Alexandra Bobak

MSc Economy, Risk and Society (2018)

This programme is now called MSc Economy and Society

Looking back, my career has not been a straight line, and I think that has been one of its greatest strengths. Each experience has given me a different perspective on how policy is developed, implemented, and experienced by the people it is ultimately intended to serve.

Tell us about your journey since graduating from LSE?

Since graduating from LSE in 2018, my career has taken me through several different roles, but with a consistent focus on public policy and solving the challenges facing communities and governments.

After LSE I began working with the Latin American Youth Center, where I had the opportunity to provide direct service to youth in Washington DC and build systems around substance abuse prevention. I then moved into work with the DC City Council in Constituent Services, which gave me a closer understanding of how public policy is translated into decisions and services at the local level, as well as how the community actually experiences these policies. From there, I moved into consulting, working with Guidehouse on the State and Local Government team. Consulting gave me the opportunity to work across a range of public-sector challenges at the State level, and my expertise was in communications, strategy and stakeholder engagement for large Federal programs.

More recently, my career has taken an international turn. I have moved abroad and am now working in an international environment, bringing together many of the experiences I have had across government, consulting, and public policy.

Looking back, my career has not been a straight line, and I think that has been one of its greatest strengths. Each experience has given me a different perspective on how policy is developed, implemented, and experienced by the people it is ultimately intended to serve.

What advice would you give to current students or people who are thinking of applying to LSE?

London is an incredible part of the LSE experience, and students should absolutely take advantage of it. Explore the city, travel, and enjoy everything London has to offer. But I would also encourage students to spend as much time on campus as they possibly can.

The conversations you have with classmates, the speakers you hear from, the events you attend, and the people you meet at LSE are a uniquely valuable part of the experience. You are surrounded by people who are exceptionally intelligent, curious, and accomplished, and who come from an extraordinary range of backgrounds and perspectives. Even with an international career, I have never been in a community such as LSE.

It can be tempting to think of your degree primarily as a set of courses or a credential, but the opportunity to build your knowledge, relationships, and intellectual perspective through the LSE community is something that is much harder to replicate later in your career. Some of the most valuable things I took away from LSE came from conversations outside the classroom and from being exposed to ideas and perspectives that were different from my own.

How has your sociological training shaped the way you think about designing and delivering public policy?

My training at LSE, particularly in the sociology of risk, has had a direct impact on the way I approach public policy. One of the most important lessons was that people's responses to risk are not necessarily determined by the objective level of risk itself. How people perceive, understand, and respond to risk is shaped by their experiences, communities, institutions, trust, and the information available to them.

That perspective became particularly important during COVID-19 public health emergency, and at the time I was in the thick of it doing Constituent Services in DC. The pandemic was an extraordinary example of a public policy problem in which governments were asking communities to change their behavior in response to a rapidly evolving and deeply uncertain threat. My sociological training gave me a useful framework for anticipating that people would not all respond to the same information or policies in the same way.

Understanding risk as a social phenomenon has helped me think about questions beyond simply, "What is the scientifically appropriate policy?" It also required asking: How will people perceive this risk? Who will trust the information? What concerns or experiences might shape their response? What will make a community feel that a policy is being imposed on them rather than developed with them?

What's the best piece of career advice you've received?

The best career advice I have received is very simple and it is to think about what issue you most want to solve, and then continue taking interesting jobs that give you opportunities to work on that issue from different angles.

You do not necessarily need to know exactly what your job title or career will be ten years from now. Instead, I think it is more useful to identify the problem or issue that you care about and use your career to keep learning about it.

I think the same principle applies when deciding whether to pursue a master's degree. Rather than starting with, "What degree should I get?", start by asking, "What problem do I want to help solve, and what knowledge or skills would help me do that?"

That is ultimately how I ended up at LSE studying Economy, Risk and Society. I was interested in understanding complex questions through policies, and I wanted to develop a deeper understanding of the forces that shape how people and institutions respond to risk. The degree was a means of gaining the knowledge and perspective I needed to work on issues I cared about.

Your career does not have to follow a perfectly predictable path. If you keep moving toward an issue you care about while taking opportunities that teach you something new, you can build a career that is both interesting and meaningful.

What is your fondest memory from LSE?

My fondest memories of LSE are going for coffee with my classmates after class and continuing to discuss what we had just learned. Those conversations often went well beyond the material from the lecture or seminar, and they became one of the most valuable parts of my experience at LSE.

That same spirit of collaboration carried into my dissertation. Although I was working on my own research, the process was incredibly collaborative. My classmates and I were constantly talking through our approaches, challenging each other's thinking, and helping one another work through difficult questions. It made what could have been a very solitary process feel like a shared intellectual experience.

My favourite place on campus was the sixth floor of the student centre. I loved being ‘above it all’ and working up there. It was also by a café, and of course you always need coffee.

What achievement are you most proud of?

I am most proud of developing the agility to take the skills I have built throughout my career and apply them effectively across very different types of organisations, careers, and communities.

Since graduating from LSE, I have had the opportunity to work on public policy issues at the local level in Washington, DC, with state governments through consulting, and now in an international environment. Each setting has presented different challenges, stakeholders, institutional structures, and communities. What I am proud of is my ability to critically apply the skills I have developed—rather than simply relying on what worked in my previous role—and find ways to add value in each new environment.

On a more anecdotal level, one work achievement was working to get COVID-19 vaccines quickly to the most vulnerable in DC. I first mobilised a group of volunteers to help get older individuals make online appointments. I then mobilised resources for a vaccination event at a Public Housing location in DC. This was a career highlight for me.