Sixteen. As high school juniors get behind the wheel and taste freedom for the first time, a boy in rural Indiana was finally liberated in a different sense: from years of abuse in the foster care system.

“My first bout with public administration was being able to convince the state of Indiana that the foster care system was doing more harm than good,” Mat Bunch (MPA ’22) said, a graduate student in the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Government. “I was set up to be in an independent living program where I had my own house junior year of high school. I’ve been raising myself since.”

Bunch graduates with an MPA this December. Despite the many achievements Bunch has accumulated – from class president in high school to publishing a memoir during graduate school – his life’s trajectory was anything but normal, let alone anything a child should have to face. 

At the age of six, Bunch became a foster child in the Indiana state system. For six more years, he lived under the roof of an abusive guardian.  

“For that woman, I was a $2,400-a-month check,” Bunch said. 

He recalled wearing makeup to go to school in order to cover his guardian’s blows and would miss school altogether if his physical marks revealed too much. As young as eight years old, he pleaded for help at school. It took four times for anyone to listen. 

“Every time I would get the courage to try and get out of the situation, the public school system didn’t believe me,” he said. “The investigator would come, she’d take pictures, and I would be put back into that abusive home that very day.” 

Merely being believed wasn’t enough. As soon as the state removed Bunch from the abusive household, amid teenage years of personal discovery among the LGBTQ community, he was placed in a foster home that seemed all but perfect – until he received an ultimatum: to be straight or return to the orphanage. He chose the latter. 

“That’s a very young age to say ‘I would rather go to the orphanage and be faced with that than pretend to be somebody I’m not in this foster family,’” Bunch said. Their love, or lack thereof, was conditional.  

Once the state of Indiana granted Bunch permission to leave the foster care system, he got his grounding. He went on to attend college at Indiana University where he graduated from the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. From there, Bunch knew he wanted to contribute to the public service sector in some way.  

“Being discriminated against was probably the biggest propeller because I wanted to be an advocate for others in any type of way,” Bunch said.  

While he always envisioned post-graduate life in law school, a job opportunity at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) altered his path. For four and a half years, Bunch wrote grid Reliability Standards to ensure a sustainable and secure bulk-power system from the U.S. and Canada to part of Mexico.  

Bunch has since shifted to a job in the private sector where he is responsible for North American energy compliance.  

“I was in the public sector for a while,” Bunch said. “But having this degree and taking these classes, I was able to take public sector values – leadership development, organizational theory and work with leadership to influence the compliance culture,” Bunch said.  

Following commencement, Bunch plans to continue his work in energy policy.  

“While at Carolina, I built community among colleagues and friends,” he said. “This has made all the difference.” 

— Kate Slate 

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Master of Public Administration student Anna Naples has received the prestigious Impact Award from The Graduate School at UNC-Chapel Hill. The awards recognize significant graduate student research and contributions to the state in areas of education, economic, physical, social or cultural well-being.

Naples partnered with the Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC for her research, titled “Produce Distributed in Urban and Rural Areas through the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina”. In partnership with the Food Bank, Naples focused on the equitable distribution of produce for households under the poverty line.

“UNC MPA students can be a valuable asset for engaged research,” said School of Government faculty member Maureen Berner. “They are gaining the analytical skills to do research and learning about leadership, organizations, and community needs. Most importantly, they want to make a difference. Anna is not the first of our MPA students who has been recognized with this prestigious campus award, and I’m sure she won’t be the last.”

Naples was able to use her personal interest in food insecurity and produce access to guide her research project as part of the MPA program.

“The most meaningful part of the project was that I felt my research had a tangible impact on the Food Bank’s work,” said Naples. “This data can increase produce access for families and help them find fresh foods easily available nearby that they might not know about.”

The Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC was seeking information about where they are distributing produce, how well they are meeting the community need, and where there are still gaps in access.

Naples used ArcGIS to create a map of food distribution data. She mapped 1,200 pantries across the Food Bank’s 34-county service area, including the amount of produce distributed over six months, urban versus rural distributions, the number of people below the poverty line served, and the amount of produce distributed per person.

Through her research, Naples collected data and created a valuable tool the Food Bank will use to guide future programming, including where to establish “pop-up” distributions and where to connect food-insecure individuals in hospitals with nearby pantries that have produce.

“The Food Bank is thinking strategically and doing incredible work. Their work and mine shows there’s more to be done to increase fresh food access for people in our state,” said Naples.

The 2023 Impact Awards had 11 recipients. Over 300 individuals have received awards since the program’s inception.

When it was time for Maggie Bailey ’21 to look for her first post-MPA job, she didn’t have to look far. She found the right fit within the walls of the School of Government, joining the School’s Criminal Justice Innovation Lab as its second project manager. The role was a natural transition for Bailey after serving as a research assistant in the Lab as a student.

“The Lab has afforded me the opportunity to leverage skills I gained in the MPA program,” Bailey said. “The program does a great job bridging theory and practice. The practitioner’s lens is evident in all the work the School of Government does. It’s exciting to work on projects that directly support stakeholders and inspiring to see how those stakeholders make measurable changes.”

The Lab is one of 10 entrepreneurial initiatives at the School. These specialized, public-service oriented units focus on a variety of critical issues, including public service leadership, criminal justice, economic development and community revitalization, and environmental finance. They generate local government fellowships, produce public policy analysis, and educate public defenders. As this work expands and grows, these initiatives are forging deep connections with UNC MPA alumni and students to support their efforts.

Jess Dorrance (’04) returned to the School in 2021, joining the ncIMPACT Initiative as research director after working at the UNC Center for Community Capital. Returning to the School to work on research and evaluation was “such an easy decision” for Dorrance. With ncIMPACT and UNC’s Carolina Across 100 initiative, Dorrance has the chance to continue deploying skills she first learned as an MPA student.

“The curriculum, the things I learned, and the relationships that began with MPA have carried through the years,” Dorrance said. “At its essence, our work at the ncIMPACT Initiative is about collaboration. That was such a big part of MPA: working collaboratively with groups, with cohort members, and directly with organizations or communities to help them solve problems or address issues.”

MPA students engage in the work of entrepreneurial initiatives by serving as research assistants, graduate assistants, or conduct their Professional Work Experiences (PWEs) with initiatives, generating practical scholarship that leads to real-world impacts in North Carolina communities. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship that expands the work of initiatives, provides unique, hands-on learning experiences for students, and allows public officials to gain the resources they need.

“Our students move foundational research forward and take on projects that help us be responsive to stakeholder needs,” Bailey said. “Students learn about criminal justice in North Carolina and work on projects directly affecting people’s lives. We’re lucky to have programs like UNC MPA as partners.”

Bailey and Dorrance join other MPA alumni providing leadership to innovative entrepreneurial initiatives at the School. That list includes Dylan Russell ’17, executive director of Lead for North Carolina; Emily Williamson Gangi ’01, policy engagement director for the ncIMPACT Initiative; and Lydian Altman ’84, teaching assistant professor for the Center for Public Leadership and Governance. Each program benefits not only from the expertise of these alumni, but also from the practical skillset of the MPA students supporting them.

“Our team is fairly small, which allows us to be adaptable and responsive,” Dorrance said. “But we are tasked with completing a significant amount of work with limited staff capacity. The MPA students help boost that capacity and bring their enthusiasm, skills, and diverse perspectives to enhance our work.”