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Investing in the Future with Randy DeCleene · Liberty + Leadership

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty and friends who are making an impact.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Today.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, roger Ream.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is a colleague of mine at TFAS, with a very interesting background and an extremely important role.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Randy DeClean is Chief Development and Communications Officer at TFAS.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Prior to joining our team in September of 2023, randy was a partner in a communications firm.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: He'd previously served as Deputy Press Secretary at the White House, special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army at the Pentagon and as a Senior Advisor to the Commanding General of the 3rd Infantry Division in Northern Iraq.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: For his service at the Pentagon and in Iraq, randy was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Global War on Terrorism and two Department of the Army Superior Civilian Service Awards.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Randy has over 25 years experience working in both the private sector and government, with expertise in development, communications, media relations, public affairs, public policy, marketing, branding and strategic planning.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Randy's dedication to the mission of TFAS spans more than two decades, including as a member of our journalism advisory board, a host of interns at his communications firm and a mentor to students.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Now his focus with TFAS is overseeing our communications with donors and leading our development team.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Randy, welcome to the Liberty and Leadership podcast.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Very nice to be here, roger.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Before we talk about your current role with TFAS, I think listeners would be interested to learn more about your experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as your work in the office of the vice president in the White House.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So let's start there.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: What path took you from your upbringing in Indiana to the office of the vice president in the White House?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, there's an old saying they say even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I grew up in South Bend, indiana.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: I was born in 1974.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: So the bulk of my childhood that I remember was in the 80s.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: And.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I was very interested in politics.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I think of my memories of that time.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: You know my dad was on the city council in a town called Mishawaka which is right next to South Bend.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: We got the South Bend Tribune delivered every day.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I was editor of my middle school and later high school newspaper.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Most every night we had dinner as a family at 5 or 5.30.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: The news was always on, whether at the time it was like Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather or Peter Jennings, just kind of that world of news and politics.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Public service was just such a huge part of my life growing up and when I just think about the constants that have been there the whole time, I mean that's really kind of it.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: I would say news, politics, sports, that really was the formative building blocks of my entire childhood.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: And you went to the University of Indiana, or Indiana University, as it's correctly called, and law school at Valparaiso, and then, after some work out in the Midwest, you headed to DC.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I worked on, starting in the early 90s.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: A lot of political campaigns and really my goal was always to do one rung higher.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: So, like the first politicals a lot of political campaigns and really my goal was always to do one rung higher.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: So, like, the first political campaign I was paid for was a mayor's race in Bloomington, indiana, when I was a student there, and I took a break from class and then after that worked for somebody running for a county office.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: After that worked for the county party and then after that worked for the statewide race, somebody running for Indiana Secretary of State, on and on and, as I say, always wanted to do one higher.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: And then I moved over to Illinois and did a Senate race there and so for a good 10 or 12 years, in addition to some side jobs at restaurants and bars and things, but my primary focus was working on Republican campaigns and along the way you're going to have good mentors that help you and I had a number of those and one of them was a guy named Kevin Kellams.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Kevin saw me speak at a Lincoln Day dinner in Indiana in the mid-90s and then subsequently ended up hiring me several times after that, but Kevin was the one who hired me.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: To come from Illinois to Washington, so he was extremely influential in that sense.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Come from Illinois to Washington, so he was extremely influential in that sense.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And a TFAS alum.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: And a TFAS alum, yeah, you came to Washington.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: How'd you end up at the White House?
