Waking up at four in the morning on Election Day might not sound like fun to a lot of people. But Grace Klinefelter ’23 happily started early on the day of the 2022 midterm elections, conducting exit polls alongside other political science students in Minnesota’s Second Congressional District.

And now, three years later, Klinefelter is the alum giving tours each January to Oles considering a career in public policy.

“It’s been a tremendous joy to help with that program,” she says. “It was one of the most vocationally beneficial things I did during college, and I’m really enjoying getting to pass it along.” 

As part of the program, students visit Klinefelter’s office, where she introduces them to her team and their work in election and governance policy. Last January, she participated in a panel on ethics challenges in her field. 

“It’s an opportunity to have some thoughtful conversations about the complexity and nuance of working in public policy,” Klinefelter says. 

“The experience of those first five to 10 years after graduation is pretty special. It’s a time when a lot of people my age are having a lot of major life transitions. It makes approaching how to best support these alumni a puzzle to figure out.”

Grace Klinefelter ’23

The experience extends beyond the workplace. Alumni pair up with students to show them around their neighborhoods, giving them a glimpse of what it actually looks like to build a life in Washington. 

“You’re not just working in D.C. You’re living in D.C.,” Klinefelter says. “What does that actually look like?” 

Klinefelter gets to share the vibrant city that she loves (“It’s deeply nerdy. And you may have noticed that I’m a deeply nerdy person.”) with the next Ole graduates. She laughs that she gets plenty of questions about apartment hunting, a subject she now feels particularly qualified to answer: “I’ve done it.”

But three years after graduation, Klinefelter is still close enough to her own St. Olaf experience to remember the questions that come with figuring out what happens next. It’s a perspective she’ll now bring to the St. Olaf Alumni and Family Board, which she recently joined.

“The experience of those first five to 10 years after graduation is pretty special,” Klinefelter says. “It’s a time when a lot of people my age are having a lot of major life transitions. It makes approaching how to best support these alumni a puzzle to figure out. I’m excited to help the group think through what that looks like and also give back to a community that’s done a tremendous amount for me and my entire family.”

St. Olaf has been a family experience for Klinefelter. Her partner, father, and younger sibling are all alumni. 

“My parents are both extremely strong proponents of education,” she says, adding that her mother is a college professor in Omaha, NE, where Klinefelter grew up. “My parents wanted us to grow up thinking that college campuses were like a home. A place where we should be welcome. A place where we should feel comfortable and confident.” 

And that is how she felt at St. Olaf, where she has younger memories of sprinting around the quad. As a student, she also found it to be a place that supported her curiosity. 

That curiosity led Klinefelter to double major in political science and Spanish. While Spanish isn’t directly connected to her day-to-day work, studying language and sociolinguistics gave her a deeper understanding of the country’s linguistic complexity, including issues of language access as they relate to election policy. 

It’s also shaped the advice she offers Oles during their J-Term trip to D.C.

“I think there’s a lot of emphasis on college as a way to prepare for a career,” she says. “But you’re going to learn a whole lot of other things in college that aren’t directly related to that, and those are going to be some of the best things that you learn in college.”