Championing pathways to economic opportunity

Born in Saudi Arabia to Filipino migrant workers, Caren Yap MPP 2025 and her family immigrated to the United States when she was an infant. She spent her early childhood in rural Onaga, Kansas before settling in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Yap learned about systemic inequities firsthand—well before stepping foot in a public policy classroom. Her early jobs working in retail, as a barista in Las Vegas’ searing desert heat, and as a nursing assistant in home health care taught her how workplaces can fail their workers.

“I constantly encountered inequity in the workplace, whether it was working seven hours without a break in 120-degree Fahrenheit heat or as an underpaid nursing assistant,” she explains. “I knew it was something I wanted to change, but it wasn’t until I got to HKS that I could finally put a label on what I care about: civic engagement and labor policy.”

Her commitment to public service grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, when a mentor invited her to help register people in her community to vote.

“I got drawn into this world of community engagement and policy, and I never looked back,” she reflects.

Organizing civic events turned into a passion for policy—Yap set her sights on the Nevada Legislature, where she worked as a legislative assistant before applying to the Master in Public Policy (MPP) Program at Harvard Kennedy School.

For the past two years at HKS, Yap has devoted herself to deepening her commitment to public service, her community, and her identity. But the most rewarding experiences, she shares, have come through immersive, hands-on opportunities that bridge policy and practice.

Last summer, Yap served as the Michael S. Dukakis Governors’ Summer Fellow in Hawaiʻi, where she worked with Lindsay Apperson MPP 2023 to support Governor Josh Green and his housing team in securing a $2 million federal Transit Oriented Development grant for Honolulu’s Iwilei-Kapālama neighborhood. She also helped coordinate a federal funds summit, bringing together state and federal agencies to discuss ways to generate more funding capacity for Hawaiʻi, and she compiled a legislative digest of the state’s housing bills, drawing from her experience in the Nevada Legislature.

But the significance of her Dukakis Fellowship extended beyond her professional growth; it was also an opportunity to build connection with communities she cares deeply about, particularly within the Asian American Pacific Islander diaspora.

“Hawaiʻi has a large Filipino population, and my hometown of Las Vegas is informally nicknamed the ‘Ninth Island’ as it has the highest number of native Hawaiians outside of Hawaiʻi,” she says. “To work in a community where many of my loved ones call home was incredibly fulfilling. I’m endlessly grateful to have learned on native land.”

Yap continued to take on new opportunities to navigate the space where policy ideas meet the real world.

As part of the 2024 cohort of Transition Term—a nonpartisan program led by the Taubman Center for State and Local Government that matches newly elected leaders with HKS students who join them full-time for two weeks during January Term—Yap and her team supported then incoming Mayor of Ogden, Utah, Ben Nadolski on a racial and gender equity portfolio.

She returned to Transition Term in 2025 as a senior research assistant, recruiting state and local administrations to participate in the program.

“It’s been rewarding to help expand the Transition Term program’s reach to areas I care about—the Southwest, West Coast, and Pacific Islands,” she says.

She points to client-focused courses like MLD-375: Creating Justice in Real Time: Vision, Strategies and Campaigns with Professor Cornell William Brooks and DEV-502: Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building II with Professor Eric Henson as being particularly meaningful. In the latter course, Yap was paired with a Pacific Islander-focused organization and, in March 2025 during spring break, traveled to Samoa to learn about the island nation’s healthcare challenges.

“Going into these rural areas and interacting with the community health workers reinforced my interest in labor and workforce development and building capacity for underserved communities,” she says.

But some of Yap’s most meaningful experiences at HKS came from her interactions with other students. She helped coordinate the Public Policy Leadership Conference (PPLC)—which she herself attended as an undergraduate—and she guided new students as an orientation leader.

“I felt like I was making a tangible difference at HKS by taking on these student-facing roles,” she reflects. “Planning the PPLC was a magical, full-circle moment. Helping other first-generation, low-income students see themselves here has been one of my proudest memories.”

Initially, she thought coming to HKS would make her feel far from home. But she says her HKS experience strengthened her connection to her community and identity.

“Whether I’m in Samoa learning about community health systems or studying transportation equity in Las Vegas, I try to connect the lessons I learn to the communities I care about,” she says. “At HKS, I met Professor Ed Garcia, one of the original framers of the Philippine Constitution. I’m taking intermediate Tagalog. I brought 24 of my HKS peers back to Las Vegas as an organizer of the 2025 Urban and Rural Trek. I wrote a policy memo on nursing staffing for my first-year MPP Policy Design and Delivery course, and it has turned into a piece of legislation that is working its way through the Nevada Legislature. In many ways, HKS has reinforced that I want to dedicate my life to the communities I am a part of.”

Ultimately, Yap wants to return to Las Vegas to create opportunities for socioeconomic mobility. In the near term, she hopes to work with a labor union or worker center, using what she’s learned to strengthen worker protections and support pathways to economic opportunity.

“Las Vegas is a working-class town. Nevada has the highest rate of unemployment in the country,” she says. “I want to change that.”

Portraits by Lydia Rosenberg; inline images by Natalie Montaner and courtesy of Caren Yap