This internship contributed to my professional goals in several ways.
Firstly, it helped me deepen sectoral understanding of my policy area of interest i.e., gender and provided an ideal opportunity to expand my expertise to a new context i.e, Africa.
Secondly, it enabled me to hone and refine my data and evaluation skills. I had working knowledge of Stata and learnt R and other data visualization tools like Flourish and Datawrapper at HKS. I applied these skills to address real-world gender policy issues through this internship.
Thirdly, having predominantly worked on field-based research with J-PAL and EPoD before HKS, I have mostly been on the user-end of similar tools and techniques as those mentioned above. Thus, it was a unique experience to be exposed to the world of desk research and tool creation through this internship.
Lastly, being based in the World Bank headquarters in DC helped build networks within the Bank that I can now leverage in the long-term post-graduation in 2023.
In sum, the internship provided me with an excellent opportunity to work on gender policy using data analysis - both domains that continue to remain my focus at the Kennedy school. Accordingly, I look forward to exploring these areas and building on my summer learnings further, through my courses and research pursuits in the second year of the MPP program.
The Africa Gender Innovation Lab office (corridor area) at The World Bank headquarters in Washington D.C.