Month: August 2021

During my internship experience this summer with the National Consumers League, I have not only learned a lot about health policy, but I have also gained a greater understanding for what life is like in a real office job. Before this experience, I have had different jobs and internships, but none that involved a traditional work schedule in an office setting. My internship has given me a much better understanding of how one’s daily activities are structured in a workplace, and how people within an organization or company work together to accomplish the overarching goals at hand. I have experienced how coworkers coordinate and delegate tasks, and how communication occurs effectively between them. Being able to see how a professional organization works on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis will be very beneficial going forwards as I begin a professional career after graduation. 

Additionally, I learned how one aspect of social justice work is conducted. There are many avenues for social justice advocacy. These can include grassroots approaches, nonpartisan/apolitical organizations, and the nonprofit advocacy establishment, which would include my organization. I was able to see how an established social justice advocacy organization works largely behind the scenes to push the policies it supports. I learned how they work with like-minded advocacy groups, government and legislative staffers, and various stakeholders throughout society to push their issues to the forefront and get positive policy changes enacted.

I also learned of the challenges that this type of social justice advocacy faces. These challenges can include securing funding for work that often occurs behind the scenes and away from the public eye, and balancing the interests of various stakeholders who often hold conflicting views. All of this can result in advocacy efforts that are not as robust or transformative as many would prefer. It has been really interesting to see all of these tradeoffs, and how social justice advocacy works in the face of these challenges. 

In my time on the job, I have made an impact on my organization by helping the health policy department work on long-term projects that they normally would not have time to complete, and by helping them get through a particularly busy time without reducing the amount of work and materials produced. One thing that I contributed to was updating some of the health policy position statements for NCL’s website. Some of them had not been updated in over twenty years, so my work went a long way in helping NCL to revise their content for the present day.

Before I started this internship, I wish I had known more about how the D.C. advocacy establishment functions as a whole so I could have been more prepared for the environment as a whole. My advice for someone looking to get into the field of advocacy, particularly health policy advocacy, would be to continue getting educated, as the people with the most success in this field often have some kind of advanced degree. I would also suggest that they always seek to learn more about the policy area they are advocating for, and to make connections with people from a wide-range across the industry.

My experience at Health and Education For All (HAEFA) throughout the summer has been very meaningful to me. I was able to get a lot of experience with various kinds of work. From making social media posts to contributing to a research paper, I was able to learn about the ins and outs of the organization and its work. I learned that HAEFA has many dedicated and hardworking individuals who are out in the field in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh.

Being able to work with people who are as driven as the HAEFA team members have taught me a few things. Firstly, I learned that I must always be able to adapt to changing circumstances in this line of work. A few weeks ago, a landslide and flooding devastated the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, and our team on the ground had an emergency response. As the media team leader, I had to coordinate with the fundraising team to launch a GoFundMe campaign to collect funds for the emergency response. We spent that whole day creating the campaign and social media posts to raise awareness and funds.

Secondly, I learned that clear communication is the most productive way to complete work. Whenever I needed information for the monthly newsletters that I am responsible for creating or for the research paper that I am working on, I was able to reach multiple people that could help me via WhatsApp. Rather than providing incomplete or inaccurate information, I was able to simply reach out to someone for help, which resulted in me being able to do a better job.

While I was unable to visit the camp site due to the pandemic, my remote work with HAEFA has shown me that I can make a contribution to a global cause from all the way across the world. Social justice work does not always have to be focused on our own communities. While it is important to advocate for our own people, it is important to keep in mind that many of us have the skills, expertise and resources to help those in need in other parts of the world as well. By working at HAEFA remotely, I was able to raise awareness about the struggles of the Rohingya refugees, the prevalence of cervical cancer in Bangladesh, and the dire COVID-19 situation in the country as well. My contributions also aided the fundraising campaigns, which had a direct impact on HAEFA team members on the ground who benefited from new equipment used to help those in need.

Before I started my work at HAEFA, I wish I knew how quickly I would have to learn about the organization. While a lot of information was provided to me during the first days, I had to constantly ask questions about the organization’s activities to better understand certain tasks. This, however, is not a negative thing. I would urge those working in the nonprofit sector to be ready to ask questions and learn about the organization very quickly.

During a typical summer, after school ends, I would go to my seasonal job of being a server and youth camp counselor. But this summer I decided to aim for a job in the professional field that I hoped to be in some day. I found an internship at the nonprofit the Power in Place Project: Settings of Inspiration, which was started in 2015 by professional photographer Katrina Hajagos and highlights the stories of women through photojournalism. Content such as photoshoots, portraits, political haikus, podcasts, and write-ups, are all products of Power in Place (PiP). For this summer, I was assigned as a project manager for the PiP Time Capsule. In addition to my assignment as project manager, I had a short term project of interviewing a woman in office or potential candidate. I chose North Carolina Associate Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls.

The PiP Time Capsule has three parts: the physical time capsule, the virtual timeline, and the outreach/connections section. I specifically spent my efforts on the virtual timeline with two additional project managers and twenty other collaborators on the time capsule project. The physical and outreach sections were aimed at reaching out to female politicians to interview them about their political ambitions and experiences in office as women and/or women of color.

My section, the virtual timeline, was an art and research project focused on retelling the story of the feminist and suffragette movements, beginning in the 1800s through present day. The bulk of the summer was spent on research focusing specifically on suffragettes of color whose stories have not been as amplified, but played a significant role.

Towards the end of the internship program, I worked with the team of graphic designer putting the entire project together, and so far we’ve accomplished digitalizing the 1940s to the early 1990s. There is still much work to be done, and since the internship program is coming to an end, I will have to pass it on to the next group of collaborators.

