STUDENT LEADERSHIP AND ALUMNI SUCCESS

COLIN POWELL SCHOOL Student and Alumni Success

Chin-Chance is giving back to the Colin Powell School with his dedication to connecting alumni with current students. Together they are building a rich and dynamic network of matchmakers.

LOOKING AHEAD AND GIVING BACK

SHAWN CHIN-CHANCE ’05

In 2005, when Shawn Chin-Chance graduated from CCNY with a major in Political Science, the Colin Powell School did not exist. There was no alumni network with whom grads from his department could communicate to explore next steps in their careers. Fast forward to 2019 and Shawn ChinChance is President of the Political Science Affiliate of the CCNY Alumni Association and Secretary of the Board for the Association. To honor a growing network of CCNY graduates from the Colin Powell School, the Alumni Association’s Political Science affiliate recognizes recent graduates five years out from the Colin Powell School who are paving a trail for others to follow with the Rising Star award. They also honor the CPS alumni who graduated 10 or more years ago and have made a significant impact in either the public or private sector with the Professional Achievement Award. In addition, in honor of New York City’s first African American Deputy Mayor and a CCNY alumnus, the political science affiliate honors alumni who had a major influence on city or state public policy with the Paul Gibson Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award in Public Service. Both the Political Science Affiliate and the CCNY Alumni Association are working hard to make specific connections to current students to offer mentoring and next steps advice. These matchmaking connections, according to Chin-Chance, are more important in the early career development of recent graduates than some of their efforts to make money. The goal is to support and nurture our recent graduates’ careers so that they might later be inspired to give back in support of their alma mater.

At the time of Chin-Chance’s graduation, Dean Rich was ChinChance’s Political Science professor and CCNY President Boudreau was the chairman of the Political Science Department and Director of the Colin Powell School Center for Policy Studies. Chin-Chance speaks fondly of late night discussions he and a group of other Political Science students had with their faculty, including Professors Rich, Boudreau, Krinsky, and Berman. The faculty offered them strong encouragement and support in their future careers, especially in areas of engagement with community organizations where they could develop their leadership and service-learning skills. Rich and Boudreau were instrumental in supporting ChinChance’s internship with the New York State Assembly during his senior year. Following graduation, Chin-Chance was hired as community clerk for the legislator for whom he had interned, thus starting his career with the New York State government. Four years later, he became a legislative director for a Queens Assemblyman who was Chairperson for the Children and Families Committee. This committee oversees state public policy for child welfare, childcare, juvenile justice, and foster care. Chin-Chance is most proud of The Safe Harbor Act, for which he was a key partner in drafting some of the

legislative language during this period. The act was the first in the nation to provide support services for youth sexually exploited in the United States.

Chin-Chance would later go on to work with the New York State Office of Children and Family Services’ juvenile justice division following his policy work with the New York State Assembly. He became Assistant Director, overseeing all the vocational training in juvenile residential IVANNA KUZ ’16 Ivanna Kuz always had a strong interest in public service. Nonetheless when she entered college, she wanted to practice medicine and spent her first two years at CCNY studying the natural sciences. In the fall of her sophomore year, 2013, the outside world interrupted her plans in a significant way: Her home country of Ukraine was facing political upheaval facilities across the state. He developed programs for young people who were connected with the family court system and placed with the state in residential programs. He was later the Coordinator for a state-wide initiative that provided funding for New York counties to prevent kids from entering the NYS Juvenile Justice system. After graduating from CCNY, Chin-Chance went on to earn his master’s degree in Public Administration from Marist College. He also married and became and revolution. She felt the pull to do something that might make a difference, so she switched her major to International Studies and Political Science. That summer, she interned in Brussels at the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI). She focused on human rights abuses in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and the migratory crisis of millions seeking the father of boy and girl twins, who are currently eight years old. ChinChance lives in Harlem and is currently the Harlem District Manager for the New York State Commission for the Blind. His dreams from those late night discussions with his professors are being fulfilled. And Chin-Chance is giving back to the Colin Powell School with his dedication to connecting alumni with current students. Together they are building a rich and dynamic

TAKING FULL ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES

network of leaders. refuge in Europe from the war in Syria. The experience further convinced her that the path she had chosen was right.

