Started As Urban Fellows, Found Home in City Gov't

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang LEADERS OF FUTURE: Mayor Bloomberg and some of his agency heads honored Urban Fellows during a Gracie Mansion reception May 12, with many program graduates saying they had been inspired by their apprenticeships to pursue careers in city government.

Recent college graduates who spent nine months working with Commissioners and other top officials in city agencies were feted at Gracie Mansion May 12 as part at the 40th Anniversary celebrations of the Urban Fellows program.

The program, established under Mayor John V. Lindsay, chooses highachieving students who are less than three years out of college and places them in a city agency, where they work on policy, develop and plan projects, and learn the ins and outs of city finance and government through an intense hands-on approach.

A Path to City Careers

Many of the 28 graduates then continue on in their agencies or continue in civil service in another form; others attend graduate school in law or public policy and return to city service later.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang A CHANCE TO MAKE AN IMPACT: Elizabeth Rodriguez says that working in the Department of Youth and Community Development under another alumnus of the Urban Fellows program, Commissioner Jeanne Mullgrav, allowed her to play a role in opening non-profit community centers to Housing Authority residents whose own centers had become budget casualties.

Prominent alumni of the program in attendance included Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Linda Gibbs; Commissioner of Youth and Community Development Jeanne Mullgrav; Commissioner of Small Business Services Robert Walsh; and Gene Russianoff, attorney for the Straphangers Campaign.

"[It] provides an unparalleled opportunity for young professionals to gain meaningful work experience in public policy, urban planning and government operations as they consider careers in public service," Mayor Bloomberg said of the program. "It demonstrates New York City's commitment to shaping future leaders."

Alums of the class of 2008-2009 seemed imbued with enthusiasm for their work, with many of them saying that they would stay on in their agencies, sometimes taking new, permanent positions and helping to shepherd projects they started in their fellowships to completion.

From Planning to Fruition

Elizabeth Rodriguez, a Hunter College graduate who lives in The Bronx, had worked under Ms. Mullgrav at the DYCD, where she helped develop the program that opened non-profit community centers near public housing projects, to fill the void left when Housing Authority centers were closed for budget reasons.

"I helped with the initial preliminary planning. It came up, we had a month to plan it and then roll it out," she said. "It was exciting, to do something from the planning stages; obviously you don't always get to see that happen." Ms. Rodriguez is staying on at DYCD to manage the program. She said that although she is considering attending law school at some point in her life, "I am planning to stay permanently… I love my agency, I really do."

She said she had been interested in civil service since she was a child living in Flushing, Queens, as her father worked for the Department of Transportation. "He's worked for the city for 22 years, he's a very hard worker; that is where this comes from," she said. "He even drove for Mayor [David] Dinkins at one point."

'Feel Like Part of City'

Another City University of New York graduate, Ahura Jacobwitz from Queens College, agreed that she wasn't going to leave city work anytime soon. "I really feel like part of the city, it's definitely something I want to be part of, particularly on public health. There's no better city to be involved in," she said.

Ms. Jacobwitz works at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, in its housing and neighborhood study division, where she surveys affordable housing projects and sees how they affect health and well-being among residents. "I am one of the principal people in the planning stages of the project. I'm currently running one of the research sites in Williamsburg, collecting data," she said.

Two other fellows worked in the city's largest agency, the Department of Education, although they each took different paths within the DOE. Anna Friedman, a Harvard graduate from Baltimore, worked in the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation, which serves children who are at risk of dropping out and develops programs and schools around their needs to help them gain qualifications.

'Only See This in New York'

"We offer a full variety of programs and innovative initiatives," she said. "I've been supporting model development for the new schools, doing outreach and communications, doing smaller data projects, things like that." Ms. Friedman said that the kind of work she was doing was something "you'd only see in New York."

"You have transfer schools, which offer ways to recuperate credits, to get back on track to graduation, and night-time programs for kids who have trouble coming to school during the day," she said. But now that the fellowship is over, she's moving within the agency—to join the communications department.

Blakely Whilden, who attended the University of North Carolina, worked at Middle School Success in the DOE division of Teaching and Learning, where she helped develop "a multiyear strategic initiative to turn around the middle schools in New York City and turn around the achievement gap amongst students," she said.

"I'm working on a program called the New York City Middle School Film Festival, which allows seventh- and eighth-grade students to apply for a scholarship at the New York Film Academy," she said. Ms. Whilden will continue that work at the DOE for now, and although she admitted that "graduate school is absolutely on the horizon," she said, "I'm committed to working in public service—that's as much as I know at this point."