HKS Government Performance Lab Fellow Position - 2025 Cohort

Summary: The Government Performance Lab (GPL) seeks to hire fellows with a passion for improving government performance and solving social problems. Fellows may provide support remotely to one or more jurisdictions or may be placed on-site with a government office or agency that is spearheading a project. To support our policy area goals, fellows work collaboratively with their assigned manager and receive coaching to help them develop their skills to drive projects forward. Fellows function as day-to-day project managers, conducting transformation projects from conceptualization through design and implementation.

Example projects that GPL fellows have conducted include working with governments to launch alternative 911 emergency response teams, supporting the state of Washington to release an RFP for culturally-responsive pilot programs to reduce the over-representation of Black and Native children in out-of-home care, and launching an Accelerator to support jurisdictions in reducing homelessness and increasing connections to housing.

Required Qualifications

• Strong project management capabilities—the ability to independently execute project tasks and meet key project deadlines.
• Ability to navigate complex organizations, develop trust and credibility with stakeholders, and build strong relationships among diverse groups.
• For some projects, ability to travel on a regular basis is required.

Preferred Qualifications

Many kinds of experiences could prepare an individual to thrive in this role. We expect candidates to have many but not necessarily all of the qualifications listed below:

• Passion for improving government performance and solving social problems.
• Self-motivated approach with a learning mindset and an orientation towards results.
• Ability to communicate ideas clearly, efficiently, and with humility both verbally and in writing, including through slide decks, meeting facilitation, memos, delivery of trainings, and public speaking.
• Awareness of and sensitivity to the needs and concerns of individuals from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and orientations.
• Sound analytical skills, with experience analyzing and using both quantitative and qualitative data to generate and communicate insights that drive impact.
• Graduate-level training in public policy, business, law, economics, social work, or related fields. Although non-traditional, applicants outside of the training listed above are encouraged to apply.
• At least two years of professional work experience.

Compensation:

This role is funded at an annual salary of $92,000 plus benefits. This position is a term appointment ending one year from date of hire, with the possibility of renewal. The role will receive a Harvard appointment as a Fellow.

Potential locations: Remote (requiring access to major U.S. airports for travel), Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area, DMV Area (District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia), Detroit/Lansing MI, Portland/southern OR, Frankfort/Louisville/Lexington KY, and Columbia SC.

Start date: Candidates should be available to start in July 2025.

To apply: Please submit your application using the GPL Online Application Form by Sunday, February 23, 2025, at 11:59 pm ET. If selected for interviews, candidates will be asked to participate in case interviews and submit examples of previous work products.

Key responsibilities typically include:

Project Management 

• Manage and coordinate projects while navigating complex organizational structures, including developing workplans and balancing multiple workstreams across various government entities.
• Develop, introduce, and oversee performance management systems to enable government and service providers to better collaborate on service delivery.

Communications and Stakeholder Management

• Conduct interviews and site visits with government officials, community stakeholders, and people with lived experience to help identify service delivery barriers and inform solutions.
• Facilitate meetings, trainings, and workshops to advance project work and build capacity; provide coaching to permanent government staff.
• Brief agency leaders and solicit decisions from them at key project milestones.
• Create memos, presentations, training documents, and solicitations with the aim of making complex information easier to understand.

Research and Data Analysis 

• Help governments match and analyze administrative data to measure population outcomes, understand cost-effectiveness, and form insights that can improve service delivery.
• Use continuous improvement tools to analyze existing processes and design new processes that enable agencies to better serve constituents.
• Review research literature, government documents, and best practices to inform work.

Community of Practice 

• Share insights with government collaborators and GPL colleagues to help spread lessons and best practices.
• Contribute to publications including project features and solutions briefs to help share insights externally.

Continuous learning is a key part of the overall fellowship experience. Fellows are part of a community of GPL team members spread across the country dedicated to sharing lessons learned, building organizational expertise, and refining GPL tools, models, and frameworks. Through project work and regular engagement with the broader GPL community, fellows develop substantial policy area expertise, hands-on project management experience, and deeper familiarity with government processes.

Possible project areas include the following:

• Children & Families. The GPL’s Children & Families policy area supports jurisdictions strengthening supports for children and families, shrinking and reducing the harm of punitive government responses such as child protection investigations and removals. We do this by working with agencies such as public health, human or social service, child welfare, and early childhood. For example, our team has supported jurisdictions to support substance-using caregivers, place more children with relatives when they enter out-of-home care, connect families to home visiting services, and invest in culturally-responsive services to improve outcomes for Black and Native children.
• Criminal Justice. The GPL’s Criminal Justice policy area aims to prevent individuals from harmful interaction with the criminal justice system by testing, scaling, and spreading alternative approaches to public safety. To achieve this, our projects focus on upstream interventions such as developing government- and community-led offices of neighborhood safety, conducting qualitative research with residents impacted by violence, sending alternative responder teams to 911 calls, setting up pathways to direct people with mental health needs to service centers instead of jail, testing alternatives to pretrial incarceration such as referrals to supportive services, and reducing punitive conditions for individuals awaiting trial in the community.
• Homelessness & Housing. The GPL’s Homelessness & Housing policy area supports jurisdictions to take a housing first, equity-centered, data-driven, collaborative approach to sustainably reducing homelessness. To achieve this, we work with jurisdictions to build out systems that 1) prevent homelessness by supporting vulnerably housed individuals further upstream, and 2) reduce the amount of time individuals spend unsheltered or in temporary shelter by creating streamlined, client-centered rehousing processes that yield benefits for unhoused individuals, response systems, and housing partners. Our approach includes both projects that support jurisdictions on specific prevention and rehousing interventions as well as direct coaching and training supports for the staff managing homeless response systems.

About the Government Performance Lab

The mission of the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab is to accelerate progress on difficult social problems by improving how state and local governments across the country function. Our team collaborates closely with government innovators in developing and testing ways to create more just and effective service systems in areas including child and family wellbeing, criminal justice, homelessness and housing, and procurement. To date, the GPL has engaged with 100 jurisdictions across 38 states and has conducted more than 278 projects shifting more than $6.2B in government spending towards results.

Harvard University is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions, or any other characteristic protected by law.