The overall experience was fun one and definitely a learning process. I enjoyed working with other collaborators from across the country (and the globe!), hearing different approaches to problems, and working together to make solutions. One thing I did not anticipate going into my internship was the organization of the workload. The workload itself was manageable, but I did not anticipate the time that the art section of my project would take. The entirety of the 1940s-90s itself took a week and a half, and by the time I completed it, there was only a week left in the internship program.

Additionally, I found it challenging to balance the two projects at hand. Our manager/boss heavily emphasized that we work on our long-term projects (virtual timeline) the most, and the short term (interview) project  when we had individual time. I personally felt that my interview needed to be published, seeing as I’d put in the effort to interview and do a full-write up. That can be found here!

Three things that I have learned from this internship program are:
1. communication is the key to success not only as an individual but as a team
2. write our your weekly schedule, and
3. the key to a good write up is in the detail.

I did not foresee my first internship being fully remote, nor did I foresee stepping up into a leadership role so early. Regardless, I enjoyed my experience and this furthers my interest in pursuing a job in politics.

This internship packed a punch in under 300 hours. I simultaneously learned about the not-for-profit space, what it means to work on a small team, and honestly just how to be an effective employee. In my time I also had an impact on SuitUp as well. I know my perspective and skillset were an asset to the team, especially in tricky and busy times.

As for my growth, I learned that social justice work is complicated and takes constant reflection. SuitUp taught me to navigate this complicated space by forming strong relationships with my team and the external partners we work with. With these relationships, I was able to have hard conversations and make tough calls regarding COVID, fundraising asks, and staying mission-driven. For example, making the choice to delay our fundraising initiatives to not come across to our youth and corporate partners as deaf to the ongoing pandemic. Or thinking about ways to showcase BIPOC and minority-owned companies at our gala in a way that is equitable and not forced.

It was in making choices like these that I learned when you can have discussions that weigh each choice with people that you trust and value, it is simple to stay mission-aligned. This perspective and frame of mind will come with me in all of my social justice work and made every smaller decision easy in comparison. This experience will carry over into my hands-on social justice work both in classrooms and in communities. I certainly have learned to be a stronger facilitator thanks to the SuitUp programs I participated in. I will also be a stronger advocate and coordinator of social justice-minded programming from the backend. This experience has solidified for me something I have always known: that social justice work is far more than hands-on service. As my time ends, I am immensely grateful for this team as they helped me learn and see everything I have mentioned above.

On the topic of things I am grateful for, SuitUp and my mentors at the organization recently helped us interns make a list of our accomplishments in our internship. This was geared towards resumes and LinkedIn, but for me, it helped me realize all I have done. I will include this list below as well as some artifacts of my work.

• Codified strategy for post-COVID era in-person fundraising gala. Created strategy, ticketing processes, marketing campaigns, pandemic protocols, etc. which will ensure $110,000+ raised to serve over 4,500 students in the 2021-2022 school year.
• Executed a new outreach strategy that engaged 2,000 companies, resulting in $10,000+ silent auction items for the SuitUp Annual Gala.
• Led team of SuitUp board members (eight corporate executives from companies like Morgan Stanley, UBS, KKR, Fox Corp) to execute strategy, marketing, and design for SuitUp’s annual Gala.
• Facilitated SuitUp entrepreneurship programming with full-time staff to serve over 600 Title I students across 11 states to increase their college and career readiness.
• Worked heavily in Excel to build multiple databases, systems, financial models, etc. that will assist the organization in efficient outreach for fundraising events in years to come.

Looking at this list and through my portfolio, I can see now the impact I had. Through my support, as well as with help from the whole intern staff, we are leaving SuitUp ready both to reach financial goals but more importantly ready to fundraise ethically and mission-aligned. A huge thank you to my team at SuitUp and of course the folks at Hiatt and WOW for making this a possibility for me.

As I begin to wrap up my summer internship and reflect on the work I’ve done the past few months, I think about the influence taking initiative has had on my experience at the Color of Health (COH). I am given considerable freedom in my work and have found that, especially when working independently, taking initiative can make all the difference in your experiences and the opportunities you have. In social justice work, there are constantly issues that need to be addressed and this can be extremely overwhelming. The members of COH each work on a different project and regularly have their hands full. My supervisor is the CEO of the organization, and I was continually looking for ways to help with administrative tasks. By offering to be involved in these processes, I had the opportunity to get a more comprehensive look at how nonprofits operate while also working on a project of my own. I was able to learn new skills, build upon others, and create more experiences for myself in the process. I learned that by expressing interest and taking initiative, more opportunities are likely to come your way.

One aspect I love about COH being a small nonprofit is that every program can have an impact, and I am excited to be leading the first research project the organization has conducted. I have designed a study that will allow us to examine provider prescribing habits related to HIV PrEP for Black women. While COH has multiple healthcare providers on the team and serves as a health education organization, they have not led any studies or collected data. This is something my supervisor has always been interested in and I am grateful to have this opportunity that hopefully paves the way for future studies.

During my time at COH, I have adjusted how I organize my work several times and tried to find the best method. As I am frequently switching between tasks, it is very easy to lose focus of what needs to be accomplished. I wish I had known when I started the best approach for staying organized. Through trial and error, I have determined an effective system that allows me to manage and organize all my documents, lists, and modes of communication. This has been a game-changer when it comes to productivity.

Working for a nonprofit, you learn that burnout is real, but you must stay focused on what motivates you. I have had the privilege of being a part of COH for over a year and, wow, has it been a crazy one! As we have seen from thousands of healthcare providers, the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to the healthcare system, and not only is COH an organization that addresses public health issues, but it also fights for racial justice. Last summer, in the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, the members of the organization shifted their energy to join their communities in fighting for racial justice. The team members were exhausted and the planning of many of our projects took a pause. Energy was low as we focused on other things. Getting started again was difficult but we reconnected later in the summer and reexamined our reasons for why we do what we do. Talking about and reflecting on our passions and motivations allowed us to resume work with a new energy and enthusiasm. While this situation was unusual, I learned early in my training that in the nonprofit world, employee burnout is real. It is difficult to avoid, but my advice is to always keep your reasons for doing this work in mind and to let that motivate you.

