Meet Hannah Levien. Prior to the Coro fellowship, Hannah graduated from Marist College in 2015 with a dual degree in Political Science and Spanish with a focus on Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Directly following graduation, Hannah left New York to join Americorps in Austin, Texas, where she specialized in bilingual literacy training for K-2 students for a full year. Her experience with Americorps informed her desire to pursue education policy. However, Hanna’s focus has shifted through her Coro placements to an interest in data-informed decision-making and disaster preparedness.

During Hannah’s government placement in the Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles, she had the opportunity to develop pieces of a strategic plan to create a more resilient City. The plan included a number of focus areas of which Hannah worked on infrastructure and disaster preparedness. Through her research, she crafted narratives to highlight at-risk zones in the City, outlined key action items to complete in order to institute a more resilient procedure and identified partnerships with outside organizations to accomplish those goals with expediency. The sections that she crafted will roll out with the full plan later this month. Her exposure to this type of work and the contacts she made at her placement allowed her to pursue a Spring project with Los Angeles Department of Water and Power within their Water Systems Resilience Program, and more specifically their Fire Following Earthquake Risk Management section. Both experiences have inspired Hannah to follow opportunities that surround crisis management. Hannah continues to build on this knowledge in her current placement with the media relations team of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Hannah Levien and her LAPD placement supervisor, Sargeant Jack Richter