Samantha O'Neill-Dunbar MPP 1994

Samantha O'Neill-Dunbar graduated from the Harris School in 1994, packed her bags, and moved to Colorado, hoping for the best.

With a keen interest in education policy, O'Neill-Dunbar had long aimed to work for Colorado governor Roy Romer, well-known for his innovative education initiatives. She joined his re-election campaign and then gained a place in his policy office working on a new vocational and workforce development initiative.

It was right up O'Neill-Dunbar's alley but she quickly learned that "the real world and academia are not really the same at all." She remembers starting the job and telling her boss they needed to collect all kinds of data and do regressions to plan the best policy approach. She was told, "the governor wants an answer, just make something up."

She worked in Romer's office until 1999 getting the "state level on-the-ground policymaking experience" she'd been seeking, having already tried the non-profit and national political routes. After graduating from Duke University in 1989 with a history degree, she'd joined the National Center for Educational Competitiveness and worked for then Kentucky Congressman Carl "Chris" Perkins, all before attending the Harris School.

It was in Colorado that O'Neill-Dunbar also worked as director of a sustainability project looking at funding for the governor's school-to-career initiative. She aimed to help address "the Colorado paradox"-the state has the country's highest per capita of residents with higher-education degrees yet is dead last in sending low-income state residents to college.

The challenge is determining, "how we can help our own homegrown folks who are just lacking opportunities get to self-sufficiency and a good job. To me, it seemed the biggest [missing piece] was just an understanding about what jobs are available, and what skills are needed to do those jobs, and how you can get those skills."

After Governor Romer reached his term limit, O'Neill-Dunbar took time off to reconsider her long-term goals.

But the pull of workforce development issues was strong. She returned to the field in 2002 and currently makes policy recommendations, regulates workforce development initiatives, and manages the state's customized training program as Director of Workforce Development for the Colorado Community College System, a statewide system of 13 community colleges.

"I work to build partnerships between the workforce development system and the community colleges to make sure that the links are strong and that there's an awareness of what the colleges can do to meet the workforce development needs of youth coming out of high school as well as people who have been unemployed or are looking to change careers," she said.

Her Harris School training gave O'Neill-Dunbar the analytical skills she's needed. "I've gotten really good at looking at the big picture of a policy issue and then being able to break down into tiny bullet points or salient pieces of information to share to make policy recommendations," she said. "The Harris School just kind of changed my whole mode of processing information."