Please Welcome Our Two Newest Members!

Please Welcome Our Two Newest Members to 

Women in the Public Sector!

Stephanie Jaquez                                                                               Shanelle Greenidge 

Stephanie Jaquez is third year Master of Public Administration student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, specializing in Investigation and Operational Inspection. After her first year in the MPA program, Stephanie was welcomed by CUNY School of Law as a dual degree student. Now entering her third year of law school she has served on the executive boards of the Latin Law Student Association as the Scholarship Chair and Parents Attending Law School as the Events Coordinator. Stephanie has interned at the Legal Aid Society Juvenile Rights Practice where she gained courtroom and investigation exposure. This past summer Stephanie presented to an audience of law students and professors at the National Lawyers Guild Law for the People Convention in Washington, DC where she discussed racial and gender disparities in the legal profession. Upon graduating, Stephanie hopes to obtain a position in an Inspector General’s office as legal counsel, apply for a PhD program and launch a nonprofit organization for young women in her community.

Shanelle Greenidge is a graduate student in the Masters of Pubic Administration (Public Policy and Administration) with a specialization in Management and Operation. She has earned an Associate in Science and Bachelor of Science at CUNY Medgar Evers College with Cum Laude degree honors. During her undergraduate career, she has gained experience working with New York State and City organizations on projects to enhance methods in which public service is provided. These government entities include the Kings County Clerk, New York City Department of Transportation, New York City Transit, and New York City Department of Information, Technology and Telecommunications. Upon graduating, she intends to pursue a doctorate degree in Organizational Theory and a long term administrative career in operations within a government agency.

NASPAA 2018 Student Simulation Competition.

NASPAA 2018 Student Simulation Competition

(Left) Tanisha Morrison: Masters of Public Administration student in the Inspection and Oversight Program; (Middle) Monica Zambrano Saquicela: Maters of Public Administration student in Public Policy and Administration Program, the 2018 NASPAA Simulation regional winner; (Right) Tyresa Jackson: Masters of Public Administration student in the Public Policy and Administration Program. 

Three Masters of Public Administration (MPA) John Jay College of Criminal Justice students were selected to participate in the 2018 Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) Student Simulation Competition held on Saturday, February 24, 2018.  As participants, students worked in small groups to address hypothetical scenarios of a global pandemic by using data developed from the simulations on fictitious countries. Interestingly, it was later revealed, the information used in the simulation was based on real countries, like Kenya. In total, there were approximately eight-rounds of the competition that were split between the morning and the afternoon--three rounds (in the morning, and then in the afternoon) were used to construct the simulation and the last round was used to develop a policy analysis based on the data gathered during each simulation.  From John Jay College, City University of New York (CUNY) the following MPA students participated in the simulation: Monica Zambrano Saquicela, Tanisha Morrison, and Tyresa Jackson.

Overall, this event experience enhanced our critical thinking abilities, public speaking, and our ability to interpret data.  Further, we were able to network with fellow MPA students from colleges and universities in the Northeast, including Columbia University, Metropolitan College of New York, and the University of Connecticut. The most interesting part of this event was learning how to navigate a simulation program and developing policies based on the information collected during the simulation.

From my perspective, the most valuable piece taken away from the 2018 NASPAA Simulation was learning how to make decisions and solve problems with limited information and time. Participating in the simulation demonstrated that policy is constructed under imperfect conditions with significant constraints. This enhanced my ability to think in a fast and precise manner, when working under a tight deadline.  Furthermore, for the future, I would like to once again participate in the NASPAA Simulation and apply the skills I have learned during the 2018 NASPAA to a future competition.  

Thank you.

Women in the Public Sector Spring 2018 Networking Event

Reflections on the Power of Networking from the Women in the Public Sector Spring 2018 Networking Event

Gina Ortiz & Tyresa Jackson

Throughout high school, I recall teachers advising that it is not what you know, but who you know. So I’d often wonder, did that mean I was going to school for nothing? And if that was the case, where was I supposed to meet this game changing friends and professionals? Why did I need people to draw upon my own successes in order to get ahead? Now a soon to be graduating Masters student, I better understand the power of networking. While networking may serve as a planted seed for some organizations, networking may serve as a professional development tool for individuals in other contexts. I personally enjoyed attending John Jay’s networking events such as the occasional social hour, because I was in search of new friends and contacts within the public administration field. I have served in the criminal justice field and have many contacts within the field. Networking beyond my professional circle allowed me to meet some really great friends who I stay in contact with regularly and encourage each other. For many young professionals, networking goes beyond friendships or a line of encouragement. There is certainly a lot of potential in networking because after all, success is essentially a team effort.

