Alumni in the Field
Kate Costella, MSW’03
As an MSW student, Kate Costella was on the macro track, and completed field placements with a victims’ services agency in the Homicide Unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, and with EdTec, a for-profit management consulting firm in Camden. When she became a Presidential Management Fellow after graduation, she spent the entire two years of the program working within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – mostly at the National Cancer Institute – on projects that were very different from anything she had done at Penn. As Kate points out, she often uses the knowledge and skills she acquired in Penn’s program, but her opportunities as a federal government Fellow were not limited to those areas in which she already had explicit training. Her transition from a traditional macro social worker to a federal employee was a bit unusual, and it opened many doors for her.
Kate’s first placement was on the President’s Cancer Panel, an independent advisory panel to the National Cancer Institute. Here, she used a multifaceted approach to study childhood cancer survivorship. Next, she worked at the Office of Cancer Survivorship, NCI, monitoring programs in schools and communities for children who have survived cancer. Due to the fairly recent medical advancements in childhood cancer treatments that increase children’s survival rates, pediatric survivorship programming is still an emerging field. After this placement, Kate continued to work with pediatric patients from NIH at The Children’s Inn. This non-profit organization on the NIH campus offers families a place to stay while their children are receiving treatment at NIH. In Kate’s words, The Children’s Inn is a non-traditional PMF rotation because of its clinical focus. (While much of the work done by Fellows is macro-oriented, opportunities for students pursuing clinical practice exist within certain government agencies.) During her placement at The Children’s Inn, Kate focused on one primary project – the creation of a Disaster Recovery Plan for the Inn in the case of a disaster or emergency at NIH.
Kate’s fourth placement – working on the National Children’s Study at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH – became her permanent job after the PMF program. This longitudinal research project is the largest study of children’s health and development ever to be undertaken in the U.S. The multidisciplinary research team – compromised of pediatricians, epidemiologists, public health specialists, and others – examines the environmental and genetic factors impacting children’s health. Now that she is no longer a Fellow, Kate serves as the Outreach and Communications Coordinator for the Study. In this capacity, she oversees communications to federal and non-federal stakeholders, addresses issues of diversity, and works on culturally sensitive outreach in the Study’s designated communities around the country.
Kate had many positive experiences within the PMF program, but she particularly remembers the opportunities to learn how Congress works. She participated in trainings on the Hill in which she sat in on hearings. According to Kate, this experience was essential to understanding how policies are created – it illuminated the interaction between nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and government agencies that influences the formation of national programs and policies. As she points out, these firsthand experiences are “hard to get in a classroom.”
During her time as a Fellow, Kate found herself in arenas in which she was often the only social worker. But because of this, she brought a different viewpoint to interdisciplinary teams and proved that her training was valuable. Along with other Penn social work alumni who have done the PMF program, Kate believes that there are many roles for social workers within the government, and invites students who are considering the program to contact her at katecost@yahoo.com.
Marie Martinez, MSW’02
Marie Martinez, MSW’02, began the Presidential Management Fellows program at the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, U.S. Department of Education. Her work there focused on program management in areas pertaining to truancy prevention, character education, and school safety. After several months at the Department of Education, her first program rotation at another government agency sent her PMF experience – and her professional career – down a very different path. While many Fellows take advantage of the opportunity to complete rotations at several different offices or agencies, Marie’s rotation to the Office of Victims of Crime at the Department of Justice ended up being her only rotation. While the rotation itself lasted three months, Marie enjoyed the work so much that she left her position with the Department of Education and transferred to DOJ to accept a full-time position with the Office for Victims of Crime.
As Marie explains, she simply “found an excellent fit, both in terms of the bureau’s mission and the substantive day-to-day work.” The fit was a natural one because the position addressed issues she first became interested in during her Penn studies. In particular, Marie was pleased to have the opportunity to address issues of sexual violence and human trafficking at the policy and program development levels. She feels that the direct practice experience she gained at Penn in working with victims of sexual and domestic violence as well as refugees and immigrants continues to serve her well in her current position.
