Alumni Profile: Matt Geraci

Matt Geraci, HNC Certificate '16 + SAIS MA '17, is a Research Associate & Program Officer at the Institute for China-America Studies (ICAS) in Washington, DC.

How did your experience at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC) and Johns Hopkins SAIS together prepare you for your position that you have now?   

Before the HNC, I hadn't taken any coursework in energy and the environment and hadn’t really thought of a way to combine those ideas. The HNC is where I started to do that. Once I got to SAIS DC, I was able to take this interest to the next step through a practicum where you’re teamed up with four other students to work with either a company or a nonprofit. I was paired up with an environmental non-profit called Clean Water Action. They wanted us to produce a research report, organize a panel discussion, and help them get a huge background and understanding of the environmental impacts to underground sources of drinking water from an oil and gas recovery technique similar to fracking called "enhanced oil recovery”. It was a combination of a consulting type role (where a client comes to you and presents the problem for recommendations), and a think tank role (pulling together primary and secondary source research and trying to take an objective look at the facts as much as one possibly can).  

What was your journey after Johns Hopkins SAIS to the position you have now?  

Definitely a complicated one. After SAIS, I thought of the world of environmental non-profits. I really liked the work I did with Clean Water Action, so I sent my application out to similar organizations and got an internship with a non-profit called Oceana. I was on their energy campaign team looking at offshore drilling, offshore oil and gas survey techniques, etc. I didn’t feel satisfied–it was an advocacy group, but I wanted my work to remain objective. After that, I worked for a US-government funded, international development organization. While there, I kept networking like everyone in DC does, and at a think-tank event, I bumped into an old HNC classmate of mine. He introduced me to someone who worked at a think tank who just so happened to be leaving his role in a couple weeks and was looking for someone to replace him. That chance meeting would lead to the job I have now.  

Do you still keep in contact with people that you went to the HNC with?  

All the time! After graduating from SAIS, I had a HNCer as a roommate. In my HNC cohort, together there were about 15 of us that stayed in DC after graduation. Some have gone into the State Department's Foreign Service, government, some in the consulting world, different types of non-profits, and defense, all in the DC area. Whenever it’s one of our birthdays, we all try to get together. Even in the early days of the pandemic, we would host virtual happy hours. I had other friends at SAIS, but I definitely remained closest to my HNC program classmates.  

What advice would you give to current or future HNC students?  

I would definitely harp on learning the technical skillsets. At the end of the day, anyone can write a policy paper, but when it comes to the quantitative outlook, not as many people can use programs like STATA and R to bring statistical analysis into their economic study. As much as you can, expose yourself to some of these unique types of programs and courses, like corporate finance. Think about how you can apply what you learn in classes to your research.   

Maybe you want to work for an international development bank like the World Bank; try to look at what types of roles they offer and figure out the soft skills and hard skills that people at those organizations have. If there are gaps in your studies or professional experience, think about ways to fill them. While in DC, get on every mailing list you can, be notified on every event within your topics of interest, go to as many events as you can and introduce yourself. While you’re a student, it puts you in a unique position to receive positive feedback from others.