Graduate Traineeship in Policy Advisory

GéoPoly Global LLC | New York

Format: Primarily remote
Eligibility: Graduate students enrolled at an institution in New York State
Duration: 120 hours total, five hours per week, beginning February 1, 2027
Compensation: Unpaid. Academic credit required.
Places available: 3
Application deadline: December 1, 2026

About GéoPoly Global

GéoPoly Global is a policy advisory and risk analysis firm based in New York, founded in 2022. We work with clients and partners on international security, technology policy, and global health, producing analysis that informs decisions rather than describing events. Our work spans advisory engagements, forecasting, and published analysis.

About the traineeship

Graduate programs in policy and international affairs teach students to analyze. They rarely teach students to advise. Those are different crafts, and the gap between them is where most early-career analysts struggle.

This traineeship is designed to close that gap. Over 120 hours, trainees learn how policy advisory work is actually produced: how an advisory firm reasons through a question, what it chooses to include and omit, how it handles uncertainty, and how it writes for a reader who has to make a decision. The intent is that a trainee entering this field afterward can write to professional standard from the first week, rather than spending a year learning by inference.

This is a teaching program. It is not a job, and it is not a staffing arrangement. GéoPoly dedicates senior time to instruction, and trainees produce no work for the firm.

What trainees learn

Sessions are built around a sequence of competencies, each introduced through instruction and then applied to case material:

• The distinction between normative and non-normative analysis, and why advisory work generally stays on one side of it

• Descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive registers, and when each is appropriate

• Stakeholder analysis: identifying who holds influence, interest, and veto

• Structured analytic techniques and the logic of argument construction

• Forecasting fundamentals, including the expression and calibration of uncertainty

• Cognitive bias and the psychology of judgment under uncertainty

• Scoping: translating a broad question into an answerable one

• Advisory writing: structure, concision, framing, and the discipline of omission

• Presenting findings to a non-specialist audience

Instruction uses public and hypothetical case material. No client material is used at any point.

How the program runs

Each week follows a consistent structure:

• Two hours of joint discussion with the cohort, led by a GéoPoly officer, covering the week’s competency and the accompanying case material

• Two and a half hours of independent reading and applied work

• Thirty minutes of individual review with the assigned supervisor

Half the weekly commitment is therefore direct instruction and supervision.

Trainees are supervised by an assigned GéoPoly officer throughout. Additional members of the firm may join particular sessions where their expertise is relevant.

The applied project

Partway through the program, each trainee selects a policy question of genuine interest to them. GéoPoly helps sharpen the question into something tractable, and the trainee then applies the competencies covered in the sessions to produce a piece of advisory analysis on it.

The project belongs to the trainee. It is their own work, on their own subject, developed for their own academic and professional purposes. GéoPoly does not commission it. Trainees retain all intellectual property in what they produce. Publication is not part of the program. Trainees are free to use and publish their work wherever they choose.

Trainees present the completed project to the cohort and to their supervisor. Where a trainee’s university requires an evaluation, GéoPoly completes the university’s own supervisor assessment of the trainee’s learning.

What this program is not

• It is not employment, and it does not create an employment relationship. Trainees are not employees of GéoPoly Global LLC and receive no wages, salary, stipend, or benefits. It does not substitute for paid staff. No GéoPoly work is assigned to trainees.

• It is not client facing. Trainees undertake no client work, see no client material, and have no access to confidential information or proprietary firm tools

• Completion confers no eligibility for engagement with GéoPoly or its analyst network.

Eligibility

Applicants must:

• Be enrolled in a graduate program at an institution in New York State, and remain enrolled across both semesters spanned by the traineeship

• Have started the second semesters of a two-year master’s program before the traineeship begins

• Receive academic credit for the traineeship from their institution

• Have their institution approve the placement in writing

Applicants apply through their university. GéoPoly does not accept direct placements. International students require Curricular Practical Training authorization from their institution, arranged by the institution.

Who we are looking for

We are not looking for a particular skill set. No prior professional experience is required, and we do not expect applicants to arrive already knowing how advisory work is done. That is what the program teaches.

What matters is intent. The strongest applicants are those who intend to work in policy advisory, risk analysis, or an adjacent field, and who want to understand the craft before entering it. Coursework in policy, international affairs, security, economics, public health, or a related discipline is relevant context, and we are interested in what you have studied and why.

How to apply

Fill the form at the bottom of this page.

Applications are assessed on academic preparation, demonstrated interest in the field, and fit with the program’s stated learning objectives. Selection is not a hiring process and does not evaluate candidates against the firm’s staffing needs.

Deadline: December 1, 2026
Decisions: by December 15, 2026
Program begins: February 1, 2027

Equal opportunity

GéoPoly Global LLC does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, marital or partnership status, military status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, New York State, or New York City law. This applies to trainees as well as employees. Applicants requiring an accommodation in the application process or in the program should contact info@geopoly.co.