Alumni Impact Detroit

While Kevin Naud was born and raised in Ann Arbor, the Ford School alumnus’ offspring will be born and raised in Detroit.Naud, who graduated with a Master’s of Public Policy degree in 2021, and his wife are expecting their first child and just...

A growing number of public policy graduates are opting to work in public sector consulting—public arms of larger firms such as EY or Deloitte, or advisory consulting firms such as Guidehouse, Huron Consulting Group, or Booz Allen. For many years, a...

Steve Tobocman (MPP/JD '97) is the director of Global Detroit, a non-profit that seeks to revitalize Michigan’s economy by making the region more attractive and welcoming to immigrants, international students, businesses, and investors. He speaks...

It’s Eboni Wells’ (MPP ’13) penultimate day at the Skillman Foundation, located on Detroit’s bright riverfront. She’s tying up a two-year public policy fellowship that, for the last eight months, has tasked her with supporting Detroit’s response to...

A couple years ago, Mark Wallace (MPP ’04) built two electric guitars. A long-time musician, he had recently taken up woodworking and thought he might give guitar-making a try. He built two, he says, because he was afraid that one might not work...

As the plane hummed on the runway at Detroit Metro Airport, 17 anxious teenagers fidgeted in their seats, peering through the drawn window shades. “Are we in the air yet?” It was the third time Leah Ouellet (AB ‘13) had heard the same...

Serving, staying, and making a home in the City of Detroit Jennifer Niggemeier was surprised when she attended the fifth annual Worldwide Ford School Spirit Day gathering in Detroit this summer. “When we first did a Detroit event in 2011, there...

It’s Saturday at 8:30 a.m. when Ren Farley takes a right onto State Street and pulls to the meter in his red Ford Mustang. For the past eight years, he’s been teaching a policy course at the Ford School on “The History and Future of Detroit.” Today,...

Addell Austin Anderson (MPP '80) was born in Detroit in the 1950s and lived in Black Bottom, a predominantly African-American neighborhood. In later years, her father told her stories about the close-knit community with its many black-owned...

How does the creative sector contribute to economic and community development in Michigan? As the director of creative industries at Creative Many, Ford School alum Cézanne Charles (MPA ’15) makes the case using data. Charles leads the...