Master’s Student Wins Scholarship in Pursuit of Advocacy

Unlike many of his classmates, first-year Master’s of Public Policy student Raj Buck doesn’t exactly see himself becoming a policy maker. He’d prefer to take a more grassroots approach toward affecting policy decisions. “I felt that studying public policy was a natural segue into advocacy,” he explains.

Buck’s career goal to become an economic development advocate recently helped him earn a $5,000 scholarship from the Bryce Harlow Foundation, a professional lobbying organization. With the assistance, he plans to pursue his dual interests in advocating for municipal organizations and agricultural producers.

As a teenager growing up in Virginia Beach, Va., the seeds of advocacy were planted in Buck’s mind. That’s when he first noticed the importance of urban planning. Because the sprawling city had few public transportation options, “I was stuck at home as a middle schooler,” Buck says.

But after living in Lima, Peru (once as a teenager when his family moved there in the late 1980s and again as an intern for the U.S. embassy in 2003), Buck realized just how critical urban planning could become for people’s livelihoods. Like Virginia Beach, Lima lacked public transportation. In addition, he saw people living in shanties. With millions of people residing in the earthquake-prone city, Lima was a disaster waiting to happen, according to Buck. “It’s a megalopolis, and there hasn’t been much thought put into development,” he says.

One day Buck hopes to change the kind of faulty policy making that makes cities develop into disasters. Advocacy, he believes, will give him the power to do just that. “If I have a certain agenda, one way I will make it onto someone else’s agenda is by informing them how it will benefit not only my cause but also the public as a whole,” he says. “Lobbyists play a critical role…A lot of major pieces of legislation are pushed because of lobbyists.”