“You Can Have Real Impact While You Are Still a Student” A Q&A with Mary Treacy, MPP ’24
When Mary Treacy arrived at Harvard Kennedy School, she expected a future grounded in academic economics. Instead, two Greater Boston Applied Field Labs—one evaluating Boston’s Open Newbury Street program and another modeling redevelopment options in Long Beach, California—immersed her in the realities of local governance and applied policy work.
Before HKS, Treacy worked as an economic research assistant at the Federal Reserve, building a strong quantitative foundation. While she entered the MPP program with technical expertise, she was eager to understand how policy analysis functions beyond academic settings. The Greater Boston Field Labs stood out as a way to move from theory to practice by working directly with cities on live policy challenges.
From Research to Real-World Policy
Her first Field Lab, the Urban Politics Field Lab (DPI-325), paired her with a cross-disciplinary team working with the City of Boston on the Open Newbury Street program. The project combined data analysis, surveys, and interviews to assess how temporary street closures affected businesses and public use. The work surfaced nuanced findings that helped the city better understand how different stakeholders experienced the program and where targeted adjustments could improve outcomes.
The experience challenged Treacy’s expectations of applied policy work. Concepts from the classroom had to be adapted, assumptions tested, and recommendations shaped with an awareness of political context and competing priorities. The work was less tidy than a problem set, but more consequential. Because the project had real clients and real implications, the sense of accountability was immediate.
Applying Financial Skills at Scale
In the spring, Treacy enrolled in MLD-412: Advanced Budgeting, Financial Management, and Operations, taught by Professor Linda Bilmes. Through the associated Field Lab, she worked with the City of Long Beach to model redevelopment options for a major waterfront site as the city prepared for declining oil revenues.
Her team developed financial models tracing capital costs, operating expenses, and revenue streams under different scenarios, producing a flexible tool the city could continue to use as assumptions evolved. While the work required forward-looking judgments, it gave city leaders a clearer framework for weighing trade-offs and long-term fiscal impacts.
Shaping Career Direction and Impact
Working closely with municipal partners reshaped how Treacy viewed public service. Local government, she found, offered the opportunity to see how analysis translates into decisions and how those decisions affect communities directly. The Field Labs also helped clarify her strengths as a generalist, comfortable working across policy areas and project phases.
Those experiences informed her next steps after graduation. Treacy will join Deloitte’s public sector practice, working with federal, state, and local governments. She credits the Field Labs with providing concrete examples of applied, client-facing work and with expanding her sense of where a public service career could lead.
The impact of the Field Labs extends beyond student learning. In Boston, elements of the team’s recommendations were reflected in subsequent adjustments to the Open Newbury Street program. In Long Beach, the city later advanced a development option Treacy’s team had modeled. For Treacy, the experience underscored a simple truth: meaningful public impact does not have to wait until after graduation.