What brought you back to Maine? Did you always envision yourself returning?
I spent the first few years after ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ hopping around to different jobs: I helped manage a fellowship program at Harvard; I taught English at a university in Turkey; and, then I began a PhD program in Italian language and literature at Yale.
I returned to Maine in the summer of 2012 for what was intended to be a temporary stint. I had just completed my first year of graduate school, and I planned to spend the summer studying for a Latin exam and waiting tables at a restaurant in Brunswick. At the time, Governor Angus King had announced he was running for the US Senate, and his campaign headquarters was right in downtown Brunswick. I stopped by the campaign office and offered to volunteer with whatever free time I had. The volunteer work quickly became a full-time endeavor, and by the time the fall came around I realized I was not going to return to graduate school. King’s Senate election led to a policy job in his Washington office and, a few years later, the opportunity to return to Maine to help run his reelection campaign in 2018.
Because I grew up in Maine, there was some part of me that expected I would always maintain some connection to the state, but I never imagined that my professional work would tie me so directly to the state’s people and politics.
Tell us a little about your role as chief of staff for US Representative Jared Golden.
It can be difficult to describe—every day is different. The job basically involves two different sets of responsibilities. The first is advising the congressman on issues of policy and politics. That can range from big issues in the national news (What actions should Congress take to reassert its war powers responsibilities?), to the more local (How can we help a local farmer navigate confusing USDA regulations?).
The second part of the job involves managing a team of seventeen staff across three offices in Maine and an office in Washington. The staff run the gamut from a policy team that helps draft legislation, to staff on the ground in Maine who focus on outreach to communities and helping constituents resolve problems with federal agencies. I spend most days trying to maintain a big picture view of our operation and ensuring that we are moving the ball forward on our strategic priorities, while also helping the team troubleshoot issues by providing guidance on how to approach policy or political challenges.
What’s your favorite part about your job?
It’s hard to pick just one. Politics is a challenging business—particularly in the current climate, where so much about our system feels broken—but I am motivated by playing a small part in trying to counteract the cynicism that many Mainers (and folks across the country) feel about the role that government and elected representatives can play in their lives. When our constituent services staff are able to dig into a problem and help solve it for real people, or when the congressman is able to elevate and give weight to a concern that previously had been neglected, I feel like we are still engaged in work that matters.
On a more personal level, when I started this job over a year ago, we had to build a team and operation from scratch. I have found that the experience of helping to hire, build, and lead an organization has been one of the most rewarding of my career thus far. Our team has been through a lot during the first year on the job, from taking office during a partial government shutdown to ending the year with historic votes on impeachment. To a person, our staff are incredibly talented and hardworking, and their commitment and enthusiasm motivate me every day.
As a government and legal studies major, did you always know you wanted to get involved in politics?
Not at all. I majored in government largely because I was interested in international affairs and sub-Saharan Africa (I studied abroad in Ghana.). I took the minimum number of American politics courses to complete the requirements for the major, but gave no thought to working in domestic politics at the time. Honestly, if anyone had asked my college self to consider working in Congress, I would have likely dismissed the idea altogether.
How does your graduate degree in Italian literature fit into the picture?
My interest in Italian literature was piqued during my junior year at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ when I took Professor Arielle Saiber’s course on Dante’s Commedia. The following year, I pursued an independent study with Professor Saiber on canto XXIX of Inferno. By the time I graduated from ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, my love for Dante was such that I began contemplating graduate school. I took a few years to do other kinds of work and travel, but I kept going back to the idea of graduate school—it was an unanswered question of sorts. So, I applied to a handful of Italian programs and began a PhD program at Yale in 2011.
Early into the program I determined that the insularity of the humanities PhD experience was a challenge for me, and I began to question whether I wanted to keep at it for six or more years, particularly given the difficult job market. After spending that summer on the Angus King campaign, I changed course. Still, I have no regrets about my pursuit of Italian. Indeed, being exposed to and absorbing a rigorous approach to Italian literature and history at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ and in graduate school have sharpened my ability to dig below the surface of the events around me and taught me how to analyze and synthesize complex material into a concise message or argument. As a result, I think it has made me a more effective critic of public policy, as well as a more grounded, balanced person.
Now that you’ve been involved in Maine (and national) politics for some time, what do you see as the most pressing problems for the state? What are we getting right in Maine? What do we need to work on?
I think there’s a good deal of agreement about some of the big challenges facing Maine—our aging workforce, lack of rural infrastructure, and the ways in which the shifts in global markets and the changing climate are making once-reliable jobs in Maine’s traditional industries, like forest products and fishing, less secure.
To me, the greater challenge is that although we can get people from across the political spectrum to agree upon what the challenges are, policymakers haven’t done a great job coordinating a response to them. Some of that inconsistency is natural—changing administrations in Augusta and Washington produce new officials who want to make their mark by starting new initiatives. Old ideas are abandoned and replaced by the new. But the only way I think we can make progress on the biggest challenges Maine faces is if we commit ourselves to coordinated, strategic approaches to solving these problems and level with the public about a realistic time-horizon to achieve change.
Do you have an “only-in-Maine” story that you love that you can share?
In December, Congressman Golden and several of our staff drove up to Millinocket to join in the fifth running of the Millinocket Marathon & Half. For those readers who might not know much about Millinocket, it’s a town in northern Penobscot County that has fallen on some hard times since the Great Northern Pa