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I was working on a US Senate race in 2003 in Illinois.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: There was six or seven Republicans running six or seven Democrats.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: One of the Democrats happened to be a guy named Barack Obama, who, of course, ended up winning that Senate race.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: But I was working on that campaign and I was also going to law school part-time at Valparaiso, which is in Northwest Indiana, so it was about an hour commute.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: And I read in USA Today that Kevin Kellams had been named communications director and press secretary for Vice President Cheney and, as I said, I'd worked with Kevin on a number of campaigns in Indiana.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: One night after law school, it was like nine o'clock and I was driving from Valparaiso to my apartment in Chicago.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I called him with the intention of just leaving a voicemail and saying congratulations and instead he answered the phone and I'd called his office line, which surprised me that he answered and we talked for an hour and that was kind of that.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: And then, long story short, two days later he called me back and he said you know, I got to thinking after talking to you I need a deputy press secretary for Vice President Cheney's staff.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: There's really two things that I'm looking for.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: One is very easy to find in Washington somebody that's smart and you check that box even though you don't live in Washington.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: And two, I need somebody that's going to be loyal and that's harder to find in Washington, and I know you could be a good, loyal deputy, so I'd like you to come to Washington.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: That story you just told emphasizes something we stress with our students.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I know about the importance of it's called often networking, but it's just keeping relationships going with people you knew in the past and the fact that you made a phone call to congratulate someone you'd worked for on this promotion.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: He got this new job.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: He got led to you getting a job that you weren't necessarily looking even for at the time.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: No, totally the number of jobs.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: I would say when I speak sometimes as a TFAS, mentor or whatever to young people, that other than maybe my first job at Kroger's, which is a grocery store in the Midwest, I don't think I've ever gotten a job that wasn't somehow linked to somebody that I knew.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: And it doesn't mean the job is given to you but it opens the door so that you can make the case and get over the finish line.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: I mean networking is.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: It sounds so trite to say, but it's also so true.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: There's almost nothing as important as that.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: And then so you had experience then working in the White House.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: That must have been an incredible experience.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I think you've told me you flew to something like 34 different states on Air Force Two with the vice president.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Anything to share about that experience?
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I mean it's remarkable, it was remarkable.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I was very fortunate to get the job on Vice President Cheney's staff at the White House and then 2004, of course, was an election year.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Kerry and Edwards ran against Bush and Cheney.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: My role was basically to be in charge of the logistics when it came to the traveling press, and so we always had depends on the trip but somewhere between like five and ten different reporters with us and during the campaigns we travel four or five, six days a week, do two or three stops a day.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: So just to do that as a 29, 30 year old, after having worked in politics for a long time, in the middle of a campaign that was very close, and to see the vice president and his family and went to the debate it was in Cleveland that year.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: It really was just amazing and I have so many good memories of that.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, maybe the fondest one that comes to mind is, you know, if you like politics, october and early, and they wanted to do a bus tour in southwestern Michigan, but none of the airports there were big enough to land Air Force Two.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: This was late October of 2004.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: To get to this bus trip, we had to find an there on the tarmac in South Bend to greet the plane and the vice president talked to him and I was there and it's a very fond memory.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Now, I guess, a little over 20 years later, After you left the White House, you went over to the Pentagon.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I spent a few years at some PR firms.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: I was at.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Ogilvy at Ketchum and then from Ketchum I unexpectedly went to the Pentagon, kind of through networking avenue that you were talking about.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: A friend of mine was in a meeting with the Secretary of the Army, which is the highest ranking civilian in the Army, because it's a two-headed situation with the Chief of Staff, who's uniformed, and then the secretary, who's civilian.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: A friend of mine was in a meeting with the secretary of the army who was lamenting the state of his communications operation.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: My friend said you need to talk to this guy.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: I went in and it was only my second time ever in the Pentagon and I interviewed with him and at one point, maybe a few minutes into the interview, his name was Pete Guerin.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: He used to be a congressman from Fort Worth, succeeded Jim Wright actually in the House.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: But I looked at him and I said, mr Guerin, I have to tell you I don't know anything about the Army, nothing.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: I just want to put that on the table.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: And he got this real big smile and just said that's exactly what I'm looking for.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: So then a few weeks later I started at the Pentagon, which is something I certainly never thought that I would do.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And A few weeks later I started at the Pentagon, which is something I certainly never thought that I would do, and then you ended up in Iraq.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: I did, and that was probably the most interesting and most meaningful thing that I've done.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: I spent two years working for the Secretary of the Army of the Pentagon and while I was there I got to know this two-star general Major General Tony Kukulo is his name.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: He was the Chief of Army Public Affairs, so he was in charge of all public affairs for the Army and him and I became friendly and his job after that was the commanding general of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is out of Fort Stewart, georgia, and they were deployed to Iraq.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: 20,000 soldiers were in his group.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: That was called Task Force Marne.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: It was based in Tikrit, which is Saddam's hometown, about 100 miles north of Baghdad.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Just the way the army structure was set up.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: General Kukulo was in charge of the seven provinces north of Baghdad, so from Mosul all the way over to the Kurdish region, and my job with him was basically to help with communications for members of Congress that came to visit senators, reporters, all of that, and really to provide kind of a civilian perspective on things.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: People in the Army spend most of their time talking to people that are in the Army.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: My perspective was from more political.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: I had went to law school, had never served in the Army or any other branch of military, so it was just a different perspective that I think they found valuable, and it was, you know, being a civilian in a war zone.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Getting to travel with the general was a very special and it was quite a learning experience, to say the least.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Did you have any close calls with action that was taking place there?
