A personal update

As you may know, I've been working full time while attending graduate school in the evenings for the past 2 1/2 years. Well this past May I finally graduated from Johns Hopkins with a Masters in Government!

During my last year I applied for the Presidential Management Fellowship and was named a finalist back in February. In April I attended the PMF finalist job fair and interviewed with 12 government agencies in 2 days. It was one of the most intense experiences I've had but a lot of fun too.

I accepted a position with USAID's Office of Development Credit where I will get to tell the success stories of people who benefit from loan guarantees around the world. Basically the US government guarantees 50 percent of loans banks in developing countries make to poorer sectors. This makes the loans less risky to the banks. Plus it turns out the poor often pay back loans at a much higher rate than other sectors! So in the past 10 years the US government has only spent $62 million and has leveraged $1.9 billion worth of credit. I'm pretty excited to help work towards international development in a way that empowers people by changing structures that are currently unfavorable to the poor.

Also I will get to work for two months (Aug and September) with the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. I'm going to be helping them come up with a plan to get the deficit back down to 3 percent of our annual GDP.

I'm so excited to use my frugal skills and passions to help our country.

PS The federal government pays a lot more than the nonprofit sector! But I will continue to be careful about how I spend money, though perhaps not AS careful.