My 300-Hour Experience: USAID Internship

Summer 2016Mary Ziemba

What, When, and Where

• Internship with the US Agency for International Development

• PEER team within the Global Development Lab

• May-July 2016, summer after my sophomore year

• My task: Corroborate PEER's central hypothesis--that scientific research improves countries’ development outcomes--with hard data as opposed to anecdotal evidence

• Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, DC

My Big Takeaways: Entrepreneurial Skills• Technical skills:

• Assess the needs of my “customer” (in this case, the PEER team, who would be using the data I provide)

• Consider the technology available to my team

• Consider the team’s technical ability (e.g. no coding required to perform statistical analyses)

• Working with a team

• Talk to my “customer”—how do you want to use this? What problem can I solve? (and talk with the team often!)

• Weekly meetings with the team, asking questions over email

• Show my team demos of my progress, see what I can do to make it better

Learning about the social impacts of innovation

• Domestic research promotes innovative solutions to a country’s pain points and can help improve a country’s development outcomes.

• Strong relationship between University-Industry Collaboration in R&D and quality of research institutions, an important development goal.

Sample Charts and Graphs from my Experience

Relationship between University-Industry Collaboration in R&D and Quality of Scientific

Research Institutions: Selected Countries in Latin America and comparison countries

Source: Global Competitiveness Report, 2016-2017, World Economic Forum

Radar Chart: Comparing Peru, Brazil, and Colombia’s Science

Ecosystems, 2015-2016Source: Data from Global Competitiveness Report, 2016-2017, World Economic Forum; chart is my own

http://tinyurl.com/mtz-usaid

See my artifact for a more comprehensive view of my work this summer

In Summary

• Learned collaboration skills, how to receive feedback and implement it

• Consideration of an item’s use, functionality for the user

• Learned about the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation in promoting global development