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I would, I certainly wouldn't, use the term close call, but our group lost 27 people during the year that we were there, which certainly kind of puts things in perspective year that we were there, which certainly kind of puts things in perspective the base we were on was regularly rocketed by the enemy.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: They would pull up to the gates and trucks and shoot things in, but you know their ability to hit things wasn't the most scientific operation.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: But I will just tell you one kind of short story.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: When you're in a war zone like that, you have a battle buddy, which what that is is.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: They always know where you are and you're just in constant contact with them and you generally have three meals a day with them and whatever.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: My battle buddy was a guy who had done two or three tours as an MP in Vietnam, so he was an older guy.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Tom Roberts was his name and I was there advising the general on communications things.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Tom was there advising him on security and training activities Because, if you remember, part of the mission then was to train the Iraqi police and the Iraqi military and Tom was kind of an old hand at that from his time during Vietnam.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Tom was my battle buddy and we got to Tikrit and the first probably week we were rocketed more than we were the whole year.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: So I would be in my trailer sleeping and, like you, would feel the ground shake and the trailer would shake.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: And you know, this was all very new to me.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: And one day at lunch I said to Tom.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I said you know, tom?
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this is going to work Like this makes me nervous.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: And he just he didn't even miss a beat, he just kept eating his food and he goes Randy, when it's your time, it's your time.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: You just don't even think twice about it.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: And I adopted that mentality.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: And then soon after that, when the rockets would come, you know it didn't bother me and that was really good advice from Tom.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Wow, I have trouble trying to accept that as the advice I want to follow.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: But you had your service then in government and the private sector and you went back to the private sector at a company called K-Global.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Tfas has actually been a client there and they launched this podcast that we're doing and have been doing now for several years.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: But what drew you back into the private sector?
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: I think probably the biggest thing was I was tired of having elections decide the future of my life and where I was going to live.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: It's ironic how things like that turn out.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I moved to DC in January of 2004.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: And if Kerry would have beat Bush, I would have went back to Chicago at the end of 2004.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: And I just think how different my life would have been, where Bush ended up beating Kerry and then I stayed and have done all these things that you're talking about.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: But we certainly wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation if that election hadn't turned out like that.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Doing that is kind of the pinnacle of doing campaigns.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: So I just wanted to try something different, and you know, in the private sector you, as I said, your job wasn't decided by an election.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: You got paid more.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Private sector ended up being very good.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Now, your connection to TFAS predated our work together when you were at K-Global.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about how you first got involved?
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Who introduced you to TFAS, do you remember?
