Lucy McMillan (’22)

This summer I worked as a policy fellow at the Nexight Group, a small consulting firm in Silver Spring, MD that has both commercial and government clients. As a policy fellow, I developed a primer document on the American workforce development system that explains how federal funding is used at the state and local level to support employees and employers in the labor market. The primer is intended to be used by Nexight’s private and public sector clients to better understand workforce policy and the existing system’s structure. I also worked on an economic analysis of the digital divide in the U.S. and what household characteristics contribute to higher rates of broadband internet adoption and computer use in urban and rural counties.

It was interesting this summer to be able to use what I’ve learned about policy and econometrics at MIT to develop analyses of existing policies and issues for the Nexight Group. Both projects were also very relevant to the current labor crisis and the increasing disparities in who has access to internet in the United States during the current pandemic.