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Technology and Advancing the Public Good: A Q&A with Mark Frischmuth (MPA ʻ19)

Evans Alum Mark Frischmuth (MPA 2019) believes that technology can help solve challenging social, economic, environmental, and civic problems while empowering all members of society. At DemocracyLab, he is building on that vision by connecting tech-for-good projects with skilled volunteers and socially responsible companies.

What contributed to your decision to pursue a career in support of the public good? Was there a defining moment in particular?

I have always been motivated by a search for meaning and majored in philosophy as an undergraduate. Two sources of meaning I have found are authentic personal relationships and contributing to the public good. A spark of insight the day after the 2004 Presidential election motivated me to explore how technology could be used to crowdsource public policy by mapping connections between the values people believe, the objectives they seek to accomplish, and the policies they would like to see implemented. It was from that exploration process that I formed DemocracyLab in 2006, and it began a long journey that eventually led me to the Evans school and my full-time dedication to advance public interest technology.

Can you share a bit about the work you are currently doing and what a typical day in your work looks like?

DemocracyLab empowers people who use technology to advance the public good by connecting tech-for-good projects with skilled volunteers and socially responsible companies. Our platform and programs help tech-for-good projects to launch without funding, volunteers to upskill and advance their careers, and companies to build cultures of purpose. DemocracyLab is a volunteer-driven organization and thousands of hours of volunteer labor have been contributed toward the research, design, and development of our open-source online platform. I spend time every day coordinating volunteer efforts, engaging with current and prospective partners, reaching out to companies to solicit employee engagement opportunities, and building relationships with prospective funders.

Can you share how diversity, equity, and inclusion are central to your work and the work you continue doing?

Our world and our communities face many very difficult problems. Many of these problems were created by systems that exploited people, land, and resources for profit. I believe that addressing these problems will require the voice, perspective, and talent of as many people as possible. I believe an extroverted culture of inclusion leads to diversity, and that open-minded and respectful teams of diverse people can create communities and products that advance equity. I have experienced much personal privilege in life, and feel a responsibility to use that privilege to create greater equity at whatever scale I can.

If there was one thing you’d want people to know about your work, what would it be?

One of the most important effects of DemocracyLab’s work is that it increases the sense of agency of members of our community. We help people recognize that they have something valuable to contribute to solutions to public problems, and, that their response to these problems is within their control. The infrastructure that DemocracyLab creates has positive impacts on many other problems in society. By activating skilled volunteers and encouraging them to contribute their talents, we make it possible for organizations addressing a host of other issues to pursue their missions more effectively.

Looking back on your Evans School experience, what stands out as being particularly impactful during that time?

While the Evans classroom instruction was invaluable, I found my interactions and conversations with my classmates to be the most impactful aspect of my Evans experience. The diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives of my classmates helped me better understand my own worldview and challenged me to think more broadly. The education I received at Evans helps me see my work in the larger context of society and to better understand the complex range of stakeholders whose engagement is important to the success of my work.

What are 1 or 2 resources that inspire you personally or professionally?

A book I read long ago that stuck with me is Ken Wilbur’s A Brief History of Everything, where he made some very interesting points about systems thinking. The biggest takeaway for me was that any particular thing can be understood simultaneously as a whole, as a sum of its parts, and as a part of a larger whole.

A Q&A with Rebeca de Buen Kalman (PhD ’21)

This past summer, Rebeca de Buen Kalman completed her Ph.D. at the Evans School, where she focused on the intersections between environmental policy, climate change policy, transportation, and public health. Evans had a chance to sit down with her for a few minutes to talk about her dissertation research.

Your dissertation project is titled, “Pueblos Bicicleteros: Three Essays on Cycling Policy in Mexican Cities,” but you use the evolution of cycling policy in Mexico as a lens into contemporary urban environmental policy. Explain why cycling policy is so central to how major cities address today’s climate challenges.

Transportation is one of the largest and fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions globally and thus a critical area for climate mitigation policy. Increasing cycling commutes and trips in cities has the potential to reduce emissions and improve and health. Cycling policy can be especially compelling when it is integrated within a larger transportation strategy combined with transit.

Safety and equity concerns, however, must be present as we rethink transit policies. In the cities I studied, most urban cyclists are low-income workers who mostly cycle out of necessity. Framing a bicycle as “one less car” erases the experiences of these cyclists who might perceive the bicycle as a marker of poverty and whose perspective and needs are usually left out of cycling plans.