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Yep, I mean, it was a name we already said.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Kevin Kellams, who was a TFAS alum, I believe in the late 80s, so he's a little older than me and he's the one that brought me to Washington.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I could go back at my calendar and look, but I'm convinced it was in my first week or two in town, kevin and I went out with a guy named Steve Hayes who was a TFAS alum.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: And worked at TFAS and worked at TFAS I think he met his wife at TFAS, but at the time he was working for the Weekly Standard and the three of us went out and had dinner and in my mind, steve at the time was kind of a celebrity because he was working at the Weekly Standard, the Washington Magazine that I read, and sort of go out with him was really cool.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: And somehow in the course of that, t-fest came up and I think they took me to an event and, as I say, the rest is history, especially when it came to the interns.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: You know, when I started it, when I came back from Iraq, I started a PR firm in DC that had five or six employees and when I left, 12 and a half years later, we had give or take around 75.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I started in May 2011.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I quickly realized it was all senior people, like there was no mid-level or junior people, and I didn't really know how to react.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: And so I reached out to Joe Stars, who I knew from the journalism programs at TFAS.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Who oversees our journalism programs?
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I said you know, I'd like some interns.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: And then, starting in June of 2011, we had three or four TFAS interns and then, with like 99% certainty can say, every semester summer, spring and fall from 2011 through summer 2023, with the exception of one, we had multiple TFAS interns, had a lot of exposure to them and hired a lot of them, served as a reference to a lot of them.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: It was excellent.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: So now you've expanded your responsibilities from a focus mostly on communications and public affairs to include not only overseeing that at TFAS communications, but also fundraising and our team of people in the fundraising shop.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Why should people support TFAS fundraising shop?
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Why should people support TFAS?
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: We could do a whole podcast on that, but probably the simplest reason I'd say is just the impact that it has across so many groups of people, whether it's high school students, college students, postgraduate students.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: You know, I was thinking the other day when we were talking about doing this podcast.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: If you just look at last year with the different TFAS programs, there was over a thousand students involved from over 40 states, from over 16 countries and from over 150 schools, and when you think about that times, year after year after year, you know the impact on young people is extraordinary.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: And as the country goes through different things and different phases and whatever, and there's, you know, new generations coming to have students who are exposed to new ideas and taught in things like economics and honorable leadership and some of these things that TFAS does, it just becomes so much more important.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: What has perhaps surprised you, or anything you've seen since you've joined our team.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: That is very different than you anticipated.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I would say the biggest thing maybe is actually how similar it is.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: You know, when I look at my career, everything we've talked about whether it was in campaigns or at the White House or the Pentagon or at the PR firms it was all about communicating something to someone and maybe getting them to buy a product or to feel a certain way about an issue, or to like what the Army was doing at a given time, or to like this candidate Coming to a nonprofit like TFAS, which is my first job with a nonprofit.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: I to some degree didn't know what to expect, but I've been very surprised at how similar it is.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: And it's still that common thread of communicating something to someone where, whether it's talking to alumni or whether it's talking to donors or students, it's trying to get them to.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: You know, for students it's maybe getting them to sign up for TFAS.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: For a donor, it's getting them to understand the value of what their dollar does.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: For an alumni, it's helping them continue to appreciate the experience that they had, or whatever the case.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: But it all kind of still fits in that mold of as succinctly and clearly and plainly as possible trying to get a message across to a certain audience.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: What do you see as the priorities that you're focused on for 2025?
