MPP Student Profiles

Afnan Nehela, MPP'25

Maria Aybar, MPP'24

Katherine Nace, MPP'24
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer [Coverdell Fellow]
Nace, who has chosen a concentration in Economic and Racial Equity, is eager to learn how she can help improve the criminal punishment system and mental health policy in the U.S.
“One thing that I was looking for was flexibility in the curriculum,” she says. “Heller’s program requires courses that provide a great foundation, while giving me the agency to pick other topic areas I am interested in. This combination creates a really well-rounded degree.”

Jeff Arnold, MPP’23
“I can see my friends suffering from behavioral health issues,” he says. “I can see what I’ve done and how they have affected me, so […] this is how I can give back to the military. This is how I can effect policy change for the better using this degree.”

Branden Miles, MPP’23
“Heller is a unique space in that there is a richness of experience both in the faculty and staff but also amongst my cohort,” he says. “I think there’s a lot of varied experience that I can really learn from and that there are a lot of different positions and different experiences that we have a lot of chances as students to investigate.”

Lisa Thorn, MPP'23
Lisa Thorn decided to leave a successful career in the tech industry in order to apply her leadership and knowledge to resolving systemic issues, such as workplace discrimination. She’s fascinated by the intersection of labor policy, racial justice and the tech industry.
“Tech has been unregulated for so long, and it’s long been inaccessible to women and people of color. And beyond the employment issues, there are also policy questions around the data the tech industry collects on people, how that information gets bought and sold, and the impacts that data can have on groups of people, on misinformation, even on efforts to destabilize democracies.”