March 2025 Student Spotlight

Rinchen Lama is Human Resources Coordinator at the CUNY School of Professional Studies and an MPA candidate

Tell us about your work with the MPA Club.
When I was the secretary for the Baruch MPA Club, I focused on trying to plan out events to help foster more of a community within the program. This was because with graduate students, most people are working full-time jobs and have less time for natural chances of building connections with their peers and I wanted students to feel that they have actual connections they can reach out to after graduating.

What are you planning as the Secretary of ASPA NY?
I plan on helping build their social media presence to reach a younger audience of public administrative professionals in NYC. I only found out about ASPA through my professors at Baruch and want working professionals who are not in graduate school to have a way to find out about ASPA. For me, ASPA is a good opportunity to connect with other working professionals in the public sector and learn about different agencies and their working environment. I also see ASPA as a good way to participate in a sense of brotherhood that typically isn’t part of a working professional’s life since things such as clubs or organizations are usually in colleges and universities. Additionally, connecting Marxe and the ASPA NY Chapter aligns with Marxe’s strategic plan because this can help enhance relations with Marxe alumni, students, faculty, and staff. This also would help Marxe reach their community building goal of developing and hosting professional development programs. This could all help bring students together with different working professionals from the public sector.

Do you have any favorite Marxe professors?
I think Marxe students are quite lucky with the professors we have teaching our courses. That being said, my favorite Marxe professors are Dr. Neil Hernandez, who was my Public and Non-Profit Mgmt. I and II professor and Dr. Rahul Pathak, who I had a great Budgeting and Financial Analysis class with. Both professors are great at teaching and you can tell they both really want to see their students succeed in their careers!