How 3 Alumni Serve Communities, Shape Futures

Published Date September 17, 2026
News Type Public Address

John Glenn College of Public Affairs alumni (from left) Taylor Stepp, Kyla Hurns and Sarah Anstine prove that a visionary commitment to the public good coupled with the right education and experience inevitably results in impact.

By Joan Slattery Wall

An advocate uses her lived experiences to establish stable programs for vulnerable populations in addiction recovery. A passionate visionary proves what works and fights for solutions in national education policy. And a civic leader who wants better community development outcomes improves strategies to navigate the business/government intersection. 

Students arrive at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs searching for their passion or building their knowledge and skills to serve the public good. Read the stories of these three young alumni to learn how they’ve used their Buckeye education and experiences to drive impact where it matters most to them.

Creating Opportunities for Addiction Recovery

Known as a fearless advocate for the behavioral health system and the individuals and families that benefit from it, Sarah Anstine received her Master of Public Administration from the Glenn College in 2015.

My personal experience being in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction showed me that recovery is not only possible, but probable, when people have the right support at the right time.

Sarah Anstine
MPA ’15

“It continues to fuel my passion for bringing people together and helping build stronger systems so that more individuals and families have the opportunity to find hope, healing and lasting recovery,” said Anstine, who received the college’s Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2017. 

While obtaining her degree, she was instrumental in creating Ohio State’s Collegiate Recovery Community, a support program designed to help students in recovery, and was director of recovery for Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery at Ohio State. 

At a OneOhio Recovery Foundation board meeting, Sarah Anstine, third from right, poses with some board members, a panel expert and a grantee who celebrate Recovery Month with a combined 205 years of recovery.

Now, she is director of partnership and outreach at OneOhio Recovery Foundation, a nonprofit, charitable organization created at the direction of Ohio’s state and local leaders to distribute funds the state receives from the pharmaceutical industry as a consequence of its role in the national opioid epidemic. She was recruited to lead region engagement, stakeholder relationships and advocacy efforts. 

Anstine also is founder and board chair of Heartland High School, central Ohio’s first recovery high school.

Lead for the Public Good

Find out how Glenn College graduate programs provide rigorous training and practical skills in policy, economics, management and analysis that you need to solve the challenges facing your community and hit the ground running in your career.

She previously worked for six years at Alkermes, a global biopharmaceutical company, where she built strategic partnerships with government, healthcare, nonprofit and community leaders to promote policies and collaborative approaches that expanded access to treatment and recovery resources, helping drive meaningful systems-level change.

She also was appointed to serve on the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration’s Advisory Committee for Women’s Services and was a founding member of Young People in Recovery and a past board member of both the Association of Recovery Schools and Ohio Citizen Advocates for Addiction Recovery. 

Sarah Anstine shares her thoughts.

One example is the foundation’s launch of the Evidence Guide, which was designed to help applicants better understand evidence-based prevention, treatment and recovery strategies. I was involved in developing and implementing the guide, including a companion webinar that reached more than 300 unique viewers and helped strengthen the quality of applications submitted during the current regional grant cycle.

Launching a startup nonprofit is no small feat, but building one with this kind of reach and impact is next level! It’s amazing what can be achieved when people come together to solve complex problems facing their communities. My work is focused on our 19 regional boards, which are made up of over 300 regional volunteers to support the work of our grant rounds. 

My vision for Heartland High School is steadily taking shape as we become more deeply integrated into the community and continue to build diverse, sustainable funding streams that will support our long-term impact. While there’s still important work ahead, we’re focused on growing to serve 30 students and securing the revenue needed to sustain that growth by our 10-year anniversary in fall 2028. Every new partnership and milestone brings us one step closer to realizing that vision!

Good mentorship! In my experience, recovery requires a willingness to remain teachable and approach life with humility, and mentors help reinforce both. Having trusted people who can speak honestly into your life provides perspective, accountability and encouragement that helps you grow in ways you often can’t achieve on your own.

