“Policy is not just about economics and numbers, it’s about focusing people in our approach.”
Heather Dannyelle Thompson is a graduate of the Hertie School’s Master of Public Policy programme (MPP 2021). She currently works as Manager of Digital Democracy at Democracy Reporting International. During her time on campus, she co-founded the student club SHIELD, which stands for Students of Hertie for Inclusion, Equity, Liberty and Diversity. She founded the organisation in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. While racism and police brutality are sometimes seen as only an US-American problem, “As a black person living in Berlin, I can say that those issues are still very present here.” SHIELD led several initiatives, such as encouraging faculty to cover more diverse areas of study or diversifying the syllabi readings. “Policy is not just about economics and numbers, it’s about focusing people in our approach.”