Week 1

Hey! I am Sebastian, a rising senior at Wake, and will be interning at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC over the summer. More specifically, I’ll be interning with Elaine Weiss, who heads the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education (BBA), and Monique Morrisey, an economist at EPI who focuses on retirement security as well as labor and financial markets.

I’ll be working on pretty different projects for both of them, allowing me to catch a glimpse of a lot of different strategies, research, and policy promulgation covering specific topics. I’m hoping to apply many of the things I’ve learned as an Economics and Sociology double major while learning plenty of new, perhaps more specific, things. I’ll be interested to see how a think tank operates on a day-to-day basis as well as becoming familiar with the way policy and research are generally conducted in DC.

This summer represents a great opportunity to more fully understand the work at policy oriented non-profits and network with some great people. I hope that by the end of the summer I’ll have a better understand of how a think tank works, and if I would like to do such work in the future. Additionally, I hope to have expanded my network. In the process, I should become better at doing research, synthesizing material, and gain a much deeper understanding of many of the topics I will be working on.

I’m greatly looking forward to my first day at work and a fun summer!