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: This summer Muram worked with the Boston Planning Department where she created a repository of multi family housing projects to be published in the city's Multi Family Housing Guidelines. In addition she developed a building model in conformance with zoning codes and regulations to be included in the department’s Urban Design Guidelines. Muram also contributed to the Squares+ Streets initiative by mapping Urban Heat, Stormwater Flooding, Open Space, Land Use, and Tree Canopy Cover in Boston neighborhoods using ArcGIS to inform city urban design decisions. She also participated in zoning and land use related planning and community engagement processes including public meetings, walkshops, and creating supporting materials for community workshops and initiatives.
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 Giandomenico
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 and Boston Public Health Commission
Project Description: The Boston Public Health Commission envisions a thriving Boston where all residents live healthy, fulfilling lives free of racism, poverty, violence, and other systems of oppression. In an effort to increase the role of mental health workers and decrease the role of police in responding to mental health crises, BPHC is partnering with community to envision and implement a community based mental health crisis response. Julia will support the BPHC team in reviewing other national programs, with a particular focus on community advisory and accountability boards, how programs make dispatch decisions based on acuity level, and the implementation sequencing, in order to help construct Boston’s response efforts.
Name: Tyler Engler
Graduate School: Harvard Kennedy School
Agency: Massachusetts Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience
Project Description: Tyler worked with the MA Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience coordinating climate action across state departments. His primary work was facilitating a working group on school building decarbonization, collecting feedback from key stakeholders, and designing the process for schools applying for federal funding to retrofit their buildings. His other main project was researching and recommending a structure to establish a new Disaster Relief and Resilience fund that would help localities access state funding quickly following climate disasters. He researched how other states approached the problem, outlined a slide deck for presentation to department leaders, and developed a foundation of slides for them to build upon. Additionally, he helped update the website where the Governor’s office tracked climate actions across agencies, revised a model to calculate the cost of decarbonizing affordable housing, and wrote a memo about how to measure the emissions impact of Solid Waste.
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 worked on improving the MVP 2.0 program, which expands on the work that communities have done to build climate resilience with a particular focus on addressing social vulnerability to climate change for Environmental Justice and other priority populations. The MVP 2.0 pilot program (2023-2025) began with building a core team composed of municipal staff, community liaisons with strong ties to communities that will be most impacted by climate change, and vendors with experience in equity-centered project management, community engagement, and climate resilience.
Her project focused on defining the challenges faced in the pilot program particularly with regards to expertise in equity-centered processes, community engagement, and climate justice and on adapting the MVP 2.0 process. Jane worked to update the MVP 2.0 program, incorporating the new role of equity partners to ensure equity-centered processes and deeper community engagement. In creating this new role, she worked on adapting the original process guide, defining the tasks and responsibilities of the equity partners, creating a budget, and writing up a Request for Response (RFR) to post on Massachusetts’ vendor procurement system (COMMBUYS). Jane also helped the MVP team with the current development of the Climate Resilience Playbook in collaboration with MAPC and the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission.
Name: Emek Karakilic
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: During her fellowship, Emily worked with the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Advancement on developing a worker cooperative ecosystem in the City in collaboration with the Small Business Department, the Boston Center for Community Ownership (BCCO), and Democracy at Work Institute. She also led the Office’s efforts in fulfilling the Certified Welcoming certification, interviewing more than a dozen staff members within City Hall and accruing evidence to fulfill more than 100 criteria. In addition, Emily also supported MOIA's Needs Assessment for their strategic planning process and their research in climate change impacts on immigrant communities.
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 worked with the City of Boston’s Planning Department, supporting the Communications Division with their community engagement efforts through three projects. In her first project, she explored the use of generative AI for qualitative data analysis. She created a comprehensive guide Planning Department staff can use to collect, analyze and draw key insights from qualitative data collected during engagement events. For her second project Calah explored how community compensation and incentivisation can be used to create more equitable engagement opportunities for the Planning Department in the future. She connected with stakeholders from various City departments to understand their compensation methodologies. Using this information, Calah created a compensation best practices guide that includes procurement logistics and case study examples. Lastly, Calah conducted an assessment of the Planning Department current communications materials. Along with the assessment, she provided recommendations and online tools to improve accessibility throughout written materials.
Name: Shaakira Parker
Graduate School: Brandies University
Agency: Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care
Project Description: This summer Shaakira worked as a fellow at the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC), where she worked on developing a toolkit for early childhood education and childcare providers focused on preventing the use of exclusionary discipline (e.g., suspension, expulsion). EEC is in the process of updating their exclusionary discipline policy and the goal of this toolkit is to share strategies and resources focused on preventing and addressing challenging behaviors that could lead to the use of exclusionary discipline, where to go for help/who to contact, best practices, how to communicate/engage with families, the impact of exclusionary discipline on children and families, etc. This toolkit is not meant to be an exhaustive list of strategies but is instead intended to be something that early childhood providers can easily access and is feasible to implement, that provides concrete examples and actions. Currently, the toolkit is intended to be launched on EEC’s website in October.
Name: Megan Siebecker
Graduate School: UMass Boston
Agency: Boston Age Strong Commission
Project Description: Megan spent her summer at the City of Boston’s Age Strong Commission working on two projects. The first was the development of a mapping resource of services and supports available to people living with dementia (PLWD) and their caregivers in the city of Boston. Resources were compiled and mapped on the Age Strong web page in order to make them publicly accessible to constituents and lessen the burden of identifying and locating these resources independently. Compiling existing dementia services and supports also revealed where there are gaps in support geographically. The second was a project coordinating and creating materials for Age Strong’s Needs Assessment, a large-scale data collection effort in preparation for the City of Boston’s and State of Massachusetts’s Area Plans. This Needs Assessment process informs priority setting, program development, and funding opportunities for the Commission and the Executive Office of Elder Affairs of Massachusetts.
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 worked with the Executive Office of Administration & Finance on two different projects. The first was serving as an A&F representative on the Interagency Task Force for Early Education and Care. This task force was charged with finding a whole-of-government approach to improving access and affordability of early education and care for the state. Part of her work included conducting research into innovative approaches to early education and care as well as other policy opportunities, providing strategic and policy advice, and reviewing/editing report documents. The task force also conducted public engagement sessions across the state this summer, and she was able to attend as an observer to improve and enhance my understanding of the sector. She also worked with A&F to conduct a policy analysis on the parental leave policies for the Commonwealth’s Executive Offices and provide a report on opportunities for improvement. She leveraged her skills in policy analysis, data analysis, and process mapping to enhance the depth of her report.