Reflecting on 10 Years at the AAPSS

AAPSS Program Manager Jessica Erfer recently celebrated 10 years at the Academy. The AAPSS thanks her for her service and is delighted to share an essay she recently wrote about her experiences and memories of the past decade.

In summer 2015, when my husband and I decided to return to our roots in Philadelphia after a decade in Washington, DC, I worried about how to market my ten years of federal government service to potential employers outside of the DC beltway. I applied for a job at the AAPSS knowing little about it beyond its location in Philadelphia. A few nights later, as I was feeding my toddler dinner, executive director Tom Kecskemethy called to invite me to Philadelphia for an interview. Little did I know that a job I’d applied for out of curiosity would become a career I have come to love within an organization I cherish.

Tom and I spoke about the Academy over the phone, but I was still not entirely sure what the job would entail. Looking back, I’m not sure that Tom knew, either. I had plenty of experience on Capitol Hill preparing admirals and generals for congressional hearings but almost no experience with academics or social scientists since earning my own master’s degree. Tom and then–managing editor Emily Babson were much more academia-oriented, while I hadn’t opened an academic journal since graduate school. But Tom took a chance on me.

By spring 2016, I had walked through the trial by fire and was simultaneously managing the selection processes for our annual honors, preparing our board for semiannual meetings, and planning for the next year’s Moynihan lecture in DC. Over the next ten years, my role grew and evolved as the AAPSS did, and I’ve had the opportunity to expand the Academy’s programming amid unprecedented changes in both academia and the world more broadly. The events I managed in DC that brought together policymakers, academics, and reporters became a series of webinars that kept the AAPSS community connected during the COVID-19 pandemic. I grew the AAPSS’s social media presence by thousands on Twitter and brought our audience with us to platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube. More recently, I have been working closely with Tom on the Moynihan Prize Capital Campaign to arrange events—like our recent panel discussion on living in a “post-truth” America—that honor the AAPSS’s history of interdisciplinary programming and sustain the late senator’s legacy. The donations we have received—and continue to receive—will further broaden the Moynihan program’s reach and impact, and I hope you stay tuned for what’s next.

The most amazing part of my job has been the personal and professional growth that come from working with all of you—our Fellows, board members, ANNALS contributors, and friends. I learned of the passing of Alan Krueger while on vacation and spent the rest of that trip thinking of ways to properly memorialize such a kind, brilliant man. Claudia Goldin winning the Nobel Prize in economics was particularly meaningful to me, as someone who felt represented by her work on women in the workforce. I am lucky to have met the luminaries whose work influenced my own studies years prior, like Theda Skocpol, whose early work led me to study social welfare states as part of my master’s degree, and Carol Anderson, whose work on race taught me so much about the history of my country. So many of you have transitioned from colleagues to friends: I cherish my email correspondence with Sherman James and a warm hug from Tim Smeeding whenever I see him at events in DC. These examples are only a fraction of the people at the Academy whose work and collaboration have made me a more informed person over the years, and I thank each of you for your impact, wisdom, and guidance.

Working for the Academy has been not only professionally meaningful but also personally life-changing. In 2013, when I was still working at the Pentagon, I had so little support in returning to work after my son’s birth that what should have been a momentous, joyful time in our lives felt like an inconvenience for my colleagues. In contrast, working for Tom and with the AAPSS community has completely changed what I thought was possible for a full-time working mother. Tom and I celebrate each other’s family milestones, and he has always encouraged me to prioritize my family over late-night emails. I have never had to choose my job over volunteering at my son’s school functions or helping my parents.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022, I had unwavering support from Tom, the board of directors, and especially then-President Marta Tienda: flowers after surgery, heartfelt notes, and advice from colleagues who had faced similar diagnoses. I never once had to worry about balancing work and treatment or being compromised by the side effects that persist in my recovery. For all of this, I am eternally thankful. If I’ve learned anything from our academic colleagues’ work on systemic inequalities, it’s that too many people are not as fortunate to receive such support and flexibility.

This job, this Academy, is much more than the journal volumes we release or the lectures we hold: It is a living, breathing organization full of passionate people who seek to better our world through a deeper understanding of its problems with the goal of finding realistic solutions. I am honored to have worked to advance this mission for the past ten years, and I look forward to many more years with you.