Weinberg College
of Arts & Sciences

Waldron Career Conversation with Mai Sistla '14: Deputy Director at the Aspen Tech Policy Hub

This episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast features a conversation with Mai Sistla ‘14, who is currently a Deputy Director at the Aspen Tech Policy Hub after Graduating from Northwestern with an Economics Major and a Global Health Studies Minor.

Mai shares insights on Important Classes, Extracurriculars, Connections, Grad School, Working in Tech Policy, Good Fellowships, and the Arts & Sciences Background.

For more information about the fellowship discussed by Mai during the podcast, click below: http://www.corofellowship.org/

0:40: Student Experience and Pivoting Majors
4:30: Extracurriculars and Important Connections
8:15: Path to Grad School
14:15: Working in Tech Policy
19:00: Projects in Tech Policy
22:40: Good Opportunities out of Undergrad
24:05: Arts & Sciences Background

Cassie Petoskey:
Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. This episode is brought to you by the Waldron Student Alumni Connections Program, a resource in Weinberg College where we help current students explore career options through making connections with alumni.
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Mai Sistla, who graduated from Northwestern in 2014 with a major in econ and a minor in global health studies. She's currently the deputy director at the Aspen Tech Policy Hub. And, Mai, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Mai Sistla:
Of course. Thank you for having me.

Cassie Petoskey:
We're so excited to hear more about your work at the Policy Hub, but before we get into that, I want to hear more about your Northwestern student experience. If you can dive into what were some of the impactful classes, internships, extracurriculars, things that impacted you during that student experience that helped you kind of figure out what you might want to do after graduation.

Mai Sistla:
I always knew ... I knew going into college and knew, frankly, in high school that I wanted to work in public service or social impact, and that was always sort of my guiding North Star at Northwestern and beyond. I was an economics major, but I was also pre-med. I actually went through all four years. I took my MCATs and then decided a couple of months after graduation that I didn't actually want to apply to med school, and the thought was at Northwestern that I would become a doctor and then work in public health, get an MD-MPH, because that seemed like one of the more obvious ways to do good in this world.
And I would say Northwestern really impacted me because I really appreciated being able to take non-pre-med classes. Like I said, I was an economics major because I was also really interested in policy. And frankly, being an econ major allowed me to pivot into the policy space and pivot away from medicine and public health later on after college when I realized that medicine and public health were not the paths for me. For me, having that flexibility of being able to do another major that was sort of unrelated to being pre-med was really, really critical for me later on when I decided that I didn't want to go to med school.
Being an economics major really was impactful for me in thinking about policy. Again, like I said, it allowed me to pivot, and I ended up working for economists at a think tank on urban policy issues for a few years after undergraduate. And I think that just statistics and quantitative way of thinking that was built through that econ foundation has been really helpful.
I also ... Because I was ... I was a little bit of an outlier in my econ classes that I didn't want to go to the consulting route. I fundamentally just liked economics, and that's why I was an econ major. I was not planning on working for McKinsey or Deloitte and never really went through those recruitment processes, but I was able, through my econ classes, to really see the importance of econ and policy. Specifically, I took a development economics class that really helped me think through the ways that economists can think about international development issues and policy generally. I took a behavioral economics class that really was super helpful in thinking through how people make decisions, and that has been really important in the roles that I've had since. And then I remembered taking a transportation economics class that made me realize that econ has something to say about how to structure transportation systems and things like that. Just a lot of great classes on the intersection of econ and policy.
Outside of just how these classes impacted my career, I also think there were some classes that were helpful just as a life lesson front. Everyone talks about how important Russian lit is at Northwestern, and I think about that class a lot just in my life and how the lessons learned in some of these works we were reading have really just been helpful in thinking through life generally.
And I remember really enjoying ... I took modern cosmology just, again, because I thought it was interesting and just ... I think about that class all the time just as a general interest area. I think some of these classes that weren't directly related to my career are just really important in my life generally.

