By Carol Kerbaugh
Christian Hess MPA 2025 credits his experience in the Peace Corps for his mentality toward public service and interest in health care policy. He is exploring these topics and more at Harvard Kennedy School.
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After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Christian Hess MPA 2025 joined the Peace Corps and spent more than two years in the Dominican Republic, where he was a community organizer for the 300-person village, Ingeñito. While there, he successfully lobbied the Ministry of Public Health to fulfill their longstanding obligation to open the region’s first primary care facility.
“I was originally assigned to a completely different project,” Hess recounts. “But when I got there, I met with families and quickly realized that what they really wanted was access to health care.”
After his Peace Corps experience, Hess spent several years as a management consultant before enrolling in the concurrent Master in Public Administration (MPA) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree program at HKS and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
“I remember coming back from my service and discovering the HKS-Dartmouth (Tuck) program from a Google search,” he says. “I was ecstatic about getting a different philosophy from each institution. It has given me greater clarity on what skills and lessons are transferrable between sectors.”
“I was ecstatic about getting a different philosophy from each institution. It has given me greater clarity on what skills and lessons are transferrable between sectors.”
Hess has focused on deepening his understanding of health care policy at HKS.
“The Peace Corps was the inception of me finding health care as a passion area,” he says. “It’s what I’ve fallen the most in love with and has been my policy area of focus here at HKS.”
He has taken several courses focused on health care policy, including SUP-578: U.S. Healthcare Industry and Regulatory Policy with Professor Leemore S. Dafny and SUP-581M: Federal Health Policy Making from Legislative Specs to Regulations with Professor Sheila Burke.
“One major takeaway from these courses for me is that many of the health care issues we face in the U.S.— pharmaceutical patent thickets and services consolidation—must be addressed at the legislative level,” he says.
Outside of the classroom, Hess has gained hands-on experience working in government through a summer internship with Representative Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government’s Transition Term, a nonpartisan program that matches newly elected leaders with teams of HKS students. He traveled to Ogden, Utah to assist newly elected Mayor Ben Nadolski with completing a city assessment that was used to inform the mayor’s first State of the City address.
“When I was in the Peace Corps, I was technically working for the federal government, but I couldn’t have been more removed from Washington,” Hess says. “Transition Term was my first experience actually working in government. It didn’t matter if they sent me to Utah or Pennsylvania or New Mexico—I knew it would be a great experience for me to get a sense of what it’s like to be in those buildings, interacting with different departments. I’ll think back on that experience as my initial gateway into public service back home.”
“I knew it [Transition Term] would be a great experience for me to get a sense of what it’s like to be in those buildings, interacting with different departments. I’ll think back on that experience as my initial gateway into public service back home.”
Immediately following graduation, Hess will return to the private sector, joining Morgan Stanley’s health care investment banking practice in New York. In the long run, Hess sees himself entering public service in his home state of California.
“I see myself as fundamentally bipartisan” he says. “Instead of running away from the government, we need to ask where that’s left us today, if we’re happy with the current state of affairs, and how we can participate from our position.”
Photos courtesy of Christian Hess
