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We have arrived at a moment marking both the close of the academic year and the midpoint of the Policy School's 20th anniversary. The stories gathered here reveal a clear thread: a deep commitment to scholarship and policy work in service of society.
We concluded The Future We Design series with a powerful Arts and Policy event at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In this issue, we celebrate a surgeon advancing cleft care in the Global South, a PhD student uncovering greenwashing by fossil fuel companies, and City of Boston employees pursuing their degrees while continuing to serve their communities, among many others. Together, these stories show what policy looks like in practice: driven by purpose, grounded in rigor, and guided by a commitment to justice.
Across our campuses and around the world, our faculty, students, and staff bring this spirit to life every day and make the Policy School the community it is.
Warmly,
Maria
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Maria Ivanova
Director, The Policy School
Co-Director, Plastics Center
| | | DOERS AND DREAMERS SPOTLIGHT | | Photo courtesy of Gloria Fortner | |
Arts, Culture, and Good Governance: Gloria Fortner Earns Rappaport Fellowship
Congratulations to MPA student Gloria Fortner on being selected for a 2026 Rappaport Public Policy Summer Fellowship at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
The Rappaport Fellowship supports students in applying their skills and commitment to good governance to Greater Boston's most pressing public policy challenges. For Gloria, that will mean working with a government agency on policy at the intersection of arts, culture, and public investment. Her research and policy interests focus on arts and culture funding for lower-income communities, nonprofit sustainability, and the role of public policy in supporting working artists.
After she completes the Rappaport Fellowship, Gloria will travel to Athens, Greece in Fall 2026 to engage in a co-op with the EPLO European Public Law Organization.
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| |  | Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University | |
From Co-op to CEO: How Jenna Woods Is Commercializing Nature's Carbon Capture
It was during her undergraduate co-op that MS Environmental Science & Policy student Jenna Woods first encountered olivine, a mineral that naturally removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through a chemical reaction with CO₂ and water. The catch? The process takes millennia. So she is working to speed it up.
Her co-op mentor, Prof. Marcel Di Vece of the University of Milan, was so impressed by her dedication that he founded AngelRock BV — and hired 21-year-old Jenna as CEO. The company, launched with a University of Milan accelerator grant, is now in R&D to make olivine-based carbon removal commercially viable.
After Jenna completes her master’s degree at the Policy School, she has her sights set on a PhD.
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| | | UPDATES FROM THE POLICY SCHOOL | | |
It was a proud day for the Policy School at the CSSH Celebration of the Class of 2026 at Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston's Seaport. Prof. Kimberly Lucas served as a faculty marshal during the ceremony. New alumna Bella Wood, graduate student speaker and founder of Ranch Lab — a conservation initiative reshaping agricultural models across the American West — received her MPA and challenged her fellow graduates to keep building their legacies as doers and dreamers. Prof. Christopher Bosso, retiring after more than four decades at Northeastern, reflected, in his role as faculty speaker, that the greatest joy of his career has been getting to spend his life with people who love learning. His advice to the graduates? Five years from now, buy your favorite teacher a cup of coffee. They will know exactly what you mean.
Congratulations to all Policy School graduates!
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From Classroom to Community: Celebrating Policy in Action at the Spring 2026 Capstone Symposia
Graduating students at the Boston, Arlington, and Oakland campuses and fully online students showcased their projects at the Spring 2026 Policy Capstone Symposia These hybrid presentations represented months of dedicated work alongside public service and nonprofit partners to develop meaningful policies that strengthen our local communities. A heartfelt thank you to each of our community partners for investing in the next generation of policy leaders.
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Art, Justice, and Memory: The Policy School Marks 50 Years of "The Soiling of Old Glory"
How can art create the conditions for social change? How can cultural expression document injustice, preserve collective memory, and catalyze policy transformation? These were the core questions addressed by Prof. Ted Landsmark, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Stanley Forman, and historian Don Gillis at the "Arts & Policy: 50th Anniversary of 'The Soiling of Old Glory' Future We Design Seminar hosted by the Policy School at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. It was an evening that underscored the enduring power of a single image to spark conversation and shift perspectives.