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Certainly one of the big thing is you always want to raise more than you did the year before and raise enough to meet the budget.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Because we, as I said, whether it's the US programs or the international programs or the high school or the college or the postgraduate, you know the real value in what TFAS does is their programming, and without being able to have the classes and have the professors and have the speakers and have the reading groups and all of that, it's not really a program.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: So certainly meeting our fundraising goals is essential so that the programmatic side can do what they do.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: And I'd say, secondly, the big thing I think is really just kind of keeping up with how things evolve and how people consume information.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: You know the way somebody raised money 15 years ago or 10 years ago or five years ago isn't the same way you do it now, and so, whether it's you know the new forms of social media that people communicate on, but also recognizing the fact that you know a lot of TFAS donors and through a lot of nonprofits are older and some of the more traditional ways appeal to them.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: So it's really operating across that spectrum of the different ways that people receive information and try to stay as much ahead of the curve as you can.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: You know, like we saw that in this last election where you had Donald Trump, for example, doing a three-plus-hour interview with Joe Rogan on his podcast.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, when I heard he was going to do Joe Rogan, I thought all right, that's good, and then when I heard the interview was three hours, like I couldn't even believe it.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: That's not a normal activity for somebody running for president, but clearly that that is kind of one of the mediums that people, especially young people, no-transcript.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: One thing that I think was very interesting that we talked about when you joined TFAS was this integration of communications functions the things we're doing to communicate the stories and the successes that we're having with the fundraising function and making sure that donors who support us are hearing about the results of what their money is enabling us to do.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: We've had a lot to report in that regard.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: As you touched on, we've had a record number of students in our high school programs and record number of teachers were training to teach economics effectively.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: We had full enrollment in our college programs, both in the US and in Prague and South America, and now we're doing so much more with young professionals and law students and students interested in careers in journalism.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: You know you don't want to hide it under a bushel.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: You know you want to communicate that effectively to donors using all these mediums.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Is that a key challenge that you've been able to get your hands around?
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Definitely.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I think whether it's and it surprised me a little bit more on the development side than the communication side.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: But essentially, if you're in one of those or both of those areas, you're a storyteller and you need, as you say, tell these stories, or people aren't going to know that they happen.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: And I've certainly observed, especially in interactions with donors, that the most impactful way you can tell the story of the impact that TFAS has is through the students when they meet the donors and you just see, like, the intellectual curiosity and the desire to learn and all of the positive things from these young people, and they just tell the story with their presence.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: In a sense, if you're good, you know you do that through written pieces we put out or through videos or through just having the students meet the donors in person.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: But having them see firsthand the people impacted by what TFAS does on a programmatic side or on a development side is the best way to tell the story, I would say.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I know we all love it when supporters of ours are able to attend a program.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: You know, come to one of the high school programs all over the country that we're doing in the summer and sit in the back of the classroom or come see a summer program in DC or meet alumni is really very, very important.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I often say you know, hardly a day goes by where I don't get an email from someone on our staff saying this TFAS alum just got some new job or just wrote this great story in the Wall Street Journal or accomplished something here or there.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Then, tied to that is so often that testimonial from that person saying I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for the TFAS program I attended.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Or my thinking about the world, my analysis of world events has been transformed by the economics courses I took at TFAS or what I learned when I was in the program, in my internship or in the classroom or hearing from even from a guest lecturer.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: So that's the challenge is getting that story told of the accomplishments of our graduates, the fact that they are becoming leaders and our leaders we just elected three to Congress a month ago and the fact that that career path was influenced by us, they might not have been where they are today, and our Rego Fellowship is a clear example of that.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: With these fellowships we give to put people at the Wall Street Journal and three now are working full-time at the Wall Street Journal on the editorial pages.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: We have someone at the Boston Globe and others that we're developing and putting on those tracks to success.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Well, and that's kind of another element of it, I think, is the real-world, real-time impact that people that have done the program are doing, which I think from a donor perspective, they like to see that because it's not all theoretical opining about what would the world be like if we didn't have Obamacare or whatever, that's just very theoretical.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: These folks that you're talking about at the Journal and the Boston Globe and the young lady at the Boston Globe is on Fox Business all the time and they're weighing in on what's happening now and having an impact on shaping the conversation.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Or if you look at all of the 20 or so student newspapers that we have on different campuses I think, including all of the Ivy League schools you saw some of the really horrible things with the anti-Semitism and the protests and things, and then these are papers that were providing a point of view that was very different from the administration or from the mainstream, if you will, college paper that was putting out other things.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: So to be able to have impact on current events in the moment with students that have taken different TFAS classes and programs and lectures is incredibly important.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: That's a great point you're making, Randy, because it's not just a donor who gives a gift to TFAS, isn't just making a long-term investment on some college student who maybe 30 years from now will make a difference.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: We're helping students who are making a difference right now on their campuses with the papers that they're publishing, or in their professions with the articles they're writing, the op-eds they're writing in the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and elsewhere in the media.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: It is having impact right now.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Well, anything else that you, any stories you want to share, that kind of exemplify the impact of our work.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: You've had this full circle moment.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: You know that brought you to TFAS full-time after having been a volunteer for many years, and just wanted to see if you had any closing thoughts before we have to wrap this up.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: One of the biggest things that struck me is just the impact that it has on people's lives.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: You know I was thinking about I mentioned in 2011,.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: We got our first batch at the PR firm of TFAS interns and we had two or three that we'd agreed to take and then, for whatever reason, one young woman her name was Claire Tonneson hadn't been placed and Joe Stars, who we already referenced, called me and said you know, would you take one more student?
