Student Profile: Anna Katter, Evening Master’s Program, Class of 2020

Anna Katter, Evening Master’s Program Class of 2020, remembers a student she met while working for Teach for America from 2011–16. His life, she said, “progressed in peculiar parallel” to her own. Both spent five years in Miami-Dade County Public Schools: Katter as a green Teach for America corps member, and he as a sixth grader three years behind grade level. When Katter finished her Teach for America service, her student had successfully completed twelfth grade and was headed in the right direction.

In 2017, while working as Managing Director of Education Policy for the state of Illinois, she cried tears of joy when she heard her former student had graduated from high school, bound for Florida’s community college system.

Two years later, as Katter transitioned from education to criminal justice and public safety to help the Chicago Police Department improve its community relations with the Civic Consulting Alliance, she learned he had been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

“From K–12 schools to higher education to criminal justice, we’ve both spent the last decade navigating some of the country’s largest public sector systems—albeit from drastically different perspectives and with devastatingly divergent outcomes. It is precisely because the same systems impacted us each so differently that I have devoted my career to tackling systemic societal issues through public service and policy. … I hope to help create a future where my former student’s story can end differently.”

As an Evening Master’s Program student, Katter has already begun to formally study the intersections between education and criminal justice and public safety. “Over the course of my career, it has been amazing to see the parallels between school districts and police departments: far more of the knowledge has been transferrable than I ever would have imagined, and Harris has provided me with the opportunity to closely examine the intersection of these two policy worlds. I think there is great opportunity as a policymaker to make change in both spaces, thinking about things like school resource officers, or how police presence in school should be managed, or reentry programs for kids who have been incarcerated from a young age.”

Chicago, Katter notes, is the perfect place to study from this multidimensional perspective. Not only are there experts equipped with the knowledge to study the intersections of education and criminal justice in the Urban Labs, but Chicago also offers a uniquely tight-knit community: “Building relationships in your work pays off in the long run. In both education and the public safety/criminal justice space, it’s a relatively small community. Once you develop relationships and build your reputation, the community makes it easier to accomplish good things.”

Similarly, Katter appreciates the intentional way that the Evening Master’s Program’s cohort structure has built community. Recently married, she had just returned from her honeymoon when the semester started. She said, “I was blown away by how accommodating faculty and classmates were in making sure I got caught up and acclimated.”

Katter also says she enjoys working alongside other experts from various policy areas. Like many students in the EMP program, she finds that her current work provides the color for what she’s learning in the classroom. “As I read articles and books and we have discussions in the class, the content comes to life through my work experiences. The EMP allows mid-career professionals like me to not ‘hit pause’ on our careers. Because it was one of the only programs of its kind, it felt like a no-brainer to pursue a degree with Harris.”

Katter plans to take the knowledge that she gains at Harris to make an impact at a more senior leadership level. “Harris provides opportunities to broaden your perspective. I hadn’t thought much about the ways my background in education intersected with my current role working with the Chicago Police Department until I had conversations with the instructors and my classmates: the program has already empowered me to consider avenues different than my career history would have predicted.”

At the end of her first quarter at Harris, Katter was promoted from Senior Associate to Associate Principal at the Civic Consulting Alliance. “I certainly have Harris to thank. I know that my enrollment in the EMP—specifically the way in which it demonstrates my commitment to growing and developing as a professional—definitely contributed to the promotion.”