Erin Krasik MPP 1998

“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 the Deputy Director, Office of Democratic Initiatives, USAID/Russia 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.”