Our star-studded Honors College continued on Thursday with the two visits I had been waiting for all week. As an Economics and Art History major who hopes to design development interventions in the Global South, I was thrilled to visit the World Bank and the Center for Global Development.

After receiving our very own World Bank security passes (printed photos and all), we headed upstairs to meet John Giles, Lead Economist in the Bank's Development Research Group. John shared how his early research on rural workers moving to China's cities grew into a career studying labor markets across the developing world, and gave us a candid look at how research shapes the Bank's work. My thesis asks who benefits when governments invest in a neighborhood's heritage, so his perspective on how people move toward opportunity was invaluable.

John and our next speaker, Abby Baca, Lead Disaster Risk Management Specialist, then shared a brief Stanford reunion. Abby, a civil engineer by training, spent years in the private sector pricing disaster risk before joining the Bank, where she now helps governments build infrastructure that can withstand the next storm or earthquake. Professor Stedman told us he first met Abby when she was a freshman in the dorm where he was Resident Fellow. Seeing that connection carry from a Stanford dorm to the World Bank deepened my appreciation for this community, and for the care Professor Stedman has put into building such a special program.

A short walk took us to the newly renovated office of the Center for Global Development, where we met with Leah Rosenzweig, Thomas Ginn, Erin Collinson, Morgan Pincombe, and Yolanda Yang. Dr. Rosenzweig, herself a former CDDRL postdoctoral fellow, explained how her team at the Market Shaping Accelerator encourages companies to develop products that matter most for the world's poor by committing to pay for solutions once they exist. It was the clearest example I've seen of the work I want to pursue long-term. Thomas, a fellow Stanford Economics alum, shared his research on how access to work shapes the lives of refugees and the communities that host them.

I left the afternoon with a clearer picture of where research becomes policy, a longer reading list, and a renewed sense of the career I want to build.

~ Daniel Hadi

We ended our day speaking with Alexei Koseff, a journalist at the Washington Post known for his persistent reporting on political power. Before joining the Post’s Congress team, Koseff’s investigation with Sophia Bollag into sexual assault and misconduct allegations against Eric Swalwell led to the congressman ending his California gubernatorial campaign.

Our discussion drew the cohort’s attention to the importance of a free press in a democratic society. The challenging, complex work that Koseff and his colleagues undertake creates a vital source of truth and accountability in the public square. Without it, our political system would remain a black box, obscuring abuses of power and the inner workings of government.

Koseff’s path runs through Stanford. After earning his BA in American Studies and a Master’s from the journalism program, he spent years covering California for the Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the nonprofit CalMatters. His extensive coverage of state politics and public figures, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, forged his commitment to accountability reporting.

I appreciated Koseff’s openness about the “worksmanship” of reporting. Investigative journalism, he noted, requires patience and empathy. To ask another human being to share deeply personal experiences, or to risk their security to benefit the public, is an ethically weighty task. So is the attempt to transcribe human stories and information into publicly accessible language. Koseff models a career devoted to the seriousness of that mission.

Of the many stops we made in Washington, I was most inspired by our talk with him. I have served as editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily since February, while my thesis investigates the historical roots and consequences of local journalism gaps in the rural American South. Both my student journalism and my research rest on the conviction that rigorous, unimpeded truth-seeking is integral to democratic life, whether on a college campus or across the country.

Where policymakers advance democracy, development, and the rule of law through institutional power, journalists’ role is subtler and, perhaps, stranger. Through language, information, and narrative craft, we cast a critical eye on institutional power in the hope that our work will illuminate public life. That work belongs as much in our nation’s capital as in a think tank or a legislature. While easy to overlook, it is foundational to civic life.

~ George Porteous