I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to work with United for a Fair Economy and to have been introduced the social justice and nonprofit worlds. I’d previously worked with many offices that did good for their communities, but I’d never been brought into a workplace that so strongly viewed itself as part of the communities for which it stood, and that provided a community in itself for staff. From my mentors at UFE, I learned everything from fundraising to communications to project planning, all through the lens of an inclusive nonprofit atmosphere. I also found it refreshing to work for an organization that focused so seriously on the wellbeing of staff. Everyone at UFE wants to form genuine relationships with each other — in fact, it’s pretty much required, as collaboration and understanding are at the core of all their projects.

I was lucky to try and have a small impact on every aspect of work at UFE. I’ve done database entry and a bit of research for our fundraising efforts, I’ve worked in Canva and done writing for communications, I’ve learned about social media and its place in nonprofit work, and that feels like just the tip of the iceberg. What I’m most proud of, though, is that I was able to pitch and build the framework for an entire long-term project on my own. Obviously, the project itself will be a surprise until UFE is done with it, but I had the opportunity to write a full-length project proposal on my own, to search for potential vendors and artists, and to feel like I’d really built something for the organization.

I wish I’d known before I started with UFE how free I’d get to feel throughout the internship. Everyone I worked with was concerned with my happiness and comfort as much as, if not more than, they were concerned with my output. The hours were extremely flexible, and I was consistently asked which parts of UFE work I’d like to explore more. This really stuck in my mind through the summer because I quickly realized how much higher the quality of my work was when there was that relationship of trust.

If I could give advice to anyone interested in working with United for a Fair Economy, it would just be to speak openly about your background in nonprofit and social justice work, and to be even more open about your interests and the things you hope to accomplish in those spheres. I think it goes this way for many internships, but it’s so much more important to be genuine about your experiences and honest about your curiosity than to project an image of the perfect undergraduate student. You don’t have to have years of experience organizing protests or running your own nonprofit to be the right fit for UFE. The most important thing is enthusiasm and a willingness to learn.

Overall, I’m so thankful for my internship with United for a Fair Economy and I’m excited for the next Brandeis student who might get to work with them.

 While interning at C-TAC, I have had the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of social justice work. Throughout my experience, I gained new perspectives on what it means to bring advanced care planning to the most vulnerable populations. C-TAC’s social justice work is trying to ensure that all aspects and participants in advanced care planning have a seat at the table. During my time, I have learned that the best way to approach the complexities of healthcare is to address each aspect of the problem head-on. 

During my internship, I was given the opportunity to support and be a part of C-TAC’s advanced care planning work. While interning, I participated in over thirty outreach calls to discuss potential partnerships and collaboration events. I had the opportunity to meet with death doulas, large hospices, volunteer hospices, virtual planning organizations, and many more. Through these calls, I have been working to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to be a part of the change and reform of the healthcare system.

After a discussion with the Greater Illinois Pediatric Palliative Care Coalition, the C-TAC team is working to set up the “2nd member-only meet up” to discuss The Pediatric Palliative Care Bill (SB.2384). As discussed in the article linked below, the bill would allow more families in Illinois to get benefits sooner rather than later. The bill is aimed to make community-based, interdisciplinary palliative care services more accessible to patients and reimbursable for providers. I have been working to promote the event to C-TAC’s 180 members, in which we will be discussing the bill. After the virtual event, I will work on a blog post for the C-TAC website in which I will interview participants and take a deeper look at the impact the event had on the C-TAC community.

I feel that my outreach to potential members, calls with other interns and C-TAC members, and promotions of the organization have given me the opportunity to have a larger impact on the world of advanced care planning. I am spreading the word that advanced care planning and comprehensive health care should not be a privilege, but rather accessible to all individuals. 

Before I started my work at C-TAC, I wish I would have known the magnitude of different resources needed for comprehensive advanced care planning. If I had known more about the different branches involved in advanced care planning, I feel as if I would have had a better understanding of the issues C-TAC is working to address. Although I did not know the complexities before, C-TAC gave me the opportunity to be immersed in each facet of this field. 

For everyone who is interested in pursuing an internship or career in public policy or public health, I would advise them to keep an open mind when looking at the field. The world of public health includes many different pathways and lenses in order to create comprehensive change. By keeping an open mind about the world of public health when pursuing an internship, students may find a sector of public health that speaks to them. Throughout my internship at C-TAC, I have had the opportunity to learn about and talk to many different organizations in the world of advanced care planning and public health. Through these different lenses, I have a better understanding of the complexities involved in advanced care planning. 

Illinois Approves Pediatric Palliative Care Benefit

My internship with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI) and the Massachusetts Child Welfare Coalition has greatly informed my continued interest in working in a job related to advocacy. I learned that the world of work differs from a college student’s life in relation to the schedule, purpose, and goals. 

One difference between college and the world of work are the stakes of the assignments you are given. While time and effort spent on projects impact your personal grade and GPA in college, projects in the world of work impact the overall goals and deadlines of your department at your organization and possibly other departments as well. In the world of work, you are communicating with the same people from your team constantly and it is important to always do your best in order to maintain the trust and confidence of your coworkers. 

I have learned that it is important to be patient, specifically in the social justice world of work. Legislators are sometimes not on the same page as advocates and those who have been impacted by harmful policies. Legislative change and social change can take years and you cannot let your frustrations about the pace of change distract you from reaching your team’s goals.  

