Erin Krasik
M.P.P. ’98

“I use my Harris School experience every single day.”

That’s how Erin Krasik sums up the value of her Master’s in Public Policy ,which she earned in 1998 after several years as a community organizer in Chicago following her undergraduate education at Smith College. Krasik is a U.S. Foreign Service Officer and has worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) since her graduation from the Harris School. USAID is the government agency charged with providing U.S.economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide.

Recently, Krasik reflected on her careerpath and her Harris School training. “As much as we grumbled about those workshop classes and writing memos about how economic theories would apply to the real world, all of it has been extraordinarily helpful to me,” she said.

“I think many people come to Chicago because they want to be a researcher or educator in the academic world and be the best in their field,” Krasik explained. “But there are many of us who are practitioners and simply need to be able to speak the same language and be effective consumers of the quantitative information that is essential to our work.”

While based in Washington, D.C., for the past four years, Krasik has worked on democracy building programs throughout Latin America with local and international organizations and with host country governments. She began her career there through the highly selective Presidential Management Intern Program, which placed her on a fast track for advancement in the federal government culminating in her recent appointment as a career Foreign Service Officer.

Community-building and improving the quality of community life have been Krasik’s consistent interests since she graduated from Smith. She was a community organizer and national trainer for the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute in Chicago before beginning at the Harris School. Having worked with the public schools during a graduate school internship, her initial goal after graduation was a career in education policy in the Chicago Public Schools. However, she also was drawn to federal policy, which led her to the PMI program and an application to the Department of Education. On a whim, she said, she also applied to USAID.

“I thought I’d take a chance in applying, and told my interviewer, ‘if you need someone with international affairs experience who has lived overseas, I am not that person. I am a community organizer, I have some Spanish ability, I communicate and write well, and I have strong analytical and problem-solving skills.’” she said. “Because of those skills, I was hired.”

Krasik said she has had a satisfying and productive career so far at USAID and gives credit to the training she received at the Harris School. “I was taught to think on my feet, to articulate a range of solutions quickly, and to take a mass of complex information and synthesize it into clear policy decisions that can fit on a page or two. The Harris School gave me an excellent toolkit that has served me very well.”

Andricus Hutcherson
M.P.P. ’99

Since joining the Global Center for International Development at the United Negro College Fund Special Programs Corporation(UNCFSP) over a year ago, Andricus Hutcherson (M.P.P. ’99) has supported the efforts of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs)to improve the global society.

As a development coordinator, Hutcherson works with HBCUs to apply expertise to the economic, social, and environmental problems in developing countries. By fostering partnerships with nongovernmental organizations, private-sector companies, government agencies, and other groups, Hutcherson is able to cultivate involvement in international development projects. This involvement is part of the mission of Hutcherson’s Global Centergroup—a cooperative venture between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and UNCFSP.

“We administer grants and provide technical assistance to HBCUs,” he said. “Then, we help manage all of their projects to make sure they’re fiscally transparent in their operations. After completing a project with us, they’ll be able to competitively seek funding” to work on other international projects.

Hutcherson has played a key role in this process by developing proposals and lobbying the Congressional Appropriations Committees “to make sure they understand what we’re doing and that we get on their radar screen.” And with more than 50 active projects, including a private-sector partnership in Jamaica to develop renewable energy technology, a community-building project with a women’s group in Guyana, and faculty enrichment in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, this is no small task.

After graduating from the Harris School, Hutcherson moved to Washington, D.C. as a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Fellow. His experiences—as a legislative aide for Congressman Danny Davis and a research analyst in the World Bank’s urban development division—furthered his interest in community development and led him ultimately to international development. Positive about his role at UNCFSP, Hutcherson adds, “This opportunity has allowed me to gain experience in international development. If I can find a way of doing something that’s out of the box on the international front, maybe I can apply that best practice in the U.S., particularly in Chicago where I was born and raised. Something integrative that provides a new set of incentives to bring people together to work on community-based problems.”

Hutcherson credits his Harris School education with transforming his world view and fueling his ambitions. “It changed my whole outlook. It becomes like a light switch—it turns on and you start using it,” he said. “I use my Harris School education all the time,” pointing to the work he did with the ex-offender population and their transition into society culminating in The Ex-Offender Public Safety Self-Sufficiency Act. Hutcherson wrote the white paper, proposed the legislative action to Congressman Davis, and helped to draft the bill to address housing, training, and life skill development needs. In addition to the many practical and theoretical skills that he gained at the Harris School, Hutcherson added, “It helps to build [your confidence], because of the reputation of the University of Chicago; because of the work you put in, you start to feel really good about that choice and the doors that are opened because of it.”