Women in The Public Sector at John Jay College of Criminal Justice held the WPS Spring 2018 networking event to bring students, faculty, staff and professionals within and beyond the John Jay College community together for the opportunity to learn more networking tools as well as meet other professionals in the public sector. Over seventy five students, faculty and staff attended and engaged in a host of exciting activities! These activities included professional simulations of pay negotiations, listening to the experiences of senior-level in the public sector, along with learning how to promote yourself through a 30 second elevator pitch! These exercises were beneficial to all because it in turn, they helped to enhance their negotiation skills, public speaking, and confidence in networking.   

Amazing Professionals in attendance were:

-Will Simpkins, Ed.D., Senior Director of the Center for Career and Professor Development, who also moderated this event.

-Ashley Emerole,Adjunct Lecturer at Metropolitan College and Deputy Chief Clerk at the New York City Board of Elections (BOE)

-Alaina Gilligo, John Jay College Faculty Member, Deputy Comptroller

-Bill Jorgenson: Director of Outreach and Investigation at the Department of Investigation,

-Laura Ginns: Vice President for Policy and Strategic Initiatives at John Jay College of Criminal Justice,

-Linara Davidson: Managing Director for Development and External Affairs at East Harlem Tutorial,

-Stephen Rolandi: Adjunct Lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal of Justice

-Sergine Louis: Nonprofit Management Executive.  

   

Home-Based Care Sector Needs Innovation and Policy Supports To Raise Job Quality For Working Women

                            Dr.Elizabeth Nisbet                       Dr. Jennifer Craft Morgan

Dr. Elizabeth Nisbet is an Assistant Professor of Public Management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Her research focuses on public and private sector responsibilities for public services and labor markets, and on how labor, health, and immigration policies affect both public services and low-wage work. 

Dr. Jennifer Craft Morgan is an Assistant Professor in the Gerontology Institute at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta. Her primary research interest is in workforce studies within health care organizations. She has led six major funded projects evaluating the impact of career ladder, continuing education and financial incentive workforce development programs on health care worker outcomes, quality of care outcomes and perceived return on investment for health care organizations and educational partners. She has published and presented widely in both scholarly and practice-based outlets. Her work seeks to tie research, education and service together by focusing on the translation of lessons learned. This translation of research into lessons and tools serves to help stakeholders, such as employers, program implementers, and workers, to build evidence- based solutions to pressing problems.

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              In New York State, many women, often people of color and immigrants, work as personal care or home health aides to care for persons with chronic illness, disability or dementia who need assistance with daily living tasks. Over 300,000 of these women hold a job largely financed with public funds and in some cases, as direct government employees. The majority of home-based care services in the U.S. is funded by public sources including Medicaid and Medicare. These jobs are usually low wage, high demand with poor working conditions and few opportunities for advancement. They also exemplify two trends in the workforce that help explain the situation of many low-income working women today: occupational segregation, or the overrepresentation of certain groups of workers in certain jobs, and growth of low-wage work in the service sector. According to PHI, nearly 90% of home care aides are women; well over half are women of color and aged 45 or above. Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate their median pay in 2016 was $10.60 per hour, while the occupation is projected to grow 40% by 2026. However, public policy is changing aide pay in some places. For example, home health aides working for larger New York City-based agencies must earn $13 an hour plus benefits (as of December, 2017). Recent national legislation (2016) also afforded many aides nationwide first-time rights to overtime pay, rights that New York aides have enjoyed under a more limited law already.

Our recent study in the Journal of Applied Gerontology examines the experiences of these aides highlighting the difficulty getting enough work hours or maintaining a stable schedule. This problem has been well-documented for restaurant and retail workers, but it looks different for care aides, whose schedules depend on the needs of low resource clients, Medicaid or Medicare policy changes, and on decisions made by employing agencies.

Our interviews with 30 people in 17 agencies who hire aides and assign schedules focused on how labor and health care policy affect employer practices. Interview participants believed Medicaid policy change had, at least in the short term, shortened visits to patients and reduced the number of patients, which made it harder to create good schedules. They reported that aides wanted more hours. They were cutting back on overtime and reorganizing schedules to respond to regulations about overtime and pay for time traveling to homes, because they said the current structure of health care funding did not cover those costs (since then, the state provided some funds to Medicaid plans that are intended to address this). There were also changes to the way round-the-clock care was authorized so that people stayed 24 hours in a home and were paid 13, instead of working one of two 12-hour shifts.

Some innovative employers were adopting new ways to improve job satisfaction and provide steady work, such as hiring an aide to work in the office who could go out on short-notice visits, hiring mentors to help new hires, and finding new ways schedulers and aides could work together. Some aides working for more than one unionized agency may also pool hours to gain enough time to receive health care benefits.

In the restaurant and retail sectors, some workers desiring better schedules are benefiting from state laws related to scheduling notification or call-in or send-home practices. Policies like this could be helpful to care workers too, but care work presents different challenges: income can be dramatically affected by a patient’s death, change in health, or sudden admission to the hospital, and total work hours are limited by what public programs will authorize. As this occupation grows, continued attention to how policy and employer innovations can serve care aides, their patients, and their employers is needed.