Why do you think cities in Mexico, as well as in the U.S. and in other places around the globe, struggle to better incorporate cycling within urban transportation strategies?

There are many reasons why incorporating cycling into transportation can be tricky in cities where low cycling rates are the status quo. Most barriers revolve around our current model of mobility, or ‘automobility’, which is centered around the cars and car-centric culture. In most cities, public policies, public spending, and regulations related to street design have historically favored car mobility at the expense of other modes like transit, walking, and cycling, which further entrenches car-centric life-styles. In many places, like the cities I studied in Mexico, some people associate cycling with low economic status and cars with progress and social mobility. Another common cultural barrier relates to society’s tendency to consider bikes as toys or means of recreation, rather than part of the transportation system.

While there are a lot of barriers, there is also a growing appetite from some sectors of the population to move towards multimodal lifestyles that include cycling. Evidence from travel-behavior data reveals an opportunity to reduce car use and substitute cycling for short trips, especially in core urban areas. There also is mounting evidence that younger generations are more environmentally conscious and inclined toward shared and multi-modal transportation when these are available.

We also might not think of cycling policy as a critical element of tackling inequality in modern cities. How does your dissertation show this is anything but the case?

The relationship between cycling and equity is not straightforward. Cycling policy can absolutely be a tool to tackle inequality, but bicycles and cycling policy are not inherently equitable. Bikes are a low-cost and efficient form of getting around in a city. In urban areas like the ones I studied in my dissertation, roughly one-fifth of trips are done by car but the vast majority of public funds for mobility are invested in car infrastructure. Improving cycling conditions through a variety of measures can be a way to improve people’s access to services and opportunities at a very low cost. Improving cycling conditions can also have benefits to pedestrians through improved street design, with important equity implications since riders from vulnerable communities are more likely to be hit by cars as pedestrians.

Measures that are meant to improve cycling conditions, however, are often implemented in visible central city areas and not necessarily accessible to lower-income people who might benefit the most from them. Cycling lanes are frequently implemented on sidewalks or at the expense of sidewalks, limiting pedestrian mobility and accessibility. Sometimes cycling-related policy can even further marginalize cyclists since cycling infrastructure is often determined once motor traffic needs have been prioritized, without addressing the fundamental asymmetry of power that makes cycling unattractive or unsafe.

Readers will be impressed with your research design, which involved the integration of many different data from many different parts of Mexico. How might environmental policy scholars use mixed methods designs to better inform policymaking?

The development of any project related to the built environment is situated in a complex web of actors, institutions, and social processes, where data is often scarce and disperse. I think that mixed methods are crucial for understanding these types of social phenomena. In my dissertation, I studied the trajectories of ten mid-sized and large cities who have implemented cycling infrastructure to different extents. I also took a deep dive into the local social movements that have sparked the adoption of cycling related policies. I used various qualitative and quantitative methods that leverage diverse data sources, including open source and crowdsourced transportation data on infrastructure and travel, administrative data, policy documents, and interview data.

The questions I asked in my dissertation were oriented towards understanding processes and mechanisms rather than questions of cause and effect. To have a full story on each of my cases and parameters that could be compared systematically in my analysis, I had to draw from a variety of sources. I also needed to be through for purposes of validation and triangulation.

Considering the bigger picture, in public policy and management, we ask cause and effect questions because we want to know how interventions impact our desired outcome. But we also need to know how to get things done, the mechanisms at play, and the nuances involved. There is an implementation process between a policy and its effect that requires organizations, institutions, and people. Policy and management are also contextual. We need to draw on various methods to situate ourselves to understand the nuances of public problems and potential policy solutions. Mixed methods are therefore a powerful tool for policy research to become more relevant to policymaking and implementation.

Tell us what you’ll be doing next for your next project at the Evans School.

I am a postdoctoral fellow for Ocean Nexus at the UW EarthLab and the Evans School. Ocean Nexus is an international network of ocean governance scholars based at the UW. Our team at the Evans School works with network members to develop applied policy analysis with an explicit focus on social equity. We are developing a framework to guide the operationalization of equity in ocean governance-related policy analysis through this process. We are also studying how policy problems are discussed in ocean governance research to identify gaps that reduce the applied impact of policy research in this field. Our ultimate goals are to help ocean governance scholars make their research more policy relevant and bring equity to the forefront of policy analysis.

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Evans Faculty Isabelle Cohen Discusses Findings from Tax Policy Experiment

Evans faculty Isabelle Cohen recently appeared on the VoxDev Talk (podcast), where she discussed an experiment she conducted in conjunction with the Uganda Revenue Authority to test a tax encouragement scheme in the form of reminder messages. Click here to listen to the podcast.

