Klane/Nyquist Endowment Scholarship Aims to Build Future Policy Leaders
Polly Klane '91 shares the ways in which Sanford built her community at Duke and how she still uses lessons learned in public policy today.
The establishment of the Klane/Nyquist Family Endowment Scholarship in 2021 to support Duke undergraduate students majoring in public policy has received a generous boost from Polly and Larry Klane. Their additional gift in 2024, which accessed Duke’s Centennial Challenge match, will amplify its impact.
As with all public policy students before 1994, Polly Nyquist Klane ’91 spent countless hours in the Old Chemistry building at Duke near the Duke Chapel. As she debated the policy problems of the day and penned memos to address them, the Sanford building was still just a series of blueprints waiting for approval, and Sanford was still an institute at Duke.
Like her fellow students, Klane had been given a vision of that future school and building—a vision that would place Sanford as one of the 10 schools at Duke and as a world leader in policy education and research.
“The public policy school was the most impactful and most important part of my time at Duke, both educationally and personally. I built many relationships there; it was my home at Duke. It was my primary place for connection. It was my community,” says Klane. “I grew as a person and a professional in my time there. Because of that impact, when I thought about giving back to Duke, I wanted to give to the public policy school.”
A return to campus and a renewed appreciation for Sanford
After graduating from Duke, Klane attended Harvard Law School and has since utilized both her law and policy expertise to establish a career that has spanned leadership roles in South Korea, D.C., New York, and now Westport, Conn., currently as General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer for Citizens Financial Group. When she returned to campus with her husband Larry and two children (Eliana and Daniel) years later, she was most excited to see Sanford.
“I was so excited to finally see the building because this was a manifest of that vision we had talked about for those years when I was at Duke. That’s when I first knew I wanted to give to the public policy school,” Klane describes. “Now, more than ever, we need capable people thinking about our policy issues. This is a way for me to promote that need for really good people to be in policy, and I hope our gift makes it more affordable for them.”
How policy affects her work today
Today, Klane is a leader in financial law, but her training as a public policy student still informs her daily work.
“As General Counsel with Citizens, I oversee our regulatory and government relations functions. So, while I didn’t go directly into a policy career, my work always interacts with policy. I often spend time thinking about how policies impact our industry as well as the role of policymakers in shaping regulations,” Klane explains.
Building future policy leaders at Sanford
With the additional gift to the Klane/Nyquist Scholarship, she hopes that future generations of students can build on the foundations of the lessons she learned in public policy here at Sanford, particularly the interdisciplinary skills that Sanford faculty teach.
Klane is excited to see the wide-ranging and inclusive impact that this scholarship can create.
“Sanford reinforces the idea that we need well-rounded policymakers who can listen to a variety of stakeholders. They ask a fundamental question: How do you make policy by looking at all different perspectives?”
This gift will support future generations of policy leaders seeking answers to that question.
