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Celebrating Trachtenberg: Reflections from Director Newcomer
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Reflections from Director Kathy Newcomer
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As Director of a school that graduates many alumni who work in the nonprofit sector, it is extremely rewarding to see the impact our alumni have in civil society. Professor Michael Worth has been the prime mover in our nonprofit coursework, and given that he has literally written the key textbooks on both nonprofit management- widely known as the "Worth book" due to its dominance in the field- and fundraising, it is not surprising that our graduates have done well.
We have hundreds of alumni working in leadership roles in nonprofit organizations, and a good number of them are leading development teams. Fundraising in the nonprofit world is a critical skill, now more than ever. We have dozens of alumni in that field, as exemplified by Audra Clark (see below), who founded Audra Clark Consulting in the Kansas City area, as well as fundraising leaders at Children's National Hospital, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Geographic Society, and Save the Children.
Our students and alumni are typically highly active in volunteer work in leading volunteer organizations, as well, and many hold significant leadership roles at such organizations across the country. For example, Lala Kasimova's work with Aid on the Hill is inspiring, and the future of our country's foreign assistance is truly an issue on all of our minds. See more on that work below.
Our students receive relevant experience and develop needed skills working with nonprofit agencies in our capstone classes each semester, and the impact of that pro-bono assistance each year is impressive- see more about our capstone below. Our students, faculty, staff, and alumni truly go out and make a difference across sectors- doing good and doing it well.
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Trachtenberg Alumni Engaging in Nonprofit Management: Audra Clark
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Audra Clark (MPA '08) is the founder of Audra Clark Consulting, where she partners with nonprofit executives and development teams to strengthen fundraising strategies, deepen donor partnerships, and foster long-term organizational growth. Audra's commitment to service began as an Americorps*VISTA in San Antonio, Texas. She then spent 11 years with City Year in Washington, DC, leading fundraising efforts for a $5 million budget and helping the site triple in size. It was during her tenure at City Year Washington, DC that Audra enrolled in the Trachtenberg School, concentrating in nonprofit management. She credits courses like program evaluation, budgeting, and policy analysis with shaping her into a more well-rounded nonprofit leader. This preparation became even more important in 2015 when she returned to her hometown to become the Founding Executive Director of City Year Kansas City, a role she held for 6 years. Audra remains grateful to her professors, especially Kathy Newcomer and Michael Worth, for preparing her to take on that one-in-a-lifetime role.
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From USAID to Aid on the Hill: Lala Kasimova's Pivot to Nonprofit
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After completing her MPP in 2019, Lala Kasimova built a career in program evaluation, serving as Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Advisor for USAID's Asia Bureau. Tberg courses in research methods, decision modeling, and cost/benefit analysis gave her the foundation to strengthen her work in program evaluation and performance monitoring. In July 2025, Lala was RIFed, at which point she again turned to her Trachtenberg skills to pivot from government service to the nonprofit space, helping launch Aid on the Hill (AOTH), a grassroots nonpartisan initiative based in Washington, DC. AOTH is a movement of aid professionals, advocates, and engaged citizens working to ensure that US international assistance policy remains strong, effective, and central to America's role in the world. They are now 500 members strong!
Kasimova shared, "now more than ever before, I am taking a harder and closer look at how the legislation that becomes policy is shaped (that people like me used to implement). For example, when I develop our asks for Congress, I try to think through the implications of how it will be received on the agency side, and what that will mean for the American public- are they gaining or losing value? The public policy courses that I took at Trachtenberg have informed my decision-making and work at AOTH." Some examples of AOTH's asks are on their resources page, with case studies on topics like migration, food assistance, and data capture.
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Capstone Projects Create Positive Change
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For 20+ years, Trachtenberg's capstone students have provided pro-bono projects for clients, many of whom are alumni. The capstone teams design and implement substantial analytical projects. We extend our sincere thanks to our 2025 Capstone Clients and our Capstone Students who logged over 12,500 hours of work this year.
