Hello! I'm Hanna
Thank you for visiting my website. I am a student at the University of Washington finishing a degree in Community, Environment, and Planning where I focused in transportation planning, public policy, and food systems. I am currently interning with King County Metro on their service planning team. I graduate from the program in June of 2019, and I will be beginning a job as a transit planner for Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc. in Bellevue, Washington in July. Beginning in September 2019, I will staying at UW to attend the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, where I hope to learn more about the politics of food and how we can most effectively bring cost-comparable, healthy, and equitable plant-based food products to our communities. When I'm not studying, you can find me eating at a cool Seattle vegan restaurant (ask me for recommendations!), talking about pigs, or hanging out with my three dogs, Sophie Titan and Ozzy.
Hanna Peterson
Aspiring Urbanist and Animal Advocate
CEP Alumna
Incoming MPA Student
University of Washington, Seattle
Phone:
(425) 530-6194
Email:
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EXPERIENCE
June 2018-Present
Planning and Policy Intern
King County Metro: Service Planning Team
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Collaborated with market experts, translators, and community members to create English-to-Spanish glossary of 70 transit terms to promote civic involvement of historically marginalized populations, in addition to facilitating easier transit use for Spanish-speaking community members.
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Analysis of data from hundreds of surveys regarding fare enforcement practices, ultimately contributing to recent reforms to address criminalization of evasion and elimination of punitive punishment.
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Created a RapidRide Stop Spacing project through Excel that allowed users to toggle dwell time and pedestrian walking speed, using average passenger trip distances for each route to determine optimal spacing between stops on RapidRide routes.
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Analyzed nearly 1700 trips taken by stand-by buses funded by the City of Seattle during the Alaskan Way Viaduct closure. Presented summarized data describing most popular routes that needed additional supplementation, using number of trips and ridership as metrics and distinguishing between weekday and weekend data points
July 2016-Present
Volunteer
Vegan Haven and Pig's Peace Sanctuary
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I play an active role in the Seattle vegan community by volunteering weekly at Vegan Haven, where all proceeds go to Pig's Peace Sanctuary in Stanwood, Washington. I work independently, publicize quarterly bake sales, and answer questions about unique products to new customers. I also help run the Facebook page, sharing news about our organization to over 13,000 followers.
September 2017-December 2017
Intern
Transportation Choices Coalition
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Created research projects on Seattle’s public transit agencies and the city’s transportation infrastructure
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Performed organization system development
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Supported project advancement through community outreach and research
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Gained deeper understanding of policy analysis and policy development process.
EDUCATION
2019-2021
Master's Degree
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Evans School of Public Policy and Governance
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Hoping to focus in policy analysis and non-profit management.
2015-2019
Bachelor's Degree
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
College of the Built Environments
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Bachelor of Arts in Community, Environment, and Planning, focusing on transportation planning, food systems, and public policy.
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Member of Outreach and Admissions Committee: Developing skills in public speaking, professional leadership, interview facilitation, delivering presentations, and researching best practices for inclusive and equitable interview processes.
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Officer of Community, Environment, and Planning Registered Student Organization
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Teacher's Assistant for CEP 200, Program's Introductory Course
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GPA: 3.64
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Dean's List Scholar
ACADEMICS
Community, Environment, and Planning
"Community, Environment, and Planning is a self-directed, diverse undergraduate major comprised of students, faculty, and staff engaged in holistic growth and a collaborative process of experiential and interdisciplinary learning. In our major, we develop skills, techniques, and knowledge necessary to be active leaders and conscientious planners in our communities and environments."
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Individualized Study Plan
In our undergraduate program, students have one core class each quarter, and the rest of our schedules are allowed to be taken from anywhere in the university, varying from student-to-student depending on their interests. Aligning with our values of intentionality in our educational experience, we write up individualized study plans that outline courses we have taken, internships we have completed, and other components of our academic experience.
Junior Year
Senior Year
FALL 2017
CEP 400: Governance
Description: Emphasizes personal and collective leadership, democratic decision making, and learning through direct action and reflection. Explores and develops students' personal skills as doers and leaders, while also learning how to form and function as effective groups.
Application: I joined Outreach and Admissions committee, where we worked to increase the number of applications to a whopping 100. During this quarter, we put on a successful open house, tabled events, visited community colleges and classrooms around the university, and placed signs around campus that encouraged prospective students to apply to the major.
