Internships have been a staple of the Policy Terp experience--dating back to the School’s first class of students. Suzanne Cartwright MPM ’84, a member of the charter class of the School of Public Policy, says internships have been a cornerstone in her career, from her most recent ventures connecting students to opportunities all the way back to her time at what was then the School of Public Affairs.
“40 years ago, I was an intern in the office of Congressman Jim Moody,” recalled Cartwright. “A fellow intern in the office, Chuck Rosenberg, went on to become U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.”
Rosenberg would later hold top roles at the Department of Justice, the FBI and serve as the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), later resigning from the DEA after criticizing former President Donald Trump’s comments regarding police brutality.
In her own career, Cartwright was able to pay her internship experience forward. Most recently, she worked with the University of Washington Runstad Department of Real Estate. Recognizing the importance of internships, she utilized her position to help graduate students connect to internships and jobs in the private, public and nonprofit sectors of the real estate community.
All of these seemingly separate experiences would come full circle in the fall of 2019, when she was able to introduce her students to that fellow office intern from so long ago. The significance that it was the confluence of all these shared internship experiences - her own, Rosenberg’s, and now her students - that made that moment possible and special was not lost on her, and reinforced her drive to help others have those opportunities.
“I was proud to introduce my students to [Rosenberg], this upstanding member of the “deep state” so essential to a functioning democracy - and to reconnect with my own MPM past,” said Cartwright. “Internships change lives!”
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