Scholar (2021), Certificate in American Constitutional Democracy
Olivia Evans was raised in the bourbon and bluegrass state, in Louisville, KY. At Mizzou, Olivia studied Journalism, Political Science, Constitutional Democracy, and Spanish. She also was an athlete on Mizzou’s Track and Field Team where she threw hammer and weight for four years. The summer before senior year, Olivia interned for Forbes as part of the Kinder Scholars Program, and after graduating from Mizzou, she moved back to Louisville where she began working for the USA Today Network covering business and the overlap of policy and the business world in Kentucky.

 

Scholar (2021)
Raised in Saint Louis, MO, Venkatesh Satheeskumar moved to Columbia to study Biology at the University of Missouri. Following graduation in 2022, he began a Master’s in Public Health at Washington University in Saint Louis, specializing in health policy. While completing this degree, he is working as a graduate research assistant with the Center for Advancing Health Services, Policy, and Economics Research.

 

Fellow (2017-2018), Scholar (2019), Certificate in American Constitutional Democracy, M.A. in Atlantic History & Politics (2020-2021)
Riley Messer was born and raised in a small town outside of Kansas City, Missouri, and studied Political Science at Mizzou. During her undergraduate career, she contributed to the fourth volume of the Kinder Institute’s Journal on Constitutional Democracy with an essay titled, “Defining Corruption in the Founding Era and the Modern Era.” Riley obtained an M.A. in Atlantic History and Politics from Mizzou in 2021, and after completing that, she started work as a researcher for a government accountability organization, where she uses FOIA and state public records requests to combat corruption and advance transparency.