Category: News and Information

We recently had the opportunity to connect with soon-to-be MPA graduate Davon Thomas. In addition to years of student leadership as an undergraduate and graduate student, he has participated in civic leadership programs such as Washington Student Achievement Council and Institute for a Democratic Future. We asked Davon about his path to Evans, his memorable experiences as a student, and his aspirations to make an impact for communities of color.

Describe your journey towards pursuing your degree at Evans. What inspired you to pursue a career in public service?

Growing up, my father was in and out of prison. Like many Black men, he is a victim of a system designed to determine your life expectancy by your zip code. As a Black man in America, I have always cared deeply about righting the injustices my father and many others have faced. I can’t make excuses for him, but I can recognize that when you grow up in an underfunded and overpoliced community, your future and life opportunities are bleak. My journey to the policy world and Evans is about justice for those suffering under oppressive systems. I want to utilize the tools here at Evans to create a brighter future for communities of color.

Evans School is preparing to welcome the 2023 cohort of the Junior Summer Institute to campus. You were involved with JSI as an undergraduate student: could you share more about your time with JSI and the impact it made on your academic career and goals?

In 2019, I attended the JSI program at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Prior to this, I had no intention of attending graduate school. JSI was an opportunity for me to see what the experience would look like and I thrived there. I took graduate-level policy, economics, and statistics courses. After the program was done, I knew I wanted to attend graduate school. JSI gave students from underrepresented backgrounds an experience like no other. We had students, staff, and faculty push us to be our best selves during this program. Now, most of the classmates in my JSI cohort have already or are currently pursuing their MPA.

The Evans School’s values are equity, courage, and service. In what ways have these values shaped your time as a student?

In January 2022, three months after moving to Seattle, I was appointed by Governor Jay Inslee to the Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC). WSAC is a state agency tasked with raising educational attainment throughout the state and I continue to have the privilege of representing graduate students on council. I get to work on issues such as retention and recruitment, telehealth for students, and increased funding for students. Without the reputation of the Evans School’s commitment to equity, courage, and service, I felt that this appointment would not have happened.

You serve in leadership on the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS). Could you share more about your role with GPSS and how the Evans School has shaped that work?

I am the Vice President of Internal Affairs for the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS), which serves as the representative body for graduate students at the UW. In my role, I am responsible for event planning for graduate students across campus and for hiring GPSS staff. In a post-COVID world, it’s very important for students to have events to attend and opportunities to relax. I served as the vice president and president of my student body as an undergraduate, and I’ve continued in student leadership as a graduate student at Evans. Those who join student government do so because it’s a service and at the root of my heart is service. I love this work and I’m grateful I get to serve my fellow students in this capacity.

In addition to your role with GPSS, you’ve also recently returned from a week-long trip in Washington D.C. as part of the class of the Institute for a Democratic Future (IDF). Could you share more about your time with IDF?

Throughout the year, our cohort has spent ten intensive weekends meeting with leaders across Washington state, including local, state, federal, and native elected officials. Recently, we spent one full week in D.C. to meet with Democratic stakeholders, think tanks focusing on Arab American policy relations, and other leaders. This program has enlightened me on the issues impacting our own state. Policy in Washington is centered around Seattle and other major urban hubs, but having the opportunity to explore Eastern Washington and other rural areas reminded me why I went to graduate school in the first place – to improve the quality of life for underfunded and underrepresented communities. My north star, my heart, and my life are all rooted in service and I’m grateful to have participated in a program that aligns with my values.

What is the impact that you hope to leave as alumni of Evans and as you embark on your career journey?

I hope my impact is one of resilience and community. Graduate school has its trials and tribulations. There were more times than not when I wanted to drop out. However, I found a community here that pushed me to be better and do better. You might enter graduate school as an individual, but you leave here with a community. I’m better off for it.

We had the opportunity to connect with Nicolás Díaz Huarnez, MPA ‘20. As a student, Nicolás supported research for Zero Waste Washington, which led to the passage of the 2022 Organics Management Law in Washington state We chatted with Nicolás about his experience at the Evans School, the work his are currently doing in Chile, and his passion for waste management and its connections to climate change. His current role is with Global Methane Hub as a Project Manager for the Waste and Circular Economy Program. The hub is a global philanthropic effort to address methane emissions in alignment with the Global Methane Pledge which has been subscribed by more than 160 countries to reduce methane emissions globally by 30% by 2030, compared to 2020 emissions.