Cassie Petoskey:
Absolutely. I love that, and I love hearing that you were genuinely interested in the econ courses. I remember when I first took an econ class in college, and I looked down, and I looked up, and I'm like, "I have no idea what we're talking about. I need to get out of here." It's so fun to hear your passion for the major and some of these specific courses you took that are really interesting.
Were there any experiences outside of glass that you want to highlight? Internships or extra student groups or groups of friends, peers, that were impactful for you?

Mai Sistla:
I took a lot of opportunities, and I tried to as best I could, because I knew I was maybe interested in medicine but wasn't positive. I tried to talk to as many folks who were physicians, and I ... Actually, I think, now that I think about this, the real ... One of the really helpful experiences I had at Northwestern that helped me realize that medicine was not for me is I did the Next Externship program, and I was shadowing a physician who was working at a low-income clinic in Chicago because that was the type of work that I really wanted to do. That's why I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to work with low-income patients. And just hearing her experience made me realize that I wasn't necessarily interested in just being a physician.
She was just talking a lot about the broader societal issues that her patients face and how they're facing a really challenging healthcare system, and it has to do a lot with lack of access to healthcare, and being a doctor in a low-income community can't fix all of those problems. She helped me think through public policy as a potential career rather than just being a physician, which of course is important, but I just realized that there were all these other things intersecting with her work that I was interested in as well. That was really impactful.
And then I had an internship at Lurie Children's Hospital between my junior and senior year where I was working with public health physicians, and I think that connection came through Northwestern. I had a friend who had worked at the Children's Hospital through ... I think it was some sort of Northwestern connection that she got the internship, and she connected me to work there. And I remember talking to one of the physicians there, and she was saying ... She's like, "You shouldn't become a doctor unless you really enjoy working with patients. If you want to work in public health, there are other ways to work in public health. You should be a doctor because you like doing the everyday things that physicians do." And that was really helpful in helping me think through that.
In addition, I also ... Because I was interested in social justice and policy work, a lot of my friends were interested in those things too. And they have just been a great support group. A lot of them are working in public service in some capacity, but we all took different paths. Some people went to law school. Some people are working in public health at research organizations. And it's just been really great to have that network of people with shared interests who I can bounce ideas off of when I don't know necessarily what I want my next step to be. They have the same passions that I do, so they're a helpful group to talk to.

Cassie Petoskey:
I love that. I hear the peer networking is so valuable, and you don't necessarily think about it in that way when you're in school that your friends are going to be the sounding board throughout your career. And that's the Northwestern network that you're starting to build is, really, those friends and those close peers. And I think that's just so valuable for current students to hear. Networking can be such an intimidating topic, and sometimes it is. A networking event is intimidating. I won't sugarcoat that, but your friends are part of your network, and they do play a big role in how you approach different problems and challenges and whatnot. I appreciate hearing they were a resource for you and have been.
And while we're on the student experience side, I want to hear more about your path to grad school because I am curious just about your mindset. You worked for a little while before going to grad school.
Can you walk us through ... You thought med school. That wasn't going to be it. You worked for a little while.
How did you decide to go to grad school, which program to go to, and even the location of it?

