Current student Sarah Dhunjishaw is one of two students from North Carolina to receive the NCLGBA scholarship award to attend the Summer Conference.
Sarah Dhunijsaw is originally from Colorado and received her undergraduate degree from Queens University. She is a 2nd year oncampus student interested in local government and is currently working on her Professional Work Experience with Wake County Budget Department.
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The North Carolina Local Government Budgeting Association awards two scholarships every year to attend their summer conference. This year, it was held July 9th-12th in Asheville, North Carolina for a weekend of learning, networking, and all things budgeting.
Sarah’s interest in budgeting developed after she discovered her interest in local government. Sarah was formerly a Lead for North Carolina Fellow who returned to the School of Government to obtain her MPA because ‘it felt like the right next step, and I always knew a Masters would help open career doors a bit wider for me’.
While Sarah discovered local government through the LFNC program, she has always had a public service mindset and had originally planned to go into nonprofit work. Through her local government experience, she began to learn the vastness of how local governments impact. As she explains, “Local government isn’t for a specific population. It serves everyone in a geographic area. So anyone within the geographic area, regardless of your socioeconomic status or specifics that a nonprofit might normally target, local government encapsulates all of those people.”
She began to see how the budgets told a story about where a community wants to go. “I want to be the person that’s working behind the scenes, telling the story, and helping people get the funding so they can implement the programs they want to do.” She has also enjoyed getting the chance to work with departments that serve the areas of education, public safety, social services, and other community services like parks and recreation and libraries.
First year students are required to take a budget and finance class, and Sarah used that class to help her figure out where she wanted to do her PWE. She chose to study Wake County’s local government budget as part of a class project which she said helped her land the Wake County Professional Work Experience this summer.
Over the next year, Sarah is gearing up to finish her MPA and hopes to continue her professional career in a budget office after she graduates.
As a graduate student that is interested in pursuing a career in local government budgeting, this experience at the NCLGBA conference was incredibly valuable to her. Through formal sessions at the conference, she was able to dig deeper into the current local government budget landscape in North Carolina and gained valuable takeaways on how to respond as a budgeter in this political atmosphere.
“The personal and professional development that I received from the sessions and networking events has helped prepare me for my future as a young professional in local government. I have left the NCLGBA conference inspired, motivated, and more knowledgeable about my chosen career path. I am so grateful to the NCLGBA for the scholarship and opportunity to attend such a transformational conference!”
