January 2021

Policy Hackathon is one of the most enriching and fun experiences at ISPP! We usually invite organisations to give scholars a real policy challenge, and the scholars get 24 hours to work and present their solutions. The campus stays open all night, and of course there's an endless supply of chai/snacks.

The spirited diversity of our batch is also reflected in their varied career aspirations.

At ISPP, we have designed our own career support process – the ‘Three Es towards Employment’ to competently leverage on the varied skill sets and domain expertise that our scholars offer and enable each scholar to pursue career opportunities of their choice.

The ‘Tea and Policy’ session is a unique initiative where we invite public policy professionals from a diverse range of industry backgrounds to engage with our scholars. These events are structured to be free flowing discussions which not only provide the scholars with an avenue to network with industry leaders but also gives them an insight into the day-to-day workings of a policy professional.

A few policy professionals who have engaged with our scholars include Aman Jain (Google), Priti Srivastava (Reliance Industries), Rajesh Chadha (Brookings), Anu Madgavkar (McKinsey), Nirat Bhatnagar (Dalberg), Ranen Banerjee (PwC), etc.

Engaging public policy stakeholders requires a sound understanding of the policy landscape, skills to conduct research, write scientifically, and the ability to repurpose scientific writing into communication formats that suit stakeholders. The Writing and Communication Lab at ISPP offers apprentice-style training to develop scholars’ verbal, non-verbal and writing skills to communicate well in development, corporate, and academic settings. The Lab also works closely with the Careers team to support scholars' career development needs.

Immersive Learning Projects (ILPs) are high impact and unique learning experiences for scholars at ISPP to collaborate on real time projects guided by project leads from client organisations. ILP is a great way to provide the scholars a platform to completely immerse in live projects related to public policy that enables learning by doing.

The Antarang Leadership Lab (ALL) is an experiential lab. Antarang means ‘intimate’ and the lab is meant to create a comfortable space where scholars can have conversations amongst friends on issues that are relevant to their personal development as leaders. ALL gives our scholars hands-on, practical experience to build their leadership skills to help them both at ISPP and when they start working. ALL aims to make our scholars more aware of themselves and their surroundings.

Harris, along with ISPP offers the scholars from ISPP the opportunity to earn a certificate of completion in Public Policy and International Development. The certificate consists of a series of workshops and lectures, organized by Harris, to be held at ISPP and conducted by faculty, practitioners and other experts associated with the University of Chicago.

The lecture series hosted highly esteemed professors and alumni of the University of Chicago. Michael Greenstone, Director of the Becker Friedman Institute at UChicago; John Mark Hansen, the Charles L. Hutchinson distinguished service Professor in the Department of Political Science; Marvin Zonis, Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business to name a few who addressed ISPP scholars.