Then, when Kuz found out that the Colin Powell School had a program in Washington, DC, directed by Dean Rich, where she could refine her skills and explore her interest in the practice of policy reform, she applied. She describes this experience as “definitely changing her entire life.” She took a full

course load and worked four days a week as an intern at a think tank, the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). With a fluency in speaking and writing Ukrainian, Kuz monitored the Ukrainian media and reported to the President of AFPC on the developments of the war in the Donbas region. She researched Russia’s treaty violations, its annexation of Crimea, and the upheaval in Eastern Ukraine. She met the Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament as well as a number of other members of Parliament and Ukrainian experts at AFPC-organized conferences and events. At the same time, she was writing her senior thesis on “The Culture of the Ukrainian Oligarchy,” which investigated the pervasive culture of corruption in the 1990s and 2000s in the Ukrainian government.

Up Next: Opportunities with Senator Charles Schumer

By the time Kuz graduated in June 2016, she had three internships under her belt and longed for a job in her field. In October 2016, just before Donald Trump’s election victory, Kuz started interning at Senator Chuck Schumer’s fast-paced DC office. She says this was a critical time as the office fielded hundreds of calls a day, with many walk-in constituents expressing deep concerns with Trump’s election. Following her internship, Kuz applied for a full-time paid position and in January 2017, joined Leader Schumer’s full-time team.

She was assigned to the mailroom and proceeded to organize it for the onslaught of mail and communications that came in for the Minority Leader every day. Sometimes working late into the evening, Kuz felt the pressure of the moment.

By July 2017, Kuz was promoted to a staff assistant position and worked in the front office greeting and addressing the needs and concerns of constituents, legislators, protestors, and others as well as managing staff meetings. The office had a staff of more than 100 individuals and was a “vibrant and exciting environment,” says Kuz. She stayed with Schumer until May 2018, when she left to prepare for graduate school in Harvard’s two-year Master’s Program in Regional Studies on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Summer in Kyiv: High AntiCorruption Court of Ukraine

Completing her first year at Harvard, Kuz worked in Kyiv, the capitol of Ukraine, in Summer 2019. She researched her thesis, “The High AntiCorruption of Ukraine,” conducting interviews with judges, lawyers, legal policy experts, and politicians who were directly or indirectly involved in the court’s creation. The Ukrainian parliament passed a law in 2018 that enables the court to take on top-level corruption cases; it is scheduled to take effect in September 2019. Kuz says she hopes that Ukrainians will have the energy and perseverance to continue the fight against corruption and that the Anti-Corruption Court, as an independent institution, will act as a tool in this fight.

Kuz returned to Harvard for her last year at the end of August and says she looks forward to working in public service upon graduation. She is committed to giving back some of what she received from the Colin Powell School, which shaped her values and gave her the preparation to succeed in a career in foreign policy and international relations.

