Meet the Metro21 Intern Team
Meet the intern team at Metro21. They work tirelessly behind the scenes for Metro21 to make lasting change, in addition to being amazing and dynamic students at Carnegie Mellon University.
Hailey Gordon
Hailey’s favorite project at Metro21 is G2UPGH (@g2upgh), an Instagram project where interns encourage college students and graduates to consider a life of public service. Her favorite part of this project so far has been interviewing the Instagram Stars, people currently in public service who offer unique insights about both public service and the city of Pittsburgh. Currently, she’s working on perfecting the Instagram, and she tries to develop new, more engaging content that can connect to the viewers. She also creates connections between curious commenters and Instagram, and she says, “I’d like to think of myself as a career matchmaker.”
When she isn’t working for Metro21, she loves to shop! She enjoys almost everywhere from the farmer’s market to a trendy clothing store, and she particularly loves looking for clothes, food, gadgets, and home decor. After a long day, she spends her time in the kitchen, experimenting with new Pinterest recipes.
Sommer Schneller
Sommer’s favorite project is the landslide predictions analysis, where she uses GPS images to figure out where the next landslide could happen in the Pittsburgh area. She’s also a skilled graphic designer, having created amazing infographics and icons for various Metro21 projects. If Metro21 needs anything to do with creating or analyzing images, we call Sommer!
Outside of Metro21, Sommer is currently working on her Capstone project for Carnegie Mellon University. This project focuses on creating fire starters and seed pucks created from spent coffee grounds and other organic materials. In her free time, she loves trying new coffee drinks and baking a wide variety of breads.
Mary Kubinski
Mary’s favorite project is “Feeding Families in Need: Optimizing School Bus Routes for Pandemic Meal Support.” She’s seen firsthand how machine learning can help respond to community needs, and she’s learned more about Pittsburgh through Metro21’s collaboration with community leaders, government, nonprofits, and businesses. She also currently works on Pandemic Meal Support, the G2UPGH webinar series, and the Civic Innovation Challenge.
Mary is currently a first year in the Public Policy and Management program at Heinz College, a part of Carnegie Mellon. She’s very focused on her schoolwork, and she enjoys learning new things. For fun, she runs, tries out new recipes, and reads.
Kirsten Heuring
Kirsten’s favorite project at Metro21 is G2UPGH, where she specializes in making memes. She also creates posts that shows what college students can do in government with their degrees. She enjoys creating posts that people can relate to. Besides working on the G2U project, she also creates the “Broadband Articles and Items of Interest” newsletter.
Kirsten’s currently pursuing a MA in Professional Writing at Carnegie Mellon University, where she focuses on journalism and science writing. When she isn’t working or doing schoolwork, she enjoys trying new recipes and working on her fiction writing.
Varsha Nagele
Varsha enjoys the G2UPGH project because it helps to build a learning community by promoting careers in the public sector as it helps us give back to the community we live in.
Varsha graduated from Carnegie Mellon in December 2020 with her Master's Degree in Technology & Innovation Management and is currently a Growth Marketer who enjoys dancing and often found binge watching anything and everything.
Yashasvi Tulchiya
One of Yashasvi's favorite Metro21 projects is the meals delivery program that utilizes bus routes to deliver the meals. She sees it as an example of how smart solutions can come in handy at the drastic times to help people.
Yashasvi is a second year Master of Urban Design student at CMU, with a background in architecture. One of the main reasons for her choice to shift towards urban design was to work for the public good. She feels our cities need to provide equally for all at the same time taking care of the ecosystems. For Yashasvi, being a Metro21 intern fits in here as it gives an opportunity to understand how working with the community can improvise design decisions.