Alumni

As a practice-oriented program, Emory MDP intentionally emphasizes job-readiness and provides career development support during the two years of the program and after graduation. The Laney Graduate School also provides a wealth of professional development services and resourcess.

MDP students and graduates benefit from a free DEVEX Career Account that provides job search resources. There are also many free portals to job ads in the global development and humanitarian sector, see for example this meta-list curated by the Peace & Collaborative Development Network.

Since its inception in 2010, Emory MDP has graduated nearly 200 alumni, 95% of whom are currently employed, mostly in development-related fields. The rest are enrolled in specialized or advanced degree programs or have temporarily opted out of the workforce for personal reasons. This network is an invaluable resource to current MDP students, providing mentorship, internship opportunities, networking contacts, job leads, and enduring friendship.

This chart depicts the distribution by employer type for a representative sample of MDP alumni.

Below are some examples of entry-level positions which recent Emory MDP graduates have moved into:

Evaluation Specialist, CDC Foundation
Public Health Analyst, Health Resources and Services Administration
Research Associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Program Associate, Initiative for a Competitive Inner City
Information Officer, Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, USAID
Senior Researcher, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project
Technical Advisor, Trachoma Control, The Carter Center, South Sudan
Knowledge, Learning and Communications Advisor, Save the Children USA
Value Chain Sustainability Manager, Dell Technologies
Data Visualization Analyst, DevTech Systems

Congratulations to MDP alumni Joanna Galaris and Taylor Spicer for being featured by Forty Under 40, an Emory initiative that recognizes alumni who distinguish themselves for impactful leadership across a range of fields.

Lyndsey Czapansky Senior Specialist in Housing Finance Systems, Habitat for Humanity, Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter At the Terwilliger Center, Lyndsey works with the Financial Inclusion team, supporting financial and microfinance institutions that seek to assist low-income households in accessing quality, affordable, and sustainable housing. Her team also works on green housing finance products, including sustainable construction materials and financing for climate resilient shelter. More broadly, Lyndsey is responsible for partner engagement, project execution, and impact measurement and learning. This role is exactly why I went to graduate school" says Lyndsey" to intervene on systems that fail poor individuals and communities, I was looking for an opportunity to dig into global development programming, from project inception to project impacts, and asking whether we are really doing what we said we would be doing.

Josh Griffin

Assistant Director,

Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity

University of Washington

Based in Seattle WA, Josh works for the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity (CCDE) at the University of Washington, a space where students, faculty, staff, and alumni gather to promote greater equity. Josh also works as a DEI consultant, for example, he worked with The Carter Center’s Human Rights Program to organize and facilitate roundtables centered on on how artists use their artforms to advocate for social justice, prompting a globally-focused human rights organization to broader their agenda and advocate for civil rights in the U.S. “Through the MDP program, I gained a deep insight into the root causes of the structural injustices and political oppression that disenfranchised communities face due to the legacies of racism and colonialism" remarks Josh "At the same time, the racial reckoning that followed George Floyd's murder challenged us to take those theoretical understandings to the streets and link them with the lived struggles of Black and Brown people in the US".

Bianca Patel Assistant Director, Precourt Institute for Energy Stanford University As Assistant Director at the Precourt Institute for Energy, Bianca develops and manages programs for student experiential learning and energy education. Her responsibilities also include strategic planning, community building, and monitoring and evaluation. Most of all, she loves helping students understand the intersections of energy, sustainability, and climate justice. “I came to the MDP program with STEM background and a strong interest in environmental and social change. This program exposed me to a different way of thinking that looks at global issues through an anthropological lens." states Bianca" "I had enriching experiences through my practicums and as a student delegate to COP25. The friendships I made are among my most valued takeaways: a sense of community that is extremely important for this field of work.”

Ian Hamilton

Senior Advancement Officer

CDC Foundation

As Senior Advancement Officer for Public-Private Partnerships, Ian manages the federal subaward portfolio at the CDC Foundation, an independent nonprofit created by Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s work. Additionally, Ian contributes to multi-sector fundraising efforts for infectious, non-infectious diseases and global health projects. About the MDP program, Ian stresses that it "strengthened my ability to understand the interactions across scales and how to account for those by utilizing a human-centered design to develop solutioins. While in the program' I also honed my philanthropic skills at graduate assistantships with Emory College's Advancement and Alumni Association as well as The Carter Center's Office of Estate & Gift Planning, which I now utilize in my current position."

Marinangeles Gutiérrez Rivera

Senior Disaster Mitigation Specialist,

ICF International

Marinangeles serves with the Disaster Management division of the global consulting firm ICF International. As a Specialist, she assists state and local governments in navigating the federal funding landscape to get the relief they need throughout the disaster lifecycle. She also helps develop state and local action plans, analyzes impacts on critical services, coordinates community participation, and manages grants for programs related to green infrastructure, voluntary buyouts and acquisitions, resilience planning, and strengthening resilience of service agencies. About her experience at Emory, Marinangeles says '“The MDP Program deepened my understanding of various theories and approaches for the development sector. Even more importantly, it grounded those learnings by providing me wiith invaluable hands-on practice across organizations. These experiences ultimately helped define my professional trajectory in disaster recovery and mitigation, with the hope of responding to and reducing global displacement.”

Katie Pons

Knowledge, Learning, and Communications Advisor,

Save the Children

Katie is based in Washington, D.C. and works for Save the Children as a Knowledge, Learning, and Communications Advisor. In her role, she supports several USAID/BHA-funded to promote food and nutrition security, particularly in evaluating impacts of humanitarian efforts. Katie is also engaged in a project aimed to removing barriers to gender and youth integration in development programming. More broadly, she leads the development of dissemination and socialization plans, produces technical deliverables, and facilitates peer-to-peer learning with practitioners around the world. "The MDP program helped me gain not only technical skills, but also equipped me with a critical lens to examine and challenge traditional development paradigms. In addition, the practice-oriented approach of the program offered me invaluable experiences to apply what I was learning in real-world settings."

Alumni

Lyndsey Czapansky

Josh Griffin

Bianca Patel

Ian Hamilton

Marinangeles Gutiérrez Rivera

Katie Pons

Where They Work

Non-Governmental Organizations

Research Centers

Consulting/Contractors

United Nations

US Government

Universities

Emory University

Private Sector