Harvard's $100K Service Fellows Arrive

Harvard Kennedy School’s first class of American Service Fellows, 50 mid-career public servants each holding a $100,000 scholarship, is now midway through its first semester in Cambridge. In profiles and interviews published Oct. 16 and Oct. 19, the school and The Harvard Crimson described a cohort of veterans, police chiefs, diplomats and state officials that arrived as federal employment continued to shrink.

What the American Service Fellowship pays for

The fellowship covers full tuition and fees plus a partial living stipend for the one-year, full-time Mid-Career Master in Public Administration (MC/MPA) program, according to the HKS fellowship page. It is open to U.S. military veterans and service members; federal, state, tribal and local employees, including teachers, firefighters and police officers; and alumni of national service programs such as Peace Corps and AmeriCorps.

HKS announced the program in July 2025. Harvard Magazine reported at the time that it was chartered as a one-year pilot, that the school expected roughly half the class to come from military service, and that each applicant needed at least seven years of service. A school spokesperson told the magazine the program would run within existing facilities and staffing, with no new faculty hires.

The Crimson reported that the fellowship is funded by $5 million in private donations and is the largest single-year scholarship program in the school’s history. The school’s own magazine says it is paid for entirely through philanthropy from multiple donors.

Who is in the inaugural cohort

According to the HKS admissions blog, the fellows arrived on campus in July and together bring more than 980 years of public leadership experience. The school lists combat veterans, career diplomats, police chiefs, public health officers, international development specialists and elected officials from both major parties among them.

Profiles posted between September and mid-October include:

Gannon Hendrick, an Iowa cattle farmer’s son, former Army intelligence analyst and lieutenant colonel, and chief of staff to Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair.
Joe Newhouse, a former Oklahoma state senator and U.S. Navy combat veteran.
Colleen Corbett, who spent 14 years in operations and contracting roles at NASA.
Patrick Daley, chief of police in Norwich, Connecticut.
Siena Fleischer, a 15-year Foreign Service Officer at USAID.
Alex Castillo Smith, who helped run New Mexico’s Medicaid, SNAP and state employee health systems for nearly seven years.

Fellows describe a ‘landing pad’ amid federal cuts

In interviews with The Crimson, several fellows linked their decision to apply to turmoil in government work. David Gleaton, who spent more than 20 years in federal technology roles, most recently at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the program offered a way to “take a step back and try to just pivot and figure out what comes next.”

Shannon Jackson, a retired Navy officer with 28 years of medical planning and international health work, told the paper she had planned to join USAID before the agency was upended. Holly Kostrzewski, who worked 24 years in tribal public health and traffic safety, said: “I couldn’t have afforded to come without the fellowship.”

Chuepheng “Ping” Lo, a retired Army officer with 34 years of military and federal service, said: “The biggest challenge with public servants is for them to lose faith.”

Federal data puts the backdrop in numbers. Federal government employment, excluding the Postal Service, stood at about 3.01 million in January 2025 and roughly 2.68 million in September 2026, a drop of about 328,000 jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED).

The Pentagon dispute and the veterans in the class

The cohort arrived during a broader standoff between Harvard and the federal government, which The Boston Report has covered in its explainer on the Harvard antisemitism case. In February, the Department of Defense said it would end graduate-level military education at Harvard starting in the 2026-27 academic year, citing the university’s partnerships with Chinese institutions and campus antisemitism, The Crimson reported.

Hendrick told the paper he retired from the Army Reserve before enrolling because it was unclear whether the directive applied to reservists or to service members paying their own way. He called the number of veterans in the class “a testimony to how important we think the opportunity is that we’re willing to put careers on hold or end them.”

Applications surge as a second round opens

HKS’s 10-year strategic plan, released in June, credited the fellowship with helping drive a 235 percent increase in domestic applications to the mid-career program, according to The Crimson. The school is now recruiting a second class: admission applications are due Dec. 1, 2026, at noon ET, and financial aid applications are due Jan. 15, 2027. The application fee is waived for fellowship applicants.

The expansion comes as Harvard’s finances draw scrutiny; the university recently reported a $100 million surplus and a 27.1% endowment return for fiscal 2026. The Kennedy School’s research centers have also been in the news this month, including a Belfer Center report covered in our story on the AI “pre-mortem”.

Featured image: Littauer Building, Harvard Kennedy School, by KAKM via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0; cropped.

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Harvard Kennedy School’s First American Service Fellows: 50 Public Servants on $100,000 Scholarships