Hearts at Harris: Passion and Problem Sets

For more than 30 years, the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy has been awarding degrees, launching careers, and even sparking lifelong romantic relationships. In celebration of Valentine’s Day, a few of Harris’s alumni couples have shared details of their love stories and updates on their shared lives since graduation, a tradition Harris began in 2019. Some of these couples arrived at Harris together, only to grow more in love during the years they spent holed up at Harris and exploring Hyde Park; others met crossing paths in shared classes or school activities, and they’ve been together ever since. All have gone on to apply their educations in policy, leaving their own mark on the world, hand in hand.

This is Hearts at Harris.

“Very Decisive People”

Laura Bergedieck, MPP’17 & Rodrigo Guzman-Sanchez, MPP’18

When they started dating at the end of Rodrigo’s first year at Harris, and just a few days before Laura’s matriculation, it wasn’t a “will-they-won't-they” plotline, Rodrigo says. “We’re both pretty decisive.”

“It was just a—this is what we both want.”

“It just felt right from the start, for both of us,” Laura continued. “There was no drama.”

The “drama,” so to speak, would come a year later, when Laura, who is from Germany, began to worry that the H-1B visa she was relying on getting through her job might not be guaranteed.

“There was a lot of scrutiny in the process,” Laura recalled. She was required to provide further evidence to support her application, and a colleague’s denied application for the same visa was a heavy cloud hanging over the entire process for her and Rodrigo.

If Laura’s application was denied, she would be told to leave the country.

“We quickly realized that wasn’t an option and we wanted to stay together, so the easiest way was to get married,” Laura said. “We spoke with some lawyers, realized we had to move fast—before I lost my visa.”

Less than three weeks after initially considering marriage as not only a solution to Laura’s visa issue, but also as the logical next step for the ever-decisive couple, they were married on the University of Chicago’s main quad in what Laura described as a very “Harris-focused celebration.”

“We threw a little garden party on campus,” Laura said. “It was beautiful. We had a little celebration at the Logan Center for the Arts afterward. It was a very spontaneous and fun party. We’re more spontaneous people anyway, so we didn’t envision a big, fancy party, but rather just a get-together with people that are important to us.” 

Rodrigo’s classmate and former roommate officiated the wedding after getting ordained online. Friends still in town that summer for internships and jobs were in attendance, filling in as family for the couple’s far-flung family members.

Ironically enough, the only class the couple ever took together during their overlapping time at Harris was an immigration policy course, which they only realized while sitting for their green card interview after having tied the knot. It was in that class that Rodrigo first caught Laura’s attention.

“He was always really involved in class discussion, and I remember he wrote a paper about some German migration topic,” Laura said. “We discussed that at some point after school.”

“That night Rodrigo drove me home and we sat in the car forever talking about all kinds of things,” she said. “Our first date was two days later; we didn’t do anything special really. We met at Rodrigo’s place and it wasn’t anything fancy.”

The rest, as they say, is history. One that has continued in Chicago, where Laura and Rodrigo ended up both getting better jobs than they’d ever expected. Laura leads a strategy and sustainability team for a German-based renewable energy company that develops solar wind and storage. Rodrigo is a senior solution consultant for Salesforce. They live in the South Loop with a view that overlooks Millennium Park, and they have a new roommate with whom to enjoy the view, too: their first child, Soren, was born in February 2022. His name is pronounceable in all three of the languages spoken at home—German, Spanish, and English—and he’s already become best friends with Seneca, the family’s white boxer dog.

They’ll likely move to Arizona soon, to be closer to Rodrigo’s family, before ultimately making their way to Europe. Because of COVID-19, there are still belated wedding celebrations with Rodrigo’s and Laura’s parents and extended family, as well.

“On the Bus during Math Camp”

Margaret Yu & Jeffrey Lew, both MPP‘20

Margaret Yu, MPP‘20, remembers Jeffrey Lew, MPP‘20, talking to her “a lot” on the bus en route to their Math Camp community service projects. 

“At the time I was like, why is he talking to me so much?” Margaret said. “But now, I have all of the information.”

It’s very plausible that Jeff was playing the long game, as they say.

“I just remember our conversation lasting longer than a usual one would,” Margaret said. 

“I remember talking to Margaret on the bus for a long time,” Jeff said. “And then we were supposed to be paired up in our first Statistics I class, but they changed the groups and that didn’t happen.”

