Alumni and Students Find Purpose in Active Citizenship
At Hamilton, this is demonstrated in many ways – through student organizations like HamVotes that encourages students to register and vote, HAVOC that offers direct community service opportunities, and the Common Ground series that explores cross-boundary political thought and complex social issues.
We talked to several students and young alumni who explain how they discovered an interest at Hamilton that led them to take action to create social change, and have a positive impact on society.
Marquis Palmer ’18
Marquis Palmer ’18, a native Utican, is senior outreach manager with Common Justice in New York.
You’ve been interested in restorative justice since you were a student at Hamilton — including your Emerson grant research, studying the philosophy of criminal justice at Oxford, and now at Common Justice. Would you say that interest began with your personal experiences?
While I’m relatively new to restorative justice, I’ve been involved in various social justice causes surrounding our criminal legal system for over a decade now. My involvement began when I was about 16 as I started to learn that the various challenges afflicting my neighborhood — from mass incarceration and over-policing to high rates of poverty and underfunded public education — resulted from specific political choices. I started to see that these realities did not constitute the “natural” order of things but rather were made and thus could be unmade. It was this realization that exploded open my sense of agency and sparked my pursuit of social justice.
Why is it important to lead by example? What do you hope to show others through your leadership?
Perhaps there’s a role for leaders who inspire others to act but don’t themselves get in the mix, but that mode of engagement doesn’t appeal to me. I prefer being more hands-on. It’s what the community leaders in my city taught me.
How did you learn about Common Justice?
While working as an investigator in a public defense office, I often interviewed survivors of violence who walked me through experiences of intense trauma. Out of this trauma arose an array of needs that often went unmet by our traditional criminal legal system. My professional obligation was to engage them insofar as their testimonies proved relevant to our defense, and prosecutors were doing the same exact thing, only on the other side.
While I was already deeply aware of our nation’s counter-productive reliance on incarceration as a way to achieve public safety, my investigative work exposed me to, and made me complicit in, the marginalization of survivors. When I heard about Common Justice and restorative justice more generally, I felt drawn by its capacity to move beyond some of the limitations of our criminal legal system by centering survivors and addressing serious violence without relying on incarceration.
What is your role there?
The core of my work at Common Justice involves screening and assessing cases of serious violence to determine their suitability for our restorative justice program. This entails regularly meeting with prosecutors, defense attorneys, the courts, survivors of violence, and individuals who are being charged with that violence. If a case is eligible for our program, I do the legwork of getting it in by coordinating the plea process. Once a case has come in, I also facilitate restorative justice circles with the directly impacted parties. Outside of case-to-case work, I also help to maintain Common Justice’s relationships with different system stakeholders to ensure that we can continue the amazing work that we’re doing.
Why is this so important to you?
We need solutions to violence that actually address violence while supporting the healing and transformation of the people directly involved. The record is quite clear that prison does not and cannot keep us safe. Common Justice and other restorative justice practitioners are proving that there is a better and more promising path toward a safer society.
What did you take from your Hamilton experience that you’re able to use in this role?
Despite being a 15-minute drive away, Hamilton was a wildly different world from the one I had known in Utica. Navigating college was therefore very challenging, especially in the beginning. But as I grew into my own, I learned how to work with and across various lines of difference to learn, organize, have fun, and grow with my fellow classmates. The capacity to connect with others who view the world entirely different from me has proven invaluable, both at my current job and in life more generally.
“The capacity to connect with others who view the world entirely different from me has proven invaluable, both at my current job and in life more generally.
Nicole Taylor ’19
Nicole Taylor ’19 founded HamVotes at Hamilton in 2018. The student-run organization continues its mission to enroll students to vote and obtain absentee ballots. Today she has a job with Citizen Data, a nonpartisan public benefit corporation that provides data, insights, and tools to social impact organizations.
What was your interest in seeking a position with Citizen Data?
After college, I started working at a nonprofit supporting student voter engagement on college campuses. What struck me most was how challenging it was to assess both our impact and the true effectiveness of the student voting organizers we worked with. There was a major gap in data infrastructure and literacy in the student voter engagement space, as well as across the nonprofit sector, largely due to limited budgets and capacity.
