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Internships | 2004 Intern Profile

Brief Bio:

My name is Aimeé Wilczynski-Altez, I’m of Peruvian and Polish heritage, and I grew up in a Latino community of Chicago. I have always been involved in public service, and while at Amherst College, I found that economics courses dealing with social issues (i.e. education, welfare) appealed to me the most, and that is how I found out about public policy. My first experience with public policy was participating in the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Leadership Program that assigned me to work as a legislative assistant for the IL State Senate. I then learned about PPIA, and attended the Junior Summer Institute at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. There, I learned more about public policy as an academic and career option, what graduate coursework in the field would be like, and met friends that were interested in similar work. Attending the PPIA program gave me the knowledge and preparation to apply straight to graduate school from undergraduate studies, and I am now in my last year of completing a Master’s degree in Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Govt. My policy concentration is in Human Resources, Labor, and Education, as I have always been committed to improving access to educational resources for disadvantaged students. My methodological concentrations are in applied microeconomic analysis and empirical methods due to truly liking economics. This next year, I plan to work in economic and policy research in the field of education and/or immigration.

Summary of Internship Experience:

This past summer, I worked as a summer economic analyst for the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), an organization founded by a Harvard professor with whom I had just completed a course with. I wanted to see how his theories were applied in practice to inner-city economic development through the work of the City Advisory Practice, the consulting department of the organization that works with non-profit and government entities. Being at ICIC allowed me to not only see theory in practice, but to also learn about many other aspects of economic development work such as the political interplay that occurs between private and public officials. Most importantly, my work with ICIC, allowed me to gain research experience that will be valuable for finding a job next year.

As an economic analyst for ICIC, I developed economic profile presentations of inner-cities and performed industry and economic research for cluster engagement projects in New York and Pennsylvania. Most enjoyable to me, I was also able to research the economic impact of immigrants to Chicago’s inner city economy, and to then present my findings in a luncheon discussion for ICIC staff. This internship experience confirmed to me that I will pursue what I enjoy most at the moment, economic/policy research in the fields of education and immigration. Doing so will allow me to examine the issues more in depth, and will also help guide me in future career choices.