Former club soccer team captain Eli Cain ’18 is now flexing his intellectual, rather than his physical, muscles in a full-time position at MAXIMUS, Inc. As a business development analyst for the program administration company, which boasts Bruce Caswell ’88 as its CEO, he is tasked with combing through data sets in order to forecast changes in federal health provisions. It’s a prospect he welcomes.
“Given the political, social, and economic importance of the health-services industry in the United States,” says the political science major, “I believe this is an incredibly interesting public policy niche to examine, and one that will tie into my academic study at Haverford.”
MAXIMUS, Inc. provides business-process services to government health and human services agencies, overseeing everything from Medicaid enrollment to foster care placement to welfare reform. In short, it enables “the most vulnerable citizens in the communities [it] serves” to access “essential services.” For Cain, who concentrated in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Studies, this humanitarian credo was especially seductive—as was the company ethos.
“The way MAXIMUS treats its interns reflects how much they value their employees,” Cain, a former intern himself, says. “Even as an intern I was given real responsibility—I wasn’t a coffee boy. For a multi-billion-dollar company, the emphasis on individual employees was striking and something I desired in my full-time employer.”
Cain has also been accepted to Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where he’s considering pursuing a master’s degree in Latin American Studies—eventually. (He’s deferred his enrollment for two years.)
In the meantime, however, he is gratifying his interest in “the analysis of public policy” at MAXIMUS, Inc., and picking up skills that he’s sure will serve him well in the professional world, regardless of the career path he ends up taking.
“Although I am not sure I want to spend my entire career working with public policy in the health services field,” he says, “the ability to examine large data sets, to prognosticate policy developments, and to determine how these developments will impact a company, a state, or a community will [be useful] in any… job.”
“Where They’re Headed” is a blog series reporting on the post-collegiate plans of recent Haverford graduates.
Photo: Eli Cain ’18 beams after he receives his college diploma on May 19, 2018. Photo courtesy of Eli Cain ’18.