Reunion Stories: Leadership, Service, and the Bonds That Last

Each year in the beginning of May, Harris celebrates its more than 6,000 alums with social, intellectual, and celebratory events that officially mark Reunion Weekend.

As we look back at 2025 and look forward to 2026, here's a chance to catch up with three of those alumni and read about how the Harris experience shaped their professional and personal lives.

Anna Lee, MPP/MDV’00: “It definitely feeds me.” 

When Anna Lee arrived on the University of Chicago campus in 1998 to study for her master’s in public policy and divinity, she felt overwhelmed, surrounded by people who she thought seemed too smart for her. She was unsure exactly where the degrees would lead her. 

“Something clicked when I thought, ‘I need to just learn from these people—from professors and classmates,’” Lee recalled. “I can either come to class scared or I can think, ‘I need to learn these things and I want to know. It may mean that I won’t get an A in microeconomics, but it does mean that I can learn and sharpen my knowledge so that I can use these tools for very important, meaningful, practical things.’” 
It turned out to be a wise strategy. 

In late May, Lee was promoted to Vice President of Programs at Polk Bros. Foundation, the venerable Chicago philanthropy that has invested more than $586 million to address the root causes and effects of poverty. Since its founding in 1988, the foundation also has challenged inequity and worked to ensure that all Chicagoans have the chance to reach their full potential. 

Before joining Polk Bros. Foundation last year, Lee had worked in a number of roles in municipal government, philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, starting with an internship in then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s office—when she met and absorbed advice from Michelle Obama while serving as Associate Dean of Student Services. Lee’s career arc continued through leadership positions in the Chicago Housing Authority, Year Up, The Chicago Community Trust, and United Way of Metro Chicago. 

Driven by her interest in addressing issues of poverty and inequality and a commitment to service fostered by a Jesuit education, Lee enrolled in Harris and the Divinity School. She viewed Harris’ quantitative emphasis and the Divinity School’s commitment to the public church as important to obtaining a comprehensive view on a career. 

In those first few overwhelming months, Lee heard one of her classmates mention that philanthropy was interesting. At the time, Lee acknowledged, she was unsure what philanthropy was, but her new mindset motivated her to find out. 

“And now, it’s where I’ve been for a while,” she said. “Philanthropy is interesting because it’s at that intersection of policy, programs, and community organizations. We get to work with research institutions, academic institutions, and public sector partners. It’s a place where you draw upon your critical thinking skills, but also your relationships – and it’s all anchored in a love for Chicago and the people who live here.” 

Her master’s education also taught Lee qualitative skills and the value of critical thinking and deep, close reading. She recalled that a class on program evaluation was particularly compelling. It helped her understand how to ask essential questions about factors that contribute to a problem and what helpful interventions might look like. 

“It made me really love programs because we were using very qualitative approaches,” Lee said. “At the same time, I love the creativity of people thinking about place-based work or interventions for specific populations, and that stayed with me my whole career.” 

She leaned heavily on those skills when working on what may be her most powerful project: as the Chicago Community Trust’s Director of Community Impact, Lee co-led Chicago’s COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund with the United Way of Metro Chicago. 

That effort by local philanthropies, corporations and individuals raised $35 million—the single largest relief effort for the United Way of Metro Chicago and The Chicago Community Trust and one of the largest in the U.S. In the first five days after launching the fund, the effort distributed grants to more than 400 organizations providing emergency services to people most impacted by COVID-19 over the course of a year. 

“That fund was about rapid response,” Lee said. “It was about critical thinking and thinking about programs. There definitely was connective tissue to my work and my education, my twenty years in public service and in the social impact sector.” 

Lee takes on her new role at Polk Bros. Foundation as the institution refines its goals toward making more progress in racial equity and justice. She’ll continue utilizing the skills she gleaned as a master’s student at Harris and the Divinity School, and throughout her career. 

And she likely will take inspiration from her classmates. 

“It’s lovely to connect with alums to see how people have applied their education to really strengthening their communities or specific sectors,” Lee said. “It’s incredible, very inspiring and it definitely feeds me. I recognize the value that Harris brought to my own life and career, and I want to contribute back to Harris, the students and the faculty.” 

Caleb Herod, MPP’20: “The holistic experience.”

Born and raised in a small town in north Mississippi, Caleb Herod, graduated from the University of Mississippi and took a position with Teach for America as an algebra and geometry instructor.

One year in, he experienced a serious illness that landed him in the hospital for months. His mind “reordered” itself, he said, and focused on “making the places that you love better.” After Teach for America, Herod took a job in the Mississippi Delta managing federal grants to enhance education and workforce development there, work he performed for almost five years.

“That’s when I met mentors who encouraged me to go to graduate schooland push myself personally and professionally to grow beyond what I had previously imagined possible for my career,” he said. When he researched the Harris School of Public Policy, he found a place that “would push me in a way that I don’t always like to be pushed.”

Today, he is Director of Income & Assets at The Chicago Community Trust, where he manages support for educational achievement, workforce development, and inclusive business practices in the Chicago region.

“I built some great relationships at Harris,” Herod said. “I got to do amazing things on campus and explore the city. The thing with University of Chicago is you’re going to brush up against and/or work with real leaders, local, national and global.”

Five years after his graduation from Harris, Herod continues to utilize the powerful lessons about empathy in public policy that Harris Senior Lecturer Paula R. Worthington gave him, and a deeper understanding of Chicago he learned through work with Eve L. Ewing, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity.

