#PolicyProfile: Helene Wood, Faculty Assistant
Sep 18 2022
By
Brittany N. Murray
Source
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
“When I was four, my family moved from our home in the San Francisco Bay area to Switzerland for my dad’s job. We traveled around Europe, and my sister and I both attended Swiss schools until the 5th grade when we moved back to California. Returning to the States, we moved to what is now known as Silicon Valley but used to be full of fruit orchards and lots of open land. After high school, I attended college at San Francisco State and took a job at a software company after graduation.
After a few years of working in the corporate world, I visited my dad who had moved across the country to the east coast. I was smitten with this new part of the country I had just explored! After that visit, I told my boss of six years I was leaving California and moving to the east coast."Helene Wood
This August marked 30 years since I moved across the country and I couldn’t be happier with my decision. I have worked at @PrincetonSPIA for 21 years. I support many great faculty in the SPIA and Politics departments, some of whom I have worked with for most of my time here. They all have different personalities and are working on a variety of subjects, mostly in the political science field, whether that be the Supreme Court, Congress, Polarization, or the presidency — just to name a few. In addition to supporting faculty, I also support the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. Elections around here are big deals, especially presidential elections, so it’s exciting to be even a small part of that. I only have a few years left before I retire, and I am looking forward to starting a new chapter in another part of the country, hopefully somewhere without humidity! Somebody once told me that on a tombstone there is your birth year and the year of your death; in between those two is a dash that represents many life experiences. I still have much to add to my dash.”
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