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Cohort 8

Jurisdiction: City of Mount Holly

University: Scripps College

Hometown: Seattle, WA

Joan Hanson serves as a Lead for North Carolina Fellow with the City of Mount Holly, where she supports organizational capacity building across the City Manager’s Office, Public Works, and Finance. During her fellowship, Joan will work alongside the City Manager and Assistant City Manager, prepare City Council updates, assist with the annual budget message, and lead the development of Mount Holly’s first annual report, which will present departmental accomplishments and performance information in a clear, public-facing format. She will also work with Public Works to develop a data-driven process for prioritizing street repaving projects, use Nearmap to estimate project costs, and help modernize the City’s capital project management policy. In addition, Joan will assist the Finance Department with developing Power BI dashboards for grants, Capital Improvement Plan projects, and financial summaries while helping create improved systems for tracking employee benefit liabilities and a standardized Budget Book template. Through these projects, she is gaining hands-on experience in municipal operations, executive communication, infrastructure planning, GIS and data analysis, capital project management, budgeting, financial reporting, Power BI, and cross-departmental project management.

Joan Hanson graduated summa cum laude from Scripps College with a degree in Public Policy and a minor in Spanish. Through the Rose Institute of State and Local Government, Joan gained extensive experience in policy research, project management, and leadership, and looks forward to supporting thoughtful growth in North Carolina.

September 6, 2026

 This July, the eighth cohort of Lead for North Carolina Fellows arrived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to begin their journey into public sector careers. After…

August 24, 2026

This July four Western Carolina University graduates were chosen to serve communities across the state as Lead for North Carolina fellows. Lead for NC is a government fellowship program started…

August 24, 2026

This July, the eighth cohort of Lead for North Carolina Fellows arrived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to begin their journey into public sector careers. After…

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