News from 2015
Internship at CFPB
Felix Owusu with former MA Congressman Barney Frank, who co-authored the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I came to the Goldman School to develop my skills in quantitative policy research while gaining experience designing, researching, and evaluating policies that reduce poverty and inequality. With these goals in mind, I chose to work in the Office of Research at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) this past summer in Washington, DC.…
Equipped to Lead
In the summer of 2009, a North Korean ship containing illicit cargo departed from its territorial waters, seemingly headed for Myanmar (Burma), possibly before transfer to the Middle East. Delivery of the cargo would have been in clear violation of several United Nations Security Council resolutions. As Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs, Michael Nacht was called upon to participate in an inter-agency team to assess the situation and help formulate a response. “We did not want…
Inside the Beltway
The story of how Farhat Popal (MPP '09) got to DC is a lesson in persistence and the importance of networks. In 2010, she was working in the auditor’s office for the City of San Diego. She knew she wanted to do Afghanistan-related work, but had no active leads in DC. She reached out to friends and GSPP alumni working in international affairs who connected her to people in relevant fields. She introduced herself via email and followed up with…
Another Chance for Teens
The conventional wisdom among social scientists is that there’s little payoff in investing in troubled teenagers. As the University of Chicago economist James J. Heckman argued in 2011, “we overinvest in attempting to remediate the problems of disadvantaged adolescents and underinvest in the early years of disadvantaged children,” when the potential gains are supposedly the largest. But this consensus is wrong, as we now know from recent scholarship. Take YouthBuild, which runs 260 programs in 46…
Angel Enters Foster Care Through Probation’s Door
"Like a picture in a magazine." That's how Angel's mother Leah wanted their small townhouse in Pacifica, California, to look. Picture perfect. Leah says that she got the idea of giving her 12-year-old daughter chores after Angel's school sent home fliers describing the importance of teaching children how to "become successful adults." When her adolescent daughter failed to manage perfection -- when Angel missed a task in her 16-point list of chores that ranged from cleaning the…
Peace Through Grids
When I served as the chief technical specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency at the World Bank, one project I found especially interesting was the construction of an electricity highway between the rich geothermal energy fields of the Rift Valley in Kenya through the Lake Turkana plains—where the best wind resource identified to date in Africa was recently mapped—to newly constructed hydroelectric facilities in Ethiopia. Not only are these indigenous renewable energy resources largely untapped,…
Museums Can Change - Will They?
I tell my students, and only somewhat flippantly, that arts policy is the most important policy arena. Seriously? Well, most people think health policy is right up there—but why live longer if life isn’t worth living? And if you don’t think government has a lot to do with whether and how you can engage with art, you just don’t understand the situation. Think about a world in which our great paintings and…
Mother-in-law units, the Swiss Army knife of housing policy
One of California’s great strengths is the repertoire of ideas and practices that our diverse immigrant population brings from all over. However, some really good ideas from elsewhere have trouble taking root here and, as an East Coast import, I have been especially puzzled that owner-occupied rental housing, a pattern that has worked so well there, is an object of suspicion and even hostility in California. I know of no neighborhood pattern that does so many useful things…
Facing the storm after the storm in Vanuatu
Workers repair the roof of a holiday resort days after Cyclone Pam in Port Vila, capital city of the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu March 19, 2015. REUTERS/Edgar Su With the devastation caused by Tropical Cyclone Pam, progress in developing the small island state of Vanuatu has been wiped out. Focus is now rightly being placed on getting immediate relief to people suffering, and on rebuilding. But once the headlines disappear and the aid workers board their last plane home,…
Foster Youth Show Extreme Optimism in Face of Seemingly Great Challenge
New research shows that California teenagers in foster care display a surprising optimism about their future, despite the many challenges they face. “In general young people [aging out of foster care] tend to be pretty optimistic, in that sense I don’t think they differ much from their peers,” said Mark Courtney, Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and director of the CalYOUTH study. Initial findings from the CalYOUTH…