Home > Resources and Services > Admissions > Interviews
Carrie O'Neil, MPA 2010: Second year MPA student with a concentration in Human Rights and with a focus in International Conflict Resolution
Back to Students, Faculty and Alumni Interviews
After graduating from Dartmouth College, Carrie O’Neil worked on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for a non-profit doing rebuilding and community development after Hurricane Katrina. She went on to work for Seeds of Peace as a facilitator developing and implementing intensive coexistence programming for young adults from the Middle East and South Asia. While at SIPA she has focused on international conflict resolution, human rights and reconciliation, work that has brought her to Northern Ireland, Rwanda and the Republic of Georgia during her time at SIPA. In the fall of 2010 she will continue her studies of human development and conflict resolution at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Can you talk about your workshop experience?
"The work environment at SIPA has been intense and collaborative. I was attracted to this program because of the practical nature of the work and the opportunity to do capstone workshop with an international organization. I had the opportunity to work with six other students on a project assessing the state of efforts to combat domestic violence and human trafficking in the Georgia for a small women’s NGO in Tbilisi. We conducted over 50 interviews while in the field and now client is organizing a conference based on our report to advance the dialogue about these issues in Georgia. It was a wonderful and intense project."
Have you taken classes at other Columbia Schools?
"I found there was lots of flexibility within my concentration to take what I wanted. I took classes at Teachers College in conflict resolution and organizational psychology which was a great experience."
What has been the best part of your SIPA experience?
"I was on the board of the Conflict Resolution Working Group and found this experience to be extremely gratifying. We put on career panels, conferences and events for the greater Columbia community and were able to advocate for more conflict resolution courses and programming. This experience helped me find colleagues with common interests and provided lots of opportunities for networking. I also enjoyed being a teaching assistant and working with students. It has made me realize that I might want to teach at the university level."
What experiences do you think prepared you at attend SIPA?
"I had five years of non-profit work experience before I came to SIPA. This school has provided an excellent environment to reflect on my work experience inside and outside the classroom and to build the specific skills I knew I needed to pursue the work I am interested in. This program has been a good balance of the practical and the theoretical and having work experience to frame my studies was extremely important."
How was your concentration?
"I am constantly impressed by the breadth of courses offered at SIPA, especially within the human rights concentration. Professors are also practitioners from myriad fields who work to make courses grounded in real practice. Out of all the schools I looked at, SIPA had by far the most robust human rights program with the option to focus on reconciliation after conflict."
[July 2010]