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By Greg Pavone, MPP’14 From the time I was about fourteen, my dream has been to graduate from Harvard Business School, get a high-powered job on Wall Street as an investment banker, and then get rich or die trying. In my immature mind, I thought that money equaled fulfillment in life. That all changed when, […]

By Karla Peterson, MPP’14 “Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to the Harvard Kennedy School.” These are the words that in March 2012 marked one of the happiest days of my life, and the beginning of an extraordinary journey. My first days at the Kennedy School were, without a doubt, a very humbling experience. The first weeks […]

By Siahoe Lim, Mason Fellow/MPA “Are you crazy?” Those were the honest first words of disbelief from my husband and two sons when I first broached my proposal to apply for a mid-career Master’s program in public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School. Looking back at the rigors of the Kennedy School curriculum and the daily struggles […]

By Julia Fetherston, MPP’14 Ninety nine days ago, I began asking second-year public policy students: What is one thing you learned at HKS? Their responses amount to a remarkable catalogue of life at 79 JFK Street, including: Dean David Ellwood will accept any invitation to perform a musical number in costume. The supply of bathrooms […]

By Asma Jaber, MPP’14 Fifteen years ago, my daily routine was to say to my late father, “No! Not at the entrance. Drop me off here!” – hoping my adolescent friends would not see me running from a glaring yellow taxi into my middle school. The taxi was how my father, a twice-displaced Palestinian refugee, […]

By Adrienne Murphy, MPP’14 As the students filed out of my classroom one mid-May afternoon, I noticed Ricky lingering quietly, pretending to read the newspaper articles posted on a bulletin board in the back of the room. “Ricky, do you need something?” I asked. (No student ever actually stopped to read the articles.) After a […]

By Claudia Newman-Martin, MPP’14 I clearly remember arriving here two years ago. I remember spending 20 minutes searching for Littauer, and the next 15 looking for a bathroom that was (a) empty; (b) clean; and (c) not able to be heard by everyone in the library. The thing I remember most clearly was the question […]

Simon R. Bone, MC/MPA Overcast grey skies that whisper wildly with the wind. A chilling cold that cuts through bone and carcass. An airport that closes down due to bad weather A sense of isolation as you long for new experiences of the outside world. But this is not what you expect. This is not […]

By Sarmad Palijo, MPA’14 When I first came to the Kennedy School I asked someone — What does Veritas mean? — After all, it is Harvard University’s motto. I was told it means ‘truth’. In the last two years, I never visited this question again but upon graduation I have been reflecting on what Veritas […]

By Sara Minkara, MPP’14 Like most, my greatest source of comfort as a child was my mother’s watchful gaze. One look into her brown, loving eyes put all my concerns at ease and allowed me to walk confidently… I felt I was safe as long as I could keep her within my sight. But, at […]

By Sanjay Gokhale, MC/MPA’14 After three years of brutal civil war, 150,000 deaths and nine million refugees; Syria is still burning with no end in sight. International regimes are at stake, stability in the Middle East is under threat and, most importantly, millions of lives in Syria are at risk. The crisis itself is wretchedly […]

By Roman Rubchenko, MC/MPA’14 For the last 23 years, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been struggling to become a democracy. The Ukrainian constitution outlines a system with a representative democracy, where people elect the representatives, president and the parliament who run the country on their behalf. But unfortunately the system of […]