Catherine Neill has been interested in city systems and how people relate to their environment practically her entire life.
“Growing up in Ireland, my family moved around quite a bit,” she says. “From a very young age, I realized how much where you live affects your opportunities—everything from where you work to where you send your kids to school is dependent on your housing situation.”
Today, Neill works as a senior planner at the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Before that she was an urban planner in Vancouver, Canada, working on that city’s first comprehensive plan resulting in transformative change. And while she has always had a deep appreciation for the importance of equitable housing, it was Harvard’s Public Leadership Credential (PLC) that really inspired her to take action and help make that happen.
“The opportunity the PLC gave me was to engage with changemakers from all over the world who were impacting areas like public education, health, and government affairs at all levels,” Neill says. “That encouraged me to step up and cofound an organization called Peer City Convening: an online forum of urban planning practitioners who meet to generate new approaches to improving affordable housing access for vulnerable communities across North America.”
Of course, Neill didn’t enroll in her first PLC course with that goal in mind. She found the convenient, self-paced format of each course and the opportunity to learn online at the renowned Harvard Kennedy School of Government an amazing opportunity for self-development.
“The opportunity the PLC gave me was to engage with changemakers from all over the world who were impacting areas like public education, health, and government affairs at all levels.”
Catherine Neill PLC 2021, MC/MPA 2023
“The great thing about the program is the way it challenges you to think about how you can enhance your effectiveness as a leader from a number of different angles. You can register, try out one or two courses, decide if you like it, and keep going from there,” she says.
Harvard’s Public Leadership Credential consists of six six-week courses in three curricular areas, plus a capstone project. Since it was first introduced in 2018, the program has welcomed thousands of learners from over 121 countries and continues to grow.
“I’m always looking for ways to improve myself, be more effective and ensure the public sector can operate more effectively, too,” says Neill, who after completing the PLC program also worked as a research assistant with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. “The policy analysis, group facilitation, and leadership skills I acquired in the program had an immediate impact on my ability to scale the Peer City Convening organization from three cities to 14 over the course of two years and move the dial on affordable housing policies nationally.”
The PLC was a huge reason behind Neill’s decision to apply to the Mid-Career Master in Public Administration, from which she graduated last year. She often tells people, “Because of my time at Harvard, I’m not just building cities. I’m building movements.”
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