By Nicole Morell, Director of Communications
Inside the cockpit of a Boeing 737, Gloria Korpas MPP 2025 worked through a test flight simulation. It was far from easy; and that’s to be expected; Korpas has no plans of becoming a pilot. She just completed one year as an Economic Development Initiative Analyst for Miami-Dade County, Florida, where the aerospace industry is a top target sector for the region. The simulation – and working to attract more aerospace companies to the county – was part of her yearlong experience as a Taubman Center Economic Development Post-Graduate Fellow. 
The Economic Development Post-Graduate Fellowship is a pilot program that creates more intentional pathways for HKS students into the field of state and local economic development while strengthening the talent pipeline for agencies. Since 2023, it has placed recent HKS graduates in offices across the country—at the state (Colorado), county (Miami-Dade), city (San Antonio, TX), and regional (Madison, WI) levels, exposing HKS students to diverse communities, career pathways, and opportunities to support economic development at multiple levels of government. Fellows spend one year in competitively paid full-time roles, helping to accelerate key projects while developing their skills in the field.
“The fellowship has given me access and experience I don’t think I would get in another role,” says Korpas, who was the third graduate to participate in the pilot program.
Embedding Harvard Kennedy School grads within economic development agencies across the country
Economic development is a core priority of the Taubman Center, driven by strong student interest, growing demand for talent from communities across the U.S., and the field’s potential to transform state and local economies. However, the work is often fragmented across many state, regional, and local agencies, making it hard for offices to recruit talent and for students to know how to enter the field. “Through the fellowship pilot we’re experimenting with building that talent pipeline and bringing the brainpower, passion, and capacity of recent HKS grads to states, counties, cities, and towns they may not have otherwise considered,” says Rafael Carbonell, Executive Director of the Taubman Center. “We aim to better inform and inspire students to consider a career in state and local economic development, and to provide them with intentional pathways to pursue those jobs."
Fellows have made a meaningful impact in their host communities: helping launch an innovative cross-sector procurement system in San Antonio, strengthen the small business technical assistance network in Colorado, and identify new opportunities to grow local economies in Miami-Dade County, among other contributions. As a testament to the success of the fellowship, each fellow has been offered a position within their host government once the fellowship has ended. “We’ve had great outcomes with the program pilot, with our fellows leading important projects and being adaptive during a time of a lot of change in the field,” says Natalie Phillips, Economic Development Program Manager. “The fellowship has become a capstone to our economic development programming, another way for students to put into practice what we teach through our state and local economic development offerings.”
Learning about the field
Many economic development professionals discover the field accidentally and indirectly. Korpas was no different. Before coming to Harvard Kennedy School for her Master of Public Policy, she worked at a nonprofit and had little exposure to local government or economic development. “I didn't really know about economic development as a concept or potential career until I did the Taubman Center’s State and Local Economic Development (SLED) Seminar,” she says. Taking the SLED Seminar in her first year and serving as a Transition Term fellow for the newly elected mayor of Revere, MA sparked her interest in opportunities at the state and local level. After attending an info session on the Economic Development Post-Graduate Fellowship in her final semester, her exposure to the topic and her experiences at HKS—not to mention the appeal of Miami—led her to apply. In July 2025, Korpas began her fellowship with the Miami-Dade County Office of Innovation and Economic Development.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava previously hosted a team of HKS students through the Taubman Center’s Transition Term program. When contacted about the possibility of hosting a Taubman Center Post-Graduate Economic Development Fellow, she enthusiastically accepted.
Navigating the ebb and flow of county government
Although Korpas was the first county-level fellow, she quickly found that her work extended beyond that scale, with priority projects spread across all levels of government. “I had the opportunity to work at four levels of economic development: local, regional, intergovernmental, and federal,” she says. “It wasn’t just one project, but many across different layers.” At the regional level, her work focused on attracting target industries to Miami-Dade County, while at the local level she supported a program providing technical assistance to small businesses. Intergovernmental projects helped her partner with departments across the county in support of her office’s goals.
Korpas was also instrumental in county programs that extended to the federal level through the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Tech Hubs program, which selected Miami-Dade County as the base of the Risk and Resilience Tech that aims to drive regional technology- and innovation-led growth. “I got to see the process of forming one of these tech hubs, the governance behind it, and worked on advancing demonstration projects for the technologies the hub was supporting,” she says.
As one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, Miami and the surrounding communities in the county provided ample room for envisioning the future. “Miami’s business and economic identity haven’t fully been figured out yet in comparison to other big U.S. cities,” says Korpas. “Working in economic development at this time allows us to ask questions like ‘What businesses and industries do we want to focus on?’ and ‘What direction do we want to go in?’”
