Community Fellows Program Leads to Career in City Planning for Huda Hagos ’24 M’25

Huda Hagos ’24 M’25 knew that she wanted a career that matched her commitment to social justice issues. She found the right fit as a planner for the City of Allentown. Hagos is working with community agencies on two key projects – Allentown Works and Blueprint Communities – with the aim of improving opportunities for employment, affordable housing, and access to childcare and transportation. 

Becoming a planner was never on her radar – but as a student in Lehigh’s Community Fellows program, she was introduced to the field. As a fellow in Allentown’s Department of Community and Economic development, she worked 15 to 20 hours a week from September through August of the following year while studying full-time for her master’s degree in public policy. The program, which pairs graduate students with public and nonprofit organizations, is designed to build partnerships with an emphasis on community and economic development.

“It was one of the most invaluable experiences I had,” Hagos says. “The fellowship was the perfect balance of work and school and it made the transition to work a lot easier rather than being thrust into it right out of college….I got to work with planners and I had never worked with any before. I barely knew what the field was.”

She transitioned to a permanent job as a planner after earning her master’s degree. Hagos says being a Community Fellow was the perfect marriage of the practical and theoretical. After studying topics in the classroom, she saw their real-life application on the job. “We’d be studying something…and I got to apply the lens of actual problems we’re trying to solve in the city,” she says. “There are a lot of details that you don’t think about from the theoretical standpoint that happen in the day-to-day.” 

The recent revision of Allentown’s zoning code was such an example, Hagos notes. In her classes, she learned that re-writing zoning policy can help to increase affordable housing and foster mixed-use development. In Allentown, the change is the result of a multi-year, multi-phase effort that included extensive study and community input. “I got to see it through a big-picture lens, which aligns with the theoretical nature of what I studied in school, but I also got to see what goes into the creation of those big plans,” she says. “That’s been really great for me.”

Hagos, a Philadelphia native, says the Community Fellows program offers the kinds of opportunities that drew her to Lehigh as an undergraduate. She initially entered Lehigh’s five-year dual degree program in Arts & Engineering but eventually transitioned to earning a degree in environmental studies with a minor in political science that better matched her interests. 

“I like to look at things from different perspectives,” she says. “Lehigh gave me that opportunity because (the university) is very interdisciplinary. It’s one of my favorite things about Lehigh.”