Mai Sistla:
Definitely. My initial thought ... My first job out of college was at a fellowship program with the Centers for Disease Control. They have this fellowship program that places recent graduates in local health departments across the country to work on local health issues, but as CDC employee. I actually worked in Evanston and in Chicago both at the state health department and at the city of Evanston's local health department.
And I thought that was a really great experience because I was trying to figure out whether I should work in public health as an MPH or go the MD route. And the experience actually made me realize that I don't want to work in public health and that I was more interested in broader policy. I only stayed at the CDC for a year because I just realized public health wasn't necessarily my thing. And I ended up working for three years in urban policy think tank associated with the University of Chicago. Working with economists and the City of Chicago and the City of New York to help figure out what works and what doesn't work to reduce crime and improve education outcomes for city youth and especially in Chicago and New York.
I loved that job and really learned a lot about how quantitative work can inform policy work and just learned a lot about how to project manage and things that I think are important in the workspace. I was there for three years. And I didn't know ... Though I loved my job, I also realized I didn't want to necessarily work in urban policy, but I wasn't sure what policy issue I wanted to work on.
I decided to go to policy school, and I was deciding between a lot of things. I was deciding between potentially getting a PhD, but I had worked with a lot of folks who had PhDs and realized that wasn't my route. Thought about going to law school. Talked to some friends, Northwestern alums who had gone to law school at that point, and then realized that that probably wasn't the path for me if my ultimate goal was public service. Law school is just a very expensive way to do that. And then realized that policy school might be a good option because it's really broad. I think of it like an MBA for people who are interested in social impact, social justice, public policy. There are sort of general programs, and they can be really different school to school, but I think it's an MBA for people interested in government policy and social impact.
And I applied to a variety of programs. I thought the reason I was going to go to grad school was frankly to explore a little bit more. Because I was pre-med at Northwestern, I didn't get to explore as much as I would have liked to. I would've loved ... If I were to redo college, and knowing that I didn't want to do medicine now, I would've loved to intern at a congressperson's office or take more political science classes, and I just didn't get to do that with the limitations I had on my course schedule. Was thinking about using graduate school to explore different areas, different policy areas, and went specifically for that reason, knowing that it was going to be an exploratory time for me.
I chose Berkeley for a couple of reasons. One, cost was really important. When you go to a policy school, you're not going to make a lot of money to pay your loans back. Cost was really critical for me. And Berkeley is unique in that their master's students are allowed to TA just like a PhD student would. I taught, and I was a research assistant, and that pays your tuition, and you're able to get money in addition to that. You're basically getting the same deal that a PhD student would, which is not true of most master's programs.
You're able to take classes in all of the different schools. I think private universities are a little bit more limited in this way. I took classes in the law school, the business school, in the policy school. Basically, all of campus. And Berkeley's huge. Any class that you wanted to take, you could take, since Berkeley likely offers it. And I really appreciated that. And I think some policy programs ... They tend to be really expensive and not really about the student experience, but Berkeley's very different than that. The policy school is small, and, frankly, I think it loses money for the school, the university as a whole, but they have decided to keep the program because they think it's really important, which I think is actually was a good thing to learn that it wasn't a money-making venture for them. I decided to go to Berkeley, and it was just like a great fit when I went there. And that's where I learned a little bit.
Now, I work in technology policy, and, frankly, that pivot happened when I was at Berkeley because I went to Berkeley and realized there's this whole tech world out there. Tech and innovation policy. I had never really thought about it beforehand, but it's such a focus at Cal and in the Bay Area that I explored it a little bit there. And now working in technology and innovation policy.

Cassie Petoskey:
I love hearing your approach to grad school and how it was targeted to policy, but at the same time you left yourself the opportunity to really explore and figure out within that space what did you exactly want to do and explored your options. And just your first job where you allowed yourself the space to say, "I don't want to continue on this path. I think there's something different." And I think that is really valuable for students to hear, not only that your first job wasn't what you continued on to, that wasn't your path, but that it wasn't the perfect fit. Because I think there's a lot of pressure on first jobs. And I think it's really nice to hear that it was impactful for you in a different way. It didn't set you on this path to med school or public health. It said, "Okay, let me think about something different."
And now, as you mentioned, you're in this tech policy space. I would love to hear more about what this means for students who ... Even yourself, like you were saying, you didn't know exactly as much about this space.
Can you walk us through what you do for clients and more about your industry and this subset of policy?

Mai Sistla:
Definitely. I'll start with the latter question first. "What is technology policy?" is a great question. I sort of see it as having two different buckets. One is working on policy to help mitigate some of the issues that technology has created. Things like issues with cybersecurity. Issues with mis- and disinformation and how to think about regulating tech. All of these monopoly issues that are coming up with these tech companies. I think that's one bucket of work in technology policy is working to mitigate some of these issues that technology has created.

Cassie Petoskey:
Are you working with companies who are causing, if you will, the issue? Or are you working with people who are trying to solve issues that other people brought up, if that makes sense?