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Interview with Professor Ann Bostrom, Co-Principal Investigator at Newly Established Cascadia CoPes Hub

The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded a multi-institutional team (the Cascadia Coastlines and Peoples Hazards Research Hub, or Cascadia CoPes Hub) to advance hazards sciences and increase coastal resiliency in Pacific Northwest communities across Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. UW Evans School Professor Ann Bostrom serves as a co-principal investigator. Here she elaborates further on how the hub strives to increase communities’ adaptive capacity and mitigate devastating impacts from natural hazards like earthquakes and tsunamis. Key to this work is engaging local communities as a part of scientific research and design. A list of Cascadia CoPes Hub coalition members can be found at the end of the interview, learn more and stay up to date with hub activities at their website here.

Why was the Cascadia CoPes Hub Formed?

We’re responding to needs identified locally, regionally, and nationally for improved coastal resilience, particularly in Cascadia, which stretches from Humboldt and Del Norte Counties in California to the Salish Sea. We face a confluence of coastal hazards that include not only three types of earthquakes, but also tsunamis, landslides, and of course sea level rise, changing patterns of storminess, and the increasing risks of intense precipitation due to climate change that can have compounding effects. Concerns about these risks and calls for increasing research on coastal resilience were clearly articulated in the 2017 Ruckelshaus Center Washington State Coast Resilience Assessment report, and the Oregon Resilience Plan of 2013.

The hub also responds to a suite of grand challenges identified in recent years by the National Academies and others, calling for better understanding of the causes and consequences of topographic change, along with more systematic research and better understanding of inclusive science with community engagement, and science communication. We’re grateful to reviewers and NSF for recognizing the value of these scientific endeavors and co-production of science the hub plans in response to these challenges.

What groups live along the Cascade coast? What are some of the environmental issues (and consequences) that our region collectively, and these communities specifically, are facing?

Coastal areas in Cascadia are incredibly diverse! As noted in the Ruckelshaus report’s executive summary, but applicable to all of Cascadia: “The Washington coast and coastal communities are at an extraordinary confluence of cultures, unique ecosystems, influences, and potent threats. The coast is home to several tribes, is a gateway to iconic natural treasures, and the people are stewards of distinctive ecosystems that support shellfish growing fishing, cranberry growing, and timber production.” Intra- and inter-community disparities in residential longevity, economic precarity, and political exclusion are extreme, leading to differences and large variations in hazard preparedness.

Most communities on the Pacific Coast of Cascadia, and many on the Salish Sea, are rural and easily isolated—geographically, economically, and culturally—from urban cores. These communities have maintained place-based identities and cultures, and their stewardship results in natural, social, and cultural capitals, resources, and assets that are important for resilience; indigenous communities have knowledge of coastal processes from time immemorial.

Why do you believe it’s important to engage local communities in environmental hazards research? What is are some examples of the ways you are doing this?

Environmental hazards research has the potential to inform coastal community planning and resilience in very immediate ways. The hub is chock full of projects that we plan to co-develop with collaboratories (specific areas of the coast where the project has the potential to leverage ongoing research and relationships). The hub also includes research broadly relevant across Cascadia, such as better understanding the recurrence rate of megaquakes on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and examining how geological events – like increased sedimentation and erosion – may be affecting biodiversity and the marine ecologies on which coastal communities depend (e.g., shellfish habitat).

The hub also includes environmental hazards research projects focused on integrating diverse epistemologies into hazards mitigation planning and practices – to increase the exchange of information about hazards and resilience between communities with very different ways of knowing. And we have projects and processes, including community liaison leads for each research team in the hub, focused on helping coastal communities integrate new scientific advances into their planning. In addition, the hub will be funding seed grants to bring in new research ideas and projects over the five-year span of its activities.

Another way the hub is engaging local communities is through research co-design and educational engagement. Across Cascadia, Hispanics/Latinos are 14.8% of the population, Blacks/African Americans are 2.3% of the population, and American Indian/Alaska Natives are 1.6% of the population (as defined by the 2019 ACS). Hispanics/Latinos and American Indian/Alaska Natives are underrepresented in both undergraduate and graduate enrollments overall and particularly in science and technology degrees in the universities that are a part of the CoPes Hub; the hub will support hazards science projects and data collection in coastal schools, and actively recruit and support students from these coastal community groups.

Ideally, what would show that CoPes has been successful should a natural disaster like a tsunami or earthquake occur in 25 years?

