Xiao Tan is a first-year fellow at CIPA. An international student from China, she is concentrating her studies in Economic and Financial Policy.
I can’t believe that my first semester at CIPA is almost over. It took me a while to get used to Cornell’s culture, while making new friends at the same time. Overall, my first semester here at Cornell has been such a rewarding experience and it has been a pleasure arriving at classes every day. I have taken amazing courses and have had the privilege of working with a variety of very bright people—both faculty members and students.
I took Dan Lamb’s PADM 5900 Consulting for Nonprofit/Government course, and were divided up into groups to work on projects. I had great team members. Yesterday we had our final client presentation. All four of us come from different backgrounds: Emily is the point person in charge of communication and editing; Ryan has a marketing background so he designs our PowerPoint; and Hexin and I are responsible for analyzing data. These differences are a positive because we each have distinct perspectives when analyzing the same problem.
Our client for the semester was Cornerstone Family Healthcare, a nonprofit organization operating in NY State, providing comprehensive, primary and preventative health care services to underserved areas. For this project, our team was tasked with increasing potential patient volume. While working on this project, I developed negotiation and teamwork skills and strengthened my multitasking ability; work piled up quickly if I did not prioritize. We had our final team gathering at Ale House last night, exactly two months after our first team gathering at the exact same restaurant. I still remember vividly how exhausted we were after driving all the way back from Binghamton (a city located more than an hour away) and how excited we were after meeting our client there for three hours.
Today I had my final class session with Professor Tobin, who teaches PADM 5570—Corporate Responsibility. He is a Professor of Practice who came to CIPA after working as a global head of sustainability at Credit Suisse. My experience with him was awesome. I enjoyed both his in-class discussions and all his op-eds assignments. If you are a person who loves writing interesting, concise policy analysis, I strongly recommend his class.