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Changemakers by Rachel Leibrock, MFA ’04
CHANGEMAKERS
Manyin the Mills communitywere thrown offbythe 2016 election. These students and graduates ofthe LokeySchool are channeling that energyinto public service. ByRachel Leibrock, MFA ’04
ALYSA CISNEROS ’16, MPP ’17, still remembers the moment. November 8, 2016: Donald Trump had just been elected to the US presidency and the world seemed as if it had instantly changed. She knew she needed to do something—anything—but felt lost.
Cisneros was enrolled in her fifth year at Mills College, pursuing her master’s degree in public policy, but she didn’t want to just look to a textbook for answers. She wanted to get to work.
“I was just sitting there, [wondering] ‘What have I done to myself? ’” Cisneros thought.
Her sense of urgency wasn’t singular—it’s a shared drive among students and graduates of Mills’ Lorry I. Lokey School of Business and Public Policy. The graduate program, which offers a master of public policy and a joint MPP/MBA (among other degrees of study), emphasizes a critical outcome: Change the system from within.
That starts with the final two POLICE semesters of the program at Mills, which includes a capREFORM stone project. MPP students work with nonprofits, government offices and elected FAIR ELECTIONS officials, putting aside textbooks to tackle real-world challenges. After graduating, some alumnae/i have run for justice For All DATA PRIVACY office or worked for candidates at the local, state, and national levels. Others have founded their own organizations, or consulted with others, from tiny start-ups to big corporations.
Now, leading up to November’s consequential public safety, and affordable, accessible housing. election, many say they’re motivated by the polit“It’s a chance to make myself as effective as ical and sociocultural events that have unfolded possible,” she says. since 2016, including the coronavirus pandemic Since the college launched the MPP graduand nationwide protests against anti-Black racate track in 2007 with just eight candidates, stuism and police brutality. Moreover, students like dents like Cisneros have put what they’ve learned Cisneros say their time at the College prepared to practical use in the political and public policy them for the moment by connecting class study sphere, identifying and addressing a range of issues, with hands-on work. often with a focus on social and racial inequities. “At Mills, you learn broadly, asking questions Sometimes, the challenges are unprecedented. about how you can evaluate whether a policy will The global COVID-19 pandemic and other curwork or not,” Cisneros says. “Those are the basics rent events, for example, created a new “obstacle that you do over and over again [in the field], and course” of access, according to Ashley Adams, eventually they become second nature.” assistant adjunct professor of public policy at
Not long after her world tilted post-election, Mills. The lockdown brought about challenging Cisneros struck upon a solution, realizing that delays as students were forced to postpone focus it made sense to tap into what she’d learned groups and other vital data work, but it also laid so far at Mills. That’s how she came to email bare critical inequities, she says. the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of “This work is more important than Northern California at 2:00 am with a proposal: ever,” she says. “Students and professors she needed a capstone project to graduate, and are doing research to produce recommenthe ACLU needed volunteers in its mission to prodations for social change for a lot of these tect civil liberties—such as free speech and due problems that have been magnified by the process—under the incoming administration. pandemic, including police brutality.”
“I said, ‘I can do this for free, so put me to Chalyna Lazo, MPP ’21, a former student work,’” Cisneros recalls. in Adams’s Policy and Economic Analysis
The ACLU quickly agreed, assigning her to class, says that even as she and other stustudy data privacy, surveillance, and policing in dents faced frustrating challenges, the panpublic schools. The work felt vital, she says, prodemic has also given them new insights. viding invaluable hands-on learning she couldn’t “It’s opened my eyes to so many differnecessarily get in a seminar, including how to ent perspectives on how public policy is navigate a fast-paced environment. approached, in terms of who is affected Chalyna Lazo
Now, because “this year is a time for us to reand who the stakeholders are,” Lazo says. imagine how we do things,” as Cisneros puts it, While she has yet to decide on a capstone she is running for a city council seat in Sunnyvale, project, she’s already working, writing a plan to California. Her platform includes policing reform, address redistricting nationwide for the Drake
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Institute of Research and Policy, a Washington, DC–based nonpartisan think tank that studies legislation to support women legislators at the state, county, and municipal levels of government.
After graduation, Lazo adds, she’ll be ready to pursue a career in state government. “I will walk away from [Mills] having acquired the skills that will prepare me for potential opportunities,” she says.
This is an advantage for Mills graduates, as the classes they take rely more on current events and real-world examples than stale textbook cases. “I sometimes envy my colleagues at public policy conferences who share the same case they use every year—it’s got all the material in there and they just hand it to the students,” says Mark Henderson, associate professor of public policy and MPP program director. “With us, there is no binder!”
Erin Armstrong ’16, MPP/MBA ’18, started seeking her own opportunities during her final undergraduate year at Mills as the 2016 election began winding to a close. She remembers sitting in her Political Efficacy class, struck by the disconnect between her lessons and what she saw on television. “All the conventional wisdom we were learning in class was thrown out the window,” she says.
