During the pandemic, Jad Maayah (MPP’24) graduated from Harvard and joined Waypoint, the immigration and visa consultant app, as a researcher. Realizing he wanted to work directly with people experiencing displacement, he moved to New Haven, CT, with Havenly, a nonprofit dedicated to breaking the cycles of poverty for refugee women. Maayah is from Amman, Jordan, and has drawn from his time working with Syrian refugees in his home country, where he volunteered in high school.

“I remember this moment speaking with the families,” he says. “They were thanking us for the supplies, but explaining that this doesn’t really solve the problem of systemic poverty. I want to work toward sustainability, moving beyond Band-Aid solutions.”

This mission drove Maayah to apply to McCourt, where he wants to learn “to turn data into meaningful policy.”