PREPARING FOR A CAREER IN PUBLIC SERVICE

ONEIKA PRYCE ’19

For Oneika Pryce, the desire to lead through public service was cemented at the Colin Powell School. Pryce graduated as the Colin Powell School’s valedictorian in May 2019. A great finish for a student who came to CCNY after a tough start at Queens College. “I didn’t feel at home on the Queens campus, and I wanted a school in a community that was more diverse and a little more connected. I felt that I got that at City.” She started at the Colin Powell School in January 2017. In her first semester, Pryce joined NYPIRG and the Caribbean Student Association. And then she saw a flyer for the Colin Powell School’s Semester in Washington, DC Program. “I originally wanted to study abroad in France, but that program was through Queens. So that didn’t work. I needed a program with CCNY, so the semester in DC was my study abroad experience. I loved it.” She interned at the National DAVID DAM ’19 For David Dam, graduation this past May was the beginning of his new career as an economics policy analyst. He had an internship through the Jeannette K. Watson Foundation to Disability Rights Network and explored the intersection of disability, human trafficking, and emergency preparedness. The whole experience made Pryce feel, “more comfortable applying for other things.” Last January, Pryce went to Senegal for an academic program. “I loved being there. But it challenged me around flexibility and adaptability. The style of living was so different from what I was used to. It was transformative though, because I knew I could connect with people after making it through. We bonded with people on a serious level. We had to do work at the Brookings Institution India Center, an affiliate of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Shortly after graduation he flew to New Delhi. There he was assigned to work with two economists to research and write a report on medicines in India. The that in order to succeed.” Since graduating, Pryce has been interning with the New York City Mayor’s Office of International Affairs. It’s a position right in line with her major in international studies and her concern for how foreign affairs affects real people. What’s next? Maybe a Fulbright or another experience in international affairs. Pryce says she is grateful for her time at CCNY and excited to put the civic and global leadership skills that she learned while at the Colin Powell School to work tackling systemic global

I didn’t feel at home on the Queens campus, and I wanted a school in a community that was more diverse and a little more connected. I felt that I got that at City.

BROOKINGS INDIA CENTER INTERNSHIP AND THEN HIS DREAM JOB AT THE FEDERAL RESERVE

problems in the years ahead.

My interests in economic research and social change were fueled by the diversity of my classmates and by discussions with the professors.

Indian government had done an extensive report on medicines but it is so dense with statistics that the information was ignored; his sense was that this allowed the newspapers to create sensational news articles that stoke fear in the public.

Dam’s work examined a sample list of medicines from three perspectives: Accessibility; Affordability; and Quality. For the accessibility aspect, he looked at government programs across India to see which districts have the most stores that sell the medicines in question.

He looked at price controls to explore what the history of certain drug pricing practices says about the public’s ability to buy needed medicines. Finally, he studied how the specific drugs in the sample are manufactured, either in India or elsewhere, and what kinds of quality controls exist across the country. The report is going to be published for general consumption across India.

Now back in New York, Dam is beginning his dream job as a research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank. He works on macro economics projects and splits his time between research and policy, looking at unemployment, savings rates, and BRYAN GUICHARDO ’19 Bryan Guichardo finished his degree at the Colin Powell School in May 2019, but his studies have just begun. In Fall 2019, he became a doctoral student in the Department of History at The CUNY Graduate Center on a Provost’s Enhancement Fellowship. He “will contribute to the burgeoning scholarship on Afro-Latin History and find ways to disseminate this research to communities that it serves.” The path to a PhD has already had twists and turns for Guichardo. He was a nontraditional student at the Colin Powell School. He started at City Tech with the plan to become a nurse. His heart wasn’t in it. By his own admission, he just was not motivated and left after one semester. Guichardo took three years to work, serving as direct support staff with mentally disabled adults in several group homes around New York City. During this period, he spent his spare time reading other statistical information and assists individual economists on research projects concerning trade, wage growth, and other economic indicators. Although the work is challenging and every day he learns sociology and anthropology, and that’s when he found his passion. He came to CCNY knowing he wanted to understand how Afro-Latinos navigate the politics of identity. The question of “natural hair” was important to him: How people embrace their own natural beauty and, especially, how Dominican men navigate questions of appearance and identity. Those interests translated into a project about racial solidarity in the Dominican Republic. As Guichardo recalls, “I came to the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership for its reputable something new, Dam says that the collaborative and interactive environment and the number of recent college graduates hired makes the environment a friendly and supportive

PURSUES PHD TO EXAMINE AFRO-LATINO HISTORY

Students here are encouraged and pushed to critically think about and engage with the world around them.

work experience. intellectual rigor and belief in transformative education. Students here are encouraged and pushed to critically think about and engage with the world around them. I was afforded the opportunity to think both analytically and creatively while finding ways to take those ideas outside the classroom and into the communities I serve.” While at CCNY, Guichardo was a Mellon-Mays Fellow and a researcher with the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. Guichardo’s interests continued to expand, and he knows that an advanced degree—and now continued studies—are in his future.