Recap: Trinity University hosts Coro St. Louis Alumni Panel
Thank you to Trinity University for hosting a Coro Fellows Program in St. Louis alumni! And thank you to the alumni who shared about their experiences:
Catherine Hamacher, ‘14, Associate Director at PGAV Planners
Allison Hawk, ‘89, Principal at AHC Consulting
Ross Morales Rocketto, ‘08, Co-Founder and Senior Advisor at Run for Something
Noor Rahman, ‘23, Management Consulting Analyst at Accenture Federal Services
Are you interested in joining the next cohort? Learn more about the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs and apply today! The deadline for applications for the 2025-2026 cohort is January 12, 2025.
Note: answers have been edited for clarity.
What about your Coro experience was most valuable to you?
[NOOR RAHMAN] Coro showed me a ton about what people do every day in all the different sectors. After 22 years of just reading and learning through books in school, it was a great experience to actually go and talk to people. A big part of the Coro Fellows Program is interviews; we tallied how many interviews we did by the end of the year and it was over 150.
There’s a certain level of access you get as a Coro Fellow - you could just go anywhere and be like, “I’m here, tell me everything about you.” and people are so willing to do it once you explain what you are doing as a Coro Fellow. You’re just there to learn and understand. You can just learn so much in Coro and talk to people you just never ever would or would have access to.
[ROSS MORALES ROCKETTO] It was a transformational experience for me. The training component, I think, probably gave me 10 years’ worth of education that I would have had no other way to get in a span of nine months.
It’s like a really incredible finishing school. There’s an ability to stretch yourself in an environment where there are stakes, but it’s pretty safe. The program does a lot to make that environment feel safe. It was a really good balance, because I knew that I had a safety net on the things that I was doing and while I was stretching myself I also knew that I wasn’t going to be able to, like, fail spectacularly.
I also went to graduate school later, and if I were to compare the two - Coro is infinitely more valuable to me, to be honest. I can say, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I use the things that I got out of Coro literally every single day and couldn’t be happier that I did it. I am 20 years into my career and I have not seen another way to get the level of access that I was able to have in Coro so early on and learn so much from it.
[CATHERINE HAMACHER] Coro asks you to think about different sectors and think about how they all work together or don't work together. And then what that means, like what types of people end up in certain sectors and what types of leaders show up in certain ways. So it was an opportunity to have a short-term stint, kind of like how doctors have residencies in all these different specialties.
Coro places you in sort of all of these really out-of-the-box, not necessarily align with what you thought you might want to do with your life, opportunities. It provides you this opportunity to shift your perspective and gain new ideas for what one’s future might look like.
I didn’t even want to run for office necessarily, but I got a lot of value out of working in a government organization. That one month provided me the opportunity to think about what public health and mental health means in a system in a broader community setting.
What are the things that made you say yes to Coro? Why was this the right opportunity at the right time for you?
[ALLISON HAWK] I thought I wanted to go to law school and get a master's degree in public administration. I had been applying for jobs, applied to graduate school in public administration, and I applied to Coro. I was fortunate enough to get Coro because one of the things I learned in Coro within the first week was that public administration probably wasn't for me.
[HAMACHER] I also had a lot of experiential opportunities when I was at Trinity through my classwork, so when I found Coro, I thought this would be great. This would be kind of an opportunity to spend a year doing those things I really loved about Trinity.
[RAHMAN] Coro has been infinitely valuable to me. I said yes for a similar reason, just wanting to know more about what opportunities were even available to me. So for me, it was the opportunity to go try a bunch of different things, and then end up with a pros and cons and likes and dislikes list for myself.
Why did you each choose to do Coro in St. Louis?
[MORALES ROCKETTO] I wanted to do it somewhere else, I'll just be totally honest - I wanted to go to LA or New York at the time, and I got selected for St. Louis. To be honest, it was the best thing for me. For one thing, the St. Louis center has a very long history and really deep roots in the community, and I think that's really important.
Secondly, St. Louis is a smaller city and it just gives you the kind of access that you can’t really get in the bigger cities where people don’t tend to be as generous with their time.
[HAWK] I'm from the Midwest, originally I grew up in Kansas City, so the Midwest was appealing to me to get back to after I graduated. But honestly, what it came down to was it was going to be affordable for me. Being able to live in St. Louis is a lot more reasonable financially than trying to live on the coast.
[HAMACHER] I'll also add that affordability was the reason I came here too. But I didn't realize how important the nonpartisan aspect of the program was prior to doing Coro. But it is sort of one of the major tenants of the program. And in the world today, I have since realized how important it was for the Coro Fellows Program to be in a place like St. Louis – a really blue dot in a really red state. A really urban place surrounded by small family farms. That dynamic is really important to how the world works, and also how I was able to learn.
How would you describe the value of the cohort experience?
[HAMACHER] I am still in touch with the other Fellows from my cohort - I was actually in a class of 16 Fellows and we have an extremely active text chain. Coro Fellows were in my wedding, I’ve been to other Coro weddings and baby showers and all kinds of things. So for me, the cohort aspect of it was one of my favorite parts – it was a really big and important part of my experience.
[RAHMAN] You work with these people a lot – you’ll stay up late working on projects together, you’re often in a room with the same 10 people, so you get really close. I honestly don’t know if I ever felt like I knew anyone in school as through-and-through as I knew the people in Coro. It’s a really great way to learn how other people have different working styles than you and you can’t disregard them because you’re stuck with them for nine months, and you really learn to respect it. I definitely felt connected to them and still stay in touch with tons of people from my cohort, too.
[HAWK] There’s also built-in conflict and that’s part of it. You know, we just had our 50th anniversary of Coro in St. Louis and one of my fellow Fellows - who, the two of us were probably the least likely to continue to be friends this many years later, and in fact, we are. But there are some that I don’t talk to; so not everybody was a lovey-dovey friend at the end, and that’s okay! You got to learn about what people were really like in Coro and it was really helpful to me in working with people that were a little more difficult.
[MORALES ROCKETTO] 15 years later, I’m still friends with almost everyone who was in my cohort. Some of them were in my wedding, we’ve been to baby showers. A bunch of us tried to do a reunion for the 50th anniversary in St. Louis; I was actually quite excited to see them. To Allison’s point, not all of them are going to be your best friend at the end. I still visit a bunch of them when I go through the cities they live in, I look them up and honestly, it feels like picking up where we left off.
What is your advice for applying for the Coro program?
[HAWK] I would just apply. Get a good recommendation from one of your great professors and talk about some of the things you've been doing. I think you want to also emphasize what you are currently doing and what you aim to do, making a commitment to public life in some way. But, short of that, being vulnerable and saying, “I don’t know what I want to do, but I know I’m passionate about public affairs generally, and I’d like to get more specific.” would be the way that I might think about framing it.
[HAMACHER] I think the best thing about Coro is that the whole goal is for you to learn things you don't already know. So I think it's okay in your application if you think about what you're hoping to get from Coro being like: "I don't know what I want to do for my life, and maybe this can help me figure it out.”
For 50 years, the nonpartisan Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs has equipped emerging civic leaders in St. Louis to better understand how decisions are made, how complex policies are shaped, and how to influence meaningful change.
Up to twelve Fellows are selected each year to participate in St. Louis’ program from a highly competitive national applicant pool for the nine month, full-time, graduate-level leadership training program. Throughout their program year, Fellows have rich interactions with private, public, and nonprofit decision-makers while immersed in intentionally ambiguous and stimulating environments designed to support their growth and development in a collaborative, peer-to-peer learning space.