Alumni Profile: Susan Paykin, MPP’20

Susan Paykin, MPP’20, came to the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy with a background of two seemingly divergent skill sets and interests: international studies and domestic farming.

“Growing up in New Jersey, I felt a calling to work toward a more just global society,” said Paykin. Fascinated by her studies of Chinese culture in twelfth grade, she chose international and global studies as her major at Brandeis University and spent her junior year abroad, studying Chinese language, history, politics, and environmental issues in Beijing, China.

“I’ve been interested in public policy issues since I was in high school,” Paykin said, “and this interest continued when I became involved in environmental activism and state and national policy campaigns while in college. Those experiences helped me understand that community organizing and grassroots activism can be paired with progressive policy change to achieve significant and lasting solutions.”

After graduation, Paykin worked for a year as a legislative assistant for the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC, where she had an insight that changed her life. “I realized that although I was working on sustainability issues and was passionate about organic food production, I didn’t have a lot of life experience with the very communities I was advocating for. When I came across a notice about an internship on a farm in Tuscany, Italy, I decided to pursue it. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn about farming while experiencing a different culture.”

Paykin continued learning about agriculture over the next few years. “I was an apprentice, supervised apprentices, managed a farm, and taught classes in sustainable agriculture. Farming taught me so much about our food and agricultural systems, as well as the importance of working to build local, regenerative economies.”

However, Paykin also wanted to make a positive difference in her own local community. “In order to do that,” she said, “I needed to build up my technical skillsets.” Paykin applied to four graduate schools and was accepted to all of them. “I chose Harris because I was confident in the education and training that the program offered, and the high caliber of the faculty, staff, and students I met during Admitted Students Day truly drew me in. The Harris community is vibrant and strong—and was welcoming from day one.”

As for building her technical skillset, Paykin said, “I graduated with the skills I came in wanting to learn. I also took courses across the University in GIS and data visualization that have allowed me to be an effective researcher in my role as Associate Director and Program Lead of the Open Spatial Lab.”

Based at UChicago’s Data Science Institute, and in collaboration with the Center for Spatial Data Science, the Open Spatial Lab was launched by Paykin and her colleague Dylan Halpern to create open source data tools and analytics to solve problems using spatial data science. “We work with different social impact and nonprofit organizations to develop new, affordable, and accessible spatial data science tools that allow them to do their work more effectively.”

Her role, Paykin said, allows her to touch a variety of policy areas that have been deeply meaningful to her for quite some time. “I’m in a role where I can support organizations doing work that I am also very passionate about. My work in data science is inextricably connected to my values in effecting change and leading grassroots community efforts.”