I am so grateful for those that have guided me along the way both personally and professionally. Shout out to Debbie Johnson, founding director of Ross Leadership Institute, who was my mentor when she was involved in leadership initiatives at the Glenn College and is still a close personal friend today!

I truly wouldn’t be where I am today without the Glenn College and my time at Ohio State. They not only equipped me with the skills and confidence to lead in the public and nonprofit sectors but also connected me with mentors, colleagues and opportunities that continue to shape my career and my commitment to improving the lives of others.

Advancing Education Policies

Kyla Hurns, who is committed to fostering environments where all students can thrive, graduated magna cum laude with honors with her BA in Public Management, Leadership and Policy and a minor in education policy in 2024.

As a higher education policy analyst at EdTrust, an advocacy and research organization in Washington, D.C., she advances policies and practices to dismantle barriers embedded in the American education system. There, she co-authored EdTrust reports “Understanding the Implementation of Universal FAFSA Completion Policies in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana and Louisiana” and “A Guide for States on Implementing Workforce Pell Grants,” which will expand Pell Grants to short-term, career-aligned programs, opening new pathways for career changers and learners seeking direct entry into the workforce.

Kyla Hurns attends the 2025 Annual Legislative Conference hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus.

“We’re doing some future work on short-term credentials in general and just understanding the different options that students are pursuing for post-secondary opportunities. Are they equitable? And if they’re not, how can we make them more equitable and accessible to all students?” Hurns said. 

She said her parents gifted her a love for learning, and her early education in both public and private schools gave her insight into the different opportunities and access available to students. 

“The experiences that I was able to have at my private school, I thought, ‘Well, everyone should get this. Why is it limited to those who can pay for it?’ I went to an amazing public school for high school and for elementary. All these kids are so deserving, as am I, of having that without having to pay for it,” she said.  

Education’s the only thing that everyone experiences, so why shouldn’t it be the best it can be?

Kyla Hurns
BA ’24, Public Management, Leadership and Policy

She gives back to the Glenn College by hosting visits to EdTrust or participating in panels for the Washington Academic Internship Program (WAIP).

“One of the things I’ve learned about public affairs but also just policy in general is it’s a very hard field to know and understand not being in it,” Hurns said. “I look for ways to just ensure that every student has an understanding of all the options available, because there’s a lot that you can do with a public affairs degree.”

Kyla Hurns shares her thoughts.

Up until now, we’ve seen the federal government mostly focus on paying for students to pursue degrees. But as more and more people need to go back to school, the average learner nowadays is not your traditional straight-out-of-high-school student going into college. 

We have a lot of people who are parenting students. We have people who need more flexible options. We have older learners. And so I think Workforce Pell provides an opportunity for us to meet students where they’re at and allow them to pursue credentials that fit a pathway that right now the federal government doesn’t really support.

There’s been a lot of conversation about the value of college and return on investment. While I think it’s coming from a good place, to me the biggest issue we need to focus on is affordability. 

I think people deserve the opportunity to pursue the four-year degree, and right now it’s like a false choice, right? We’re saying people have the choice, but it’s for $100,000. It feels like a choice between going into debt or going and working in a field that they can work in right now. 

I think lowering that cost removes the conversation of value, because I don’t think the data says that college isn’t worth it. The bachelor degree pays off more than anything else, any other credential you get. So, the question becomes less, ‘Is it worth it?’ and more, ‘How do we get that price down?’

I was in Undergraduate Student Government for four years. I was able to learn more about all the tiny issues that exist on a singular campus and how do we handle them all, but also about the importance of working with others. It was almost a smaller version of what I’m sure it’s like to work on the Hill. 

At the Glenn College, the class I took my senior year, Qualitative Research with Professor Jill Clark, gave me a really good understanding on how to take a research project from beginning to end. The research side provided me with a very good foundation, as I started doing projects here, for what a brainstorm process might look like. If I want to do a long study, this is how we would recruit focus groups and why we should recruit this way and not that way. That came at the very right time as I ended up working somewhere that does a lot of qualitative research. And so I think that class, specifically, was super helpful in just thinking about what it means to do research, how we do it and how we do it correctly.

