Research Assistant, Under Dr. Sukumar Ganapati, Department of Public Policy & Administration, Florida International University (FIU), Fall 2024-Summer 2025.
- Designed and created a dataset of school board public meetings, state documents, and news reports regarding local government handling of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. Used NVivo to analyze common themes with four school districts and their implementation of a mask mandate.
- Collected videos and created transcripts for school board meetings, with special focus on 4 out of 67 school districts in Florida.
- Used the Florida Digital Newspaper Library and Newsbank to identify and gather news articles relating to mask mandates.
- Identified relevant Press Releases and Executive Orders.
Research Assistant, Under Dr. Milena I. Neshkova, Department of Public Policy & Administration, Florida International University (FIU), Spring 2023-Summer 2024.
- Created a dataset of superintendent characteristics in Florida through the use of school district meeting transcripts and agendas, local newspapers, state documents (Florida Commission on Ethics, Florida’s Auditor General, OPPAGA), the Florida Sheriffs’ Association, the various county election websites, campaign information, and the school district website.
- Created a dataset that combined data from several international surveys and databases. Cleaned and organized the data from 1990 to 2020 for 34 nation-states in Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Research Assistant, Under Dr. Meredith A. Newman, Department of Public Policy & Administration, Florida International University (FIU), Spring 2021-Spring 2023.
- Assisted with the creation and maintenance of a benchmarking table of local government best practices in human resource management.
- Researched and summarized the history of inequities in a local government through the use of academic resources, books, newspapers, and local government sources.
- Created population and wealth distribution maps of the state of Florida and a local government within Florida.
- Used local government websites to build city profiles of several cities throughout the United States through meeting agendas, local government initiatives, local history, and local government committees.
Nonacademic Experience
Homicide Victim Witness Intern, The Office of Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, May – August 2017 and May – August 2018
- Was responsible for digitizing and uploading open and closed case files and personal information of homicide victims and their next-of-kin under the purview county’s three homicide counselors.
- Over two summers, was charged with uploading over 300 case files from the 1970s to the current year. The role included ensuring that the case files were updated and standardized across the decades. The information included the name of the victim(s), the case number, the name of the suspect(s), charges and convictions, and the name, phone number, and address of the next-of-kin. Because some of the files were either incomplete or decades old, I was in charge of filling in the missing information. To update the files, both private and public sources were used, which include the Florida Department of Corrections website, the county’s database of arrests and convictions, and local newspapers.
Intern with the City of Tallahassee’s Talent Development Team in the Human Resources Department, January – May 2017
- Consolidated the HR personnel training for the city into a database for standardization and easy access. This included creating a Microsoft Excel database on the current and past HR personnel training that the city conducted for its employees over the years. This made it easier to keep track of which of the city employees have conducted their training, the type of training, and the date that the training took place. To create my database, I analyzed over 10 years’ worth of employee training materials.
- I interacted with the public through outreach programs, such as reading to elementary students and coordinating and hosting a community workshop that provided information about the Fair Housing Act as well as opportunities for community members to attain affordable housing.
- I helped host several events that sought donor assistance for a youth summer job program. The program allowed youth under the age of 18 to have temporary summer jobs with local businesses. Some of the events that we hosted were radio broadcast informing the community of the opportunity and a dinner where we collected donations for the summer job program.
Intern with the Child Support Program’s Interstate Division, The Office of Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, May – August 2016
- Tasked with creating a Microsoft Excel database of ongoing and closed cases for the Interstate Division. Tasks were completed by locating information on the non-custodial parent through the Florida Department of Corrections and the agency’s database. I also reviewed the mail the voicemails of custodial and non-custodial parents, added them to the database, and assigned them to their case worker.
Ariel T. Powell 