Drew Zachary came to Heller in 2012 after finishing her Master of Public Policy degree at Johns Hopkins University, where she learned that she wanted to do policy research. Heller’s PhD program stood out to her for its intersectional and interdisciplinary approach that more traditional policy PhDs didn’t offer. “I felt like the type of faculty and the way that the program was designed would really allow me to dig into the kind of research I wanted to do.”
From Heller to the White House
When she started the program, Drew knew she wanted to eventually go into a federal agency, but she didn’t know what the path looked like to get there. With help from the school’s resources, Drew ended up right where she needed to be. “On my first day of orientation at Heller, Career Services asked us what we planned to do after getting our PhD. Most people wanted to either become research faculty or go into nonprofit work—I was the only one who wanted to go into federal government. Career Services kind of scooped me up and said, ‘we’re going to help you apply to Presidential Management Fellows’ and that’s exactly what happened.”
Drew was accepted into the program in 2014 after two years of coursework, and served as a Presidential Management Fellow first in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and later the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. She also became a policy advisor on the Domestic Policy Council at the White House in 2015-2016, where she focused on leveraging data and technology to support economic and community development across the country.
Co-Founding The Opportunity Project
Following her time at the White House, Drew worked at the U.S. Department of Commerce before ultimately joining the U.S. Census Bureau, where she had the opportunity to do the research that became the subject of her dissertation. Drew currently holds the position of Deputy Chief Innovation Officer at the U.S. Census Bureau and is the co-founder and Managing Director of the Census Open Innovation Labs.
“A lot of the ways that we run our office and the programs we lead are very much in line with Heller’s philosophy of inclusivity, critical thinking, cross-sector collaboration, and qualitative research approaches. This is all a strong thread at Heller that I see in my work to this day.”
In 2016, at the White House, Drew co-founded The Opportunity Project, a large federal innovation effort designed to bring together cross-sector collaborators from all different perspectives to build tools with open data that help families, communities, and businesses solve daily problems in their lives. One of the program’s first external partners was the diversitydatakids.org team at the Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy (ICYFP) at Heller.
Nailing Down the Dissertation
Drew’s dissertation topic shifted during her time in the program, but she credits her committee for helping her to stay on track and graduate within ten years. From the time she started at Heller, she worked closely with Professor Mike Doonan, PhD’02, who, like her, was also a Presidential Management Fellow. Mike joined her committee along with Lindsay Rosenfeld, research scientist and lecturer at ICYFP. Drew’s academic advisor, Tatjana Meschede, Associate Director of the Institute for Economic and Racial Equity at Heller, served as chair.
“I ended up completely focused on data policy, which was fairly new for Heller at the time, as a lot of the legislation on technology and data policy has happened in the last five years. I knew the people at Heller who I had worked with closely would be along for the ride and willing to support that topic.”
The Heller Difference
Drew credits the Heller community and the accommodations available at Brandeis, such as Student Accessibility Support, for providing her with the resources necessary to complete her PhD while she was pregnant.
“Whatever your situation is, whether you’re having children, taking a new job, moving, et cetera, Heller is the type of place that will try to accommodate you. As a woman and mother, I found it so helpful to have people at Heller, especially women in leadership positions, who are conscious of people’s different circumstances. Diana Bowser in particular was a wonderful advocate for me. They have a mind for the various lived experiences that people have—that was the difference that made it possible to finish my dissertation.”
Advice for Current Students
Get connected with the community: “Meet with anybody whom you get a recommendation to talk to. See how you can help them with their research or if they’re looking for a TA or someone to collaborate with on a paper. It’s a great way to learn and build relationships with people who will be valuable in the long run. And don’t be afraid to change your dissertation topic if your situation really calls for that.”
Advice for Prospective Students
Intersectionality and social justice are exemplified throughout the Heller experience: “In policy today, people are so much more DEI-minded, and are thinking about intersectionality and social justice in different ways globally. Heller could not be more aligned with those messages. Everybody, from faculty to students, is thinking about those values all the time.”