Alessandra Rader joined ACET in September 2023 as the Portfolio Assistant for the Outcome Measurement & Collaborative Design portfolios. She brings experience in communications, research, and project support and says she’s thrilled to be working with both ACET colleagues and clients. “Being able to work with and learn from the incredibly savvy and talented staff has been amazing—and being able to interact with and also learn from clients has been incredible as well,” she notes.
Alessandra works on a range of projects within the portfolios, and her typical activities include proofing monthly and annual reports, attending client meetings and tracking progress, collecting and documenting data from quantitative sources, as well as supporting transcription and translation of qualitative data. As a Spanish speaker, she also is able to use her knowledge of language and culture to strengthen the work of our diverse team internally and with ACET’s many diverse clients and their stakeholders.
She says she’s proud of the work that ACET does, as well as of the variety of clients she gets to work with. One client she’s heavily involved with is Ramsey County; she meets monthly and drafts progress reports with staff on a county environmental health project. Most recently she’s begun supporting a new project with Ramsey County’s Parks and Recreation system. Another highlight has been working on a project with the Great Plains Tribal Leaders’ Health Board, meeting monthly with the six sub-awardees of a federal breast cancer grant initiative. “I really enjoy getting to know those clients and being able to communicate face-to-face,” she says.
Alessandra received her B.A. in Biocultural Anthropology with a minor in Spanish Studies at the University of Minnesota. While there, she also completed two internships: one with the Borgen Project and one with Seaside Sustainability, Inc. She gained experience in communications, research, and project support, all of which helped her jump right into her projects at ACET. “Both internship experiences were really rewarding,” she says. “It was an exciting challenge to be communicating with congressional offices and writing sustainability reports, which were so different from the academic research and writing I’d done before.” We are confident that Alessandra will continue to enrich our work here at ACET and are glad to have her as a vital part of our team!