After Federal Cuts, SPIA Grads Stay in New Jersey

It was a coincidence that Princeton created a public affairs fellowship based in New Jersey the year before similar opportunities in the federal government disappeared with the Trump administration’s cuts.

“People who normally would have pursued opportunities at the federal level are looking homeward,” said Anastasia Mann, founding director of SPIA in New Jersey, which launched in 2023 and focuses on policy innovation in the state.

SPIA in NJ established the Garden State Fellowship as a competitive program for graduating seniors interested in public policy who want to stay in New Jersey.

Hiba Siddiki ’25, a SPIA major and one of two Garden State Fellows this year, said turmoil in the federal government “definitely” impacted her post-graduation employment and made for “a really difficult time for us, career-search-wise.” She originally wanted to work at the United States Agency for International Development, but it was dismantled earlier this year.

Siddiki, a New Jersey native with a passion for education policy, hadn’t really considered employment in her home state, “just because I thought that wasn’t the most ideal place to be working on policy. But then when I started looking at the fellowship … I realized that everyone needs help everywhere,” she said.

The program’s goal is to connect new Princeton alumni with “the institutions and individuals in the Garden State who are doing pathbreaking work,” according to Mann. In addition to coordinating with prospective candidates and local organizations, Princeton pays each fellow’s salary and benefits.

Fellowship candidates have to impress the selection committee and the SPIA in NJ advisory board, and they also must be hired by the organization for which they want to work.

The job security Siddiki has for the next year as a fellow at the Education Law Center in Newark, about 20 minutes from her home, is “lovely,” she said. In her first few weeks there, she began tracking school voucher bills nationwide and researching the current state of students’ rights in the state for activist campaigns.

This year’s other fellow, Kimberly Cross ’25, is working at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

According to Mann, “A lot of the conversation that’s happening now in policy circles is about the pipeline and how to make sure that there are talented, knowledgeable young people coming up who see that public policy is an important and rewarding career path.”

The Garden State Fellowship is open to all graduating seniors, regardless of major, and is meant to illuminate professional opportunities outside of popular paths like consulting, which Mann acknowledged SPIA has been criticized for emphasizing too heavily.

After graduation, Lauren Aung ’24, a politics major, wanted to stay close to friends and find work that would help make the world a better place. But with no direct policy experience, “I didn’t really know what that entail[ed],” she said, as she had never “really been able to get down into the nitty gritty, from beginning to end.”

She now feels confident leading projects after being given complete ownership of a campaign, from strategy to outreach to drafting testimony, as a fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey.

Aung “did an amazing work plan and timeline that we all want to replicate,” said Alejandra Sorto, the group’s associate director of civic engagement. “She’s wonderful. I never want her to leave.”

“Most of these organizations are relatively constrained in terms of resources,” said Mann. “So, for them, this is on the one hand a windfall, a terrific boon to their potential capacity, but on the other hand, they want to be responsible about it.”

Aung and the two other inaugural Garden State Fellows received offers from their employers to continue working beyond the fellowship, which ended this summer. Due to University budget cuts, there are only two fellows in the current cohort, even though SPIA in NJ received more applications.