Midterm Reflection at IWPR
This semester I have been interning at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR). Our office is a small nonprofit think tank in DuPont Circle. The organization has about 30 employees and is in a phase of growth and change. We do a mix of local, state, and federal work. My team recently has been doing a lot of state level policy work. The think tank mainly does work surrounding legislation and how policy can best uplift women.
As a think tank, we are predominantly outcome driven, looking at the impacts of policies and events on people. Specifically, we focus on economic outcomes for women. My team focuses on student parents and how different programs and policies can influence outcomes. The purpose of our work is to increase research and statistics on how events and policies affect different groups of women to change how policies are made. For my team, an example of this is looking at how on campus child care centers impact student parent outcomes. My teams’ work is very different from the rest of the think tank, but we have regular research meetings and staff meetings to stay informed on what the rest of the organization is researching.
My role as an intern has included a variety of tasks. Mainly I support research through literature reviews and preliminary research support. I also make internal and external presentations, draft and edit blog posts, write tweets and social media content, and prepare our quarterly newsletters. The work has given me experience in many different capacities, and increased my confidence in many ways. My daily tasks include working on quick tasks the managing director sends me, adding to literature reviews, putting sources in Zotero, and whatever else arises. One way I hope to continue to improve this semester is in my ability to prioritize different tasks and keep up with long term tasks.
My immediate supervisor is a Senior Research Associate. She oversees a bunch of projects and oversees me. She reports to the managing director of our team. The managing director reports to the CEO. The general structure of our organization is CEO → VP’s → Managing Directors → Senior Researchers → Research Assistants and Associates. However, the organizational structure has been in a state of flux recently which has shifted who reports to who.
My goals for the semester have been mostly achieved. One thing I was able to do at all was use my quantitative skills. Overall, I am very thankful for the opportunity to be at IWPR and I hope to continue developing professionally through the end of the semester.