Alumni Profile: Isabel Kennon, MPP’23

Isabel Kennon, MPP’23, began working for the Illinois Justice Project (ILJP) as a Program Specialist soon after earning her Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. "However," she noted, "I had already interned with ILJP throughout most of my second year at Harris."

In her role at ILJP, Kennon said she works primarily on project managing the Illinois Reentry Council, where she works with partners to draft and implement policies that increase formerly incarcerated people's access to housing.

Community service, Kennon said, has been an important part of her life for as long as she can remember. "Even as a Girl Scout, I worked on service projects each year and came to understand the importance of helping others." However, as she grew up, it became clear that community service wasn’t always enough to meet the needs of increasingly vulnerable communities. “I realized that in order to really help people, I need to look at why they are in certain situations in the first place and what systems put them there. That’s what got me into policy,” she said.

Kennon’s interest in public policy solidified while pursuing her bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. “I had taken Spanish in high school, and I was interested in learning about the rest of the world and being able to communicate with people in other countries." While studying abroad in Santiago, Chile and working on her senior thesis, she examined the state of public housing policies there, driven by an interest in neighborhood dynamics and stories.

Kennon subsequently moved to Washington, DC after graduation and interned at a foreign affairs firm focused on Latin American policy. “I learned about the ins and outs of what it takes to implement policy,” she said. “Most of the team was Latino, with a personal stake or interest in their country. It was then I realized I wanted to improve my own country through domestic housing policy.”

After her internship ended, Kennon began her job search. “I kept seeing jobs that looked exactly like what I wanted to do, but most of them wanted either more experience or a master’s." Many of them, she said, also required a level of quantitative skills that Kennon felt she didn’t have. “You need to understand the numbers to identify policy solutions, but I didn’t know how to do that. I realized I was lacking some pretty crucial skills and recognized graduate school could help fill that quantitative gap."

Kennon said she was already familiar with the University of Chicago, and the quantitative emphasis of the MPP program at Harris was appealing. "Plus," she added, "Harris did a really great job with communication and events—the information I received about the programs was realistic and honest, so I felt comfortable picturing myself at Harris.”

While she was originally interested in housing policy when she came to Harris, reading Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson changed her focus. "One idea Wilkerson explored was how a clause in the 13th amendment provided a loophole for mass incarceration in the United States. That inspired me to explore—and then address—the overlap between housing policy and the criminal justice system."

Now, almost two years into her career at ILJP, Kennon is making the impact she sought. "For example, two conferences I helped organize last year brought together reentry service providers to share ideas and best practices. These conferences felt personally rewarding because the conversations I had at each reinforced for me that the skills and insights I gained at Harris have helped me become a person who can help solve housing justice issues.”