Captain Julia Farinas has built a career around helping the underrepresented. After getting her bachelor’s in history at Loyola University in New Orleans and attending law school at Tulane University, Farinas discovered a passion for advocacy at the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights (LCCR), a nonprofit organization that provides holistic legal representation for children caught up in the justice system.
Three years of hard but rewarding work with LCCR convinced her that she wanted a career in public service. “A lot of lawyers go to work at big firms to make a lot of money. I knew that wasn’t my personality.”
After her formative nonprofit experience, Farinas went on active duty with the military, where she continued to advocate for the underserved, moving from base to base in a variety of positions, including two years as a legal representative for victims of sexual assault. She never forgot about her ultimate goal to return to her hometown of New Orleans and work in child advocacy for nonprofits.
“My work in New Orleans made me realize that you have the largest impact on the most people when you’re working in public service.”
“In the army you get a lot of experience and you see a lot of things, but the foundational nonprofit work that I had done in NOLA is something I’ve always wanted to go back to,” she says. “In a perfect world, I think a lot of nonprofits would be obsolete, because basic goods and services would be available to everyone regardless of grant funding.”
“My work in New Orleans made me realize that you have the largest impact on the most people when you’re working in public service.”
Farinas’s experience in the nonprofit world gave her a firm understanding of the internal workings of organizations, how they succeed, and how they interact with government agencies. “Understanding how the money works is really what made me want an MPA. A lot of the other logistics you can learn from on-the-ground training, but there is an aspect of budget, finance, and grant writing that you can’t learn as you go.”
Being a lawyer gave her experience in many areas but one: leadership. “A JD program, in a lot of ways, teaches you how to be a technician,” she says. “You know how to put together a case; you know how to analyze facts and the law. But that doesn’t relate to how to deal with people, how to manage people, how to supervise, how to budget, along with other supervisory tasks that are required of leaders. That’s what the MPA program has done for me, and it’s why I sought it out.”
Farinas firmly believes that an MPA is crucial for those with juris doctor degrees and big dreams. “There is no lawyer I know who says: ‘I just want to try cases and stay in the same place my whole career.’ Everyone wants an upward trajectory, and that’s what the MPA program is doing for me.”
“There is no lawyer I know who says: ‘I just want to try cases and stay in the same place my whole career.’ Everyone wants an upward trajectory, and that’s what the MPA program is doing for me.”
When Farinas decided to support her goal by pursuing a Master of Public Administration, UNC was already at the top of her list.
“Everyone at Fort Bragg spoke highly of the program because it’s focused on government service,” she says, citing the high number of UNC School of Government graduates at Fort Bragg as how she learned about the MPA program. “Many army leaders have also recommended the program to me.”
As an active duty lawyer, the flexibility of an online program was crucial for Farinas. It was also important to her to get a degree “from a reputable place, from a well-known recognizable institution. UNC’s program was far and away the best one that fit my criteria.”
“Everyone at Fort Bragg spoke highly of the program because it’s focused on government service. Many army leaders have also recommended the program to me.”
She says that the UNC online MPA program has already improved her skills. “I’m up for a promotion in the army this year from senior captain to major, so I’ll be in upper management. Being in the MPA program is a huge advantage for me and has given me the confidence to serve people well.”
At UNC, Farinas is learning exactly what she needs to know to synthesize her past work experiences and take her career to the next level. She takes classes on a schedule that works for her busy life. “My main goal in this program was not to just complete the program but to learn the information.”
As a full-time active duty working mother, Farinas advises students to manage their time. “I would tell anyone coming into the program to manage their expectations that there will be a time deficit,” she says. She praises the program’s synchronous classes, saying, “I would never do an online program that didn’t have synchronous work. Those classes are very useful.”
Farinas had a baby in April 2020, right in the middle of an intense time at work that has continued throughout the pandemic. “The Immediate Response Force was called up out of the 82nd Airborne Division in January 2020 to go to Iraq, and we had 72 hours to push out 3,700 soldiers.” The changes in her personal and work life also coincided with the beginning of the semester.
“It’s my experience that the faculty will bend over backward to help.”
“If I missed class, they were great about making sure I didn’t miss the material. The fact that the professors have a baseline understanding that I am a working parent has been the reason I have been able to continue with the program through COVID, with a new baby, and with work being insane. It’s my experience that the faculty will bend over backward to help,” Farinas says.
Luis “Felipe” Martinez began his public sector career thanks to a chance encounter. While waiting tables one summer during college, he struck up a conversation with a customer.
As it turned out, Martinez was attending the man’s alma mater. After learning that Martinez was studying economics, the customer handed Martinez a business card for his job at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Martinez thought that would be the end of the story—until the Great Recession of 2008 began.
