ELGL and the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) created the PAFR Fellowship Program to connect graduate students with local governments looking to create a Popular Annual Financial Report (PAFR) for submission to the GFOA award program. The fellows have all been finalized and ELGL and GFOA are excited to announce everyone over the next few weeks.
This will be our first spotlight for our five new fellows. Feel free to reach out and give them a warm welcome! We are excited to see the work they do over the next few months.
Cody Taylor
- Connect: LinkedIn
- School: Appalachian State University
- Program: Master of Public Administration
- Local Government Match: City of Charlotte, NC
Most Creative Thing I’ve Done Recently: I am creating an alternative service delivery model for the organization that I work with (TRiO/Upward Bound) to respond to the COVID 19 pandemic in the event that my organization is unable to return to the high school to support our students.
Sara Ellis-Sanborn
School: UNC – Chapel Hill- Program: Master of Public Administration
- Local Government Match: City of Kenai, AK
Most Creative Thing I’ve Done Recently: Created a virtual (Zoom) presentation on impactful regulations for our shipping industry partners. (We were forced to cancel our in-person Industry Day so the virtual presentation was meant to replace that missed opportunity.)
Debdeep Banerjee
- School: Johns Hopkins University
- Program: Master of Arts
- Local Government Match: County of Adams, PA and City of Danville, VA
Most Creative Thing I’ve Done Recently: I have been learning how to program with languages such as Java and Python
Sydney Bannister
- Connect: LinkedIn
- School: University of Kansas
- Program: Master of Public Administration
- Local Government Match: City of St. Peters, MO
Most Creative Thing I’ve Done Recently: I created a vision board for myself with my goals as they relate to my personal and professional life, intersecting in a visual context. I had finished a book that recommended visualizing my goals in order to gain confidence so I bought a bunch of crafting supplies, took pictures and printed off pictures of meaningful artifacts and monuments, and crafted together a 5-year vision board. It wasn’t about the beauty of the board itself but using colors, images, and words that inspire and excite me for my future. It has served as a really shocking motivational tool as I look at it each morning and before bed.
Vaughan Wehr
- Connect: LinkedIn
- School: University of Nebraska – Omaha
- Program: Master of Public Administration
- Local Government Match: Town of Coventry, CT
Most Creative Thing I’ve Done Recently: I believe the most creative and beneficial project I’ve worked on has been writing a grant application for the City of Valentine. I do not actually work for the City of Valentine, nor did I grow up there. I am taking a Grant Writing class in my master’s program at the University of Nebraska in Omaha (UNO). I have never participated in grant seeking and am new to the operations of the City of Valentine. These factors forced my creative side to facilitate the project.
The end goal of UNO’s graduate level Grant Writing class is to create a grant proposal to a fictitious foundation for a $300,000 grant. I have worked in a United States Senate office for almost the entirety of my professional career, which does not participate in grant writing. So, I chose to write the grant proposal from the perspective of a small town in Nebraska. I am asking for assistance in affordable housing. Having no knowledge on the operations of the City of Valentine, I had to be creative in finding where a problem was, how I was going to gather information for the data, who I needed to talk to, finding the right questions to ask, and finding solutions to the problems I sought to find. So far, I’m proud of the creative solution I am proposing. I may even present the faux application to my new city contact.