Conversation edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself? What led you to pursue your degree at the Evans School?

Before coming to the Evans School, I wanted to connect science and policy for addressing climate change. I was accepted into the Fulbright program and chose to go to Evans because of its strengths in the environmental policy courses – Seattle and Washington state are also very inspiring places to live and to work on environmental policy. 

Climate change is one of the most pressing threats to governments and people’s livelihoods. I have been working to connect efforts from policy, science, and from everything that’s been done in practice to overcome climate change, and, with time, I have deepened my focus to address the challenges posed by the management of waste.

While you were at Evans, you were involved in a research effort that led to the passage of the 2022 Organics Management Law in Washington state. Can you share a bit more background about your involvement in this cause? How did your Evans education inform and contribute to your approach to this work?

At Evans, I applied to The Cynthia L. and David S. Harrison Endowed Fellowship for Environmental Policy and was selected to take part as an intern with Zero Waste Washington. They do amazing work—it was a very good match for my interests, and they needed someone to focus on organizing a lot of data to assess the landscape of segregated waste collection and drop-off programs across the state and develop a report on this. In addition to the environmental policy concentration, I also took classes on quantitative analysis, and I ended up combining the work from those courses with the project at Zero Waste Washington. 

It wasn’t easy to do an analysis of all jurisdictions across Washington state. I remember looking at more than 300 jurisdictions, so it was very detailed work. This project allowed me to understand the complexity of setting goals at the state level and the implementation at local jurisdictions. This process was a good learning experience of how challenging it can be to align efforts on a larger scale.  

Because of the pandemic, I had to return to Chile with my wife and our two kids. I had just finished up my studies, but I reconnected with Zero Waste Washington before coming back to Chile and joined on to support a follow-up report that was much more focused on organics. 

This second report was very detailed, too, and it contributed to the 2022 Organics Management Law that Washington passed (HB 1799). We worked with data from the State Department of Ecology and conducted more than 60 interviews with representatives of the public and private waste sector across the state. This was a great combination of what I learned at Evans in terms of understanding the policy process in the U.S. – it is very different from my background here in Chile. I think this work was needed to push decision makers across the state to rethink the way it was targeting and dealing with compost and to share the experience from all the advancements that the City of Seattle was leading by then. We were showing what was required to take this big step at the state level given its climate commitments.  

This law is great for Washington state, and we really need to address organics everywhere. I hope this work can permeate the rest of the country and beyond. We need this type of legislation now since we don’t have 100 years to address climate change but less than a decade to avoid its worst consequences.

The Evans School’s values are equity, courage and service. In what ways are these values part of the work you have done and continue doing?

It takes courage just to talk about climate change. Standing and speaking and doing something about it – and in the case of policy makers and everyone that works on public issues, it takes courage and commitment to work towards those types of targets and goals. 

Equity is a cornerstone of what we are doing because you cannot think about waste or emissions without thinking about justice or development or human rights, especially in the waste landscape. It is important because you are talking about people that are exposed to the burden of society because of historical inequities. It is an integral part of whatever you are working on from a public policy lens.  

When you come in against these challenges from a public standpoint, you have to believe in what you are doing and be consistent. Although it can be hard sometimes to stay consistent, it’s about being mindful of what you are trying to address through your work, and the way that this work relates to what you are doing as a citizen, as a person, and, in my case, as a father when considering the inter-generational implications of climate change. 

I’m very happy to know that this is being highlighted as part of Evans’ alumni profiles, because it is critical. When you try to advance this type of agenda, you really need to commit to the values, too.

Could you share some resources that inspire you, either personally or professionally?

I follow the Freakonomics podcast. It’s very interesting because it’s not only economics, but it also covers how policy intersects with common problems that you find on a daily basis.  

For everyone working on climate, please go and read the most recent IPCC report. Also try to connect with the people that are organizing around where you are. Get to know not only what’s being thought about and done on the global landscape, but also at the local level.  

It’s always important to connect with different opinions – to challenge your potential biases and explore new approaches. It can give you a more complete idea of what the challenges and the problems are. And continue to grow as a person, because I think that’s a key part of understanding your place in the world. In Chile we have a saying “who looks for something finds it.” I use that advice all the time.