{"id":7193,"date":"2026-10-26T10:35:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T15:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/?p=7193"},"modified":"2026-10-30T10:44:43","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T15:44:43","slug":"from-student-to-supporter-supporting-oles-on-and-beyond-the-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/2026\/10\/26\/from-student-to-supporter-supporting-oles-on-and-beyond-the-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"From Student to Supporter: Supporting Oles on and Beyond the Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Waking up at four in the morning on Election Day might not sound like fun to a lot of people. But Grace Klinefelter \u201923 happily started early on the day of the 2022 midterm elections, conducting exit polls alongside other political science students in Minnesota\u2019s Second Congressional District.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cJust getting a sense for the scope and breadth and complexity of the American electorate was a lot of fun,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was another thing that led me down the elections path \u2014 sitting in a polling place, talking to voters for a while.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Klinefelter now works at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) in Washington, D.C., focused on election policy. The think tank landed on her radar while she was a St. Olaf College student during a January Term trip to D.C., where Klinefelter and other political science students toured BPC.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was in the back of my mind when I started applying for jobs,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s all about those little connections.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Grace Klinefelter ’23 lives and works in Washington, D.C. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

And now, three years later, Klinefelter is the alum giving tours each January to Oles considering a career in public policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a tremendous joy to help with that program,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was one of the most vocationally beneficial things I did during college, and I\u2019m really enjoying getting to pass it along.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the program, students visit Klinefelter\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity to have some thoughtful conversations about the complexity and nuance of working in public policy,\u201d Klinefelter says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe experience of those first five to 10 years after graduation is pretty special. It\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>Grace Klinefelter ’23<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not just working in D.C. You\u2019re living in D.C.,\u201d Klinefelter says. \u201cWhat does that actually look like?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Klinefelter gets to share the vibrant city that she loves (\u201cIt\u2019s deeply nerdy. And you may have noticed that I\u2019m a deeply nerdy person.\u201d) 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: \u201cI\u2019ve done it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s a perspective she\u2019ll now bring to the St. Olaf Alumni and Family Board<\/a>, which she recently joined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe experience of those first five to 10 years after graduation is pretty special,\u201d Klinefelter says. \u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019m excited to help the group think through what that looks like and also give back to a community that\u2019s done a tremendous amount for me and my entire family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Olaf has been a family experience for Klinefelter. Her partner, father, and younger sibling are all alumni. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy parents are both extremely strong proponents of education,\u201d she says, adding that her mother is a college professor in Omaha, NE, where Klinefelter grew up. \u201cMy 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.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That curiosity led Klinefelter to double major in political science and Spanish. While Spanish isn\u2019t directly connected to her day-to-day work, studying language and sociolinguistics gave her a deeper understanding of the country\u2019s linguistic complexity, including issues of language access as they relate to election policy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also shaped the advice she offers Oles during their J-Term trip to D.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of emphasis on college as a way to prepare for a career,\u201d she says. \u201cBut you\u2019re going to learn a whole lot of other things in college that aren\u2019t directly related to that, and those are going to be some of the best things that you learn in college.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waking up at four in the morning on Election Day might not sound like fun to a lot of people. But Grace Klinefelter \u201923 happily started early on the day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12610,"featured_media":7201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[13,41,12],"class_list":["post-7193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community","tag-alumni","tag-careers","tag-giving"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/files\/2026\/10\/Grace-Klinefelter-feature.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7193"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7200,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7193\/revisions\/7200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}