?If there’s any place that I can do the weird stuff that I like to do, it would be in academia, and it would be at MIT,? says PhD student Lily Bui. ?I’m not quite satisfied with being pigeonholed into one role, and I think that’s just going to stay the case for the rest of my life.?
Lily Bui's path to her PhD program in urban studies and planning at MIT has been a meandering one, yet along the way she has followed her passions while finding new ways to support communities at the grassroots level. Whether she is helping citizens deploy air-quality monitors, improving cycling throughout a city, or gathering hyperlocal stories about climate change, Bui always thinks big, harnessing the power of regular people to make a difference in the world. An indirect path to MIT Bui, who grew up in California, earned her bachelor's degree at the University of California at Irvine, where she majored in Spanish and international relations. Unsure of what to do next, Bui headed to Capitol Hill for a summer internship with her congresswoman, Rep. Loretta Sanchez, where she had had an up-close view of how policies are made. She then pivoted into an AmeriCorps program in Maryland, working with the Asian Pacific American community on issues ranging from housing, to citizenship, to language access. The back-to-back experiences helped Bui realize that she wanted to work with citizens on the ground, but she wasn't sure exactly how.
TO READ THIS ARTICLE, CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT
And extend your reading, free of charge and with no commitment.