SEE EVENT PHOTOS
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20 Years Strong: The Policy School Celebrates a Landmark Year-End
The Policy School community gathered on the Boston campus for our annual Year-End Celebration, organized by Michele Rosenthal. Colleagues from our Arlington and Oakland campuses joined the occasion virtually. The event brought together students, staff, and faculty in a spirit that, as Policy School Director Maria Ivanova noted, reflected the joy and resilience that has characterized our community throughout this landmark year of the 20th anniversary of the Policy School's founding.
SEE EVENT PHOTOS
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Mannequins, Bears, and Empty Villages: Prof. Daniel Aldrich Explores the Implications of Japan’s Bear Attacks
“There are fewer vehicles on the roads, fewer hunters in the woods, fewer farmers in the fields,” says Prof. Daniel Aldrich, describing the situation in many rural areas of Japan where, in some villages, residents have taken to replacing missing neighbors with mannequins and puppets to combat loneliness. “Japanese young people don’t want to live out there,” he says. “They call these places 𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘬𝘢 𝘯𝘰 𝘯𝘢𝘬𝘢—basically ‘bum-f--k nowhere.’” Prof. Aldrich, whose research focuses on how dense, closely-knit populations can boost a community’s resilience in times of disaster, believes that Japan's staggering demographic shift is contributing to the country’s bear crisis. As many towns decline in population, the buffer between human civilization and wilderness is collapsing.
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Medicine as Social Justice: How One Surgeon Is Redefining Global Health, One Smile at a Time
The Social Impact Lab (SIL), directed by Rebecca Riccio, hosted this year's Zameli Family Fellow, Dr. Usama Hamdan, MD, FICS, for three events focused on the theme "Centering Humanity in Global Health: Ethics, Impact, and Accountability." Dr. Hamdan is president and co-founder of Global Smile Foundation, which has transformed cleft care in communities throughout the Global South by advancing equitable, personalized, and sustainable surgical practices and building local capacity to treat and support patients and their families.
| | Dr. Usama Hamdan and SIL Director Rebecca Riccio | | | | |
Raising New Voices: Prof. Ivanova Champions the Next Generation of Global Policymakers
Policy School Director Maria Ivanova represented the International Council of Environmental Law at the ECOSOC Youth Forum in New York, contributing to high-level discussions on youth leadership, transformative education, and global governance. Her interventions centered on engaging youth as active co-creators of policy and connecting education directly to global policy spaces, especially the United Nations.
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Beyond the Algorithm: Prof. Moira Zellner on Building Fora.ai, Rethinking the Classroom, and What AI Cannot Replace
Prof. Moira Zellner recently sat down with Matthew Graves, founder of NU Nexus — Northeastern's first student publication at the intersection of technology, policy, and society — for a newly published and wide-ranging interview. In it, she reflects on how AI is reshaping critical thinking and human connection, the story behind her work developing Fora.ai, and the unconventional approaches she brings into the classroom as Director of Participatory Modeling and Data Science at CSSH and Co-Director of NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science.
READ THE INTERVIEW
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Diplomacy Meets Data: Prof. Maria Ivanova Engages with Global Experts in Geneva on the Future of Global Governance
Policy School Director Maria Ivanova participated in a high-level expert consultation on collective security and disarmament in Geneva. The workshop brought together international scholars and practitioners to assess new global governance frameworks, including the architecture of proposed protocols on disarmament and peace operations, and to address key questions of political feasibility, institutional design, and implementation. During her visit, Prof. Ivanova also met with Ambassador Muhammadou M.O. Kah of the Gambia, a leading voice in data and AI governance and digital transformation. Their exchange underscored the growing importance of data governance in shaping the future of multilateral cooperation.
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An Equity Reckoning: Prof. Alicia Modestino on Gender, Power, and the Future of Higher Education
Prof. Alicia Modestino recently took the stage at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard to deliver a TED-style talk on gender in higher education. Her talk was part of a broader conference bringing together scholars, teachers, and researchers to examine the role gender plays in the challenges universities face today, from enrollment gaps and faculty inequities to the future of free inquiry.
