Hamilton Fellows
Fast Track to Treasury
An innovative recruitment program at the Treasury Department is connected to SSA and Harris alumni
By Carl Vogel
Melissa Slaughter is a policy and program officer in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, part of a team that evaluates applications from groups applying for federal New Market Tax Credits. A 2009 Harris School graduate, she has gone from learning about the role of finance in community development to helping to run a program that provides $5 billion as incentive for private capital to invest into low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.
James Miner, a 2009 graduate of the master’s program at SSA, also joined the Treasury Department last year. As a financial and program analyst, he monitors groups that have been awarded Recovery Act funds through the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund. “I had no idea how quickly after graduating I would be on a project that is so high profile,” he says.
Both Slaughter and Miner are among the first Hamilton Fellows, a new program at the Treasury Department that is designed to attract outstanding individuals from a variety of academic disciplines. The program offers participants a two-year fellowship, which opens the door to a career at the department. The first cohort of 16 fellows began during the summer of 2009, working in both management, such as budgeting and information technology, and mission work, such as community development and terrorism and financial intelligence. Since then another group of 13 graduate students from across the country have become Hamilton Fellows.
“The program has been just fantastic. The level and quality of the applicants we’re getting is outstanding, and the people in the program are engaged and enthusiastic about their work. They’re finding that we’re asking them to do interesting work with deep responsibilities,” says Dan Tangherlini, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary of for management, chief financial officer and chief performance officer. Tangherlini is also himself a 1991 graduate of the Harris School and a 1990 graduate of the College.
Finding the Next Generation
The Hamilton Fellows program was created by Lynn S. Kim, who has worked in the federal government since graduating from SSA in 1997. When she arrived at Treasury two years ago, she saw a need for a new generation of smart and hard-working individuals. Due to impending retirement eligibility, the Department may lose as much as half of its workforce in the next three to five years. As important, Treasury is looking to bring in new perspectives, ideas and enthusiasm for the work.
“I know there are people out there who really want to join the government and make a difference, but government agencies sometimes have trouble finding a way to facilitate applicants and quickly move people in,” Kim says. “This program uses a special federal hiring authority as a streamlined way for individuals to apply and join a structured training and development program. If they’ve performed successfully during the two year program, they are eligible to become a permanent Treasury employee.”
In 2009, Kim posted information about the Hamilton Fellows program at over 200 graduate programs across the country and quickly received more than 300 applications. This past year, more than 500 graduates have applied for the third cohort. “As our managers get to meet the individuals and see these resumes, they can’t believe their luck,” Tangherlini says.
For those who become a Hamilton Fellow, the program offers training on topics such as Six Sigma process improvement, Myers-Briggs training and special tours of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the White House, in addition to regular meetings with other members of the program. “You really get the full grasp of the work that Treasury does, from cyber terrorism units to community development,” Slaughter says.
Tangherlini points out that one of the tangential benefits of the program, from the Treasury’s point of view, is how the fellows are building connections that cut across the agency, which has more than 100,000 employees at 13 different bureaus. “It is fantastic for us when people at the line level can see an issue across the organization and across levels,” he says. “It enhances our capacity for analysis and is such a benefit to the Department that these connections are being made.”
Preparing to Lead
Tangherlini says that his time at the University of Chicago gave him a “rock solid” preparation for the work he is doing today. “It just provides you with such a great foundation of learning and the capacity to understand theory,” he says. Slaughter agrees, saying, “I was exposed to core fundamentals at Harris—statistics, microeconomics, political economy—that are 100 percent relevant as I think through proposals in my day-to-day work.”
Miner and Kim have similar praise for their education at SSA. “From SSA I can approach management from the people side. Without an understanding of how people relate to one another you can’t have a successful organization,” Kim says. “In the core curriculum I learned how to speak with people and to see where people are coming from. In the organizational development work I do now, this is critical.”
While at the University, Slaughter and Miner also both took advantage of the opportunity to take courses at other graduate schools. “I’ve always had a standing interest in evaluation, and I geared my course load at SSA toward research and evaluation, including classes at Harris,” Miner says. “While I was at the University of Chicago, I knew I didn’t want to leave without tapping all the resources that were available.”
Today, Miner says he’s enjoying be so busy as a Hamilton Scholar. “I knew I wanted to have an opportunity to make an impact at the CDFI Fund. And now I’m also involved with the Recovery Act, which is historic in it’s role around the national economic situation right now,” he says. “It’s really been exciting.”