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CEP 301: The Idea of Community
Description: Theories of community and communal rights and responsibilities. Experience building a learning community within major. Explores struggles for community in every sector of life.
Application: This course has helped me reflect historically on how groups of people have decided they should be governed, much in the same way this program is intentional in our form of self-rule and governance. I learned a lot about communism and anarchy, and this was the first philosophy class in which those concepts were explained and explored fully for me. This class gave me an even more intense appreciation for philosophy.
LSJ 317: The Politics of Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.
Description: Introduction to the history and development of racial hierarchy, focusing on how race and ethnicity shape political institutions (e.g., the Constitution, political parties, voting systems). Examination of political relationships between Whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. Case studies of minority representation and the politics of welfare, crime, immigration, and terrorism.
Application: In this course, I learned many valuable historical aspects about how race is socially constructed and how many political issues are racialized. I’ve learned about power dynamics within politics in the United States, and how stakeholders are motivated to perpetuate harmful stereotypes in order to keep their positions of power and institutionally racist structures in place. This was an especially important class to take in this political climate.
CEP 300: Retreat
Description: Focuses on planning analysis assessment and development of the major. Opportunities for community building and all-major policy deliberation and decisions. Workshops for skill building in consensus, facilitation, and for major-specific activities such as developing individual study plans and study abroad experiences
Application: I built stronger bonds within the community of the major through participating in activities that reflect on our intentional learning. This was the first time that we as a cohort got to spend time together: we played games to get to know each other, and got to bond with the seniors as well. We also got an inspirational talk that pushed us to think about why we were here at the University of Washington and in a program as unique as CEP. There was a lot of valuable self-reflection.
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CEP 499: Independent Research: Social Justice Practicum
For my internship this quarter, I was with Transportation Choices Coalition. During my time here, I played a role in doing community outreach to conduct a survey for modes of transportation for employees and business owners for businesses and organizations in the University District. I also did personal research about Seattle Transit Agencies such as Puget Sound Regional Council, King County Metro, Seattle Department of Transportation, and Sound Transit.
Winter 2018:
CEP 400: Governance
Description: Emphasizes personal and collective leadership, democratic decision making, and learning through direct action and reflection. Explores and develops students' personal skills as doers and leaders, while also learning how to form and function as effective groups.
Application: During this time, we put on another open house, table events when possible, visited community colleges, and participated in various methods of “spreading the word” about CEP. The largest part of Winter quarter was leading interviews, and this gave me skills in professional development that helped me walk into my own interviews more confidently. When you have sat on the other side of an interview table, sitting on the other side becomes (ever-so-slightly) less intimidating.
CEP 302: Environmental Response
Description: Explores issues of environmental crisis and societal responses. Readings and reflective analysis from broad selection of authoritative sources to develop grounded perspective in ecological literacy and consciousness. Concurrently, experiential education in challenges and practical responses to building sustainable society through participation in community-based environmental effort.
Application: Our environmental planning course helped me to understand environmental health and environmental justice issues that have occurred through a history of unfair policies. We also learned about NEPA and environmental impact statements (EIS), which put these issues into a planning context.
LSJ 376: Drugs and Society
Description: Explores the questions of drug use and abuse, social and political factors that shape response to their use, and the social conditions under which drug use is likely to have adverse consequences. Also covers U.S. drug control policy, the political economy of legal and illegal drugs, and political aspects of drug use.
Application: In the course I took in Fall 2017 about race and ethnicity in U.S. politics, my professor brought major injustices to my attention regarding unfair policing and incarceration of people of color, especially in the realm of disparity in sentencing for drug-related behavior. I have always been interested in the criminal justice system and in rehabilitation. This class showed me how many of our policies surrounding drugs has been shaped by gender, class, and race: this has given me an entirely new lens through which I can examine planning practices.
PUBPOL 403: Professional Leadership
Description: Cultivates practical skills required to lead within various organizational contexts: managerial strategies for public, nonprofit, and business organizations are developed through case studies and guest speakers. Focuses on analytical and ethical approaches to problem solving and the communication skills needed for effective leadership in any career.
Application: One aspect of CEP that really interested me was the impact I could see it had on all students’ leadership styles, especially with the comfort and confidence they had when facilitating a lecture or giving a presentation in a class. These skills take a lot of conscious effort and hard work to develop, and this course with Dorothy Bullitt helped me to understand the many facets of professional leadership. I learned how to better negotiate, how to work better on a team, and how to assess the boundaries of my authority.
