Additional Resource
In a new essay, The Case for Building an AmeriCorps Alumni Leadership Network, Allen Lab Policy Fellow Sonali Nijhawan argues that the 1.4 million Americans who have completed national service represent an underleveraged civic asset. Drawing on her experience as former Director of AmeriCorps, Nijhawan outlines a roadmap for transforming dispersed alumni into a connected leadership network capable of reinvigorating public service, rebuilding trust in government, and strengthening civic participation.
By:
By Sonali Nijhawan
The Case for Building an AmeriCorps Alumni Leadership Network
How do we ensure that when a person completes a term of national service, their skills and their fire for their community aren’t lost?
As Director of AmeriCorps during the Biden-Harris Administration, my work was defined by managing the complex policy and administrative needs of a national agency. Serving now as a Policy Fellow with the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, I have shifted my frame to think expansively about the 1.4 million Americans who have dedicated years of their lives to service. While my previous role was about the stewardship of a system, this fellowship is about the stewardship of people. My mission is to apply the concepts of power-sharing and inclusive leadership to building a permanent, supportive home for those who have finished their service.
This project is driven by a simple and urgent question: how do we ensure that when a person completes their term of service, their skills and their fire for their community aren’t lost? HKS, with its commitment to public service and leadership, is a natural center of gravity for this inquiry. The work will take a practical shape this summer as we convene alumni, researchers, and policymakers here on the Harvard Kennedy School campus to co-create a roadmap of what could be. We begin with a clear-eyed understanding of who AmeriCorps alumni are, what their service cultivates, and why their leadership remains structurally underleveraged.
AmeriCorps Alumni: Singular and Strategic Leaders
Over 1.4 million Americans have completed AmeriCorps service since 1993—a vanguard of action-oriented citizens who have developed a singular combination of practical problem-solving skills and deep commitment to the public good. Addressing local needs alongside community members fosters a lifelong lens through which alumni understand their country and appreciate their responsibility to strengthen it. AmeriCorps alumni know what it means to serve, to listen, and to lead from the ground up. Their service hones skills in facilitation, coalition-building, and policy implementation. Crucially, alumni have witnessed how engaged citizens create meaningful change—experiencing firsthand the pathways from individual concern to collective action.
After their AmeriCorps service experience, however, members scatter. They take on jobs in myriad sectors across the country and globe. Their expertise becomes isolated. They chart their career paths largely on their own. There are few coordinated avenues for continued connection—to service or to one another. Importantly, too, the voices of AmeriCorps alumni are largely absent from debates about expanding and evolving national service.
Yet, AmeriCorps alumni often continue contributing to their communities and nation long after their terms end. At this moment of extreme political tribalism and polarization, they are uniquely positioned to step into leadership roles that bridge divides rather than deepen them. Their shared experience of service across different backgrounds gives them the credibility and perspective to bring communities together around shared purpose. Many alumni are already leaders in their communities and sectors, but their impact remains fragmented. Without deliberate investment in connecting and mobilizing them, their collective potential to counter national apathy, bridge our divides, and elevate service goes unrealized.
A Force Multiplier
“AmeriCorps alumni can become a transformative civic force that reinvigorates public service, rebuilds trust in government, and strengthens civic participation.”
The solution: build the AmeriCorps Alumni Leadership Network. The true promise of AmeriCorps lies not just in what members accomplish during their service year, but in what they can accomplish afterward. When organized, supported, and mobilized, AmeriCorps alumni can become a transformative civic force that reinvigorates public service, rebuilds trust in government, and strengthens civic participation. By engaging AmeriCorps alumni in dynamic opportunities for networking, training, and collective action, their service becomes not a moment in time, but the foundation of a sustainable leadership identity.
The AmeriCorps Alumni Leadership Network will activate and connect alumni by:
This network transforms 1.4 million individual service experiences into collective power—proving that national service creates not just temporary surge capacity, but the enduring leadership infrastructure our democracy needs.
Interested in this project? Please contact Sonali Nijhawan at sonali_nijhawan@gse.harvard.edu. Sonali is a Policy Fellow with the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation.
Additional Resource
Ensuring public opinion and policy preferences are reflected in policy outcomes is essential to a functional democracy. A growing ecosystem of deliberative technologies aims to improve the input-to-action loop between people and their governments.
Video
The Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation’s Making Democracy Interesting webinar brought together scholars, writers, and creators to explore how storytelling can make democratic life feel more accessible, human, and compelling.
Occasional Paper
In a new working paper, Crocodile Tears: Can the Ethical-Moral Intelligence of AI Models Be Trusted?, Allen Lab authors Sarah Hubbard, David Kidd, and Andrei Stupu introduce an ethical-moral intelligence framework for evaluating AI models across dimensions of moral expertise, sensitivity, coherence, and transparency.
Podcast
White House reporter Annie Linskey offers a closer look at how the Trump White House makes decisions and what recent actions reveal about its strategy.
Article
Economists and policy analysts broadly agree that more housing needs to be built in order to reduce costs in America’s most expensive cities. Using a novel survey of mayors of mid-sized and large cities to explore mayors’ views on the roots of America’s housing crisis and what solutions they believe will most effectively address their constituents’ housing challenges, the authors summarize mayors’ attitudes and perceptions on key issues related to expanding the housing supply, reporting how well these views correlate with mayors’ assessments of their own cities’ supply needs.
Podcast
Jonathan Rauch joins the podcast to discuss why he now believes “fascism” accurately describes Trump’s governing style.