Trump’s win “lit a fire” within her. She adds: “It also reinforced that I was on the right path.”
By the next summer, Armstrong was volunteering for Nate Miley, who represents District 4 on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. That gig later led to a paid position, working on policy for Measure A, a ballot initiative that proposed a 30-year sales tax measure to fund, among other programs, childcare and early education.
By spring 2018, Armstrong needed to fulfill her capstone project. She took a leave of absence from Miley’s office and tasked herself with devising uses for Measure A’s innovation fund. While voters failed to approve Measure A during the June 2018 election, Armstrong gained practical, hands
Lyzz Schwegler
on training even as she completed her degree.
“It was incredible because I would learn about things in class and then I would be able to actually go and apply those concepts right away,” says Armstrong, who returned to work for Miley and is now a special assistant.
Eventually, she says, she wants to run for office. Before Trump, before COVID-19, before the Black Lives Matter protests, Armstrong says she might have been more inclined to delay her ambitions. Not anymore.
Her time in the graduate program didn’t just validate her career goals, Armstrong says. It reinforced that she didn’t need to wait for permission to pursue them. “Mills gave me the tool set to feel confident,” she says.
For Lyzz Schwegler, the current political landscape has also played a significant role in her decision-making process, so much so that she put her graduate studies at Mills on hold. Schwegler had been enrolled in her first semester in the MPP program when Trump was elected; by January 2017, she was seeking a summer internship that would put her in the thick of change.
A friend connected her with the founder of the Sister District Project, a nonprofit that aims to turn states blue by winning state legislative elections. Instead of an internship, however,
Schwegler was invited to join the group as a coembarked on a run for a Los Angeles City Council founder. She agreed, and by fall, the project had seat. The decision, she says, was inspired by the ballooned, drawing in thousands of volunteers. Women in Leadership class taught by Lori Droste,
A pursuit that grew out of a “dark, terrible time,” MPP ’11, who was elected to the Berkeley City Schwegler says, soon felt impactful. Council in 2014.
“The 2016 election was a milestone,” she says. Each week, Droste brought in guest speak“I’ve come to realize how lucky I was to be at ers, including elected officials who—as women of Mills at the time, and have it be a space full of color—shared advice on and experiences in fundconnections and community, holding each other raising, campaigning, and facing double standards accountable, and honest talk.” in a male-dominated political field.
Schwegler eventually decided to pause her “Every single one of them would always say to academics and relocate to run for office, even if you have Washington, DC. Since then, the the slightest feeling to do it— Sister District Project has hired 20 just run because we need more employees, raised millions of dolwomen to run,” she says. lars, and flipped legislative seats Initially, Rivera-Guzman in critical states such as Virginia. says, she wasn’t sure she was
Schwegler plans to return to ready to run but, encouraged Mills eventually; until then, her by classmates who later voluntime at the College stands out. teered for her campaign, she In particular, she remembers decided the effort could give a California politics workshop her much-needed experience. that the College hosted with She didn’t win the primary, but Assemblymember Rob Bonta says she’s prepared to run again (D-Oakland). There, Bonta talked in 2024. about his activist background— Ingrid Rivera-Guzman Until then, she’s digging his parents had been part of deeper into local politics by California’s farm labor moveattending neighborhood council ment—and the realization that grassroots work meetings. Recently, she was elected vice president wasn’t just about marching in the streets, but also on the board of directors for the Latino Coalition about the slog of endless meetings and logging of Los Angeles, a nonprofit that aims to build long hours with spreadsheets. the infrastructure needed to support progressive
That ethos resonated deeply. “Policy work isn’t candidates and initiatives that will foster change glamorous, it’s about showing up and getting through policy advocacy and other methods. down to work,” Schwegler says. “We’re trying to be that bridge between elected
For Ingrid Rivera-Guzman, MPP ’19, showing up officials and the people they’re serving who means returning to the community that shaped might not be so knowledgeable about that politiher. Born in El Salvador, she grew up in Los Angeles, cal system,” she says. and she says she chose Mills for its emphasis on A core philosophy Mills instilled in her is better social justice and intersectional politics. understanding the connection between past and
She felt energized, studying in a program that future generations. Take, for example, she says, allowed her to “have a seat at the table,” she says. the number of unhoused folks in Los Angeles, “It’s a system that you need to work within, to the majority of whom are Black. By examining some degree, if you want to break it and dismanpast redlining policies as well as legislation that tle it in some ways.” resulted from the so-called “war on crime” and
Her capstone project paired her with the “war on drugs,” it becomes easier to connect the California Energy Commission, where she drew dots between policy decisions and their problemon her passion for environmental justice to hold atic effects. the organization accountable in its efforts to “Public policy affects every aspect of your life, affect new environmental projects in low-income even if you’re not aware of it,” she says. “It didn’t just and disadvantaged communities. happen today, it’s coming from the past, and that’s
Now, Rivera-Guzman is thinking about bigstill continuing to affect us today. And the decisions ger, longer-term ambitions. Earlier this year, she we make will affect our future generations.”