As an intern at MLRI, I made a difference at my organization in a supporting role by being the notetaker at meetings. This allowed me to hone my focus on the discussions about the cases each lawyer, social worker, or advocate was discussing and future strategies or projects that they could work on regarding policy changes. I also helped keep the Coalition members informed on upcoming child welfare webinars and news articles through the weekly newsletter. 

Working with MLRI and the Coalition reminded me of the importance of continuously staying informed about the social issues that I am hoping to fix. There are so many resources to learn from whether it be podcasts, articles, books, or webinars. For example, for my project about mutual aid, I listened to an episode of Jonathan Van Ness’ podcast with professor and trans activist Dean Spade. These resources can be used to learn about the history behind a social issue, related policies, and personal experiences of impacted people. In addition, I wish I realized the impact of the tasks that might seem small. Generally in the nonprofit world, and also the social justice world, people may be asked to do a lot of different tasks, and if you can take a little off an employee’s plate, it can be super helpful. You should value all projects you are doing, big and small. 

I would advise other students who want to pursue a career related to advocacy to find a particular social issue that they are passionate about and find internships or clubs that will help them learn about that industry or topic from other people. Social change and legislative change can be slow and frustrating. As an advocate and ally, one needs to keep up to date on the news and not be afraid to ask questions from peers and people with experience in the field. 

Going into my internship, I did not know what to expect. I had plenty of previous experience in the world of private law offices and even nonprofit organizations, but public office was an area that I had yet to work in. As I write this blog post during the final week of my internship, I can say that I am grateful to have finally had an experience in the realm of public office.

Interning at the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office (MDAO) this summer taught me valuable lessons about the world of work, especially the importance of communication and taking initiative. While a virtual work setting is not always ideal, working under these circumstances pushed me to make the most out of my internship. If I hadn’t utilized my communication skills or taken initiative to ask for meetings with different people in the office such as my supervisor, the head of the cold case unit, I would have missed out on valuable information and lessons. From meetings like the one-on-one phone call I had with my supervisor, I gained valuable tips on going to law school as well as how to successfully enter the world of social justice work. My supervisor talked to me about the importance of prioritizing loving your work over any other variable when it comes to employment. This reminded me that social justice work is something I am passionate about pursuing in the future because it is the type of work that will ensure I love what I do every day once I embark on my professional career.

One of the best parts about interning at the MDAO was that they made it clear to us interns that our work was extremely beneficial to the office. While digitizing, organizing, and going through unsolved cases may seem like a small task, it was an extremely important one that I was responsible for this summer. This task allowed me to have an impact on the MDAO because the cold case unit will now be able to proceed with solving these cases and providing the families of victims with the clarity they have been waiting for. Here is a link to an article published by the National Institute of Justice explaining how important it is to have enough tools to solve a cold case.

I try hard to remind myself that each experience I have is a steppingstone leading me to my final goal of becoming a lawyer. Looking back at the start of my internship, I would remind myself of just that. Working as an intern can be frustrating as you often wish you had more responsibility or more diversity of tasks. As I went through the months of the MDAO internship program, I came to remember that these experiences are the ones that will lead me to conquer big tasks and assume leadership positions in the future. To anyone looking to pursue an internship or career in the legal field: go for it! Throughout the many interviews I did that led me to this summer’s internship, I was constantly told that experience is one of the most important things. Go out and get that experience now because each experience you have will allow you to achieve your bigger goals!

Throughout this internship experience, I have learned how to navigate in a nonprofit setting and environment dedicated to empowering women in politics. In my relationship with the world of work, I have tapped into what it looks like to reach out and to network and talk to those who you feel you will be able to connect with, learn from, and engage with. Specifically, in relation to social justice work, my internship has taught me the importance of closing the gap of power between genders in politics and empowering diverse groups of women. This is important because different women’s perspectives are needed in politics and the world in order to learn from one another, to grow, and to create future imagined positions for young women interested in politics. 

During my summer internship with Power In Place, I chose to participate in the groups of Marketing and Polikus. In Polikus, my responsibilities included composing haikus inspired by women political officials. In the Marketing group, my responsibilities and duties included creating a marketplace page on the Power In Place website, as well as innovating and advertising pro-women in politics branding items.

It was through these teams that my creativity and passions blossomed, as I was able to craft and innovate, and to relate my interest in politics with these creative endeavors. In addition, my one-on-one meetings with the head of Power In Place, Katrina Hajagos, has taught me how to continue to fight for the things I believe in and to never give up. In our meetings, Katrina was consistently optimistic and continued to affirm my knowledge, power, and creativity as a scholar in the internship program. 

One thing that I wish I would have known when I started is that politics is a very diverse field to enter, and it takes accepting this, and knowing what you’re most interested in, in order to take up space. Networking is super important in this field, so talking and being confident about the things you’re interested in and being able to articulate this is very important. 

Based on this internship experience, and the various ways in which I was able to broaden my horizons and experiences in politics in relation to women empowerment and the field in general, the advice I would give to someone else would be seek to understand the issues that make your heart boil and that you are most passionate about as well. Don’t be shy to reach out to other organizations, people, professors, lawyers, and policy makers that may help you align to and reach the goals you have set for yourself. Another piece of advice I would give would be to connect with the people inside of your internship/ career field as well. I met some nice people in this internship and felt I learned best when we were sharing our experiences as young women in politics and wanting to work towards inspiring others to get involved in the field as well. 