Mai Sistla:
I think a lot of folks who work in technology policy ... It's pushing companies to do something and whether that's through government ... Should there be new laws? Should there be new regulations governing the use of technologies? Or finding other ways to push companies to do X, Y, and Z?
For example, in the misinformation space, there's a lot of conversation about how Twitter and Facebook can redesign their algorithms so that misinformation isn't popping up everywhere like we're seeing. And that involves pushing the companies in certain ways.
And there's also a lot of people doing a lot of great work. A lot of the big tech companies have people working on these issues internally as well. You can work on misinformation policy at Google, at Facebook, at Twitter. They have teams doing this type of work as well. I think of that as the first bucket.
Then there's the using technology for social good. How can tech be used to improve education? We saw the importance of technology during the COVID pandemic where we all went to virtual school for two years. How can tech and innovation be used to improve healthcare? There's sort of the tech for social good.
And then there's this third bucket that is a little obscure, but actually it's really important, which is how to improve government technology systems. This is, how do you fundamentally improve government IT systems? And it sounds really boring, and I sort of thought it was really boring when I first started working on it but realized it's so important. A lot of the issues of folks ... You're getting ... During the COVID pandemic, for example, the federal government doled out a bunch of money to folks for pandemic assistance. They doled out a bunch of money to small businesses to help keep their businesses open. They gave out loans and things like that.
And fundamentally, a lot of money didn't go to the places it needed to go, and it didn't go as quickly enough because the government IT systems aren't built in a way that allows some of these public services to be delivered efficiently and equitably. There's a lot of conversation right now talking about how a lot of the pandemic unemployment assistance that was doled out during the early months of the pandemic actually went to the wrong people, and there was a lot of fraud. And that's because government wasn't necessarily prepared to do this. And there's a lot of really great work on technology modernization that a lot of groups are doing that I think is really, really important to delivering public services efficiently and equitably and making sure ...
Here's another concrete example. If you are a small business, and you want to get a loan because your business is closed because of the pandemic because it's July 2020, it's fairly complicated to figure out what kinds of loans that you're eligible for and where to go to get those loans and how to make sure you get that money efficiently. And that becomes doubly difficult if you are not a native English speaker and if you are an immigrant-owned business and things like that. There's a lot of really great technology folks working to redesign application systems to make these sorts of applications more equitable so people who are not native English speakers, people who are low-income, and small business owners are able to access those opportunities and know about them and get that money quickly if needed.

Cassie Petoskey:
So interesting and in such a fascinating area of doing social good and social justice work for our students to really consider because I think this probably this space ... Some of the things you were talking about were not around 10, 15 years ago, and it's just going to be an ever-important space with how much more online we are and using technology. And at the same time, we have so many students who are really excited about making an impact with their career. And this is a really interesting way to do it.
And so, with those three buckets that you described, are you working across all three of those?

Mai Sistla:
Yeah. I work across all three. Essentially, what I do is I help technology and science experts who are interested in getting their ideas into policy. How to do that. We run fellowship programs with science and tech experts who are passionate about all the issues I just described, and I help them hone their ideas, figure out who the right actors are to push on if they're interested in, say, improving the way the State of California gives out unemployment assistance. I'll just use that as an example. Helping them figure out who the right people are to talk to. Helping them produce the right materials, whether that's advocacy materials or policy briefs or white papers and things like that and help editing and publishing some of that work. That's the type of work that I do.
I can give a sort of a story, if that's helpful, of-

Cassie Petoskey:
We'd love that.

Mai Sistla:
... to illustrate what I do.

Cassie Petoskey:
Absolutely.

