Hello, and nice to meet everyone here at ELGL! My name is Casey Kunzat and I am honored and super thrilled to join the ELGL community, especially to meet, connect, and work with all the members around the nation.
My home is in Beaverton, OR, but I currently am enrolled at Willamette University studying for my Bachelor’s Degree in Politics, Policy, Law, and Ethics. My school offers opportunities for those in my major to work in a variety of places in local government, and this is where I first discovered my interest in working with ELGL.
This will be my first governmental workplace experience, and there is a large mixture of nervousness and enthusiasm for the projects I will help create. I developed a recent fondness towards statistics in high school, and how numbers can help show the bigger picture of the many issues that surround our society today.
From this, I have taken classes and developed projects analyzing a range of topics from the effects of pre-collegiate education on the mortality rates of primary school students to how economic trends can show disparities in local gentrified communities in cities such as Portland and Salem.
These events and projects have led me to work with the wonderful collective at ELGL in the creation of their Diversity Dashboard. I have always “nerded” out when it comes to analyzing and creating surveys, so this opportunity was too good not to pass up. Besides my perceptual need to stare at data, I recently learned that there is an undergoing race disparity of governmental leaders in local agencies today.
This phenom is often overlooked because there is a lack of cohesive data portraying this inequality, and the family at ELGL hopes to finally display this information for the public to see and access.
I have already seen this commitment by all of the ELGL members that I have met and connected with already. They provide and demonstrate such dedication to public service and government that I have never embraced before, and this reality has already been so enlightening in my hope for connecting communities to their local governments further.
From the different amount of platforms such as podcasts, blog posts, and events that ELGL creates to reach out to their followers, a narrative develops that displays the fun and inspiring intricacies of government for all!
Outside of my work with ELGL, I belong to a variety of clubs on Willamette University’s campus such as Paradigm Choreography and Esports Club where I hold executive and management positions in both.
I am also a huge sports fanatic and play in about every intermural offered. In my free time (other than doing homework), I love playing with my cat Merlin (follow him on Instagram @incredible.merlin).
I am ready to collaborate with everyone here at ELGL!