Power In Place Pipster 2021 Highlight Page

This summer working with the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative (BEJI) allowed me to learn and grow in ways I never could have imagined. The opportunity to get undergraduate work experience within a social justice field was quite an impactful experience and one that will certainly shape my future professional path. I learned not only a great deal about the world of educational justice and carceral reform, but I also got to see how I personally fit into this framework. Through challenging and fulfilling assignments, I was pushed this summer to be a better educator, researcher, team member, and collaborator. My internship allowed me to be both a student and a practitioner of the work we were conducting. Because of this, my confidence in professional settings grew, and I was able to practice advocacy and demonstrate initiative.

In my time with the BEJI, I feel I accomplished quite a lot. As the undergraduate intern, I was directly responsible for expanding opportunities available to undergrads and making sure our voices were heard. I effectively pitched the idea of paid research working groups for undergraduates, which will launch as a pilot program this fall. Additionally, I communicated with Brandeis CMS, and am now co-creating the BEJI website. Finally, I was able to help restructure the content offered in our education workshops and better tailor the content to meet the needs of our students. These are all accomplishments that I worked quite hard to achieve, and I take great pride in.

Having completed all of these things, I feel I was an impactful contributor to the BEJI, and look forward to how my role will continue to flourish with the initiative in the fall. The volume of work I was assigned or took on also afforded me wonderful insight into the world of work that I did not know before. For folks considering interning with the BEJI or an initiative like it, I now feel privileged to offer advice on what you can do to make the work all the more meaningful. 

The first piece of advice I would give to someone interested in an internship like this is to honor the experience they bring to the table. As an undergraduate, it can seem daunting to enter a workplace staffed by adult professionals. Through my love for this work, the training and support from Hiatt, and the kindness of those I worked with, my age never felt like a deficit. Instead, I was honest when I needed help and advocated for what I believed was right. As a result, those I worked with trusted me. I honored both the areas I had room to grow in, as well as my strengths. A new set of eyes on a project is often a welcome presence! Lean into this opportunity and allow who you are and the unique skill set you bring to the table to guide you.

The final piece of advice I would offer is a note on intention. The world of summer internships can be a daunting one. It is easy to get lost in what sounds most sophisticated, or which job is likely to propel you the farthest. From my experience with WOW, I learned that the personal pride and care  you can attach to whatever it is you do is the greatest marker of success. If you are intentional about finding a job that is meaningful to you, it will be clear to those hiring you, those who you work with, and those with whom you spend time. 

Working with the BEJI was an intentional and incredible experience. Being able to reflect on it through these blog posts has made it that much more special. And I hope, through the culmination of these posts, it is evident just how hard I have tried to follow the advice I have laid out and how wonderful the outcomes have been as a result.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned and am continuing to learn about the world of work and social justice work overall is what it means to be an advocate. Advocacy can be defined in many different ways, but in general, it involves taking action to create change. Through my work with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, I have seen that truly successful advocacy goes beyond this step of just identifying these weaknesses and flaws in our systems. It involves championing them to change or be uprooted entirely.

In the time I have been with CMS, I have critiqued policies that do not allow for coverage of nearly enough patients, and pushed for new and improved technologies to be available to patients under Medicare. I have questioned outdated standards of care and encourage optimal coverage for beneficiaries to allow all people fair and equitable access to healthcare. Though my tasks have been very detail-oriented and I focus on smaller aspects of access to quality care through recommending new technologies, my hope is that my work as an intern this summer will further my department’s mission to advise policy surrounding coverage and access to technologies to push for health equity within CMS and the U.S. health system as a whole. 

One thing I wish I had known before I began my internship is that progress in many forms is often slow-moving. Although you can approach advocacy with gusto, true and sustainable change often takes longer than you realize. It is frustrating at times to want to see large scale changes in healthcare access reflected in policy and infrastructure changes, but not witnessing it due to things like bureaucracy, red tape, or even just the nature of change in the field overall. However, one of the most beneficial traits of someone entering the field of public health and working towards the pursuit of health equity is understanding the importance of stamina. To anyone else looking to pursue an internship or career in public health, I encourage you to think critically about the ways you can maintain your stamina in your work. Whether you accomplish this through acts of self care, or by setting boundaries in your professional life, maintaining stamina in your advocacy and not burning out when immense changes do not occur immediately is a key factor in ensuring that when the progress actually does occur, it is sustainable and will be upheld by the institution even after you are gone.

I have been honored to work with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Division of New Technologies this summer. My work this summer has taught me an incredible amount about how different subsections within Medicare work to optimize coverage for beneficiaries to allow all people fair and equitable access to healthcare. All patients, whether they are Medicare beneficiaries or private beneficiaries, deserve access to the same promising technologies and interventions, and watching the DNT push for that by streamlining the approval of technologies under coverage has been a privilege to witness. I hope that my impact as an intern at Medicare will be one step out of many more to come to continue the important progress being made by the DNT towards a larger goal of health equity overall.

As I reflect on my summer experience at Oxfam America, I’ve realized how much I’ve learned about the realities of social justice work, in terms of what promoting justice truly looks like in the real world. Social justice work is incremental, and oftentimes feels invisible or impossible. However, I’ve witnessed how the combination of seemingly small actions and collaboration between changemakers can create larger actions and long-lasting structural change. Instead of being disillusioned by the reality of social justice work, I am empowered to be part of the process. Before my internship started, I never thought it would be possible for individuals to leverage the power of corporations, but now I can confidently say that changemakers at Oxfam do so every day.

Throughout my internship, I collaborated and led various projects that supported my department’s overall mission of creating equitable food value chains for the largest food and beverage stakeholders. My biggest contribution was documenting supplier disclosure practices through researching and compiling resources, which I used to create a database to keep track of the supplier transparency efforts of these companies, traders, and supermarkets.

There were definitely moments along the way that felt tedious or like I was searching for dead ends. However, once I completed the project, I was so proud of myself and the research I had conducted. This project will be valuable for the members of my team who can now access this information in a consolidated and organized document. Since my team members work directly with companies, this information will serve as a knowledge base to guide action and directly influence the companies to improve human rights, environmental practices, and promote justice in all its forms.

