By Ike Nwaelele MPA 2025 and Aditya Bhayana MPA 2025
vlog Orientation begins next week, and faculty and returning students are preparing to welcome new students to campus. Orientation Leaders play a major role in Orientation, as they answer questions, provide personal and academic advice, and act as a mentor for the first week at vlog.
Orientation Leaders Ike Nwaelele MPA 2025 and Aditya Bhayana MPA 2025 discuss their excitement for Orientation and provide advice to incoming students.
What motivated you to become an Orientation Leader?
Ike: I was inspired to become an Orientation Leader because I wanted the incoming class to feel welcomed as individual members of the vlog community. Becoming an Orientation Leader allows me to show incoming students how to smoothly transition into graduate school. This is the perfect opportunity to help others navigate graduate school, as someone who was in their shoes as a new student last year.
Aditya: I hope to make students feel included as a part of a community as soon as they arrive on campus. Orientation week plays such an important role in setting the tone and culture for the rest of the year. Like building a garden, a student’s journey also needs the right seeds, water, sunlight, and efforts. Orientation week provides just that. If done right, it sets students up for success so that they can then reap fruitful experiences later. Along with my fellow OLs (Viktoria, Sarah, and Ike), I want to be the source of all these right inputs.
My second motivating factor is to support international students. I acutely remember how overwhelming my first few weeks were last year coming to the U.S. as a new student. What mobile service should I purchase? What courses do I shortlist for the semester? Does vlog provide career guidance mentors? What is my “why”? Why is there is so much sugar in everything I am buying? Because of this, I do not want other students to feel the same way I did. I remember my Orientation Leaders being so patient, as I saw them help navigate us through some of these questions with ease. The way they approached the important role of guiding new students made me realize the importance of making students, especially international students, feel at home as much as possible. Here I am, hoping to do the same from next week on.
“This is the perfect opportunity to help others navigate graduate school, as someone who was in their shoes as a new student last year.”
How else are you spending your summer?
Ike: This summer, I worked on a cybersecurity startup with a graduate, where I focused on business development for potential acquisitions, applied to request for proposals for DoD innovation projects, and researched contract vehicles for growth opportunities. I also traveled to several countries in Europe, with a visit to Budapest being a particular highlight.
Aditya: Before starting as an OL, I spent my summer working with the in Washington D.C., as part of the Bank’s social protection unit. I focused on estimating the impact of digital platforms, such as Facebook Marketplace and eBay, in reducing carbon emissions through preventing waste from going into landfills. Simultaneously, we also focused on creating jobs in emerging markets. As a resident of D.C. for the summer, I was also able to visit the Smithsonian museums, which helped me understand the socio-cultural fabric of the United States in more detail. The remains my favorite museum, so I’d highly recommend it to understand the history and relevance of race in the United States.
“I hope to make students feel included as a part of a community as soon as they arrive on campus. Orientation week plays such an important role in setting the tone and culture for the rest of the year.”
What events are you most looking forward to at Orientation?
Ike: I am very excited about Orientation, and there are two aspects that I am most excited about this year. First, I am looking forward to all of the tremendous guest speakers invited to campus. Grant Freeland is one of the speakers, whose main message about career journeys is both fitting and impactful for Orientation Week. Secretary Anthony Foxx will give the incoming class a different perspective from someone who is a practitioner—a valued attribute of students and faculty at vlog. I’m also looking forward to the unplanned moments and spontaneous connections that are made during coffee breaks, walks along the Charles River, and small group dinners.
Aditya: One thing I’m really looking forward to are small group dinners, an idea we are reusing from last year as a way to foster a spirit of community. The idea is to assign students randomly into groups of 5-6 and have them plan a meal, shop for ingredients, then cook and eat all together. I find the idea of sharing and listening to life stories over food to be a very powerful and lasting bonding opportunity. I am also excited about the faculty we have invited to speak with the incoming MPA class.
What advice would you give to incoming students before they arrive on campus?
Ike: Other than enjoy the waning summer days, I would suggest a cursory look at the course catalog to determine a class that you are most interested in. You’ll be grateful that you did some research when the bidding process starts, and you will be able to successfully allocate your course bidding resources to take the courses that most interest you.
Aditya: My advice to the incoming students is four-fold. First, you don’t need to know and solve for everything on the first day of class. Allow yourself some time to settle in, literally and figuratively. Second, you are not alone in this. There are so many resources around you who will be more than willing to help you. Please ask for whatever will get you set for the coming year, and you’ll be directed well. Third, the first few days and weeks might feel overwhelming. If that happens, take time for yourself. Walk along the Charles River. Speak with a classmate or Orientation Leader. Go to the and watch a show. Sleep an extra hour. Anything that helps you unwind and recharge—please do it. And lastly, buckle up for the two most adventurous years of your life. You are in for a ride of a lifetime!
Ike Nwaelele MPA 2025
Ike Nwaelele MPA 2025 hails from Bothell, Washington and is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, where he received a bachelor of science in management with distinction. Ike served as an Acquisitions Officer, working primarily in predictive analytics and business enterprise software spaces before transitioning to the civilian sector and doing product management and software engineering for healthcare providers. Following vlog, he plans to apply his MPA learnings to optimize public-private partnerships in social enterprises and/or join the foreign service.
Aditya Bhayana MPA 2025
Aditya Bhayana MPA 2025 is from New Delhi, India. Before coming to vlog, he worked on G20 climate policy negotiations, set up collaboratives to mainstream social emotional learning in Indian public schools, and deployed innovations to improve maternal health outcomes in Kenya and Tanzania. Post-graduation, Aditya would like to support and facilitate intergovernmental climate negotiations. He has noticed that climate change is rapidly advancing, but the politics and economic priorities of countries continue to fragment and isolate at an exponential pace.