As a Fellow, Marie had access to a number of training and professional development opportunities. Participation in trainings on topics such as technical writing, leadership, and project management equipped her with a particular skill set that she now uses on a daily basis. In her current position as Social Science Program Specialist at the Office for Victims of Crime, she administers a program that provides several million dollars in grant funding to non-governmental organizations around the country for the creation and support of services for victims of forced labor and commercial sex. She also manages several projects that enhance access to and quality of services to youth victims and victims of sexual assault.
In addition to her work with grants and program administration, Marie’s responsibilities include representing her office in interagency planning meetings, providing victimization-related briefings to foreign diplomats, and developing competitive requests for proposals as well as making funding recommendations in several different policy areas. She points out that although her work is very macro-oriented, the nature of a job pertaining to victims’ issues is such that she continually applies many direct practice skills on a regular basis.
Transitioning from working in small social service organizations to a large government agency was not without its challenges. (Marie joked about the challenge she faced in deciphering all of the acronyms for the different agencies, task forces, and initiatives.) Although being a social worker in Washington means that Marie is sometimes in the minority, she believes that a background in social work “offers a real advantage in the sense that I am well-equipped to think critically about how policy-level decisions impact the everyday lives of victims and the service professionals who help them.”
Marie’s position allows her to work at the federal level while still maintaining a significant amount of interaction with the field. She encourages students who may be considering the PMF program to look for opportunities that “bridge policy and practice.” Students who have questions about the program are welcome to contact Marie at Marie.Martinez@usdoj.gov.
Marianne Nazzaro, MSW’02
When she was applying to the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) program before graduating from Penn, Marianne Nazzaro, MSW’02, was convinced that she would work in the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS). But instead she accepted a PMF position as a Policy Analyst in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Needs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where she worked with the homeless and those with HIV/AIDS. And now – more than four years after her initial move to Washington, DC – Marianne continues to work for the federal government, serving as a Revitalization Specialist within the Office of Public Housing at HUD.
So why wasn’t her PMF placement with HHS? As it turns out, her decision to work for HUD was due in part to timing within the interview/hiring period. But, as Marianne also explains, the interview process allows applicants to explore opportunities at government agencies that they may not have originally considered.
As part of the program, PMFs complete rotations at different agencies over the course of two-years, so Marianne was able to spend five weeks at each of three different agencies. Her first rotation was to HUD’s office in Philadelphia. Her second rotation, at the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) at HHS allowed her to focus on the needs of the homeless from a mental health perspective (as opposed to the housing perspective central to her work in her core placement at HUD). The third rotation, at HUD’s Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations (CIR), offered a crash course in working with members of Congress. The rotation experience can be customized by PMF participants to provide a unique set of professional experiences based on individual interests. In Marianne’s case, the opportunity to spend five weeks at SAMHSA enabled her to concentrate on mental health, which she has focused on since her first-year MSW field placement at Women of Hope.
In a recent conversation, Marianne talked about the benefits of being a Presidential Management Fellow. One highlight of her PMF experience was a week-long training course at Georgetown University on Congressional briefing. Guest speakers in the class ranged from people who work on the Hill to those who work at the Post. According to Marianne, this training opportunity summed up her reasons for entering the PMF program in the first place: she experienced how “all the forces come together” to shape policy and impact on services.
As mentioned earlier, Marianne has assumed different roles at HUD since her time in the PMF program. In her current position as Revitalization Specialist, she works with housing authorities around the country that are exploring new ways of using their funding in order to meet housing needs. In the past year, much of her job focused on the post-Katrina needs of the New Orleans population. Through the Office of the Deputy Secretary, she was one of the people who coordinated public housing vouchers for New Orleans residents who had to relocate to other cities. And from March to May 2006, she was on assignment with the Housing Authority in New Orleans, connecting post-Katrina New Orleans residents with jobs. The variety of experiences to which she was exposed as a PMF prepared her for the numerous responsibilities of the positions she has held since completing the program.
Although Marianne was a macro-concentrator during her time as an MSW student, she found that her policy-oriented job left her missing the interaction she once had with clients. As a result, she volunteers as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), working with a child in the foster care system and making recommendations to the Judge on the case.
Marianne invites students who are seriously considering application to the PMF program to contact her at Marianne_Nazzaro@hud.gov.