SPRING 2018:
CEP 400: Governance
Description: Emphasizes personal and collective leadership, democratic decision making, and learning through direct action and reflection. Explores and develops students' personal skills as doers and leaders, while also learning how to form and function as effective groups.
Application: During spring quarter, the outreach and admissions committee continued to spread the word about rolling admissions. We also connected with other committees and help them with their goals while also living up to the “outreach” half of our name.
CEP 303: Social Structures and Processes
Description: Investigates use of formal and informal social structures and processes within context of community and environment. Looks at patterns and institutions of social organization and relationships among different sectors. Issues of interrelatedness, citizenship, knowledge, and communication.
Application: In this class, we learned more about the power dynamics at play in our system and how those influence different decisions and policies we see in effect day-to-day. We studied both the Central District and International Chinatown District, two neighborhoods in Seattle. And looked into their histories and their current struggles with gentrification. We did community outreach and spoke to members of the public who were experiencing homeless, who lived in homes for the elderly community, and who worked in neighborhood preservation authorities. It was eye-opening to see how difficult it was to strike the balance between preserving the character of the neighborhoods, accounting for population growth of predominantly white and wealthy populations, and for keeping vulnerable populations safely housed.
RE 370: Real Estate Data Modeling
Description: Data issues in real estate differ considerably from other assets. This course will cover a variety of different issues that arise when analyzing and modeling land, residential, and commercial real estate markets. The course will teach students how to collect, clean, use, manage, and model a variety of data setsto make real world decisions. Suitability and exploratory data analyses will be covered in the course.
Application: In this class, I was introduced to geographic information systems and created my own “suitability map” to find the optimal location for a safe consumption site in the city of Seattle. In this project, I combined the knowledge i had from my previous planning and LSJ courses and applied this to a new skill. I identified two neighborhoods, SODO and U-District, as ones that would be most appropriate for a safe consumption site. I looked into this issue later on, and several articles showed that these were two neighborhoods that were being realistically considered for safe consumption site location if Seattle decided to implement this solution. Knowing that I got the same results as professional planners made me very confident.
URBDP 498: Special Topics
Description: This practicum brings together multiple planning elements within the context of a real-world problem. Based upon your group project, you will explore data analysis, planning and design at the city, neighborhood, and site scale. These activities will be done as group exercises.
Application: This course was the first actual planning class I took, and it really taught me how the ambiguity of a project is run-of-the-mill in the real world workforce. I applied my GIS skills in this course, and I was also able to learn a little bit of Illustrator. It was my first time working in a studio class with a client, and both of these factors prepared me to get the internship I have now.
FALL 2018
CEP 400: Governance
Description: Emphasizes personal and collective leadership, democratic decision making, and learning through direct action and reflection. Explores and develops students' personal skills as doers and leaders, while also learning how to form and function as effective groups.
Application: I am in the Outreach and Admissions committee, where worked again to increase the number of applications to 100. During this time, we put on an open house, tabled events, visited community colleges, and placed signs on campus. This quarter, we split up into several different sub-committees, and I am “pointed” one about interview training throughout the major.
CEP 300: Retreat
Description: Focuses on planning analysis assessment and development of the major. Opportunities for community building and all-major policy deliberation and decisions. Workshops for skill building in consensus, facilitation, and for major-specific activities such as developing individual study plans and study abroad experiences
Application: I built stronger bonds within the community of the major through participating in activities that reflect on our intentional learning. During this quarter, I got to become closer with some of my fellow seniors while also getting to know the incoming juniors. We tried to revive the CEPal activities, but they again did not take off quite as successfully as we would have liked throughout the year. It was still nice to connect with juniors over issues we mutually cared about. We also made some great quantifiable goals for O&A committee.
CEP 460: Planning in Context
Description: Planning in Context is a real-world, project-based class for CEP seniors. During this class students will develop increased understanding and competencies regarding team and project management, writing and working from a scope of work, developing professional planning products (written and oral), and working with a client. Students will increase their understanding of the depth and range of urban planning work primarily through the experience of a working on a specific team project.
Application: For this class, we worked with the City of Bellevue in their Livable City Year projects. The project we specifically worked on has to do with energy literacy, and we recommended best practices for businesses within Bellevue to use less energy through an energy benchmarking system. Research from case studies, field visits, and other methods were used to identify best practices for this specific community.