“The economy crashed, and I was trying to hustle my way into an internship. I randomly remembered the card I had in my wallet and decided to e-mail my contact,” he said.
Martinez followed up, and his persistence paid off: His fellow alumnus found a way to bring him on the team.
Eleven years later, that chance encounter has transformed into a full-fledged career. Martinez has helped the BLS produce important economic data like the Employer Cost Index, which tracks the wages and benefits of American workers over time. The accurate, objective, and relevant economic indicators he generates allow policymakers to effectively address complex social problems.
While many of his fellow economics majors looked to land high-paying roles in the private sector, Martinez feels confident that government is the right place for him. “Truthfully, I have no interest in Wall Street or Fortune 500 companies,” he said. “I like being a public servant.”
But Martinez wanted to be able to translate his statistics prowess into other types of public sector work, including policymaking or state and local government leadership, which prompted him to pursue an MPA. “I wanted to gain additional skills and knowledge to become an administrator not just at a statistical agency,” he said, “but anywhere in government.”
“I wanted to gain additional skills and knowledge to become an administrator not just at a statistical agency, but anywhere in government.”
Although Martinez considered attending a full-time, on-campus MPA program, he ultimately determined that wasn’t the best path forward. “For me, quitting my job and doing school full time just wasn’t an option. I really like my current job and wanted to keep my career momentum,” he said. Maintaining his income while earning his degree, he added, was part of what drew him to the MPA@UNC program.
Martinez is also a North Carolina native who had grown up thinking he would attend UNC for his undergraduate degree. He ended up attending college outside his home state, but when he began researching top MPA programs, “UNC’s online format stood out as a natural fit.”
He has found UNC’s online academic environment to be a critical factor in his ability to balance school, work, and life. “I have already noticed the care and availability of the UNC MPA community. Professors take the time to respond to e-mail questions very quickly,” he said. “It’s been a great experience.”
And in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, being able to continue taking classes online has helped preserve his sense of normalcy. “With everything in the world changing so drastically over these past few weeks, the one consistent part of my life is my MPA work,” he said.
“I have already noticed the care and availability of the UNC MPA community. Professors take the time to respond to e-mail questions very quickly. It’s been a great experience.”
Looking to the Future with New Leadership Skills
In the course of his tenure at the BLS, Martinez has come to learn that staff members with only technical skills are often not well-equipped to take on leadership roles. “Those jobs are more focused on high-level strategy and problem solving than on the technical economist work itself,” he said.
“The class that has helped me the most at work so far is my Communications class, which teaches fundamentals of public sector writing and public speaking. I actually even gave my boss my ‘persuasive’ essay to try to convince him to purchase some software!”
Once he graduates, Martinez will consider taking on a management role within his agency or transferring his skills to another area of government. “Whether an economist wants to stay specifically in the economist/statistician space, or potentially move on to other opportunities,” he said, “MPAs have great value.”
Adrienne Simonson ’00 had her eyes set on law school after undergrad when her political science professor complained that she should get a Master of Public Administration degree instead.
“I had never heard of an MPA degree, but as I learned more, I realized good government really spoke to me,” Simonson shares. “So, I decided to apply to both the MPA and JD degrees at UNC, a decision that has really worked for me.”
Distinguishable from the JD, Simonson found the MPA curriculum to provide a foundation for people management, offering coursework and experiential learning opportunities that exposed her to the challenges of working in small groups. The MPA program provided strategies for management, which she explains accounts for the “bulk of her career in government.” The small group experiences helped her appreciate that the individuals involved are as important as the material at issue.
Since obtaining her JD and MPA degrees as a single mother, Simonson spent the last 15 years working in public service for the federal government. She supported Congress on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and played a significant role in ensuring that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act (2006) requirements were fully funded. The Act and Reauthorization has been particularly successful, resulting in 41 fish stocks having been rebuilt, 84 percent of which are no longer overfished.
“I have been honored to lead committed teams of truly remarkable individuals,” Simonson says. “I also made critical decisions and recommendations that ensured a more efficient method for sharing government data would persist to the benefit of the taxpayer: the Big Data Program.”
When asked how the UNC MPA program has impacted her success, Simonson highlighted the value of not only the program’s substance but the network she joined. For example, as a Presidential Management Fellow in the U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of Budget, it was MPA colleagues that provided her with rotational opportunities in the Senate and the House, the latter of which she chose to pursue. She admits that the pace of the MPA was initially frustrating, and while she complained incessantly through all those classes and assignments, she has “been grateful ever since.
“Moreover, the MPA reinforced my confidence in my ability to grasp complicated concepts and work to resolve issues without being the subject matter expert in the room,” Simonson said. “That’s how I became acting director of the NOAA Data Program within the Office of the Chief Information Officer, without having significant data science or information technology skills.”