Nathan J. Remillard | Public Policy Researcher

Background

I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. Ask any of my friends, I'm a loud and proud Nutmegger who will always be proud of the place I get to call my hometown. It's also a community where the failures of American policy were not abstract. They showed up in my neighbors: good-hearted, hard-working people of all backgrounds let down by systems that should have caught them. Substance use was part of the landscape I grew up around, including in my own family, and I came to understand early that the difference between someone who got help and someone who didn't had very little to do with character and almost everything to do with access, circumstance, and policy. That understanding eventually led me to work and take an interest in harm reduction. It also led me to the conviction that research, done honestly and communicated clearly, can change what those systems look like.

While I was always into research and making the world a better place, I originally come from a creative background. I started at the University of Southern California (fight on!) in 2016 as a Choral Music major, ready to pursue my dreams of becoming a choral conductor and educator who also participated in LA's professional choral scene. That choir boy in me burnt out a bit during my undergraduate years, especially when my senior year was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. During my time at USC, I added two additional, completely different majors: Psychology and Russian. Through my psychology studies, I started to deeply question my alignment with the individualist approach to science. I appreciated it, but it just wasn't how my mind worked. After graduating with my BA, I went to the University of Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand to study a Masters in Population Mental Health. The population- and systems-level approach is where I thrived. I bring that systems thinking to my current studies. I'm currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy in Santa Monica, CA, where I am privileged enough to learn from and work with the most interesting field experts, policy researchers, and overall great humans.

That shift from the individual to the system is the thread running through everything I do. Policy research appeals to me because the most interesting questions are never really about one person's choices. They are about the structures and institutions those choices happen inside of: how laws laws are written, how resources are distributed, which forms of knowledge are privileged, and how institutions fail the people they're supposed to serve.

I'm a generalist by disposition and a scholar by training. I don't think those are in tension. I believe the most useful policy analysts are the ones who can move across domains, follow a question wherever it leads, and communicate clearly to people outside of their primary fields of interest. That's what I'm currently building toward! If any of that sounds like work you're doing too, I'd love to connect.