One of those target industries is aerospace — which is how Korpas ended up in the cockpit of a simulation — and builds upon the county's already strong aviation industry. To attract more talent, Korpas says the county is focusing on expanding educational and workforce opportunities related to aerospace to make the county more appealing to industry leaders. “We’re also working on creating a strategic plan for some of the last remaining undeveloped parcels in the County, that have huge potential to become an aerospace hub for the region and a job center for the southern part of the County,” says Korpas.
But work within county government is not all blue-sky thinking, as Miami-Dade County, like many local communities across the U.S., faces a large budget deficit. At the beginning of her fellowship, Korpas’s team was restructured, with colleagues moving to several different departments within the county. Leaders looked to former members of the economic development team, including the County’s Transformation Officer, for big-picture thinking on what’s next. “We spent a lot of time working on a framework for WISE 305, an initiative launched by Mayor Levine Cava to improve government efficiency and identify new revenue sources,” Korpas says. “It was really helpful to see economic development from this internal side, looking at how to improve government processes so that we can better serve the public and promote economic development.”
Korpas’s viewpoint was welcome as her team continued to advance projects in a time of change. “Government budgets ebb and flow, but the work we had in front of us didn’t change,” says James Kohnstamm, Director of Economic Development for Miami-Dade County who served as Korpas’s supervisor. “Gloria helped to bring a broader perspective and expand the conversation to what’s happening outside the walls of Miami-Dade County and ask, ‘How do we leverage this particular challenge or opportunity into something bigger?’ and ‘How might this connect to broader trends we’re seeing nationally and internationally?’ That’s what Gloria was able to bring from day one.” James notes that Korpas also immersed herself in the Miami-Dade narrative, even leading a panel and putting what she learned into practice in her time there. “Gloria really thrived here,” he says. “In the past few weeks since she’s been gone, I’ve had people come up to me many times asking if she was still around, sharing how fantastic she was.”
Mayor Cava also shared in this assessment: “Hosting Gloria through the Harvard Kennedy School Taubman Fellowship has been an extraordinary opportunity for Miami-Dade County. She brought exceptional insight, curiosity, and a collaborative spirit to some of our most important economic development initiatives. The fellowship demonstrates the tremendous value of connecting emerging public leaders with local governments to deliver meaningful results while preparing the next generation of public servants.”
Lessons learned
The county’s budget, coupled with new pressure from proposals to significantly reduce property taxes statewide, pushed Korpas and her team to be adaptive and seek efficiencies within government wherever they could. As a result, navigating uncertainty was one of Korpas’s most important lessons from her fellowship. “As the county navigated the budget shortfall, it was really illuminating to see the choices they made,” she says, noting she feels it prepared her to adapt in many roles in state and local government where uncertainty is often part of the job.
One clear takeaway from her time with the county was the importance of relationship-building. “People always think of big cities like Miami as cosmopolitan, transient places, but a lot of people have deep roots here,” she says. With agencies frequently working together, relationship-building was a key skill for Korpas, with partners including Miami-Dade College, the Urban Land Institute, and the Miami-Dade Beacon Council, where HKS alum Rod Miller MPP 2002, serves as President and CEO. “We were always working with partners in our efforts, whether it was educational partners, land use experts, or other economic development agencies, so much of the work has been relationship-based,” she says.
Korpas also has a unique collection of skills learned from a job that she says has no typical day. Through the Risk and Resilience Tech Hub, she earned a “Cement 101” certification. She worked on the design of an internal plan to upskill County employees through project-based work, enabling them to better leverage AI. She also presented a proclamation on behalf of the Mayor St. Thomas University for their Global Entrepreneurship Week. “Having that title of ‘fellow’ really opened the door for me and allowed me to get into so many meetings and events and learn so much,” she says. “James would always ask if I could join a meeting, and so often I was welcomed in.”
Looking ahead with a new government agency
After completing the fellowship, Korpas is back in the Greater Boston area as the new Deputy Director of Lean Analytics for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) —though she is quick to note that it was hard to leave behind the Miami culture and weather.
Korpas says the fellowship uniquely prepared her for new role with the MBTA, by quickly immersing her into county government in a role that allowed her to be involved in many different projects and see how governments operate on a lean and shifting budget. “[My work with the county] is so applicable to my new role, as I’ll be focused on streamlining operations and processes across departments at the MBTA,” she says. “The fellowship helped shape my perspectives on how organizational change can happen in the public sector, while also sharpening skills that will be useful for any public sector career in the future.”
