable housing who cannot receive direct utility savings. This analysis resulted in two internal policy memos in order to shape the design of the new Low Income Services Solar Program (LISSP) and Solar For All multi-family program. She facilitated breakout groups for in-person technical sessions to solicit feedback from utilities, solar developers, and other stakeholders on the updated straw proposal for MA’s flagship solar incentive program, SMART. Lastly, she planned agendas and co-facilitated two cross-agency working group meetings between housing and clean energy agencies to coordinate statewide affordable housing decarbonization programs and develop shared goals.
Name: Amanda Yu
Graduate School: Brandeis University
Agency: Massachusetts Executive Office for Administration and Finance
Project Description: Amanda will be working at the MA Executive Office of Administration and Finance. Amanda will support the Inter-agency Early Education and Child Care Task Force, established by Executive Order 625. At the Governor’s direction, this task force will bring to bear the full scope of the executive branch to ensure that Massachusetts leads the nation in early education and care access, affordability, equity, and quality. The Task Force will capitalize on what we each know best while leveraging collaboration to achieve greater impact. By December of this year, the Task Force will have engaged our many stakeholders and worked together to develop an innovative set of recommendations to propose to the Governor. The internship will involve staffing monthly task force meetings as well as supporting the ongoing work of three subgroups; access & technology improvement, capacity and affordability, and physical space.