{"id":71118,"date":"2020-11-11T12:43:58","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T17:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=71118"},"modified":"2025-09-30T10:19:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T14:19:27","slug":"politics-masters-pmo","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/politics-masters-pmo\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall Graduation 2020: Passion for Politics\u2014From a Bachelor to a Master’s to the PMO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Fall Graduation 2020: Passion for Politics\u2014From a Bachelor to a Master's to the PMO\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Carleton\u2019s Fall Graduation 2020, a university-wide online celebration, launched on Saturday, Nov. 14. Watch the celebration at the Carleton Grads 2020<\/a> website now!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As immigrants from Afghanistan, Vida Ebadi\u2019s family spent more than five years seeking a safe, permanent place to call home. Their search eventually brought them to Canada, where they settled in Winnipeg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, Ebadi was eager to give back to the country and felt public service was the way to do it. In a leap of faith, she applied to Carleton University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI seriously didn’t know a single soul [in Ottawa]. I had no idea how politics works. I actually had no idea how university works, because my parents hadn’t gone to university in Canada. So I really walked in pretty blindly,\u201d she recalls of her arrival in Ottawa to study political science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Vida
Vida Ebadi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Her experience at Carleton surpassed expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cLooking back on it now, I feel like I\u2019ve come up with so much more than I could have even imagined for myself,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

While working toward an undergraduate degree, she developed strong friendships with students who held a diverse range of political views. She was also able to attend events on Parliament Hill\u2014a fact she remembers with some amazement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo take what we were learning in classrooms and then literally walk into the House of Commons is something that I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever forget.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wasn\u2019t only an observer on the Hill. At Carleton, she learned of an internship opportunity in the parliamentary office of Winnipeg South Centre MP Jim Carr. With advice from other students in her program, she applied, and she landed the job while still an undergraduate.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt was really everything I dreamed of at the time. I thought it was the coolest job. I was writing correspondence and emails, and [there was] such a variety of different policy files that I got to delve into. And it complemented what I was learning in class so well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

She continued to work in Carr\u2019s office after earning her undergraduate degree. In addition, she immediately enrolled in Carleton\u2019s Master of Political Management (MPM)<\/a> program to further her understanding of Canada\u2019s political environment. \u201cIt was instrumental during my time at Carleton,\u201d she says of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the midst of her MPM studies, she moved into an exciting new job\u2014research in the Prime Minister\u2019s Office (PMO). That opportunity was \u201cthe best thing that ever happened to me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just two weeks into her new position, she\u2014like millions of other Canadians\u2014began working from home when COVID-19 swept across the country. The pandemic has shaped her work, as she now reviews data and focus group feedback to assess how Canadians are reacting to the crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThe ability to be able to contribute in some way is a dream come true,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

As for her career journey\u2014arriving in Ottawa as a first-generation Canadian teenager and ending up with a job in the PMO\u2014well, she says with a laugh: \u201cThat\u2019s something my parents are still in disbelief about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Canadian<\/figure>\n\n\n

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\nMore Stories<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carleton\u2019s Fall Graduation 2020, a university-wide online celebration, launched on Saturday, Nov. 14. Watch the celebration at the Carleton Grads 2020 website now! As immigrants from Afghanistan, Vida Ebadi\u2019s family spent more than five years seeking a safe, permanent place to call home. Their search eventually brought them to Canada, where they settled in Winnipeg. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":71123,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[25],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-71118","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-student-experience"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/71118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/71118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97959,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/71118\/revisions\/97959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=71118"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=71118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}