Political Science Alumnus Gives “Recession-Proof” Career Advice

Since graduating from New Paltz, Dylan Hayden ’03 (Political Science) has worked in several positions in state and federal government, as well as the military and nonprofit sector. On April 6, he returned to his alma mater to discuss his unconventional career path and offer advice to undergraduates interested in public service careers.

Hayden enlisted in the U.S. Navy his senior year at New Paltz and trained as a cryptologic technician and linguist.  He completed 99 weeks of Arabic language immersion at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and later received additional training to become one of the Navy’s first five Pashtu-Afghan linguists.

After six years in the Navy and a tour in Afghanistan, he enrolled in graduate school at the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a Master of Public Administration degree. Knowing that he wanted a career in public service, Hayden applied to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Empire State Fellows Program and was selected from over 950 applicants to join the first nine-person class.

The program sought to train mid-career professionals with advanced degrees working in the private or nonprofit sectors to assume senior management positions in the state government, building what Cuomo called a “back bench” of qualified staff ready to assume leadership roles upon current officials’ retirement.

During his two-year appointment, Hayden was paired with mentors from the Department of Labor and the Division of Criminal Justice Services. He participated in several projects for the governor’s office, including creating a brochure for the state’s Wine and Beer Summit, drafting a 310-page public policy book that included a push for an increase in the state’s minimum wage, and helping to organize a veteran and military families summit.  “These were all unique experiences that a year before, I would’ve never seen coming,” Hayden said. “It was really valuable.”

After developing skills in performance management during his work as an Empire State Fellow, Hayden helped to transform the Palo Alto, California, hospital system for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, working closely with the department’s chief of prosthetics.  “I knew absolutely nothing about prosthetics, but I knew generally about process improvement and how to look at a variety of different factors and piece them together.  Being a former cryptologist and figuring out puzzles and solving problems were good general skills that I brought to that job,” Hayden said.

Hayden drew upon the transferrable skills he learned at New Paltz, the University of Pennsylvania, and his prior work experiences to land his current job as a program analyst with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  Hayden works in the Baltimore Office of Public and Indian Housing, which oversees 60 local public housing authorities.  He monitors performance and conducts risk assessments for housing authorities throughout the Mid-Atlantic Region, which includes West Virginia and most of Maryland.

During the Q&A, Hayden told students that they should prepare for the vicissitudes of the job market by becoming adept at problem solving, which he has demonstrated throughout his career. “Regardless of what the problem is … whether it’s prosthetics or housing or workforce development, criminal justice, economic development, wine, beer, spirits, everything – if you can put the pieces together in a way that makes sense to whomever you work for and do it better than the other guy, that’s the key,” he said.

Hayden also advised students to take advantage of internships and other experiential learning experiences like the United Nations (UN) Semester and Harvard Model UN to gain a greater understanding of the problems they will face in the workforce and “start thinking about them before [they] actually get to that position.”

In an uncertain economy, Hayden said students must always be willing to learn new skills. He is pursuing his doctorate in public administration from the University of Baltimore in an effort to have the “most unimpeachable credentials” in his field while Congress mulls across-the-board federal budget cuts, which will likely include staffing cuts.

“I want to make myself as recession-proof as I can,” he said.

Hayden’s talk was sponsored by the Department of Political Science and International Relations and was one of several featured events of the Career Resource Center’s Public Service Week.