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A Global Home for Development Economics: Prof. Nishith Prakash Joins the Board of the Newly Founded IDEA
Prof. Nishith Prakash has been elected to the Board of Directors of the newly founded International Development Economics Association (IDEA) — an organization built on a simple but urgent premise: development economics needs a truly global home. IDEA was created to bridge geographic divides and support development economists wherever they work, from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America and beyond. As a Board member, Prof. Prakash will help turn that vision into action, through open-access research, early-career pipelines, cross-stage mentoring, and an annual conference.
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Where Data Meets Community: Prof. Moira Zellner on Participatory Modeling, Flood Resilience, and Youth Agency in Schools
Prof. Moira Zellner was invited by Patricia Krueger-Henney, co-lead of Boston's Participatory Action Research Network , to deliver a guest lecture on participatory modeling to PhD students in the urban education program at UMass Boston. Prof. Zellner drew on her work supporting the development of a stormwater park in the Village of Robbins on Chicago's South Side, a community-driven effort to address recurrent flooding. Students then rolled up their sleeves for a hands-on exercise, building a causal loop diagram together around how to grow youth agency in schools.
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Public Servants, Lifelong Learners: Celebrating the Policy School's Moakley Scholars
Policy School Director Maria Ivanova, Prof. Ted Landsmark, and Prof. Kimberly Lucas attended a gathering honoring the 2026 Moakley Scholars. Named after the late Massachusetts Congressman Joe Moakley, the program awards scholarships to full-time City of Boston employees pursuing master's degrees at Northeastern, creating a pathway where public servants do not need have to choose between their careers and their education. This year's group of 15 recipients included: Policy School MPP students Daniel Bryan '27 and Erin Kiley '27; MPA students Abigail Cross '26 and Meaghan Towle '26; MS Urban Planning & Policy students Liam Rimas '27, Lily Hibbard '27, and Sam Klugherz '26; and MS Environmental Science & Policy student Nick Long '26.
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From UNICEF to Guangzhou: Policy School Students Win Inaugural CSSH Awards for Academic and Global Impact
Congratulations to the two Policy School students who were among the winners of the inaugural CSSH Outstanding Graduate Student Awards.
MPP (Arlington) student Haimanot Tarekegne'26 has demonstrated outstanding academic performance, strong campus leadership through her role as a Program Assistant for the CSSH programs on the Arlington campus, and global service impact through a co-op at UNICEF.
PhD student Yimeng Yang has published six sole-authored journal articles in leading peer review journals. He recently completed five months of dissertation field research in Guangzhou, China, examining the impacts of the governance of municipal solid waste for relations between state and society.
| | | photo credit: Alyssa Stone / Northeastern University | | |
Power, Policy, and the Planet: Dr. Alaina Kinol Wins Northeastern's Outstanding PhD Award for Her Research on Fossil Fuel Regulation and Climate Justice
Dr. Alaina Kinol was a recipient of Northeastern’s 2026 Outstanding PhD Student Award in Research. Winners of this award have shown an exceptional ability to conduct high-level research and make contributions to the scholarly literature in their fields. Dr. Kinol successfully defended her PhD in Public Policy in March 2026. She is interested in how policies can contribute to climate justice and overcome climate obstruction, and her dissertation considers the negotiation of power in fossil fuel infrastructure regulation and construction.
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Funding the Questions That Matter: PhD Student Casey Gilbert Selected for NSF Research Traineeship
Congratulations to PhD student Casey Gilbert on being selected for a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Fellowship. She will be joining the Platform for Exchange and Allocation of Resources (PEAR) NRT program at Northeastern. As an NRT Fellow, Casey will be conducting cutting-edge research on some of today's most pressing challenges: fair access to goods and services, ethical technology design, the future of work, and sustainable consumption.
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Decolonizing the Energy Transition: PhD Student Carmella Uwineza Wins Fellowship for Research on Climate Justice in Africa
Carmella Uwineza has been selected as a 2026–2027 Humanities Center Global Fellow. Over the next academic year, she will advance her dissertation, which examines energy transitions in Kenya and Senegal through climate justice and anti-colonial frameworks. As a Global Fellow, Carmella will collaborate with scholars across
Northeastern's Boston, London, and Oakland campuses through workshops and public presentations, and will share her findings with the broader university community.