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CEP 490: Senior Project Prep Seminar
Description: This course focuses on developing your CEP Senior Project Proposal. It is designed to help you build a credible and creative project grounded in sound research, design, methodology, and evaluation. Through presentations, discussions, and exercises, we will explore approaches in applied research; project design and strategy; and project management best practices. By the end of the course, you will have completed a comprehensive proposal for your senior project.
Application: My senior project on finding the best practices to replace chicken processing facilities with plant-based meat facilities. I focused on the economic role it plays in small-town American economies: to stand any chance of replacing the chicken industry, the vegan meat industry must compete on every level, including placement and production. This class was incredibly helpful for keeping me on track to finish my research and project.
R E 597: Advanced Spatial Statistics
Description: This course will cover spatial analysis of real estate and housing markets. The course will teach students methods in quantitative analysis of spatial data. These methods will be applied to a variety of housing and real estate data sets to inform business decisions and policy making. Exploratory data analysis, spatial interpolation, and spatial regression will be covered in the course.
Application: In this course, I honed in on what it means to go from “big data” and technical information down to specific policy recommendations. I attempted to use this course to add a GIS element to my senior project so it could inform the economic role of chicken production facilities in small-town communities. However, my research question was not fully formulated by this time so it was difficult to tie into my senior project. I did learn that chicken slaughterhouses are very concentrated in certain areas of the state of Georgia, so that the replacement of these slaughterhouses would disproportionately affect some areas of the state while others would be less affected.
PUB POL 355: Special Topics in Non-Profits
Description: This course examines how individuals and organizations—including nonprofits, social enterprises, and foundations--can most effectively produce positive social change. By looking at the key issues facing social sector organizations, we will investigate the operational, managerial, and policy approaches that social sector leaders can take to advance their mission and increase their impact. We will explore how individual, organizational, and societal levels of analysis offer different ways to solve pressing social issues, as well as when and how it is appropriate to integrate innovation into decision-making.
Application: This class has helped to affirm my decision that I want to continue to the Evans school. I learned about the history of the nonprofit sector, different ways that nonprofits receive funds, and how positive social change can be created through this sector. We worked on quarter-long project that discusses sex trafficking and identified gaps in the approaches currently taken by real world nonprofits.
WINTER 2019:
CEP 400: Governance
Description: Emphasizes personal and collective leadership, democratic decision making, and learning through direct action and reflection. Explores and develops students' personal skills as doers and leaders, while also learning how to form and function as effective groups.
Application: Winter quarter was spent doing many interviews! I worked on my skills as an interviewer: my goals were to make the applicant comfortable while also sharpening my own professional development skills. I challenged myself by identifying one specific area that I need to work on (being more straight-faced during the interview, for example!) so that I could really focus on one piece of self-improvement.
CEP 461: Ethics and Identity
Description: Examination of personal, societal, vocational, environmental, planning ethics. Readings and discourse on ethical foundations for public life. Individual and group readings on values, human potential. Develops understanding of ecological context, moral responsibility, self-awareness. Constructs positive, diverse view of humanity, environment regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, beliefs.
Application: This was one of my favorite core classes of CEP. I love applying others’ critical thoughts on ethics to my own life: every philosophy class I have taken has shaped me profoundly. My favorite readings were the feminist philosophers that we read in the last few weeks of the quarter: reading about the ethics of care made my compassion-driven ethics feel validated. I was thrilled to have read from women writers.
CEP 491: Senior Project Prep Seminar:
Description: Focuses on implementing the senior project/capstone, including revisions and updates as seen fit.
Application: During this class, I wrote and researched the bulk of my senior project. I spoke with my mentor, Christie Lagally, several times, while also researching into USDA data and interviewing subject matter experts.
PHIL 415: Advanced Ethics in Animal Welfare
Description: Critical examination of issues in the philosophy of animal welfare and animal rights.
Application: I have been vegan for five years, and this class was a very important part of my development as an animal lover and an animal rights activist. I already considered myself well-versed in the world of animal rights and the controversial issues surrounding it, but Dr. Emmerman described entirely new facets of these issues that I had never considered before. The concepts of zooed animals, animal captivity, companion animals, and sociocultural issues surrounding animal rights and indigenous groups had only briefly crossed my mind before this class, but now they are very important to me.
RE 564: Affordable Housing
Description: This course is an introduction to the field of affordable housing and engages students from various disciplines. It guides students through the affordable housing development process and the policy issues that must be addressed to successfully plan, finance, design, construct, and manage affordable housing in the United States. The role of federal, state, local, non-profit and private sector agencies and participants will be examined.
