On the Grosso family’s small farm in Tully, New York, everyone had responsibilities.

The rule was simple: the animals ate before the family did. Tractors needed fixing. Fences needed mending. There was always another project waiting.

It wasn’t glamorous, but it taught daughters Taylor, Sydney and Lauren Grosso lessons that would carry them far beyond the rolling hills of Central New York.

“We all have a strong work ethic,” says Taylor ’21, G’22. “There was always something to do.”

That work ethic led each sister to the Maxwell School, where all three earned master of public administration degrees, the last completed by Lauren this past June. It wasn’t an orchestrated family tradition. Taylor switched paths after considering a career in medicine. Sydney discovered that public policy, not biochemistry, was her calling. Lauren chose the M.P.A. over a graduate degree in data analytics.

What each found at Maxwell was the same: mentors who challenged them, opportunities to tackle real-world problems and a community that continues to shape their careers.

The Grosso family’s Syracuse roots stretch back generations. Their grandmother worked at the University. Their mother, Michelle Grosso ’90, graduated from Syracuse and now works on campus. Two uncles attended.

“We would go up and visit my grandma in the Hall of Languages when we were kids,” Taylor recalls. “The campus just always felt like home.”

Taylor entered as a biochemistry major, conducting lab research toward medical school. Two years later, Sydney followed a pre-med path before realizing she was chasing someone else’s dream. Two years after that, Lauren arrived undecided before discovering policy studies through the program’s founder, Professor Bill Coplin, on both her sisters’ and mother’s recommendation.

“I found my passion,” says Lauren ’25, G’26.

Although all three sisters gravitated toward public policy as undergraduates, they did so through different lenses. Taylor augmented her M.P.A. degree with a certificate in security studies. Sydney combined public health, policy studies and Spanish before discovering a passion for national security. Lauren blended policy studies with data analytics, initially hoping to do policy advocacy for New York’s agricultural community.

The common thread was Maxwell, and more importantly, its people.

The People Who Shaped Them

For Taylor, that journey began with a campus job in the Maxwell School Dean’s Office.

Working alongside Dean David M. Van Slyke exposed her to new research opportunities, faculty mentors and policy questions. As she considered medical, law and graduate school, Van Slyke encouraged her to look beyond the paths she had envisioned.

“He opened my eyes to what I could do beyond what I was pursuing,” Taylor says. “He told me the M.P.A. is a great way to kind of figure out what you like, because once you go into the public sector, you can do so many different things.”

Van Slyke says he told Taylor early on that if she wasn’t going to study a Maxwell major, he “didn’t know why we were employing her.”

“She thought I was joking—I wasn’t,” he says. “That became the pattern with Taylor, Sydney and Lauren: figure out what they cared about, then show them the full range of what Maxwell could offer. What made it easy was who they are: humble, curious, appreciative, always willing to listen and asking good questions.”

For Taylor, research projects for Van Slyke led to a graduate assistantship with former Secretary of the Navy and NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe G’78, cementing her interest in governance and national security.

“Working with the two of them is where I found my love for policy research,” she says.

Although Sydney had decided to pursue the M.P.A. before Taylor enrolled, she also found herself working alongside O’Keefe—first conducting undergraduate research, then serving as his graduate assistant.

“He brought us into everything,” she says of O’Keefe, University Professor Emeritus and University trustee. “We were always the youngest people in a room full of people who had been in government or highly ranked admirals.”

“The Grosso sisters are mature well beyond their years, enthusiastically dive into anything they’re asked to do, energize those around them, and, as a bonus, are great fun to be with,” says O’Keefe. “Their parents raised three remarkable women who are the Maxwell vision of model citizens.”

Through O’Keefe, Sydney found herself in conversations with senior military leaders and astronauts, learning firsthand how policy decisions are made.

“They’re the kinds of experiences you just don’t expect to have,” says Sydney ’23, G’24.

Although Taylor and Sydney insist they didn’t pressure Lauren to follow them into the M.P.A. program, she chose Maxwell for graduate school over a master’s program in data analytics. “Between the reputation of the degree and the people that I was surrounded by, Maxwell felt more like a family than just a school,” Lauren says.

“I got to see how much the faculty and the deans care about the students,” Lauren says. “I could see how much they genuinely want us to succeed.”

With Lauren’s graduation, Van Slyke says this is the first time since he became dean that there isn’t a Grosso in the dean’s office.

“We’ll notice their absence,” he says. “I know they’ll all make important contributions and I’m grateful for the engaged citizen leaders they’ll become.”