Will Dorsey Eden – Rappaport

Organization

Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston

Program

Rappaport Public Finance Fellow

Year

2020

Links

Greater Boston Applied Field Lab Summary of Activities 2019 - 2020

This Rappaport Public Finance Summer Fellowship provides a stipend to students who undertake a project related to public finance. Traditionally these projects have been a continuation of work conducted in Greater Boston Applied Field Lab: Advanced Budgeting, Financial Management and Operations lab offered by Professor Linda Bilmes.

Graduate School
Harvard Kennedy School

Placement
MassPort

Supervisors
Gordon Carr, Deputy Director, Real Estate Strategy and Policy; and Andres de Riva, Development Manager

Project Description
COVID-19 and its resulting business closures disproportionately impacted Massachusetts’ seafood industry. Heavily reliant on restaurants – where 70% of seafood in the US is consumed – the crisis demanded the industry’s many small businesses to quickly adapt or perish. To support the seafood industry to advocate for itself, Will met with industry and government leaders to develop a governance and financial plan for a state-wide seafood collaborative. The collaborative would support the industry’s many small businesses to access new markets, including the state’s institutional markets, such as schools, prisons, and hospitals. Analyzing the cumbersome food service procurement process for these institutions, we outlined a strategy for the collaborative to access the state’s large institutional market.