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From Design to Impact: Matthew Graves Wins National Student Employment Week Tech Award
Congratulations to Policy School Student Experience and Communications Assistant Matthew Graves, winner of the Technology and Innovation Student Employee Award during National Student Employment Week. Matthew was nominated by Associate Director of Student Experience and Graduate Co-op Success Michele Rosenthal in recognition of his outstanding creative contributions over the past year, from design and technology work that elevated key communications projects to his impact across a range of Policy School programs.
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The Art of the Climate Pivot: PhD Student Exposes How Fossil Fuel Giants Use "Doublespeak" to Greenwash the Energy Transition
Northeastern researchers PhD student Dipa Desai and PhD alumna Yutong Si have uncovered a subtle but calculated shift in how major fossil fuel companies talk about clean energy. Rather than denying climate change outright, many companies have adopted a new playbook: consistently pairing mentions of renewables with natural gas, framing fossil fuels as a necessary partner in the energy transition rather than something to move beyond. Dipa and colleagues have named the strategy "doublespeak," a façade of clean energy commitment that obscures the companies' true intentions.
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Good Trouble, Great Research: Policy School Prizes at Massachusetts History Day Go to Student Documentaries
The Policy School awarded two special prizes at the Massachusetts History Day State Contest, where 427 students competed this year. Lydia Deng and Maria Deng of Lexington High School took home the Kitty Dukakis Award for Outstanding Project in Public Policy Advancing Hope and Inclusion for their documentary on Anna May Wong and the fight for Asian American representation in Hollywood. Anne Kourtz and Hannah Beaser of Needham High School won the Prof. Ted Landsmark "Good Trouble" Award for Outstanding Project in Civil Rights History for their documentary on the Soweto Uprising and how students reclaimed education through political action. The Policy School is proud to sponsor both awards in collaboration with the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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BARI Conference 2026: Greater Boston’s 10th Annual Insight-to-Impact Summit
Friday, May 8th | 8:30 AM-4:45 PM ET | Curry Student Center
Join the Boston Area Research Initiative BARI for this FREE unique forum for community leaders, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers to share how they advance data-driven research and policy in Greater Boston—and how we could do even more through collective action. The day will include a thought-provoking keynote and dynamic panels on topics ranging from public health to procurement and mobility to housing policy solutions. Coffee, lunch, and a post-conference reception are included.
Register here
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Now You Know: Honoring the Life and Legacy of Kitty Dukakis
Thursday, May 14th | 12:00 PM-6:00 PM | Cabral Center, John D. O’Bryant African American Institute
Sponsored by the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, this symposium will celebrate women’s leadership in public service as exemplified by the life and legacy of Kitty Dukakis. Bringing together policymakers, practitioners, community members and researchers, we will collectively explore how to make meaningful progress across four policy areas championed by the former Massachusetts First Lady: housing insecurity, mental health, environmental preservation, and support for the arts. The goal is to form new coalitions across the public, private, non-profit, and academic sectors that will actively work together to move the needle in each area and fulfill the collective vision of Kitty and Michael Dukakis to build a thriving community that serves the most vulnerable residents of the Commonwealth.
Register here
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Communicating for a Better World: Strengthening the United Nations & Advancing Solutions to Global Issues Through Effective Communication
October 21st-23rd | New York City
The Policy School is collaborating with the organizers of the Communicating for a Better World conference. The two-day event will bring together communication experts from academia, civil society, business, the diplomatic community, and the United Nations to explore how communication can strengthen the United Nations, advance solutions to global issues & create a better world for all. They invite scholars and practitioners at the intersection of communication and international relations to submit their research, communication proposals, or posters/videos no later than May 31st.
Submit a proposal (deadline: May 31)
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NAPPS weekly meeting
every Friday | NAPPS Weekly Meeting | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams
If you’ve ever wanted to step up, speak out, and shape the world around you, then NAPPS (Northeastern Association for Public Policy Students) is the place to be. Whether you’re eager to test your skills in leadership roles, brainstorm innovative policy solutions, or engage with the larger policy community, NAPPS offers the perfect platform. It’s a space where you don’t just learn—you lead, experiment, and grow.
| | | | Making a Difference from the Local to the Global | | | | | |
