From Boston to Cape Town, London, and Sydney: Exploring the intersection of business and public purpose

Liam Chai MPP 2026 

MassHealth 
Boston, Massachusetts 

This summer, I served as an intern with MassHealth’s Integrated Fiscal Strategy team within the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. I focused on understanding and strengthening the Commonwealth’s partnerships with Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) to deliver high-quality care to Massachusetts residents. My work spanned MassHealth’s diverse portfolio, including projects focused on local MCOs and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) administering traditional Medicaid as well as programs serving the dually-eligible population, individuals who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid in the United States. I also focused my work on further analyses of the primary care sub-capitation initiative and strategies to enhance behavioral health supports across the system.  

Over the course of my internship, I gained valuable insight into how strategic financial policies can incentivize providers to adopt best practices, improve patient outcomes, and support sustainable partnerships between public agencies and healthcare organizations. By examining both the operational and policy aspects of Medicaid financing, I developed a nuanced perspective on the complex trade-offs decision-makers face in balancing cost, quality, and access to care.  

I had the opportunity to present my findings and recommendations directly to the Assistant Secretary of MassHealth, contributing to ongoing policy discussions at the highest level. This experience strengthened my skills in policy analysis and deepened my commitment to advancing health equity. I’m grateful for the support that made this internship possible, and am eager to see how my contributions will help shape MassHealth’s future policy decisions. 

 

Cameron Davis MPA 2026 

Launch Africa Ventures 
Cape Town, South Africa 

After finishing my first year at HKS, I moved to Cape Town, South Africa to put my classroom learnings into practice as a summer associate at Launch Africa Ventures, the most active early-stage venture capital firm on the continent.  

I arrived at HKS as a concurrent degree MPA candidate, with an MBA under my belt from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Building on a background as a McKinsey consultant, nonprofit operator, and economic researcher, I expected the two programs to help me continue finding innovative solutions to economic development challenges and enabling more equitable, sustainable economic growth. And after an earlier summer in Chile working at the country’s publicly-funded startup accelerator, I knew entrepreneurship was a vital piece to the puzzle in enabling pathways to good jobs and inclusive growth.  

Africa is a continent especially ripe for entrepreneurship. It’s the youngest region in the world—the median age is 19 years old—and home to two-thirds of the fastest-growing economies globally, but still lacks critical capacities for financial security, healthy living, and stable communities. That’s been Launch Africa’s thesis for investing in 162 companies across 25 African countries, providing banking services, mobility and infrastructure solutions, and scientific inventions in medicine and agriculture.  

As a summer associate—perhaps a misnomer given that I arrived in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter!—I helped the team analyze emerging sectors, invest in innovative technologies, and build their portfolio companies. Day-to-day, I supported three workstreams: 

• ideating and pitching strategic exits for some of our best investments;

• defining the portfolio and model investments for a proposed $150M growth fund; and  

• crafting materials for new partnerships with impact-focused institutional investors across the continent.

Thanks in part to the generous support of both the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and the Harvard Climate Internship Program, I was able to fully immerse myself in the inspiring work going into investing in, scaling, and supporting the next generation of tech entrepreneurs solving Africa’s biggest challenges, and look forward to taking the lessons of the internship forward in my career.  

 

Paula de la Mora MPA/ID 2026 

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 
London, United Kingdom 

This summer I interned in London with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in its Capital and Financial Markets Development department.  

One of my main projects was contributing to the update of the Financial Markets Development Index, which benchmarks market breadth, depth, liquidity, and investor base across more than 50 countries. The index captures both the underlying conditions of financial markets and the outcomes they generate, making it a powerful tool for understanding how well capital markets function and evolve. It was fascinating to see how scores can shift meaningfully across time and regions, reflecting reforms, setbacks, and the broader economic context. Working with this tool gave me a front-row seat to the complexity of cross-country comparisons and the importance of measuring capital market development in a way that is both rigorous and practical for policymakers and investors. In the process, I learned a lot about capital market infrastructure, something I had never explored before, which made the project challenging and fun.  

A particularly fun surprise was realizing that four interns were also from HKS, and by coincidence we were all assigned to the same floor, which made it easy to reconnect, share the experience, and enjoy the summer together. 

