Alumni Profile: Jesse Altman, MPP’23

Jesse Altman, MPP’23, is a Policy Analyst at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) where he primarily works on issues related to transportation and climate policy. His journey to Harris—and his career in policy work—began with his time in the Peace Corps in Morocco. Altman said his desire to give back flourished after witnessing the hardships Moroccans faced due to what he saw as unfair economic and educational policies.

When Altman returned home to Chicago, the education policy issues he saw in Morocco informed his decision to join the organization Working in the Schools, a nonprofit aimed at improving the literacy of students in the Chicago Public School system. There, he contributed to the evaluation and analysis of the effectiveness of Working in the Schools’ efforts. “Although we made improvements, I realized that any solutions towards creating a more just and equitable world required the efforts of nonprofits, private companies, and the public sector combined,” he said.

Altman also realized these solutions needed to be data-informed and driven by well-researched policy—which was why he applied to the Master of Public Policy program at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. “I saw so many organizations with important visions and nearly all the tools to implement them still struggling to make progress, and Harris offers the quantitative tools necessary to help organizations make that progress.”

While at Harris, Altman said he sought to evaluate the effectiveness of social programs and make compelling, data-driven recommendations to help organizations amplify their impact—and he said he is doing just that in his role at CMAP.

“I joke with some friends who are also Harris alumni that my job is literally everything we learned at Harris. It combines policy research, writing policy memos or briefs about the research, and then doing data analysis.”

His work, Altman continued, has given him the opportunity to contribute to real change. “I’ve been part of a lot of projects that directly contribute to making the region better. For example, when I first started, I began working with the team on the Plan of Action for Regional Transit report, which was something the Agency was committed to do by the state legislature. The fact that the current legislative discussion on how to improve and pay for the transit system is influenced by the work CMAP did definitely scratches my itch of trying to make our community—our society—better.”