Kiam Jamrog-McQuaid

Full Name: Kiam Jamrog-McQuaid

Degree & Graduation Year: Master of Public Policy and Administration, 2024

Title: Research Analyst

Current Employer: UMass Donahue Institute Economic & Public Policy Research Group

Job Summary: I support research projects focused on housing, workforce, demographics, and economic development to support local nonprofits and state policy development. My day-to-day work involves reviewing literature relevant to our projects, data cleaning, transformation, and analysis (utilizing R & Excel) drawing on a variety of public and private data sources, designing qualitative data collection tools like surveys and focus groups, and contributing to client-facing presentations and reports.

How did you find your current position: Notified of the position by a colleague who I had an informational interview with about this organization.

Favorite part of your job: I love getting to work on research projects directly related to my advocacy experience and academic interests like housing affordability and workforce development. I am expanding my network and getting to work with people who I have looked up to for a long time and greatly respect their work. It has been incredibly cool to get to be a part of such highly knowledgeable and competent teams doing this applied research.

Additionally, the experiential learning from my role at the Donahue Institute has strengthened my ability as a local advocate. I have been able to bring my knowledge of data-driven policy and apply it to my own community to make the case for progressive policy changes. 

Are there any skills or lessons learned while in your program that you use often: I use skills I learned from SPP daily in my professional work as well as my local advocacy work. The academic research and writing skills that I honed during my time at UMass have been instrumental in communicating effectively on policy issues. Additionally, the team-based projects that were central to much of the MPPA coursework did a great job preparing me for the client-focused research projects I work on regularly.

How your program/degree prepared you for this role and career: I regularly use many of the methodological tools I picked up through the MPPA program. One key skill that has been critical for my current work is R programming for statistics and data science. This has been an instrumental skill for being able to quickly contribute to ongoing research projects and efficiently clean, transform, and visualize large datasets to inform our analyses.

What advice would you give to current or future students: 

Take the time in the program to explore your policy interests and challenge yourself in your coursework to learn more, and not just reiterate or share knowledge you already have. The professors and networking opportunities at SPP are incredible, and you can almost be sure to find a connection to someone working in the field you are interested in.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help or for advice, the career advisors are there for a good reason and they are an incredible resource and will help even if you just need to practice your interview skills or vent about the job search process.