After completing this internship process, I would recommend that others spend the summer interning at an organization like Oxfam America. I’ve learned how important it is to stay open-minded and say yes to every project, especially those that I knew little about beforehand. I’ve learned the importance of asking for help, and advocating for myself as needed. Over the course of my internship, I asked so many questions.

I would also recommend connecting with people outside of your department. After my supervisor asked me if there were any projects that I wanted to learn more about, I advocated that I wanted to learn more about health equity efforts at Oxfam, and had the opportunity to speak with Oxfam staff working on the COVID-19 People’s Vaccine. This campaign is working on improving vaccine access around the world by making the vaccine free, fair, and accessible (learn more and sign the People’s Vaccine petition here). It was so valuable to meet with people outside of my team and department, both for networking opportunities and to learn more about the topics that I’m passionate about!

I wouldn’t change anything about this internship experience. Through my internship with Oxfam America, I learned so much about how to promote gender justice, climate justice, human rights, and labor rights in the value chain. I also learned more about myself through this internship and the kind of work and setting that I want to be in once I graduate. I hope to stay connected to Oxfam America and am confident that this internship will help steer me towards future opportunities that promote social justice.

My most important takeaway from my internship is to be patient. Social justice work takes a long time and you can’t expect to solve every problem in a day, let alone a summer. Sometimes it takes a (very) long time for projects to be published and even if they are published, it can take some time before they achieve their intended purpose. I wish that I had known the importance of staying patient going into the internship. Even with this knowledge, I sometimes feel like my work is not reaching enough people or having enough of an impact. It has been important to be kind to myself and lower my expectations.

That is the other important thing to learn about work in social justice, but especially human rights: it is frustrating! Either there is no obvious solution and you really need to get creative about what the next steps should be, or there is an obvious solution that is nearly impossible to achieve! Often it is a combination of the two. For example, at the beginning of my internship, I focused on advocacy for the Rohingya. I went through two weeks of research to learn about Covid-19 rates among Rohingya in refugee camps and vaccination efforts, only to be told to focus on a new project by my supervisor because of a lack of feasibility. The clear solution was to increase vaccination for refugees in India and Bangladesh, but this would have been impossible for our virtual-based organization.

My advice for anyone interested in genocide prevention and human rights work is not to get your hopes up too high. This sounds really disheartening but I think it’s true. It is unfair to yourself to go into an internship with the expectation that you will have a significant impact on preventing a genocide in Ethiopia, China, or even here in the U.S. This work depends on so many people, and one person cannot do the work of hundreds. Managing expectations and being fair to yourself is not only important for your mental health, but crucial for not getting disgruntled or disheartened with your work. Understand that this is hard, but that there are so many amazing people just like you with the same passion and drive. Work with them and over time you will make a difference!

In the next few weeks, I will leave my internship with three soon-to-be published country reports (Egypt, U.S., Czech Republic), two of which lacked reports (you can find them here when they are published). I will also have a number of infographics and documents about the Rohingya genocide and its similarities to the Holocaust. Additionally, Genocide Watch will have a presentation on Brazil’s eco-cide to use in classrooms and other pedagogical areas. These concrete deliverables do not include my achievements updating the Alliance Against Genocide Watch website and my efforts in coordinating between Genocide Watch and our Alliance members. I have also begun the process of adding a new organization called Cultural Survival to the Alliance.

While this experience was not the rainbows and sunshine that genocide studies is (that is supposed to be a joke), it was a really amazing learning experience. I plan to take these new skills and perspectives to all of my future endeavors!

One of the most important aspects of Brandeis’s history is its focus on social justice. Not only did I learn how to be a better activist through student life at Brandeis, I also learned how to have more productive conversations about social justice with a broader variety of voices. There are many ways to achieve our goals in activism, and with a more intersectional mindset we can find paths that can accommodate and benefit everyone. The Brandeis attitude toward consistently having these conversations and being flexible with how we see the world was massively helpful as I became an intern at United for a Fair Economy (UFE). The organization is constantly finding new angles from which to look at different issues, and new ways to fight for what we believe in. Everyone on staff has a different background and different strategies for fighting for an equitable economy. Just like Brandeis, that’s one of the team’s greatest strengths.

Through the Economics and International and Global Studies departments at Brandeis, I’ve gained so much of the necessary theoretical and policy-based ideas I need to properly discuss the issues we work on at UFE. So much of what we do is a discussion of what changes we actually want to see occur, what those changes could realistically do for our communities, and how to work in such a way that those changes get made. Again, we have to think deeply and in an intersectional way about who is affected with every issue of policy change, and those questions go into everything as large as our full-scale projects and events and as little as what we decide to post to our Instagram story.

When we talk about how to work for a higher minimum wage in different states, we have to discuss the ways it will benefit the surrounding communities, who specifically it’ll benefit, what the math looks like, how to campaign to make it happen, etc. When we plan events like our Training of Trainers, we don’t just hold seminars on how we think people should do their activism better; we work within a popular education framework and give participants opportunities to express not just their pragmatic views of how to make change, but also how their own lives are affected and how they think of organizing.

We prioritize things like healing and language justice and even try to build small communities as we learn together. I think, ultimately, one of the most special parts of my experience with UFE has been seeing the way one can use the education they’ve already received, especially from traditional sources like a university, and utilize that while still learning and growing every day as part of a community. All the time, team members at UFE are coming up with a new lens through which to look at the world, and thinking about how to make it a better place for others.