“I can’t speak highly enough about the staff at Harris and the community they created and fostered for students like me,” Herod said.

Since joining the Trust in 2020, he has directed several million dollars of grants to different initiatives, the most prominent of which is the Trust’s Income Growth Solutions (IGS). IGS was started in 2023 as a call for proposals from nonprofits to offer more equitable access to postsecondary education, quality jobs and financial health.

Since then, it has granted nearly $7 million to dozens of organizations. The long-term goal is to glean insight on how the Trust can best support its strategy aimed at lifting the household wealth of all Chicagoans.

In addition to working with IGS, Herod co-manages Bridges to Brighter Futures, a collaboration between the Trust and the Kinship Foundation that supports  Chicagoans’ equitable access to income-building careers.

“I think my approach to the work is informed by the holistic experience of being at Harris,” he said. “The blessing of it is that because of my time at Harris, because of my internships, because of my research, I got to see the city holistically and that has really shaped my approach to my work and life.”

Deep working relationships, friendships, and intellectual rigor at Harris also taught him to be a very strong critical thinker who leads with empathy, Herod said.

“I’m not the same person I was five years ago or the same person I was when I came to Chicago,” he said. “I’ve gotten better because of the people I’ve gotten to meet.”

His future is less about a specific job, he said, and more about who he wants to be in any given moment—a leader who people feel comfortable being their true selves around, a leader who is rigorous, acts with heart, and creates an evolving impact.

“How can I push myself to not just leave a place better than I found it,” Herod said, “but also make a better thing someone else can pick up and build off of so the next generation of folks is not trying to address the same problem, but doing something better?”

Nicole Lee, MPP’05: “Ten steps ahead”

After earning her master’s from Harris, Nicole Lee took consulting work at United Airlines.

“I got my foot in the door,” she recalled, “and I know that the training I had from Harris allowed me to really flex and show what I could do in the department where I worked and for the company.”

Consulting led to a position as Senior Manager in Corporate and Community Affairs at United and then, Director of Social Impact Optimization and Global Community Engagement. In that role, Lee led the company’s global non-profit partnerships and spearheaded strategy in humanitarian aid and disaster response. She worked at United for nearly 15 years.

“Harris was transformative in the sense that it really solidified what I wanted to do, how I wanted to leverage the skills, and what I was learning there to continue building on that, not really knowing where I was going to end up.”

That path led to a historic role for Lee, who had established a reputation for leadership in Chicago’s Chinese American and Asian American communities through her volunteerism and involvement in many local organizations.

In 2022, she became the first Asian American woman and Chinese American to serve on the Chicago City Council, when then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot appointed Lee, a fourth-generation resident of Chicago’s Chinatown community, to be the 11th Ward Alderwoman. Lee subsequently won election to the office in 2023.

Her priorities have been safer neighborhoods, stronger schools, and improved infrastructure and transportation for 11th Ward residents.

“You’ve got to have thick skin,” Lee said. “You learn how to take a beating pretty well. But I like very much being in a position to help people when I can, and I do that knowing that there’s no way for me to help everybody every day.”

Lee enrolled in Harris while working at BP America, Inc. as a business advisor and program manager, a position she held for three years. She graduated from Indiana University in 1996 and worked for Junior Achievement, Illinois Central Railroad and OneChem before joining BP. She left the company to become a full-time student.

She arrived at Harris and recalled that it was demanding, “but I loved my experience.”

Lee saw the University’s “math camp,” two weeks of intense study tailored for specific academic disciplines, as crucial. She recalled cherishing the ability to immerse herself full time in studying public policy. She remembered the collaborative, supportive atmosphere, impressive teachers who were working in government and the value of absorbing concepts behind much of what she had been doing professionally for years.

“Going through the program and learning more of the theory behind things like collective action and game theory and how people and systems interact was so important to moving my career forward,” Lee said.

Two decades later, her Harris education continues to help Lee as full-time alderwoman. The program has given her a solid foundation for understanding the consequences of decisions and policies the city council considers, she said. Lee views her evaluation ability as “an extra arrow” in her quiver of skills.

She said it gives her the ability to look beyond the immediate response from constituents or how it will look in a headline in the next news cycle.

“I can think through 10 steps ahead, or ask questions about the unintended questions,” Lee said. “It may be frustrating for some of my colleagues or the administration sometimes when I ask questions, but I guarantee that I ask these questions because I have the training to know what to ask.”

“We all got through something together.”

Like Anna Lee and Caleb Herod, the most enduring feature of Nicole Lee’s Harris experience were the relationships forged.

As many Harris students do, Nicole Lee joined a study group soon after enrolling. And, like many Harris students, those acquaintances became fast friends while supporting one another in their academic pursuits.

After graduation the friendships endured, as they have for many Harris alumni. Nicole Lee said all her study group friends have gone on to have long careers in public service. Chicago-based members get together for a meal every two months or so. The full group “has a constant text chain going all the time,” has traveled together and been present for each other in every life event—happy or sad.

That connection has professional benefits, too. The former study group members work in different sectors and can share valuable perspectives from different points of view on issues each may be navigating.

“You know what’s important about that?” Lee said of the longstanding study group friendships. “Life is about relationships and the bonds that you create in any situation—whether that’s work or school—and getting through Harris was rarely easy. We all got through something together.”