Alumni Profile

“How often do local frontline emergency professionals, registered nurses, and NYC public school educators convene in a classroom to discuss ways to improve public health outcomes in the midst of a global pandemic? At Hunter, this was just a regular Tuesday evening class.”

As a native New Yorker, Jaclyn Williams (MSUPL ’22) has a deep sense of the significance of individual agency, neighborhood cohesion, and diverse housing and economic development in metropolitan areas. Through her varied public service projects and roles—domestic and abroad—Jaclyn knows firsthand, everyone is not included, respected, or encouraged to participate in civic society and the economy.

Jaclyn immediately jumped into public service as a Candidate Services liaison at the NYC Campaign Finance Board after graduating as a Colin Powell Fellow in the Macaulay Honors Program at The City College of New York (’19). Driven to make places more than just livable, she began Hunter’s MS in Urban Policy and Leadership program in the summer of 2020. Navigating life in one of the most populous cities during a global health crisis, Jaclyn and her peers also reevaluated the core of urban issues with critical, yet perceptive lenses at Hunter.

In her final semester as an MSUPL student, Jaclyn served as the editor-in-chief for Hunter’s Urban Review. In 2022, she also received an Honorable Mention in the American Planning Association Economic Development Division’s Holzheimer Scholarship. The honor was awarded on the basis of a  paper, “Cultivating Economic Opportunities in New York State through the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act,”  that she adapted from a final project in Professor Laura Wolf-Powers’ Planning for Economic Development course in Spring 2021.

“Earning an M.S. in Urban Policy and Leadership bridged a gap between my interest in promoting inclusive neighborhood development and my technical knowledge to do just that.”

Since completing the MSUPL program at Hunter College (’22), Jaclyn continues her public service career joining the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) as a Performance Management Analyst. Find Jaclyn on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/jaclynewilliams.