In my twelve weeks with Alliance for Justice, I have learned a lot about the United States’ judicial system—more than I ever thought I would know. As a result, I now have a deep appreciation for the people who are dedicating their careers to fighting for a fair and diverse judiciary, and a greater understanding of why our courts matter. You can read my thoughts on why young people should care about our state courts here. But as I wrap up my internship and reflect on the summer, my biggest takeaways have nothing to do with the U.S. judiciary. 

This summer reminded me that everyone has a story. Behind their LinkedIn profile, job description, and the lag on their Zoom screen is a really interesting human being. As an intern during a virtual summer, it was easy to go through each day only interacting with my team, plus maybe a quick (and sometimes awkward) nod to another staff member while we waited for a Zoom meeting to begin. As I came in knowing virtually nothing about the federal judiciary and having little interest in pursuing law (the likely trajectory of many AFJ interns) or a job related to the judicial branch, it was easy to convince myself that any connections I made outside of my team wouldn’t be valuable.

And yet, as the summer went on, I made sure to reach out to and connect with AFJ staff whose roles had nothing to do with mine, and this is where I found that I learned and grew the most. These conversations weren’t necessarily meant to advance my career or to “network.” Instead, I learned how people spend their time when they’re not thinking about work, what their families are like, and where their favorite places to travel are. Along the way, I learned a lot about being a more thoughtful adult and what kind of professional I hope to become. Connecting with people is what is most instinctive for humans; it’s how we make friends and mentors, how we find people we can rely on, and how we navigate the world. Being the new and less “experienced” employee at an organization makes it daunting to reach out to new people. But, it also means that each connection you make is that much more transformative.

If I could give a piece of advice to anyone pursuing a career in the nonprofit world, or in any profession, it would be to take every opportunity to connect with your colleagues. You never know what interesting stories you might learn or what kind of impact you may have on someone else.

Social justice work is also exhausting. Anyone who commits their time and energy to advocate for a more equitable world exposes themselves to the very worst of our society, often because they’ve been personally harmed by a system that has failed them. The only way to avoid complete burnout is to be in community with others. I feel grateful that my colleagues at AFJ were open and excited to be meeting me and answering my often endless spew of questions, and I am looking forward to working on more teams in the future—regardless of the field—that foster this same opportunity for connection.

Throughout my time at Brandeis, one of the biggest lessons I have learned and am continuing to learn is what it means to be an advocate. Advocacy can be defined in many different ways, but in general, it involves taking action to create change. As a university that prides itself on its mission of social justice, I hear a lot of words akin to the theme of advocacy (such as diversity, inclusion, and equity) discussed in my classes and my roles on campus. I have learned what it means to look at institutions introspectively to see just where they have fallen short of achieving these tenets of advocacy.

However, I have also learned that successful advocacy goes beyond this step of simply identifying these weaknesses and flaws in our systems; it involves pushing for them to change or be uprooted entirely. Medicare and Medicaid as institutions are not exempt from these flaws and weaknesses, and as an intern it is pivotal for me to champion for health equity and challenge existing structures within CMS.

All of my roles at Brandeis involve a personal learning curve for me to see exactly how I can use my voice to champion for these very changes. For instance, as a Head Residential Assistant, I constantly reference concepts of cultural humility in order to foster inclusive living environments and to plan culturally competent events for residents. I then take what I have learned at the Department of Community Living to my role as the president of South Asian Students Association (SASA), where I also push for inclusive programming in order to encourage diversity and accessibility in the events that SASA holds. With each position I hold, I become more capable of advocating for sustainable and intentional change because I am applying the concepts of advocacy I learn from one role to another.

Now, I can see myself applying the same themes of advocacy that I have learned in other roles (particularly surrounding health inequities) to my internship with the Division of New Technology! For example, I find myself critiquing policies that do not allow for coverage of nearly enough patients and pushing for new and improved technologies to be available to patients under Medicare. I question outdated standards of care and encourage optimal coverage for beneficiaries to allow all people fair and equitable access to healthcare. When I submit reviews on technologies to be approved and work to ensure patients have access to technologies that will afford them better health outcomes, I can see that my approaches to my work are shaped by my time at Brandeis, whether it is by my Health: Science, Society, and Policy program coursework or my leadership positions in which I advocate for change! 

Especially after this past year, as a woman of color who has watched COVID-19 predominantly impact and kill marginalized communities both domestically and internationally, I feel an urgency to tangibly contribute to the dismantling of health inequities. Thus, my approach to advocacy within my internship has involved directly questioning and calling out inequities in the structures of Medicare in order to encourage structural change. I work to channel the frustrations I have in the disparities present in our health structures (which have only been highlighted by COVID-19) towards critical change which addresses the root causes of disparities so that I can actually take my advocacy beyond the walls of Brandeis and push for intentional change on a larger scale.

Coming to Brandeis, I had ambitions to join the work of the United Nations and similar international organizations because of my belief in their missions to provide a more cohesive and progressive global political atmosphere. Throughout my classes in the international and global studies department, as well as the politics department, I have since changed my viewpoint on these organizations. I now interpret them as being soldiers for neo-globalization that subtly call for the exploitation and marginalization of previously colonized countries.

Through research and readings, it is apparent to me that the current structure of our international organizations places the capitalistic endeavors of Western states and countries with large amounts of capital or resources over the concerns and cultural sensitivity of the global south. While human rights issues are rightfully being brought up in many Western states, it is these same Western states that are forcing the global south to undergo structural changes to become more “progressive” when the effects of these changes really only ever economically benefit the aforementioned Western states. Along with the hyper-criminalization of the leaders of underdeveloped states, I believe, these changes work more toward creating an unbalanced world focused primarily on the exploitation of resources and consumption.

I have found that, while these organizations say that their intentions are for the betterment of the global community, corruption and bureaucracy appears to have a stronger grip. The need for consensus without an already equal world translates to veto powers and certain states becoming major decision makers in a way that makes the function of diplomacy in the way we know it almost futile. 