It wasn’t until their Statistics II class that partnership finally occurred (and stuck)—this one assigned. The following quarter, they chose to be partners in their Program Evaluation course. 

“We spent a lot of time together and grew our friendship into more of a relationship,” Margaret said.

Margaret and Jeff decided to live together for their second year at Harris. When the time came, the two applied for jobs all over the country. By the time they graduated in June 2020, Margaret had landed a role in Chicago, while Jeff had been hired by a company in Washington D.C. 

But everyone knows what was going on in the summer of 2020, which made the threat of long-distance less insurmountable than would have been the case even a year prior. 

“Pre-pandemic, it was a little bit of a question mark about what we were going to do,” Margaret said. “And then the pandemic hit, and we both ended up staying in Chicago and working remotely. We bounced around Chicago, living in different neighborhoods. We stayed together, not because of COVID, but because it made deciding those questions a little bit easier.” 

When Margaret landed a new job with Amazon’s Economic Development team based in D.C., she and Jeff relocated there together in April 2021, a year and some change after beginning their nomadic life together in Chicago. Jeff works for the District now, in the Department of Transportation. They bought a home together in Capitol Hill in April 2022, and they just spent the last weeks of 2022 together in San Francisco—where Jeff is from—looking for venues for their wedding, which is planned for Spring 2024. 

Jeff proposed at their new home, and sought the help of their dog, Joy, a 10-year-old Golden Retriever that has been in Margaret’s life long before Jeff decided to chat her up on the bus during Math Camp at Harris. 

“Jeff has learned to love Joy as his own, and even used her as part of the engagement,” Margaret said. “When we have rainy days, we try to keep Joy active by playing hide and seek with her. During one of the rounds, he got her to go upstairs without me, and then he dressed her up in a little tuxedo and they came back down. He’d taught her a trick to sit up on her hind legs, and then he proposed.”

“Tackling the Challenges of First Year”

Erin Watts & Matthew Repka, both MPP’15

Professor Don Coursey’s frequent references to trips to the Grand Canyon during class lectures on the economic impacts of vacationing inspired a cohort of classmates who’d never been to the Grand Canyon to make the journey together. Among them were Erin Watts, MPP’15, and Matthew Repka, MPP’15, another Harris-made couple.

“We definitely knew of each other first quarter and had mutual friends, but we didn’t necessarily spend much time together until we ended up on the same spring break trip that year,” Erin said.

“That trip was the first time we ever had unstructured time together that wasn’t about problem sets or getting to class or talking about the work,” Matt continued. “Just having more free time to spend with each other and other people.”

They started dating shortly after returning to Chicago from their trip, just in time to spend the summer apart while they completed their respective internships in Texas and Washington, D.C.

After graduation, both Erin and Matt found work in Chicago, where they stayed until 2017, at which point they moved to Washington D.C. together. They were married in 2019.

“We just beat out the pandemic,” Erin said. “We had a lovely wedding in D.C. and then locked down for a couple years. Our first anniversary dinner was takeout Thai food on our coffee table in our tiny apartment.”

Today, Erin works for a small consulting firm that helps philanthropists do more strategic work with heightened community impact. Matt does data analysis and program strategy for the College Board. After more than five years together in D.C., Erin and Matt still attend local alumni events together in D.C., where there’s a solid, established network of Harris alumni.

“It feels like the core first year at Harris is this hazing ritual that you all go through together,” Erin said. “It’s extremely intense and everyone is really challenged by it in their own way. Going through that together, there’s a lot of bonding that comes out of it.”

“What Harris is trying to do the minute you show up there is force you to really strip down some of your basic assumptions about the world and try to change the way you see the world and evaluate the things around you,” Matt said. “In some very fundamental ways…you’re talking about the things that people value, things that are very fundamental to the way that you see the world and experience it. In that sense, it’s not surprising that some of the people we went through that experience with are people we still know and trust and are friends with to this day.”

And in some cases, more than friends!

Read more stories in the Hearts at Harris series:

2019 – Love Stories from Harris Public Policy

2020 – From Math Camp to Marriage for Sarah Emmons, MPP'14, and Jeremy Klavans, MS-ESP'14

2021 – Mark and Me'lani Labat Joseph, Partners in Love, Parenting, and the Fight for Social Justice

2022 – It's a Forever Thing ... with UChicago