Application: This course helped me gain a deeper understanding into the complex world of affordable housing. Many big cities across the country are experiencing problems with affordable housing and out-of-control rents, and the stakeholders, legislation, and challenges are nearly beyond comprehension. We learned about policies at the federal, state, and local levels, which was especially important in the case of Washington and Seattle, because our situation is unique to most other places in the country.
SPRING 2019
CEP 400: Governance
Description: Emphasizes personal and collective leadership, democratic decision making, and learning through direct action and reflection. Explores and develops students' personal skills as doers and leaders, while also learning how to form and function as effective groups.
Application: During my last governance, I joined ARC where I helped to put together the newsletter and spoke about how ARC may change to meet next year’s needs. We also set up infrastructure for juniors to take the reigns next quarter.
CEP 300: Retreat
Description: Focuses on planning analysis assessment and development of the major. Opportunities for community building and all-major policy deliberation and decisions. Workshops for skill building in consensus, facilitation, and for major-specific activities such as developing individual study plans and study abroad experiences
Application: This retreat was bittersweet as a senior: while I am so sad to have so little time left in my undergraduate experience in this major, seeing the juniors step up and facilitate most of the conversations was a punch-in-the-gut that let us seniors know we were taking more of a back seat role as we would be leaving in less than a month.
CEP 462: Community and Environment
Description: Capstone quarter merges core seminars, disciplinary courses in major, community field experiences for mastery of personal knowledge and skills. Reflection and synthesis of themes in major; engagement with contemporary issues. Compares theoretical definitions of community and environment with individual philosophies and knowledge within thoughtful, applied context.
Application: This class has helped me enter the real world, carrying the same values of individualism, bravery, pioneerism, and reflection that CEP has brought to my life.
CEP 446: Internship Class
Description: Connects core and individual courses with field work. Group and individual readings develop understanding of how students' internships and field placements constitute particular element of community and environmental planning. Explores how what we do for a living is part of our lives as citizens and public service.
Application: My internship this year is with King County Metro as a policy and planning intern, first on the strategy and performance team and now in service planning. In this class, I explored how transportation planning and policy-making is an act of public service. I have been working on projects in data analysis, equity, fares policy, and other facets of the sector that have helped me grow academically and professionally, and this class helped me figure out how to best communicate what I have accomplished during my internship in a way that helped me get a job!
Senior Thesis
Plants over Poultry: Replacing Chicken with Plant-Based Alternatives
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Researching potential socioeconomic impacts of growing plant-based markets. Methods include conducting interviews with subject matter experts in poultry economics and food system transformation, using USDA data and Geographic Information Systems to understand the relationship between poultry farming and socioeconomic conditions of the surrounding communities, and analyzing the current political and legislative landscapes of plant-based protein sources and cell-grown meat. I presented this project at our program's senior project night and at the Mary Gates undergraduate research symposium, for which the poster is on the left below. My final write-up for CEP is linked here and my final report is linked here.
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Artifacts
The following pieces represent the work that I have done over the course of my undergraduate education. These projects have been especially formative in my personal, educational, and moral development.
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Adopt, Don’t Shop: The Moral Case Against Companion Animal Breeding Practices
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In Winter of 2019, I took Philosophy 415: Advanced Ethics in Animal Welfare with Dr. Karen Emmerman. I have been vegan for five years and am very passionate about animal rights. For our final paper, we proposed a thesis statement that would build upon the lessons we learned throughout the class, and I chose to tackle the issue of companion animal breeding. There are nearly six million companion animals living in shelters in the nation, and many of them live for years without being adopted. Everyone deserves a place to call home, and there is no reason to bring more animals in the world when there are already so many who are suffering and unwanted. Additionally, breeding companion animals simply because they possess certain features or desirable characteristics means that they are being valued instrumentally rather than intrinsically, when all nonhuman animals have intrinsic value just as we humans do. This type of value assignment is also true for the female dogs and cats who are forcibly impregnated: breeding is fundamentally exploitation of animals' reproductive systems, which is categorically wrong no matter the species. In this paper, I attempt to make a case against breeding for these reasons. Please choose to adopt, not shop.