Consequently, such findings have led me to look for work and organizations that have a principle of improving itself and allowing change in their goals for a more just world. Organizations need to have not only a goal of achieving social justice, but have it built into their system to consistently improve upon itself and dismantle the power hierarchies that may persist through its structure. Stagnancy is what leads so many good-meaning organizations to becoming perpetrators of power imbalances and contributing to the system of problems itself rather than dismantling it. 

Through my Brandeis experience, I have been led to look for organizations that work to directly aid marginalized people as they navigate systems that subliminally exploit them for their labor or resources and subject them to further subjugation. I enjoy the work of my internship for this reason, as the Court Service Center acts as a liaison that addresses the direct concerns and issues of people who cannot access the justice system due to lack of money or resources. The Court Service Center interacts with real people who have real issues that are always reduced in priority or importance because the person behind the issue does not have money. Consequently, in my internship, I look to consistently provide extra support and a sense of understanding on top of legal aid for these people who are unable to navigate a complex family court system, and hopefully work towards achieving better family dynamics. 

I have learned that the world of social justice work is full of people who wholly aim to help, but are faced with systems and bureaucracy that stall progress for marginalized groups. Within these social justice organizations, and particularly ones affiliated with the government, there comes a whole array of bureaucratic issues that limit the scope and depth of how help is distributed to those who need it. Issues ranging from current restrictive laws, to budgeting problems, to a misunderstanding or ignorance of the plight of minorities all severely hurt the social justice world. Each and every day, there are more people who face discrimination, marginalization and require aid to deal with their life’s issues, but frequently there is a backlog of people who are still receiving help. The social justice world therefore is full of constant issues that need solving and that require new and progressive ways to solve them. 

I have learned the importance of a work-life balance and the significance of training yourself everyday to be as open and helpful to the widest array of people. Social justice work inherently asks for those who aid to not discriminate in who receives their help. The more professional and bureaucratic those who help become as they rise in status, the more classist and unintentionally hierarchical they also become. This inability to understand and fully be compassionate to those who need the help seeps into the inner mechanics of social justice organizations, consequently hurting the process of social justice as it transforms into a function that works with the systems of oppression. Therefore, it is so incredibly important to go through constant training and ensure that there is personal growth in the ways in which social justice organizations are helping marginalized people. They must be able to evolve, expand, and invest in progression, which may mean changing their old practices of seeking or providing aid for marginalized people. 

The advice I would give to someone else pursuing an internship in the social justice field or family court system is one that I try to implement myself: to not become desensitized to the slowness of current social justice organizations and to consistently seek ways and organizations that contribute to new forms of social justice work. Additionally, to expand my own knowledge of languages, barriers to access to justice, and subtle systematic micro-aggressions so as to be the best representative for litigants and those marginalized.

I can see how easy it is to find a position with a social justice organization and simply just trust the organization’s intentions. But through this internship, I have become much more aware of the success that comes from doing the work to find gaps in justice and providing comprehensive and compassionate aid as an inherent personal aspect of my career, regardless of where I am. I have seen through my supervisors just how important it is to understand the litigant, to not judge people, and to constantly stay educated on what else a litigant may need.

Through this internship, I see how it is the direct aid—the help that asks the individual what exactly they need—that is so important to social justice work and what I personally look for when joining the social justice world. 

After a fifth email to my original internship placement in late May confirming my start date, I realized that I needed to create a new plan. This summer, I initially planned for my WOW grant to support an internship at a civil society organization that I am very passionate about called the Palestine-Israel Journal. I was so excited that WOW gave me a chance to be a part of the journal for the summer. Unfortunately, when the internship fell through, and I needed to find a new organization to support my WOW grant.

I tried to secure another internship at similar small social justice organizations in Israel-Palestine, but sadly (in part due to the hectic political climate in Israel and lack of support for civil society organizations), I was not able to fulfill my plan to work at a small civil society NGO. Finally, in early July, I received an internship offer from an organization called Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP). I’ve been working at ALLMEP for the past two weeks!

ALLMEP is an international organization that supports grassroots, people-to-people peacebuilding, and civil society organizations in Israel-Palestine. ALLMEP supports these organizations in myriad ways. The non-Israel-Palestine based international staff mainly advocates to their respective governments for funding for grassroots peacebuilding projects in the region. The regional staff mostly supports and grows the 100+ member organizations (civil society organizations that participate in people-to-people peacebuilding).

Even though I wanted to work for a smaller civil society organization based in the region, I think it’s appropriate that I am now working for an advocacy organization that tries to strengthen and expand those smaller civil society organizations. In my tumultuous internship search, I saw firsthand the problem that ALLMEP tries to fix: that the civil society organizations in Israel-Palestine are gravely under-supported.

In the past two weeks at ALLMEP, I have been responsible for various tasks related to U.S. advocacy. I have been asked to compile literature reviews, one-pagers for congressional advocacy efforts (like a myths and facts document responding to critiques about peacebuilding) and write blog posts to highlight the work of ALLMEP’s member organizations. Hopefully, my work with ALLMEP will help all parties in the region and especially American representatives prioritize people-to-people peace building organizations over the peace process among elites. I also am excited for the chance I will have this upcoming month to work directly with and help strengthen member organizations in the region.

On the first day of my internship, an ALLMEP employee told me that establishing an International Fund for Middle East Peace is “endgame.” Modeled after the International Fund for Ireland (which many have credited for the Good Friday agreements), the International Fund for Middle East Peace would drastically increase the support and amount of people-to-people peacebuilding organizations. All of the blog posts, congressional meetings, and op-eds that ALLMEP produces are, in some way, aimed at establishing this fund. I am excited to help be a part of bringing this fund closer to fruition.