Data Analysis with the Institute for Economics and Peace
About the author: Michelle Howard’20 is an FSI Global Policy Intern at the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) in Sydney, Australia. Michelle is currently studying Bioengineering at Stanford University.
My time with IEP ended with many hugs, Oreo cheesecake, and a toast goodbye. Working for IEP in Sydney was everything I could have asked for from a summer-turned-winter. In only 10 weeks, I transformed from a victim of CS106A scarred from the freshman year struggles of Java, to a data analyzing, R sorceress and proud member of R Ladies. R Ladies is a city-wide club of women from all backgrounds who meet monthly to learn about new R packages, hear from guest speakers, and bond with each other over the trials, tribulations, and joys of code. It should come as absolutely no surprise that last month’s R Ladies guest speaker was Talia, my IEP mentor. I leave forever thankful to her for each 9-to-5, coffee-filled day she spent inspiring me with her cleverness, persistence, and female ferocity in the pursuit of world peace.
Another bullet in the “Computer Skills” section of the resume is a great value-add, but IEP’s greater gift to me was insight. This internship taught me the process and challenges of data analysis and report writing, the mechanics and politics of an office, and the idiosyncrasies of nonprofit peace research, both general and specific to Mexico. There are few projects in my life that have infused me with as much passion as the one I engaged in at IEP on the underreporting of crime in Mexico. As a citizen of this country, I was emotionally rocked by the shocking statistics representing the lives of Mexican residents, including my aunts, uncles, cousins, and abuelita. Upon learning that 93% of all crimes are never reported to the police because public systems are perceived as corrupt or useless, I was flooded with my and my family’s testaments to this high number: the robbery of my aunt’s dentistry practice in Durango, the kidnapping of my mother in a taxi in Mexico City, the bribes I pay to Mexican border patrol to avoid harassment when I cross are silent wrongs with no access to justice. The stats I found and calculated at a standing desk in Sydney, Australia were not just digits on a screen; they were the pain caused to family, the injustices occurring in a second home, and the motivating call to someday change those numbers.
I leave happily drunk off feminism, data analysis, and inside-jokes, the ingredients of a perfect Australian winter cocktail, IEP-style.
