My name is Meghan Nestor and this past summer I interned at the Detroit mayor's office and he had the distinct pleasure to carpool with an I think goal from Ann Arbor so we can talk about that later. I came to policy school after 10 years in the nonprofit sector where I was supporting college and career access for historically under-represented students in New York City I returned to school and to my home state because I wanted to learn how to address social change at a deeper level and I also wanted to venture away from my experience in education and learn about some new policy areas from the start of my time here I knew I wanted to work in Detroit for the summer for one thing it's a very exciting place to be right now and I remember when my supervisor interviewed me she pitched the pitch the excitement pretty hard she said they're going to write books about this time in Detroit Michigan Don't you want to be a part of that very intensely and I did I did want to be a part of it. Folks in the mayor's office are consistently reaching for the same North Star goal to serve the people of Detroit every action taken every dollar spent every conversation had it comes back to this mission of serving the people of Detroit it's pretty phenomenal I was thrilled to have the chance to work with these people and to learn about so many different areas of policy I worked out of the office of development and so provided support to raise money for various mayoral priorities so I got to work on projects and work with departments ranging from port security to lead remediation to parks improvements all over the map but the most exciting part of the summer for me was working on a feasibility study regarding expanding pre-K. industry I knew the question that the mayor wanted an answer to which was can Detroit offer free universal pre-K. but beyond that it was up to me and my colleagues to figure out the rest we engaged in stakeholder interviews quantitative research and evaluation of current policies both here and across the country all lots of stuff that I learned at the ford school last year and this all culminated in a few meetings with Mayor Dugan himself we laid out our recommendations for expanding pre-K. and at one point. Mayor actually looked at me and said Well what do you think we should do just like that he likes to point a lot and I was really excited a little scared but mostly excited and emboldened to say like I think we should do this we can do this there's a real change we can make for people in the city of Detroit so later that week I attended a meeting with the mayor and other city leaders including the superintendent of Detroit Public Schools the heads of the Kreskin Kellogg foundations and I listen to Mayor Dugan lay out his plans for expanding pre-K. in the city plans I had directly worked on it influenced and I watched the other leaders in the room respond with excitement and promises of lots of support financial and otherwise and it was a very exciting day to see my work followed through all the way from the community outreach phase to recommendations to the actual start of implementation of a new policy I've never experienced anything like that before it was it was really incredible So I started my time at Ford school thinking I wanted to move away from news and education and try something new but to my surprise I found that the project I was most energized by this summer was about just that after my experiences and a trait I now know that I definitely want to work in a city that I care deeply about I want to focus on policies that make a direct impact in people's lives and I learned that I may end up returning to work all began for me working for Youth and Families who knows maybe even right here in Detroit thanks.