Spring and Fall 2025 Capstone Course Clients
- Airlines for America
- American Council on Education
- Anacostia Riverkeeper
- Artists of Middleburg
- Asian American Government Network
- CCS Fundraising
- Columbian College Career Center
- Destination DC
- District Council Office of Racial Equity
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
- Friendship Place
- Ocean Ties
- Office of Personnel Management
- Refugee Council
- rPlus Energies
- Small Business Administration
- SPIN Global
- St. Louis Integrated Health Network
- US Coast Guard
- Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions
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CCS Fundraising Casptone Team Provides Client with an Overview of the City's Philanthropic Landscape
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(L-R) Daniel Biggins, Caroline Motley, Sophia Boyer, Justin Williams
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This semester, we are highlighting Trachtenberg's CCS Fundraising capstone team! Partnering with CCS Fundraising, a consulting firm serving nonprofits, the students conducted an analysis of the city's philanthropic landscape using a mixed-methods approach. Their work provided valuable insight to help CCS Fundraising strengthen its support of its nonprofit clients and have a better understanding of local trends in Baltimore. Learn more about Daniel Biggins, Sophia Boyer, Caroline Motley, and Justin Williams' work with capstone client and Tberg alum Nana Ama Oppong (MPA '08) in an interview with the team. Read the full interview here→
A few highlights from the interview:
- "Thinking about our capstone and others this semester, I was surprised by the variety of projects and how many opportunities there were for us soon-to-be-graduates to apply the things that we've learned throughout our program in the real world. GW prepared me to be a critical thinker and an effective problem solver."- Justin Williams
- "CCS Fundraising was an excellent capstone client! They provided excellent critique and encouragement. They also allowed us to attend their Baltimore Philanthropy Forum, where I learned from development experts about the challenges faced by nonprofits of all sizes."- Sophia Boyer
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Trachtenberg Invites Experts to Speak on The Power of Free Markets and Computational Text Analysis in Examining Postsecondary Outcomes
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(L-r) Sen. Phil Gramm, Dr. Don Boudreaux, Dr. Susan Dudley
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Dr. Rebecca Johnson, Tberg Faculty and Students
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The Trachtenberg School has been busy, hosting two key events since our last issue. In a November 10 discussion with the Trachtenberg School and the Regulatory Studies Center, authors of a new book on economic history discussed the lessons gleaned in the Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism. Former US Senator Phil Gramm (Texas) and Don Boudreaux shared insights and explored the transformative power of free markets in conversation with Trachtenberg Professor of Practice Susan Dudley.
Rebecca Johnson kicked off Trachtenberg's Research Seminar Series on December 6, presenting her work on a field experiment in collaboration with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Education navigators were randomly assigned to public housing buildings to help resident teenagers apply for financial aid. The authors found no statistically significant impact of access to navigators on postsecondary outcomes. Using computational text analysis of detailed logs that navigators kept of their interactions with residents, the authors explored mechanisms underlying why the intervention did not produce the hoped-for impacts.
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On January 15 from 9am-3pm, Trachtenberg will co-sponsor The Future of Government Oversight event with Virginia Tech's School of Public and International Affairs. This is a free one-day workshop bringing together oversight professionals, scholars, and students to examine the challenges facing key accountability institutions, including the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs). Recent events, including the dismissal of Inspectors General, funding uncertainty for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), and the approaching leadership transition at GAO, raise important questions: What is the future of independent, nonpartisan oversight? What does the GAO's leadership transition mean for accountability and interbranch relations? How can scholars, practitioners, and students contribute to public knowledge about the changing landscape of government oversight? Sign-up here to receive updates→
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Trachtenberg is teaming up with seven other "good government" nonprofit and academic institutions in hosting an important bipartisan conference entitled Driving Government Efficiency: Delivering Measurable Results on March 5, here at GW. This conference is being designed as a call to action in support of a serious and sustainable modernization agenda across the government. Our objective is to leverage the collective influence of our organizations to drive this agenda into the government's policy and cultural mainstream by engaging high-level policymakers from the executive and legislative branches in this important discussion. Learn more here and register for our early bird discount→
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PhD student Stone Washington, a participant in the Hoover Policy Proposal Contest at the Hoover Institution's Policy Bootcamp, was awarded Distinction with Honors for his policy proposal. Stone's policy proposal, Financial Foil: How One Administrative Law Court Burdens Banks, focuses on his research on federal administrative law courts, particularly the Office of Financial Institution Adjudication (OFIA). Stone explored agency adjudication in two of his courses, namely Law and the Public Administrator with Roger Nober and Literature of Public Administration with Lori Brainard.
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