By Afreen Ahmed MPP 2025
Harvard Kennedy School students are busy during the summer months, putting their classroom training to work to deepen their understanding, apply new skills, and bring their knowledge to a new challenge, professional sector, policy area, or part of the world.
Afreen Ahmed MPP 2025 was part of the inaugural cohort of the David Gergen Summer Fellowship, a program designed to foster pathways to public service for emerging leaders by enabling meaningful summer internships in public service and leadership. Read what Afreen shared about the experience.
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I am a Master in Public Policy student at Harvard Kennedy School focused on labor policy. I am from Chicago and previously did my undergraduate degree in economics at the University of Chicago. For four years before joining HKS, I worked for McKinsey as a consultant in their Middle East economic development practice, working on increasing public access to jobs and social services across the region. At HKS, I am interested in learning how to democratize access to labor protections for non-formal workers, like gig workers or domestic workers, who are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.
To understand more about how federal labor policies are created and implemented, I interned at the U.S. Department of Labor (U.S.-DOL) in Washington, D.C. this summer. My time there was exciting and informative! I worked with the immigration policy team on projects to improve job access for new Americans, such as speeding up work authorization permits and reducing barriers to relicensing for skilled immigrants. At the end of the internship, I submitted a report summarizing promising practices and policy guidance for states to support the integration of new Americans into the workforce system.
“I am grateful for my experience with Gergen and U.S.-DOL, and I will take my experience forward with me in my future labor policy roles.”
Through this, I learned how federal agencies interact with state and local government to shape labor policies on the ground. I also learned the role of a federal agency goes beyond implementation and are often involved in drafting policy from the very beginning. Given the Supreme Court ruling on federal agency authority issued during the summer, it became especially important to understand the role of this part of the government in executing policy. I am grateful for my experience with Gergen and U.S.-DOL, and I will take my experience forward with me in my future labor policy roles.
The David Gergen Summer Fellowship Program supports trailblazing public service and leadership opportunities, enabling a select number of Harvard Kennedy School students to gain meaningful, practical, hands-on experience and develop important networks through summer internships in government or nonprofit service.
This post was originally published on the Center for Public Leadership website.