Ideally, coastal communities would be better prepared than they are now and would bounce back better than ever after such an event! And even more importantly, the intent is for the hub to help communities focus, protect, and develop the assets they value, across time and spatial scales. For example, we know that there are likely issues with “islanding” after hazardous events – that some communities might end up isolated due to damaged infrastructure, including bridges, roads, and communications. If we’re successful, we will help communities find ways to reduce islanding and its risks, so that they are not left stranded without essential supplies or support in the immediate aftermath of a tsunami. Some coastal tribal communities are already beginning the process of moving uphill, away from increasing risks of storm surges and sea level rise, and from the risks of tsunami inundation, which tribal coastal communities have long understood, and others have only begun to better appreciate over the last few decades.

On a broader scale, why should those not living in/near the CSZ care about this research? Where else in the world or in what other aspects could the research and collaboration modeled by CoPes be vital?

Here in Cascadia we have the privilege of living on the Pacific rim ring of fire, as it is called. It’s a magnificent living landscape, even with the “Really Big One” lurking on the horizon. Cascadia CoPes Hub researchers are already collaborating with colleagues in British Columbia, Japan, New Zealand, and Chile – around the Pacific rim – but also with colleagues in other parts of the Americas and the world in productive exchanges of knowledge that will help all of us better understand and plan for the coastal dynamism and climate changes we know are on the horizon and that include increasing risks from extreme hazards.

Coastal populations are among the fastest growing in the world, which only increases the urgency of this work. The hub hopes to leave a legacy not only of more knowledge about the coastal hazards and risks we face in Cascadia, but also advance interdisciplinary hazard analyses, modeling and simulations, and inclusive decision support, community planning processes, and science communication. The hub is dedicated to bringing science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) to coastal communities, and coastal community members into STEAM, training a new generation of hazard and resilience researchers to lead this work forward in the future.

The Cascadia CoPes Hub represent a broad coalition including:

Nearly 50 individuals who participated in writing the grant as active investigators—such as:

Peter Ruggiero (Principal Investigator, Oregon State University)
Alison Duvall (Co-Principal Investigator, University of Washington)
Harold Tobin (Co-Principal Investigator, University of Washington and Pacific Northwest Seismic Network)
Dwaine Plaza (Oregon State University)
and other stellar scholars at:
- Oregon State University
- University of Washington
- Washington State University
- The Ruckelshaus Center
- University of Oregon
- Humboldt State University
- the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community
- Washington and Oregon Sea Grant
- S. Geological Survey

Nearly two dozen entities who signed letters of collaborative intent, such as:

Oregon State Resilience Office
Surfrider
the Humboldt State Seal Level Rise Initiative
Washington Department of Natural Resources
City of Westport (WA) Public Works Director
Regional tribal representatives

Beyond the Evans School, the UW contingency on the grant includes faculty and researchers in:

Applied Mathematics
School of Public Health
Urban Design and Planning
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Earth and Space Sciences and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network
School of Marine and Environmental Affairs
School of Oceanography
Climate Impacts Group
Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem studies (CICOES – a collaboration of the UW, OSU, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks)
S. Geological Survey and WA Sea Grant collaborators at the UW

The hub builds on strong relationships established by hub members with coastal communities throughout Cascadia, including through the Ruckelshaus Center, and WA Sea Grant, and relationships developed in prior research projects (e.g., Oregon Coastal Futures; NSF-funded Hazards SEES M9; NSF-funded CoPe EAGER, CoPe Research Coordination Network, and PREEVENTS projects at the UW; the HSU Sea Level Rise Initiative; and the WA Coastal Resilience Project).

Several Evans Ph.D. students were recognized at the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies Annual Awards

Several Evans PhD students were recognized at the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies Annual Awards dinner this week. Elizabeth Pelletier was honored for a Washington State Labor Research Grant looking at employment instability around the time of a birth. Ellie Terry also received a Washington State Labor Research Grant for a project that models the impact of a proposed Guaranteed Income Program in Washington State. Matt Fowle received a Graduate Student Research Grant for a collaborative project on criminal justice monetary sanctions and labor market participation, with co-author Lindsey Beach from Sociology.

A Q&A with Ben Glasner (PhD ’21)

This past summer, Ben Glasner completed his Ph.D. at the Evans School with expertise in labor market policy and the gig economy. He took some time from his work as a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University recently to chat about his dissertation work.

Your dissertation research focused on self-employment and the gig economy – explain why this is such a critical portion of the labor market for scholars and policymakers alike?

