Meet Our New Programs and Evaluation Team Fellows!
NYC Opportunity’s Programs and Evaluation team is welcoming three new fellows: Cerimar Olivares, Christina Abraham, and Candice Charles. Here is a little bit about them.
Cerimar Olivares
What brought you to our team, and to this work?
I am a recent Hunter College graduate. Having completed a double major in Political Science and English with a minor in Human Rights, I applied to the Urban Fellows program in hopes of gaining a deeper understanding of local NYC government.
Tell us who you are, and why you’re excited to join the NYC Opportunity team as a P&E Fellow.
I was excited to join the NYC Opportunity team because I really believe in its mission and vision of equity for all New Yorkers, especially our most vulnerable populations. The breadth of work I’ve been exposed to in my time here has been amazing to say the least.
What are your goals for your time as a fellow?
At NYC Opportunity, I hope to learn how to design, implement, and execute projects to completion. I also hope to learn more about the respective portfolios of NYC Opportunity and the programs that facilitate its anti-poverty mission.
What is something we may not know about you?
In my free time, I like to travel. I am an avid reader and a writer. I also like to run and stay active with the occasional volleyball game.
Christina Abraham
What brought you to our team, and to this work?
I have had my eye on NYC Opportunity since I started at my graduate program! I was so excited to see the Graduate Fellow opportunity and after speaking with members of the team knew it would be a great fit for the experience I was looking for.
What were you doing before this? If you’re currently in school, what are you studying?
Previously I was working on the Medicaid redesign initiative DSRIP (Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment program) at Mount Sinai here in NYC. My work there gave me a passion to advance public health, which led me to pursue an MPH at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. I’m currently in my second year studying in the Health Policy and Management department.
What are your goals for your time as a fellow?
My goals for my time as a fellow include learning more about the ins and outs of NYC government, gaining broader public policy experience beyond Medicaid, and developing relationships with folks both inside and outside of the office.
What is something we may not know about you?
I am a certified tax preparer with NY’s VITA program. Unfortunately, I had to put my participation with the program on pause due to COVID, but I’m really looking forward to preparing returns for low-income NYC residents next year. I’m very passionate about financial literacy as a driver of public health and think everyone should understand the basics of investing and financial management.
Candice Charles
Tell us who you are, and why you’re excited to join the NYC Opportunity team as P&E Fellow.
I am excited to join the NYC Opportunity team as a P&E Fellow because I believe in a vision of equity for all marginalized New Yorkers. Along with this belief, I know that enacting this work at scale is a complex undertaking. One I hope to understand more through this position.
What brought you to our team, and to this work?
What brought me to this work is a strong sense to make right in the world what is so egregiously wrong from a social, economic, and public health perspective. In many ways, what brought me to this work is what brought me to this team. Simply put, I was looking for an opportunity like this. One situated in city government, backed by a strong anti-poverty ethos, and with a reverence for data-driven decision-making.
What were you doing before this? If you’re currently in school, what are you studying?
Before and during this, I had and have been working on my master’s degree in Public Health at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. There, I concentrate on studying the social determinants of health, community-based research methodologies, and equity-minded evaluation and intervention design.
What are your goals for your time as a fellow?
My goals are to learn as much as I can about the inner workings of city government as well as gain a solid understanding of how to effectively manage and evaluate the various disparity-addressing programs and projects that many New Yorker’s benefit from.
What is something we may not know about you?
I am a movie nerd. Ask me about almost any movie from 1920 on and I probably have an opinion on it.
The Programs and Evaluation team and NYC Opportunityworks with City agency partners to support the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of new initiatives for low-income New Yorkers.
The team currently manages a portfolio of initiatives of its own investments, as well as managing programs that are part of the Young Men’s Initiative. They engage in robust program management and performance monitoring for the programs within the NYC Opportunity portfolio and help partners develop appropriate performance monitoring metrics for their programs and initiatives.
Learn more at nyc.gov/opportunity