Leading Community Growth

After receiving a BA in Public Affairs from the then-John Glenn School of Public Affairs in 2014, Taylor Stepp returned to his roots to improve community development in southeast Ohio.

“I’m from Jackson, Ohio, and coming to Ohio State was great because there wasn’t a huge amount of opportunity where I grew up,” said Stepp, who graduated summa cum laude with research distinction in public finance and minored in Russian and communication. 

“In 2018, I had the opportunity to go home and give back to the area,” he said. “I remembered so many manufacturing plants closing or reducing employment when I was in high school, which was devastating for the community. After seeing growth across the state while working at JobsOhio, I wanted that same growth for Appalachia and southeastern Ohio. I joined Ohio Southeast Economic Development as the director of projects, leading development for 25 counties. I’ve been back since 2018, and it’s a great place to live and raise a family.” 

Taylor Stepp, far right, celebrates a groundbreaking for an expansion at Kenworth’s Chillicothe, Ohio, assembly plant.

Stepp is founder and president of Strategic Development Partners, a national site selection, credits and incentives, and economic development firm focused on adding value to companies and communities. He manages a portfolio of over $20 billion in capital investments across the U.S.

Part of his work involves serving as director of economic development and the Center for Entrepreneurship at University of Rio Grande and Rio Grande Community College, where he is responsible for leading the university’s collaboration with the Gallia County Commissioners, Gallia County Community Improvement Corporation, community leaders and other agencies to promote and grow Gallia County and the surrounding region’s business and economic development interests.

Right now, I have the privilege of helping companies and communities plan for development.

Taylor Stepp
BA ’14, Public Affairs

“I aid companies with location decisions and incentive negotiations, and I use the public finance skills I learned at the Glenn School every day,” Stepp said. “I also work with communities on housing studies, redeveloping downtown buildings or developing industrial parks. I have my foot in both camps — representing companies and representing communities.”

He was involved in efforts resulting in 2025 economic impact in Gallia County equating to $34 million just from industrial projects, which will add 307 new jobs. 

Previously, Stepp was manager of global location investment, credits and incentives at Ernst & Young (now EY), and for six years prior he managed projects at Ohio Southeast Economic Development, where he helped companies add thousands of new jobs — more than anyone else in the history of that organization. 

Taylor Stepp shares his thoughts.

I recently completed a housing study for Jackson County with my consulting firm in February of this year. Housing is a crisis right now, and the community needed a plan to address both current and forthcoming challenges. We found two big market gaps: a starter home gap and a massive gap in top-quartile, executive-level homes. To address this, we are looking to implement a Community Reinvestment Area property tax abatement program to spur residential development. I’m also a big believer in the Community Development Corporation model, which is a nonprofit tasked with redeveloping vacant or blighted properties.

Communities need to be strategic in their planning for growth. They need to move beyond just having an empty field and instead create shovel-ready sites with infrastructure, site plans and incentive packages that make financial sense for companies.

Ohio State was the perfect playground for me. As a young man with a lot of ideas, I was given an arena to explore policy with real stakes. I served as the first USG senator for the Glenn School and was on the University Senate and the president’s steering committee. I even negotiated with President E. Gordon Gee, trading my votes for $180 million in student scholarships. The Glenn College was incredibly practical compared to theoretical political science. I was the first to have a specialization in public finance, which I designed myself because the standard tracks didn’t fit my goals. Those “nuts and bolts” skills in budgeting and tax programs are what I use daily.

I was surprised by how much the market values the skill set from the Glenn School. I served as an executive at Ernst & Young (now EY) for a few years, managing $30 billion worth of projects across the United States. It taught me that public finance skills have real enterprise value in public-private partnerships. 

Read the latest edition of Public Address, the Glenn College magazine.