Self-employment work arrangements, and specifically work within the gig economy, are becoming increasingly commonplace. Yet, these types of work arrangements often are excluded from labor policy or regulations intended to protect and support workers. As a result, policy tools like the minimum wage are not designed for the self-employed. Workers who are operating simultaneously under multiple firms at a single point in time (e.g., driving for Uber and Lyft simultaneously), or whose hours are prohibitively difficult to track don’t receive the same coverage as a traditional hourly payroll employee who punches a time clock.

Such exclusions are nothing new. When the minimum wage was first introduced through the Fair Labor Standards Act, a number of jobs were not covered and those exclusions meant a significant share of black and female workers were not covered by the first minimum wage laws. Such exclusions remained in place well into the 1960s and were key parts of the civil rights movement.

Today, the remnants of past exclusions persist. We have ended up with a patchwork system of supporting workers. From health care to minimum standards of living, where a person works and how that work is done has important consequences to what protections or benefits they receive. I think the gig economy is really the front line of the debate over social support and the division between efficient labor markets and fair labor markets.

How does your dissertation research extend our understanding of the impact of minimum wage laws?

My dissertation project fills key gaps in the minimum wage literature. One key gap I explored was whether higher minimum wages changed the demand for workers or jobs exempted from minimum wage laws. When minimum wages increase, I find evidence of an increase in participation in the uncovered labor market, but it is driven by urban areas with access to the online gig economy. Another part of my dissertation project examines the question of minimum wage effects on multiple jobholding. The puzzle here is that if minimum wages theoretically could both increase and lower multiple jobholding. My work, however, I found that minimum wages had no significant impact on multiple jobholding in aggregate.

What are the key policy research questions we should be asking to better understand the experiences of workers holding multiple jobs?

Today, I’d say there are two key features about multiple jobholding to explore. One, hours and schedules can be difficult to coordinate between employers, which leads to unstable scheduling. Two, because individuals are more commonly combining earnings from payroll positions with self-employment, some workers may use on-demand “employment” through the gig economy to help fill the gaps of an instable schedule. We don’t know a lot about how workers make decisions about holding multiple jobs or balancing hours across jobs. This is particularly important when we consider the different experience of multiple jobholders with high earnings and those with multiple jobs who still struggle to keep their heads above water.

When you talk to state and local policymakers about raising the minimum wage, what advice or guidance would you give them?

Primarily, I’d encourage policymakers to consider the differences between federal, state, and local minimum wage rates in a given setting. I believe minimum wage increases are a positive tool for improving work outcomes, but they are not the solution to all issues of job quality or underemployment. In fact, minimum wage laws can be rather limited tools because they miss workers who are working in the uncovered or the informal labor market. This often means the most vulnerable workers will not be reached by these policies.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to since finishing your dissertation work.

I have just started a new position as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist with the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. While there I’ll be conducting analyses of the effects of major social policies and reforms on the poverty rate and other indicators of well-being. These analyses will include long-term studies of the intergenerational transmission of poverty, but also studies of contemporary policies and their effects. All the work will be under the great team headed by Irwin Garfinkel, Jane Waldfogel, and Christopher Wimer.

A Q&A with Veda Patwardhan (PhD ’21)

Veda Patwardhan recently finished her Ph.D. at the Evans School with expertise in household economics and gender. We caught up with her during a break in her day at the Institute for HealthMetrics and Evaluation (IHME) to talk about her dissertation project.

Your dissertation research focuses on how policy interventions and contextual factors shape the roles of women within households in India and Malawi. How did this project emerge over the course of your training at the Evans School?

As a Research Assistant for the Evans Policy Analysis and Research group (EPAR) during my first year as a doctoral student at Evans, I worked on a project conceptualizing the pathways through which empowering female farmers in low and middle-income countries may yield economic benefits. Thinking about the theory behind why gender differences AND inequalities have real consequences for individuals and families piqued a long-term research interest in this area. As that work progressed, I knew I wanted to focus on the intersection of public policy and gender inequality.

I also was motivated by the fact that women’s economic empowerment is an important policy objective internationally. Multi-lateral organizations, foundations, and several governments worldwide are making substantial commitments to gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. Many low and middle-income countries have implemented female-centric social protection and financial inclusion programs. For example, cash transfer schemes, self-help groups, microcredit, bank account provision and public works programs often explicitly target female beneficiaries.

Early in your dissertation, you powerfully note that “control over income is a crucial aspect of women’s economic empowerment.” What were some of the most important insights you discovered about factors shaping how women have control over household income and what having that power means for them and their families?

