Happy New Year 2025!

“Overall, I really appreciate my summer internship experience as our general meetings gave me pockets of community during a busy period in my life. Especially being a recent(ish) college grad, I’m grateful to have had this time to continue learning and gain more formal public policy training. Also, I’m thankful for the opportunity to have served as a mentor! Especially as someone who is more introverted, I appreciate times when I can support and connect with others in that way. Further, I found each module topic to be very interesting and relevant. I definitely gained a clearer understanding of how politics and public policy shape our lives in intimate ways as residents of the United States. In the future, I hope to continue honing my research skills and gaining more research experience, such as by continuing to collaborate with IGGI and going back to school to get my master’s degree.”

–Intern 1

"This summer, I learned to be a stronger mentor by taking steps back. Although it's great that I attempted to advocate for my mentees by speaking up for them, I needed to take a step back to let them grow and speak their own ideas into our space. I also learned a lot more about public policy. Interest groups have a lot of power and influence on what is voted on/written into legislation due to their financial backing of candidates. Public policy in California is different from other states as we have a more direct democracy. In the future, I'd like to be able to mentor again to learn how to lend more support. I'd also like to further expand my understanding of public policy and more of what citizens can do to participate in legislation." -- Intern 2

"As a member of the IGGI team for nearly 9 months, I find that the internship experience has allowed me to accomplish personal and professional goals. Training in public policy is essential as a part of society, where there is a requirement to have a full understanding using research and data to gain a better understanding of the realities of the government’s relationship with the people. Topics discussed throughout meetings included the issues of agriculture, global warming, political ideas, financial demographics and present day phenomenons that shape the future of the country’s decision making. Meetings allow for members to voice their thoughts and considerations regarding each topic that create a welcoming internship environment to encourage participation. The meetings effortlessly develop a comforting and open atmosphere to provide each member with a sense of safety. Having recently just graduated from San Francisco State University with a B.A in Psychology, I remained a part of IGGI for the summer internship with a goal to further my understanding of public policy and the decisions that determine my rights as a foundation for my choice of pursuing graduate studies. As someone majoring in Psychology, my interests on politics broadened through IGGI’s program. Initial goals included gaining public policy experience and meshing the material with my psychological background with aspirations of being a part of the forensic psychology field. However, I would like to touch up on crime topics for IGGI's awareness in how effect the prison system is. Using my knowledge gained from participating in IGGI will allow me to professionally apply. As a member of the IGGI team, I value the honesty, trust and respect each member took into consideration. The meetings effortlessly develop a comforting and open atmosphere to provide each member with a sense of safety." -- Intern 3

“Overall, my experience as an IGGI intern was amazing, and I am so glad to have had the opportunity to learn public policy, contribute meaningfully to the Asian American Data Initiative, and understand and execute CPRA requests. Every week brought something new to the table that I had never considered before, and I am grateful to have met all my fellow interns, who always had incredible insight and comments on the relevant topics. I appreciated how manageable the workload was in the internship and think it was perfect for my situation during the summer. It would be great to continue learning more about public policy and continue participating in the AADI. Gaining more experience in sending CPRA requests and similar initiatives is also something I am interested in.”

–Intern 4

 "At IGGI, my perspective on how to obtain and analyze information changed. FOIAs are a great way to fact check and compare how different news sources portray the same information. On a personal level, I’ve never been surrounded by so many people that look and share similar perspectives to me. Overall, I plan to apply what I learned here to write and publish better informed papers and for personal research in independent studies." --Intern 5

“I had a lot of fun during this internship! I felt that the pacing of the internship allowed me to process and think through each week’s lecture topic. This internship helped me develop an introductory level understanding of public policy, from what it is to the stakeholders to its impacts on different groups of people. I liked this internship’s focus on case studies of different events/policies. I found Prop 187 particularly interesting because I had not heard about it before and learned how detrimental a policy like that could be if it still existed today. Some things I would like to learn in the future: in-depth examination on a policy and its effects over many years (decades), some of the policies passed during the Covid-19 and their effects, the evolution of anti-discrimination policies in the U.S. (changes in language use, enforcement, impact, etc.).”

–Intern 6