Applications accepted through Jan. 12 for MDC’s 2020-2021 Autry Fellowship

Are you a talented and passionate recent college graduate (or know one) who is eager to equip Southern leaders, institutions, and communities to improve economic mobility and advance equity? Then MDC’s Autry Fellowship may be for you.

The Autry Fellow works one full year as a paid staff member at MDC on a range of projects addressing pressing issues of equity in the South—and applications are now being accepted through Jan. 12.

MDC believes that each Autry Fellow has something unique and fresh to bring to MDC’s work. In turn, MDC provides Autry Fellows with an experience that will enhance their understanding of social change and help further them on their individual path to promoting equity.

Autry Fellows come to MDC with unique strengths, aspirations, and perspectives. We believe fellowship years should be as unique as the Fellows themselves. This means that each Fellow jointly determines his or her own work and goals in consultation with an MDC supervisor. Regardless of variations in the day-to-day experiences of Autry Fellows, all have a shared purpose: growing as leaders while learning MDC’s strategies for promoting economic and social justice. (Read more information about past Autry fellows here.)

Recent Autry Fellows include one who researched the Social Determinants of Health and applied that knowledge to a health improvement initiative in rural North Carolina, and is now in medical school; another did field research on youth engagement in systems-change and now works as co-director of a major N.C. organizing nonprofit; one implemented a youth-led network for low-income high school students and is now studying at the Harvard School of Business; and another researched models for systems change that improve prospects for low-income young people, and went on to NYU law school.

The Autry Fellowship celebrates the life and perpetuates the work of the late George B. Autry, founding president of MDC. He led MDC for 32 years with a passion for improving opportunities for people and places struggling to keep pace with economic and social change.

Applicants must be U. S. citizens who are either in their final year of undergraduate studies or are no more than two years past their graduation date from any four-year college or university. Applicants must be able to commit to beginning one full year of work between June 1 and Aug. 1.

Interested?

• Here’s a PDF of the Application Overview to work on until you are ready to fill out the online application.
• And here’s the online application for the 2020-2021 Autry Fellowship (due Jan. 12, 2020, at 11:59 p.m. EST).
• Read about former Autry Fellows. 

Questions? Visit the Autry Fellowship page on MDC’s website, or contact 2019-2020 Autry Fellow Katie Toles at [email protected] or 919.797.2903, ext. 209.