There are many important findings in my work. One that stands out relates to how the source of household income matters for women’ control over income (WCI). My work in Malawi finds that women have higher sole decision-making for income from public transfer sources like cash and food transfers, as well as remittances, compared with salaries, wages, and farm income. This is very interesting, as research on women’s economic empowerment hasn’t so far considered how the source of household income can really matter for who controls it! My findings in Malawi show women have higher control over transfers than other income sources, even when men are present in the household, suggesting that targeting transfers to women may yield benefits. This also helps unpack why maternal cash transfers like the Mamata Scheme in India (which I examine in another one of my dissertation chapters) have positive effects on children’s health.

This project analyzes data from two quite different settings. How might insights from your dissertation work shape your approach to comparative policy research in the future?

This is a great question. I think that conducting comparative policy research is important for the international development field, as generalizing across regions is difficult and may not always be desirable or accurate. The underlying theme of my work in India and Malawi is similar, but in India, I analyze the effect of a maternal cash transfer program on child outcomes, while my work in Malawi looks at the household and contextual drivers of women’s control over income. Over the course of my dissertation writing, I also realized that analyzing different types of research questions in these two geographies helped solidify my understanding of the existing literature, theoretical perspectives, and research gaps on women’s control over income. I look forward to conducting cross-country analyses in my future research.

What would you say are the biggest takeaways from your work for policymakers and nongovernmental organizations working to empower women in different contexts around the globe?

Policy design is incredibly important. For instance, while examining the impact of a maternal cash transfer scheme in India on child nutrition, I find that children in the poorest households benefit significantly less than those in wealthier households. This suggests that marginalized populations may face obstacles to participation and suggests changes in policy design. For example, policymakers may wish to modify eligibility criteria, or behavioral requirements — such as receiving prenatal care – that could hinder access for marginalized groups.

Paying attention to what drives women’s empowerment is important as well. In Malawi, I find that women’s decision-making over farm income increases following drought. However, this may not reflect an improvement in women’s well-being, if women have a higher workload on the farm and at home. Female farmers tend to have less access to information on climate change and climate-smart-agricultural practices, leading to lower adoption rates compared to men. So, we need policy to recognize the role climatic factors play in women’s farm decision-making. Interventions to improve women’s land tenure security, access to agricultural inputs, and safety nets like cash transfers can play an important role here.

Tell us a little about what’s next for you.

I am excited to start a Postdoctoral Scholar position with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which is a global health research center based at the University of Washington. My work will focus on examining gender inequalities in health.

Dean Jodi Sandfort elected to NASPAA’s Executive Council to serve a three-year term

The Evans School is pleased to announce that Dean Jodi Sandfort was elected today to NASPAA’s Executive Council to serve a three-year term, 2021-2024.

NASPAA’s Executive Council is the network’s national governing body and is responsible for overseeing the planning, organizing, and supervising all activities, including applications for membership, committees, and policies.

“I am honored to be joining NASPAA’s Executive Council this fall and hope that during my three-year term I am able to move the needle for Public Policy and Public Affairs Schools. NASPAA’s Diversity and Social Equity Committee has developed an ambitious and long overdue agenda for curricular transformation, and I look forward to supporting those efforts across our profession.

The Network is also engaged in serious conversations about doctoral and under-graduate education, so I look forward to bringing the Evans School’s expertise into those discussions as well.” – Dean Sandfort The Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration is the international associate focused upon ensuring excellence in education and training for public service. It oversees the international accrediting body for master’s degrees in the field, provides advocacy with governments about the needs of public affairs education, encourages curriculum development and innovation, operates a student honor society, and oversees a data center that is the fields’ authoritative source.

An Equitable Future in Early Childhood Education Leadership: A Q&A with Leslie Dozono (MPA ’07) and Nubia Lopez (MPA ’07)

Driven by a passion for growing the number of BIPOC leaders in early childhood education and advancing anti-racism policy and practice, Evans School alumni Leslie Dozono (MPA ’07)and Nubia Lopez (MPA ’07) are working for a more just and equitable future in early childhood education leadership. We asked them about their work with the Washington Childhood Policy Fellowship and how their Evans School experience shaped where they are today.

What contributed to your decision to pursue a career in support of the public good? Was there a defining moment in particular?

