Millennial Action Project, Washington, DC
As Congressional Policy Intern for the Millennial Action Project, I was tasked primarily with projects relating to the Millennial Action Project’s Congressional Future Caucus, a caucus consisting of Congress members who are 45 and under. In the first week of my internship, I helped film a video where two members of the Future Caucus, Representative Ro Khanna and Representative Mike Gallagher, talked about a bipartisan bill they had been working on together. Days later, I was tasked with creating a millennial congressional candidate tracker, where I researched the age of every congressional candidate and marked those who were under 45 as prospects for the Future Caucus. In a similar vein, I tracked legislation that Future Caucus members sponsored and co-sponsored, marking down particularly notable bipartisan successes relating to our issue areas to add to our website. I also was in charge of organizing our E Pluribus Unum Lunch in mid-July. I invited Legislative Directors, Correspondents, and Aids from Future Caucus members’ offices to the E Pluribus Unum Lunch so that they could talk across the aisle about legislation their offices are working on over free Chick Fil-A. The event was a success, with a bipartisan mix of approximately 20 attendees. This experience taught me about the minutiae which goes into event planning. As a capstone to my internship, I wrote a policy compendium chapter about sustainability and the environment. This chapter outlined where each party stands on environmental legislation, what the current political climate looks like, and areas in which there could be bipartisan cooperation.
In addition to tasks directly related to the Future Caucus, I was assigned a variety of other work. One such task was helping to organize the 2018 Future Summit. This involved reaching out to young state legislators, creating a 20-page welcome packet, and coordinating State Representative donations to our “swag bags.” An aspect which I loved about my internship was that my work was different every day.
I could not speak more highly of the Millennial Action Project and its staff. Their six full-time employees were extremely fun, motivated, and intelligent. My internship coordinator worked closely with me and we became very close during the course of the summer. I appreciated that she provided me with useful feedback about tasks, while staying relatively hands-off and making sure not to micromanage me. The president of MAP is incredibly passionate. He founded MAP while young and truly embodies MAP’s guiding principles. I believe that MAP is at a point where it can grow quickly and become a leading political organizer.
The Millennial Action Project’s mission is to promote bipartisan cooperation and collaboration among young legislators. I believe strongly in this mission. Currently, in the U.S., faith in democracy has plummeted, while permissiveness towards authoritarianism has surged. These trends are even worse among young citizens. It is of utter importance to the future of American Democracy that young people engage in politics and feel as though they have a political voice. I believe that there are two primary ways to achieve this: grassroots engagement and political reform. MAP works primarily for the latter. By engaging young state and congressional legislators in a bipartisan manner, MAP is simultaneously training young legislators to work across the aisle while showing young people that they are represented.
MAP has already seen many legislative successes in its short life, and is only picking up momentum. Established just five years ago, MAP has established 26 State Future Caucuses and engaged over 600 young state legislators. Such immediate effectiveness not only shows the effectiveness of MAP’s wonderful staff, but also the dire need and demand for such an organization.
This internship experience has reinforced my passion for both Political Science and youth political engagement. It has also instilled in me the importance of bipartisanship within the political process. Because of this, I hope to choose more courses with professors that offer a dissenting point of view to my largely progressive views, so that I am exposed to new perspectives. Further, I believe that this will teach me how to constructively debate, and compromise. I also want to tailor my mathematics major so that I learn more about applied mathematics. I believe that the thought process behind Pure Mathematics is extremely valuable, but I also want more concrete skills so that I can potentially pursue a career which combines politics and mathematics. I would also like to take more modern world history courses. I want a deeper understanding of the global political landscape we live in today, and how it was shaped.
Both my internship at MAP and living in DC have greatly helped me clarify my career interests. While in DC, I met with 10+ alums in political fields that I am interested in to learn more about them. These alums provided knowledgeable and balanced perspectives about their career, and political careers more generally. As of now, I would like to work on Capitol Hill next summer either for a Congress member who I am passionate about, or for a committee. After gaining Hill experience, I think that I would like to find a career which also uses my quantitative skills. I feel that I have come out of this internship with a deeper understanding of the different political career routes that exist, and which I am interested in exploring further. I was able to talk to the Founder of MAP in my final week about these professional takeaways and he provided me with an inspiring, yet balanced perspective. He talked about how important it is to take professional risks while I am still young, since young people can have a huge impact—after all, the founding fathers were in their 20s. In addition to the knowledge I have gained in DC, I have built an extremely supportive professional network around me which I am confident will help me in the future as I pursue a career.
Overall, this internship has had an immense impact on my professional aspirations and how I plan to go about my next two years at Williams. And, this experience was only possible because of the Alumni Sponsored Internship Program. Thank you to the ’68 Center for Career Exploration for organizing this program and to Dr. James Marver ’72, P14 for creating this opportunity for students of all socio-economic backgrounds to pursue unpaid internships. Your generosity has made this incredible summer possible for me.
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