When I left this organization to attend graduate school for my Master of Public Administration, I focused on nonprofit management and quantitative research methods to address the gap I had experienced. Citizen Data was the perfect fit for me. Our mission, “Data for Democracy,” guides us in providing nonpartisan data and research insights to primarily nonprofit organizations working in democracy, elections, and depolarization. We help organizations develop data-driven strategies, better understand the political landscape, and evaluate their societal impact.
What’s your passion that brought you to Citizen Data?
I’ve always been passionate about two things: building a more equitable and inclusive democracy, and increasing participation in elections. At Citizen Data, we support some of the most impactful organizations with actionable data and insights to optimize their programs and reach their target audiences. I believe that trustworthy nonpartisan data, both quantitative and qualitative, is a critical framework for addressing our most pressing societal challenges.
What is your role there?
As a senior partner success manager, I work directly with our partners to understand their goals and data needs. I translate those into a research agenda, collaborate with our researchers and data scientists to execute the work, and package the results in a way that’s easy to understand. My primary focus in any project is ensuring that we meet our partner’s goals and that the data we provide is actionable and user-friendly.
Why is this so important to you?
I see firsthand how our partners apply our data and insights. Many of our projects focus on how to communicate with voters and mobilize them around pro-democracy causes. We help our partners identify their target audiences and understand the messaging, messengers, and media sources that will best reach and mobilize them. This information allows our partners to inform their work, grow their supporter networks, and increase voter turnout.
Every day, I have the privilege of working with organizations that have a wide range of objectives — some advocate for election reforms like open primaries and ranked choice voting, while others focus on increasing civic engagement among Gen Z or mobilizing support around issues such as gun safety, climate change, and the economy.
What did you take from your Hamilton experience that you’re able to use in this role?
Hamilton helped me develop essential skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication, which have been central to my professional roles. Programs like the Levitt Leadership Institute nurtured my leadership abilities and emotional intelligence. My work as a math tutor at the QSR Center honed my ability to communicate complex mathematical and statistical concepts in ways that were easy to understand. Founding HamVotes deepened my passion for elections, democracy, and civic engagement among young people. As a government and mathematics double major, I exercised my critical thinking and problem-solving abilities in every course. Hamilton allowed me to pursue diverse passions, which may seem disconnected but have culminated in my role at Citizen Data and shaped my broader career path.
“Hamilton helped me develop essential skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication, which have been central to my professional roles.
Mary Hurner ’24
Mary Hurner ’24 was an inaugural recipient of the national Obama-Chesky Voyager Scholarship for students interested in pursuing a career in public service. Today she is working with the Federation for Innovation in Democracy – North America (FIDE - NA), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to building deliberative democracy and citizens’ involvement in policymaking.
How did you get interested in this particular work?
With the Obama Foundation through the Obama-Chesky Voyager Scholarship, I was able to attend conferences and learn from public service leaders from a variety of disciplines. I became very interested in the concept of citizen-engaged democracy through processes like participatory budgeting and citizens’ assemblies. Learning about deliberative democracy made me think critically about how we as citizens engage in our democratic structures. Programs that enact citizen-engaged democracy directly involve citizens in democratic processes and inspire me as a means to address polarization and distrust in government.
Why FIDE - NA?
I first heard of FIDE - NA while leading an Alternative Spring Break trip to Greensboro, N.C., during my senior year. While having lunch with a staff member from the Every Campus a Refuge Program at Guilford College, I talked about my interest in citizen engagement in democracy. The man we were meeting with put me in contact with the executive director of FIDE - NA. I’m grateful that I was able to use my time at Hamilton to pursue a variety of different interests and that by doing so I have ended up finding new and fruitful opportunities.
What is your role there?
As the research coordinator, I’ve [helped] develop research materials to support learning around citizens’ assemblies in North America. (Note: A citizens’ assembly is defined as a group of citizens selected at random in such a way that the composition of the group reflects selected demographic or social features of the whole society.) More specifically, I’ve been working with the Yukon Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, which took place this summer in the Yukon Territory in Canada. ... I analyzed survey responses and interviewed assembly participants, attended a session of the assembly, and authored a case study outlining the findings on structure, process, and citizens’ impressions of the process.