I also supported a project focused on helping an Eastern European country bring its investor protection framework into closer alignment with European Union standards. That work required diving into the technical details of investor compensation scheme design while also considering the broader regulatory and institutional context. Beyond the projects themselves, what stood out to me most was the opportunity to learn from the incredibly talented and diverse group of professionals at the EBRD, whose expertise and generosity made the experience all the more rewarding. Both projects pushed me to develop my technical skills while also giving me a much deeper appreciation for how the EBRD strengthens capital infrastructure, fosters investor confidence, and supports financial development across its regions of operation. 

 

Carina Stone MPP 2026 

Flequity Ventures 
Sydney, Australia 

This summer I worked with Catherine Fitzpatrick at her Australian social enterprise, Flequity Ventures. Catherine is pioneering the application of ‘safety by design’ principles to challenge businesses to anticipate how domestic violence (DV) abusers might weaponize their products and proactively close vulnerabilities. Catherine has published a series of three discussion papers called Designed to Disrupt^®, which focus on disrupting financial abuse risks in the banking, insurance, and utilities sectors. Thanks to the generous support of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and the Women and Public Policy Program, I had the opportunity to intern with Catherine, learn from her incredible advocacy on business action on DV, and help co-author her fourth Designed to Disrupt report on financial and technology-facilitated abuse in the telecommunications sector.

Catherine and I hope to launch the Telecommunications Designed to Disrupt report as a public webinar this October. The report starts with an analysis of the financial and tech abuse tactics deployed by abusers involving telecommunication (telco) products, drawing on lived experience and financial counsellor surveys, stakeholder interviews, and desktop research. This builds into an overview of the current regulatory landscape across over 11 legislative and regulatory schemes, gaps in consumer protection, and recommendations for change. I included a snapshot of the telco industry, including analysis of DV complaints data to the telco ombudsman, case studies, and an evaluation of existing business actions.  

Most pertinently, I audited 20 product and service features to identify over 30 safety risks where these products can be weaponised. Risks I highlighted to decision makers include:  

• surveillance using parental controls, call and text logs, and WiFi router data; 

• coerced and fraudulent debt involving weak Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), password recovery and phone porting; 

• harassment involving public phones, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and pre-paid SIMs; and  

• physical safety risks from privacy breaches to abusers of victim-survivor addresses involving customer communications and weak app security.  

Finally, our report includes a deep dive assessment into the role that a cross-sector intelligence sharing scheme—similar to the Australian Scam Prevention Framework—could play in improving the efficacy of tech, telco, and banking responses to financial and tech abuse.  

As part of my internship, I met with about 30 different stakeholders from across government, business, and the nonprofit sectors. This included the telecommunications regulator (the Australian Communications and Media Authority), the online safety regulator (the eSafety Commissioner), the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, the peak industry body and largest telco player, state police commands, frontline domestic violence and tech safety service providers, and over seven expert academic researchers across technology and law. Catherine also surveyed survivor advocates, financial counsellors, and frontline domestic violence service providers to inform our findings.  

New telco regulatory protections related to DV were introduced on July 1, 2025. I was privileged to have the opportunity to advise the Australian Communications and Media Authority on the application of safety by design for their industry guidance materials as part of new mandatory DV policies required of the telcos. Additionally, I presented the emerging findings to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and their Consumer Panel of leaders of key consumer advocacy groups.  

It takes enormous strength and courage for victim-survivors to share their devastating experiences of financial and technology-facilitated abuse, and the impacts on them and their children. I was grateful to learn from incredible survivor advocates who are committed to stopping this abuse from happening to others. Telecommunications are an essential service for everyday life, and I am glad I was able to play a small role in advocating for safer product and service design in this critical sector.  

I plan to use my Policy Analysis Exercise (PAE) to build on my summer internship research and focus on a holistic consumer protection framework to address technology-facilitated abuse. This project will be delivered in partnership with my PAE client, Wesnet/Safety Net Australia, which focuses on tech safety for domestic violence survivors.  

My deepest thanks to the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government for supporting me to complete this extraordinary learning experience. I look forward to continuing to being part of the M-RCBG community as I embark on my PAE in the technology regulation domain.  
 

Photos courtesy of Liam Chai, Cameron Davis, Paula de la Mora, and Carina Stone.