Since receiving a dual degree from the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) and the Ford School of Public Policy, Katie Chiang (MS/MPP ’05) has made a career out of working in the federal government. 

Currently, Chiang works at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), where she is the sustainability and environmental compliance program manager. She has been at the USDA for over five years and was previously at the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) for fourteen years. She says the classes she took at U-M informed her roles in both agencies. 

“A lot of policy decisions are driven by economics, and so understanding how to use those tools to assess costs and benefits was pretty important to learn,” Chiang says. “I also really enjoyed the classes on policy and negotiations and conflict management, especially the ones with Steve Yaffee and Julia Wondolleck.”

Chiang says she also took courses on natural systems that she particularly enjoyed, specifically Spring Ecosystems, where she learned about plant identification and ecosystems in Michigan. Ultimately, Chiang feels that what she learned at U-M directly contributed to her ability to build a career in federal agencies. Her first role in the DOI was in the Office of the Secretary Management Intern Program.

“I think that one of the reasons they hired me into that program was that I had had some previous work experience working on budget and appropriations,” says Chiang. “I think the economic training that I got at the University of Michigan was pretty crucial.” 

As an intern, Chiang rotated through several different offices in the DOI.

“I started as an Office of the Secretary Management intern, and I did that for two years, and it was a great program that included different rotations through various departmental offices,” says Chiang. “I did rotations in the Office of Human Resources, I was in the Planning and Performance Management Office, the Office of Budget, the Collaboration Action and Dispute Resolution Office, and also the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance.”

At the end of the program, interns are placed in one of the offices in the rotation. Chiang’s final placement was in the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, where she was a program analyst, then a sustainability program manager and her final role was as an environmental protection specialist.

Chiang says that one of the highlights from her time at the DOI was working on international climate change and that the throughline topics that carried her between DOI and USDA were waste management and sustainability.

“One of the first programs I worked on there [the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance at DOI] was waste management, and I still work on that here at USDA,” Chiang says. “Depending on what the current policies were, I worked on different things with greenhouse gas accounting, sustainability plans, and a lot of different programs.”

Eventually, Chiang started working on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which was her most recent responsibility at the DOI.

“And then I found a job here at USDA doing similar sustainability work, just at a different agency,” says Chiang.

For SEAS students who are hoping to graduate and go on to work in the U.S. federal government, Chiang’s biggest piece of advice is, “Don’t give up. Don’t get discouraged,” citing the fact that it takes time to find federal jobs. 

“It takes a long time to find that first federal job because it takes a long time for the agency to hire,” says Chiang. 

Chiang recommends looking into the Pathways Program as an entryway into federal positions, which is a similar hiring authority to the intern program she did at the DOI. 

Although Chiang moved away from Ann Arbor almost 20 years ago, she remembers it fondly, saying, “Ann Arbor is such a great town, there’s so many different activities that you can join in on. Namely, she recommends that students try to attend Shakespeare in the Park, which happens in Nichols Arboretum during the summer months.