Nubia: As an undergraduate I majored in political science, and I worked closely with a professor who taught courses that opened my eyes to the politics and systems that I hadn’t really considered until then. Initially I was extremely interested in international politics, but then started working in a kindergarten classroom as a paraeducator. Through this job and my formal education, I started seeing the world through a different lens, one where I understood that our social systems are designed and intentional, and that happens through policy. When I came to the Evans School I chose to focus on social and education policy. I wanted to be more than just critical of our social systems and structures, I wanted to dedicate my career towards creating more equitable systems and structures—systems that work for everyone, not just those with privilege and access.

Leslie: I’ve always worked with kids and education so nonprofit/public work has been a natural path for my professional life. I was an English major in undergraduate and afterwards I worked at a nonprofit that had a focus on literacy. I think a significant professional turning point for me was the shift from direct service to policy. When I moved to Seattle, I was lucky to work with an amazing team of people at Atlantic Street Center where we offered youth development, counseling and case management, and family services. My experiences at our Summer Academy program, particularly with kindergartners, served as a catalyst for my commitment to early childhood as a field and my realization that I wanted to move from direct service to policy. There were so many things happening for the children and families we served—ongoing challenges for their overall success – that were systemic and much larger than what I could see on the ground. Looking upstream both in terms of age and in terms of policy made a lot of sense to me when I thought about the impact I wanted to have.

Can you share a bit about the work you are currently doing and what a typical day in your work looks like?

We’re working to establish a new nonprofit in Washington state, the Washington Early Childhood Policy Fellowship. The focus is on two things: Increasing the number of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) leaders in early childhood policy in Washington state and advancing anti-racism policy and practice in the larger early childhood policy system. We recognize that cultivating and supporting individual BIPOC leadership is important for progress in addressing persistent disparate racialized outcomes for young children, but at the same time, the broader field needs to be aligned and committed to understanding and centering anti-racism in policy to achieve transformational change.

We’re very much in the start-up phase of building an organization, which means we have a lot to think about! Our focus is split between leadership/governance, program design, and fund development. We are currently fiscally sponsored through the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), and we’ve been establishing our Founding Board and the internal structural components required to establish as an independent 501(c)3. That means developing our mission, bylaws, our Board structure, and relationships, all the while thinking about our long-term governing board and readying to launch a search for our inaugural Executive Director. Concurrently, we’re working on building the programmatic components of a placement-based Fellowship that combines employment with significant professional development and mentorship. Relationship-intensive work takes significant resources, so we are also deep in fund development, making sure we have the investments we need to launch and sustain this work.

You have both been champions of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion throughout your careers. Can you share why this has been so central to you and the work you continue doing?

Nubia: This work is personal for me. It is about my own lived experience and background. My family immigrated to the US from Mexico when I was 3 years old, and my parents didn’t speak English and I didn’t learn English until I started elementary school. We were a low-income family, relying on social services. I saw my parents constantly struggle to make ends meet, even though both of my parents worked multiple jobs. It took me some time to realize that struggles were not personal failings of my family or my community, but predictable outcomes based on our lack of access to resources and opportunities—this is central to equity work. For me, equity is about providing access and resources so that everyone can thrive

Going from my personal experience to our work with the Fellowship, our work is about having diverse voices at the decision-making tables. How can we ensure that BIPOC leaders who have these lived experiences are provided with opportunities to influence decisions that impact young children and families? And, beyond that, how can we support and build their capacity to have an impact on early childhood policies and systems? I truly believe these perspectives are critical to creating early childhood policies to support those who are most impacted and have been traditionally excluded from participating in the decision-making process.

Leslie: My parents are both immigrants and my dad talked a lot with my sisters and I about his experiences with racism and exclusion. Growing up in a largely white community in Oregon, the experience of feeling othered is something I carried through much of my childhood. And I think as a Japanese American, it is impossible to separate out the personal and the societal when you think about the collective trauma of internment and the resulting emphasis on assimilation and what that has meant for language and culture – for our parents’ generation’s focus on achieving a particular kind of mainstream success. I think about the difference between feeling shame and pride as a child about my heritage and what it means to create systems that honor the cultures and strengths of our communities.

On a larger scale, I don’t think you can successfully work for the public good without racial equity and anti-racism as core tenets. When we look at outcomes for children, for families, for individuals, and for our workforce and in our economy, there are glaring racial inequities.