Mai Sistla:
Like I mentioned, I run fellowship. I help run fellowship programs at the Aspen Institute. An example of the type of work I do is ... Two of our fellows are really passionate about promoting equitable pay for technology contractors. A lot of big tech companies, like Facebook and Google, hire, essentially, full-time contractors for full-time roles. They'll hire a contract software engineer who's essentially doing a lot of the same work that a full-time employee would do as a software engineer. But since they're contractors, they don't necessarily get paid as much. They don't get benefits. There's a lot of non-monetary benefits they're not getting. And unsurprisingly, a lot of the contractors tend to be women and people of color. There's sort of a race and gender equity issue there. And our fellows wanted to make impact in this space.
I helped ... And they sort of knew this was their mission broadly, and I helped them research the issues, like who are the power players? Is it something that the federal government can help regulate? Or is this something that, say, a state government should do? Because a lot of these tech companies, for example, are headquartered in California, is there something the State of California can do? What law guides this practice? And what internal policy changes should be made at these companies? I helped them think through some of these issues.
They ended up creating a series of materials. Some for labor advocacy groups. Some for internal companies. They built this calculator, basically, that companies can use to calculate how much they should pay contractors based on their full-time equivalent role. If you're a contractor that's doing the same job as a software engineer, how much did you pay them at an hourly rate to be equitable to their full-time counterparts? I sort of help them think through their materials, help them edit the eventual briefs and things that they were writing, help them get critical meetings with stakeholders to push change on this issue, and make sure that their asks made sense. That's sort of what a sample project I might be working on looks like.
And we have fellows also working on a lot of different issues. Working on cybersecurity. We had a fellow working on how to improve cybersecurity in medical devices so your pacemaker doesn't get hacked, which is unfortunately a concern. And we have folks working on how to reduce algorithmic bias in technology tools.
Now, I'm actually working on climate tech right now. Working with some fellows who are really passionate about things like, how do we incentivize people to install rooftop solar on their homes? Or how can we make sure new clean energy jobs go to the right communities? Things like that.
The programs we run are typically 10 weeks. They were working on this project for about six to seven weeks of their 10 weeks.

Cassie Petoskey:
So cool. So interesting. And now, can you do this kind of work straight out of undergrad?

Mai Sistla:
I think the specific role that I have ... As deputy director, I also just help manage. I do a lot of nonprofit management too. Help manage the organization. I think that would be a hard, difficult role to get right out of undergrad because it just requires knowing things like, how do you think about budgeting and staffing and things like that?
But I think folks who want to work on technology policy broadly ... There's a ton. This is a really exciting space to work on right now. A lot of the think tanks now will hire folks right out of college as research assistants or research associates in the tech policy space. It is a growing field, certainly.
And there's even ... If folks are interested in that gov-tech angle, that third bucket I was talking about, there's now a new fellowship program. I believe it's called the US Civic Core, where basically they're pulling in on recent graduates to work in the federal government as engineers, as designers, to help solve some of these government technology issues. You can be placed in a different agency, like at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services or at the FDA to work on government technology. There's also programs like that too.

Cassie Petoskey:
So cool. And so, technology ... You hear technology, and you don't necessarily think straight to arts and sciences. Can you share how your arts and sciences background has been an asset to you in this space?

Mai Sistla:
Yeah. It's been a huge asset. I think, because I work in policy and nonprofit work, writing has become a super important part of my job and has, frankly, always been a critical part of my job. If you're working in policy, you have to write policy briefs and memos, and you have to be able to write clearly and succinctly, and that's kind of how you get things done. A lot of my job when I was working at any, all, of the nonprofits I've worked at is writing grants and writing and communicating the results of what we're doing to our funders and things like that. There's a lot of writing, and I think having the arts and sciences degree helped me develop those skills.
I also really appreciated being able to take a wide variety of classes, which gave me both the quantitative and non-quantitative skillset. As an econ major, I got the quantitative skillset. I was taking science classes that involve a lot of math and things, but I also was required to write a lot. That broad skillset has really helped me as someone who is ... I consider myself a policy generalist. I'm interested in a lot of different areas, and I think Northwestern and being at Weinberg allowed me to develop the skills to be a generalist.

Cassie Petoskey:
That's awesome. That's great. The writing skills are so valuable. And like you said, the quantitative and these other, the non-quantitative skills, have been an asset in different ways through your work in policy. And I feel, Mai, like we could talk about these different projects you've been working on for days. They sound so interesting, and I'm sure our students would be excited to hear more. But, Mai, thank you so much for sharing so many great insights, advice, stories with us today. We really appreciate you being here with us.

Mai Sistla:
Of course. And thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Cassie Petoskey:
Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of these conversations, links to the full videos and podcasts are below. For more information about Weinberg College and this podcast, visit Weinberg.Northwestern.edu and search for Waldron. As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Please e-mail us with your thoughts on the program. Have a great day. And go cats.