It’s exciting to be part of this work to analyze the impact that the citizens’ assembly model has had in the Yukon and to gather findings that will potentially guide further city or state governments to consider using a citizens’ assembly model.
Why is this so important to you?
Citizen-engaged democracy offers a novel approach to giving citizens a proper voice in government. I think this is something that we are in dire need of in our country. I’m excited about the future of citizen-engaged democracy and feel strongly that the government is stronger when citizens have an active voice.
What do you hope to accomplish through this job?
Given that the citizens’ assembly process is relatively novel in the United States, it’s been a great opportunity to explore potential routes to address polarization and division by further activating citizen voices and direct input in government.
What did you take from your Hamilton experience that you’re able to use in this role?
Hamilton taught me how to think critically and creatively about issues that I see in the world. While I had never heard of citizens’ assemblies before a year-and-a-half ago, I quickly saw how this kind of model addressed an issue in how citizens view and engage with their governments. I spent a lot of my time at Hamilton engaging in community service-oriented work with the COOP. This work taught me a lot about adapting to new situations and feeling confident working with new people in unfamiliar settings.
Editor’s note: Hurner is currently teaching English on Reunion Island while working remotely with FIDE - NA.
“Hamilton taught me how to think critically and creatively about issues that I see in the world.
Will Rampe ’24
While a student, Will Rampe ’24 interned at the Cato Institute and wrote several op-eds on foreign affairs and economics/innovation for national publications. Today he works at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a nonprofit devoted to studying the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets.
What led you to your job with IER?
I’d gained interest and experience in communications-related work at libertarian-leaning organizations through previous internships with Reason magazine and the Cato Institute, and I viewed IER as a place where I could continue to do this type of work while improving my writing and editing skills. I’m also participating in the Koch Associate Program along with this job, which requires me to attend weekly seminars and seasonal summits where I interact with associates in many different roles and organizations and learn about applying Charles Koch’s principles-based management philosophy to my work and organization.
I’m passionate about communicating contemporary political questions through a pro-liberty framework that proposes public policy solutions that emphasize individual rights and limited government. IER is a principled organization dedicated to applying this framework to energy and environmental policy, an area I feel is especially important due to growing demand for energy and increased concerns about greenhouse gas emissions globally.
What is your role there?
My role involves assisting broadly with IER’s communications and media activities. I started recently so it will involve more as I become more experienced, but so far I’ve assisted with writing and editing content such as articles and reports, media tracking, and helping create content for social media.
Why is this so important to you?
This work is important to me because I believe that any positive change in policy has to start with someone formulating ideas and communicating them in a coherent and convincing manner. I view this as the basic role of a think tank, and I’m contributing to this at IER by working to communicate a free-market approach to energy and environmental policy that counters the mostly statist narratives that undergird current policies.
What do you hope to accomplish through this job?
I hope to improve my writing, editing, and reading comprehension skills involving public policy, specifically energy policy. I plan on attending law school in the near future and view these skills as important in being successful in this type of career.
What did you take from your Hamilton experience that you’re able to use in this role?
Hamilton did a great job preparing me for this role! Having majored in government with minors in history and economics, I use the reading, writing, and problem-solving skills that I gained from these classes in my daily work communicating complex policy questions in an understandable way. Energy policy incorporates many different fields, including economics, foreign policy, and law, and the classes I took on these subjects at Hamilton have given me a base of knowledge to build on and the skills to comprehend and write about new information.
How will IRE help to make society a better place?
I think that most of our policy approaches and public understanding of energy and environmental issues stem from what the philosopher Alex Epstein calls the “delicate nurturer assumption,” which views human impact on the environment as net negative and looks to policy to force people and companies to reduce their impact. I feel strongly that the evidence points to a different conclusion — that human flourishing requires that we alter our environment in order to improve our well-being and that this alteration requires abundant energy. IER is making society a better place by advocating for pro-liberty policies that allow for this abundance to occur, and I’m assisting with this work by helping communicate these policies to a general audience.
“… I use the reading, writing, and problem-solving skills that I gained from these classes in my daily work communicating complex policy questions in an understandable way.
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