One of the beliefs we carry in our work with the Fellowship is that communities who are most impacted by educational injustices must be represented in positions of power within policy development processes and decision-making to identify and address complex, structural inequities that are detrimental to all. Beyond the moral obligations we have in our society around fairness and justice, which I think were ingrained in me from an early age, it’s also practical. We cannot achieve shared prosperity and a thriving society without racial equity and anti-racism work. The opportunity gap in early childhood has huge implications for children in school and life and it also has implications for our public systems. Greater costs in special education and other supportive services, greater costs to the criminal legal system, and down the road, a less qualified workforce. And it’s more than just education systems. Supporting families in early childhood – a time with woefully inadequate public policy and investment in families – can also mean a reduction in child welfare services, greater prevention in health and mental health services, all of which reduce both human and economic cost. Centering the families most impacted is essential for identifying and implementing solutions and for our shared success.

If there was one thing you would want everyone to know about your work, what would it be?

We think our Core Beliefs and Commitments to Action reflect how we think about and are approaching this work. They underscore something that has become increasingly clear to us over time: at the foundation of progress is relationships and trust. These are necessary to impact complex systems and effect system-change. Creating intentional space for BIPOC leaders – spaces that we did not always have ourselves – is a critical part of this work.

Looking back on your Evans School experience, what stands out as being particularly impactful during that time?

Our work with the Partnership for Cultural Diversity (PCD) was a big part of our Evans School experience. We spent a lot of time doing what we learned to do at Evans in the public sphere but focused internally on the school itself: collective stakeholder work to identify issues, thinking through a theory of change and what we had agency to work on, prioritization and action, and planning around succession and leadership. Even then, we focused a lot of attention on leadership and representation. For example, we spent most of most time and energy when we were co-leads of PCD on faculty diversity and hiring. It’s really no coincidence that there are a lot of common themes in the work we did together in graduate school and what we are doing now.

How does your Evans education impact how you approach your work today?

Nubia: As I mentioned, my undergraduate education gave me broad theoretical knowledge and opened my worldview. It was at Evans where I learned how to make that theory actionable. If I was going to pick one particular concept that is most impactful, it would be the importance of stakeholder engagement. This is something that also goes back to the value of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. At Evans, I was introduced to the notion that as public policy professionals, we must engage with the people who have a vested interest in the specific program or policy being worked on. Furthermore, we must ensure that we are intentionally seeking out these critically important diverse perspectives and inviting them into the conversation. Critically, we must then truly value their contributions, ideally making better decisions because we have taken the time to proactively seek out stakeholders. I have used various racial equity tools throughout my career, and a central analytical component is to engage with those most impacted to assess benefit or burden from their perspective, ultimately, ensuring that the policy or program being worked on is pro-equity. The stakeholder engagement was a seed planted at Evans and has evolved over my career with a specific racial equity lens.

Leslie: Three things come to my mind pretty quickly: memos, leadership, and mentorship. Graduate school helped me learn to write in ways that were more thoughtful about the goals of communication and the structures that are useful to communicate complex information in accessible ways. I do think the most valuable experience I had at Evans was the work Nubia and I did leading PCD. We were students within the structure of a graduate program designed to prepare people for external work in the public sector and nonprofit work, which itself had strengths and weaknesses, particularly when it came to race. Pushing from within about how important racial equity work and the responsibility of institutions to further that work was another step in my personal and professional journey and thinking about how I used my positional power and agency to move change. I’ve been thinking about a lot lately about mentorships I’ve had – and at Evans I would specifically point to David Harrison – and people who have made me feel like I had the skills and abilities to engage. I distinctly remember a moment when I expressed doubt in my analysis in a class, and afterwards he told me that I could sit at any table and hold my own. It meant a lot to me because I knew he had been at a lot of tables and I held him in such high regard. I still think about his words when I’m feeling unsure and use them to bolster myself up sometimes – and it was 14 years ago! It made me even more aware of my responsibility to offer encouragement and support to others as I’ve advanced in my own career.

What are one or two resources that inspire you personally or professionally?

Leslie: My sister gave me We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by Adrienne Maree Brown a couple of years ago and it really resonated with me. In terms of early childhood, University of Washington’s own Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS) has been producing strong research on the impact of the earliest years on brain development. I-LABS and the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University are great sources of information and data on why we should care both as individuals and as a broader society about the unparalleled period of human development in early childhood.

Nubia: I would point to the PBS documentary and recently updated website (new resources from 2020): Race: The Power of Illusion. I have used parts of the documentary in many trainings on race over the years, and it has been very eye-opening for my own understanding on how as a nation we have created racial categories and then created institutions and policies to reinforce those categories. It underscores who is represented when policies are created matters. We must have multiple perspectives represented, especially those who have been historically left out and marginalized, and this is why I believe the work of the WA ECP Fellowship is so important.