Amanda Schwartz, MS LPP ’11
Partnerships Manager, Partners in Health
Amanda was recently promoted to Partnerships Manager, working with partner organizations who can help Partners in Health to further their mission to break the cycle of poverty and disease. Partners In Health is a Boston-based non-profit organization dedicated to providing high-quality medical care and social justice to the destitute sick living in some of the world’s poorest places. Prior to her promotion, Amanda worked in development for PIH.
In 2008, Amanda founded One Youth International, a small non-profit that supports grassroots community-based initiatives abroad. She also worked for nine months in Kenya at the Mtongwe Community Initiative, a community health organization located in Mombasa, Kenya that provides home-based care for HIV and TB patients, umbrella support for microfinance projects, and peer education programming for youth.
Amy Wyeth, MURP ’11
Amy Wyeth currently works as a Summer Research Associate at Foley & Lardner LLP. At Foley & Lardner LLP, Amy is researching U.S. health reform (accountable care organizations specifically) and this work will culminate in a paper she will co-author, to be presented at a health industry conference this fall. She is also a freelance journalist. Her policy interests include health reform, financial regulation, and economic security and equality.
Amy has always enjoyed public policy research, digging through mounds of data to analyze how laws and regulations affect communities. Described by one of her bosses as “an amazingly meticulous and astute researcher,” Amy enrolled in the program to prepare for a career at the intersection of business and government. Amy graduated in May 2011 and was able to leverage both her policy degree and investigative journalism background in obtaining her current job. Amy felt that the best thing about the MURP program was the practical classwork – particularly, requirements that students participate in and/or analyze policy issues actually going on today, sometimes in partnership with the agencies actually dealing with them. She also appreciated the flexibility to design her own course of studies, and the fantastic opportunity afforded to her by Professor Stephanie Pollack, to assist at a high-level transportation conference she was facilitating in Washington, D.C.
Francis Williams, PhD ’07
Associate Professor, Plymouth State University
Francis M. Williams in addition to his LPS Ph.D. he has a B.S. in Criminal Justice from Northeastern University, a MEd in Counseling Psychology from Cambridge College, and a Masters Certificate in Computer Programming from Boston University. Dr. Williams spent over 26 years as a practitioner in the field of Criminal Justice which included stints working with juveniles in a number of different environs, security administration, 9+ years as a probation officer and as a faculty cooperative education coordinator. He teaches courses in Law Enforcement, Criminology, and Introduction to Criminal Justice. His research interests include delinquency prevention programs, online education, law enforcement strategies and race and crime. Dr. Williams’s 2008 book, Student Assistance Programs: Concepts, Methods and a Theory of Organization, was published by VDM Verlag. He has published book chapters in addition to several publications in the Encyclopedia of Law and the Sociological Review.
Amanda Maher, MURP ’11
Amanda Maher works for the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City as a Senior Analyst. She is creating a knowledge management system to help identify the best practices being used by cities nationwide in the inner city economic development arena. Amanda is also responsible for developing content for ICIC’s blog and other social media channels.
While in the program, Amanda was selected for the prestigious Rappaport Fellowship, a public policy fellowship sponsored by Harvard University’s Rappaport Institute. The 10 week summer fellowship is awarded annually to only 12 graduate students. As a Rappaport Fellow, Amanda worked for the Commonwealth’s Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. She was responsible for reviewing various legislative proposals and conducting research. Amanda previously interned with the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s Economic Development Department, where she researched existing business incubators and co-working locations, establishing a comprehensive database.
Steve L. Antonakes, PhD ’98
Head of Bank Supervision, U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Antonakes was appointed by President Obama to the post in November 2010. Antonakes will be responsible for monitoring how the nation’s largest banks market and sell consumer products such as credit cards, checking accounts, and home loans to ensure they do not mislead or exploit consumers. According to the Boston Globe, this new role is “one of the most powerful posts in the new consumer watchdog agency created by Congress in response to the financial crisis.” Prior to his appointment, Antonakes served as Massachusetts Commissioner of Banks.
Antonakes earned his doctorate in Northeastern’s Law and Public Policy program. “My Northeastern experience not only sharpened my legal and analytical skills, but also taught me the value of considering complex policy issues from multiple perspectives,” Antonakes said.
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