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Suitability Map: Safe Consumption Sites in the City of Seattle
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In Spring of 2018, I took Real Estate 370, which was a data modeling course. My project involved using Geographic Information Systems to identify a suitable location for a safe consumption site within Seattle city limits. This was an important project for me, because many people in our city are currently experiencing a crisis with homelessness and while much of that is driven by out-of-control costs of living, many people are also struggling with substance dependency. The opiate crisis in Seattle and the nation overall is costing thousands of lives a year and has become a public health emergency. In addition to urban planning, I am interested in social work, and think that it is important to approach the issues of addiction and houselessness with compassion and understanding rather than judgment. Cities around the globe have implemented safe consumption sites in neighborhoods with high rates of drug use, and Seattle is considering doing the same. In my GIS analysis, I used six layers to determine the best location for one of these sites: the daytime population (to assess workplace locations rather than residential), the percentage of the population who is not covered by health insurance, poverty rates, self-reported poor mental health, transportation networks, and the coordinate locations of drug overdoses from the Seattle Police Department. From this analysis, I concluded that there were two suitable census tracks in the city of Seattle, one in SODO and one in the U-District. In my continued research for this topic, I found that these were two sites that were realistically being considered if Seattle were to have a safe consumption site, so I did something right! I presented these slides at the 2018 GIS Symposium at the University of Washington.
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Sex Trafficking Policy Proposal
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In Fall 2018, I took Public Policy 355: Special Topics in Nonprofit Management. Our quarter-long assignment was to research an issue to which many nonprofits were devoted and identify a gap in their approaches to solving the issue. My group and I researched sex trafficking in the United States. I first learned that sex trafficking is much more pervasive than I realized: every major city in the country has an issue with sex trafficking, and Seattle is no exception. Most nonprofits help the victims, usually children or women, leave the industry by providing them services to build career skills and financial literacy. We also spoke to director of Seattle Against Slavery, a local nonprofit that gears some of their preventative services to young men who may be susceptible to entering the industry as a pimp. The gap we identified was the fact that for these services that appeal to young men, the nonprofit organizations reach out to private schools, and these are often the only audiences who see these presentations. The young men who are most susceptible are not likely to be enrolled in public schools: people who become involved in this industry typically have experienced an upbringing being surrounded by illicit substances, abuse, family dysfunction, or other indicators of risk. We proposed a nonprofit that would be integrated in community centers and low-income public schools that would teach young men and boys the signs of trafficking, why it is wrong, and how they can avoid becoming part of the industry.
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REFLECTIONS
Internship with King County Metro
From July 2018 through senior year, I was a policy and planning intern with King County Metro as a member of their Service Planning team. I began the internship on a team called Strategy and Performance, but Metro reorganized as a result of becoming its own department within the whole county government rather than a division of the Department of Transportation.
During this internship with King County Metro, I have witnessed that policy has to be a trustworthy contract that best reflects and responds to our communities. One of my favorite projects throughout my time was following an audit showing that current fare enforcement procedures were disproportionately impacting people who are homeless. In response, Metro distributed surveys instead of fines to those found evading their fare so we could find out why. I helped to analyze and categorize data from the surveys: we found that even the reduced-price option was still too expensive for some riders, most of the people receiving fines were experiencing residential instability, and many people with repeated citations were people of color. The resulting policy change will include an income-based multi-tiered fare payment system so that the benefits of transportation will be more accessible to all regardless of socioeconomic status. In addition, people will no longer experience punitive punishment as a result of their inability to pay, helping to advance equity by eliminating entrance into the criminal justice system and addressing barriers to stable housing. I feel proud to be a part of this achievement, and it has deepened my conviction for a career in policy.
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Work Samples:
RapidRide Optimal Stop Spacing.
Toggle dwell time and pedestrian walking speed, using average passenger trip distances for each route to determine optimal spacing between stops on RapidRide routes. This project will be applicable to my new position, as they are a consulting firm that collaborates with Metro on implementing new RapidRide lines. The organizations intend on adding nearly twenty new RapidRide lines in the coming decades.
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Alaskan Way Viaduct Closure Data
The Alaskan Way Viaduct, a section of a major highway that helped to provide mobility daily to thousands of people in the Puget Sound region, closed permanently on January 11 2019. An underground replacement was in the works but would not be available until February 4th. To compensate for this missing infrastructure, the City of Seattle paid Metro to keep buses on standby to provide service to those who would have regularly used routes that traveled along the Alaskan Way Viaduct. For every one of these standby shifts, the operator would fill out a form that detailed which route they drove, what time of what day the trip began, how many people were on the trip, and which base they were coming from. I put in nearly 1700 surveys into a database and created a summary of the data to present to the City of Seattle.
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