Charles Demakis is a first-year Masters of Public Affairs student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Charles graduated from Stanford University in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies, with an emphasis on comparative ethics. Upon completing his degree, he moved to Prague in September 2007 to get his certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and work as an English language teacher. He moved to Berlin in June 2008, where he lived for eight years, teaching English at private companies and community colleges (the “Volkshochschulen”), as well as leading language courses for the unemployed through the German Job Center. Charles returned to the United States in 2016 in order to pursue his Master’s degree in Austin.
In his current coursework, Charles is focusing on social policy, statistical analysis, and program evaluation. He is particularly interested in matters of labor, employment, and workforce policy, and how they relate to economic outcomes and social equity. During his first year at the LBJ School, Charles had the opportunity to work with Christopher King of the Ray Marshall Center on a Policy Research Project developing a two-generation strategy for Greater Austin. After graduating, he hopes to do policy research and program evaluation in the fields of social and economic policy, whether here in the United States or back in Germany.
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