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Week #3

Hey all!

I’ve had a fun last week, both at work and in DC.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a think-tank in DC that works on a huge variety of issues (from labor market policies and trade policy to early childhood ed policy), but has a focus on issues that are important to the middle and working classes.

Within EPI, I spent the majority of last week working for Elaine Weiss. She’s been around the ed policy game, specifically early childhood education, for a while and it shows. We’ve discussed a whole host of topics relating to my tasks over the past week, and it is fun and intellectually stimulating to learn from somebody who knows so much and is so passionate about these topics. I think that can be said more generally for the staff at EPI, people here are engaged, passionate, and very knowledgeable about their individual topics as well as other trends relating to similar progressive movements.

I’ve found my work in general to be interesting, but one of the things that stood out to me last week was attending an EPI staff meeting. While probably pretty routine for most staff, I thought it was interesting to see the dynamic between senior staff, researchers, and RA’s. The president of EPI, Larry Mishel, presided over the meeting and it was interesting to hear him talk of the structural processes within EPI, his vision for the future, and the development of relations to potential donors.

All in all, an interesting week.

Sebastian