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I know you've already got several, but would you take one more?
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: And I said sure, we'll take her.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Claire was from Portland, oregon, and came through TFAS because she wanted to take classes at Georgetown.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: She was just the best intern maybe that I'd ever had and we ended up hiring her.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: She was my first hire at the PR firm.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: She worked there for three or four years and she's still in DC.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: She works at a different PR firm called Sunshine Sachs.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: She's married to somebody that's on CNN.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: When I say this to say, I think about how it's impacted her life.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: If that weird set of circumstances didn't happen with her, you know who knows where she'd be.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: But the initial spark for all of that was from TFAS.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: You know, there's another young guy named Blake Hesch who is from my hometown and I'm very good friends with his uncle.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: He had a tough upbringing.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: He was raised by his grandparents and the only way that he could come to Washington was through a full scholarship from TFAS.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: And he applied and he really wanted to go and he said I just don't have the money.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: And I emailed somebody at TFAS and I said you know, I don't know how the scholarship programs work, but this would be a great person to get a scholarship to.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: He ended up getting it, spent a semester in DC, interned at K-Global, totally transformed his life and his interest in politics and public affairs.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: He later worked for the mayor of Indianapolis.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: He just did a Senate race in Ohio.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Just a wonderful young man.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: And I say this to say about Blake and Claire is, just when you've been involved with an organization like TFAS for so long like I have in the different ways, whether it be a volunteer, a mentor, now an employee but you see the real impact on these people's lives, that they end up doing things and realizing things and going places that they would not have done without the opportunity and the exposure to different things that TFAS provided them, to see that in people that I know and then to be able to follow their lives literally decades later, I think really shows the quality of the organization and, I guess, makes the point that since 1967, it wouldn't have been around so long if it wasn't having impact like that.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that brings to mind one of my favorite stories of a TFAS alum, a student who came to us from Drew University in the Northeast.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: He had taken one economics course in college there and he said it was really boring, dry.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: He didn't like it and he applied to our program.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: We gave him a scholarship.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: He came to DC, we placed him on the hill on the Senate Judiciary Committee, attached kind of to Senator Orrin Hatch who was serving then from Utah, and he took our economics course that we require all students to take, taught by then our professor, george Vixenens, latvian-american, who of course, growing up in Latvia, knew who the enemy was.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: But this young man, it lit a spark in him.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: He came to love economics.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: He decided to go to law school from his internship experience and now he's serving on the Arizona Supreme Court, just won his retention election a month ago.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: His name's Clint Bullock.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: He had co-founded the Institute of Justice, which has done great work.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: No-transcript, they finish.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Our program is continuing to work with our alumni and help them advance in their careers.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Well, that's great, randy.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: It's great to have you on the team with us.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: You've been there, you know, now over a year.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Of course you know we only have higher to climb and more to accomplish.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: More money to raise.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: More money to raise.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: We've been pushing growth very aggressively but prudently, and it's needed.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Our country needs it and the young people we're developing need it.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: So I think this has been a great discussion today.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: I've really enjoyed it, roger, thank you.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Thank.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: This has been a great discussion today.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed it, roger, thank you.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership podcast.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfasorg, and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five-star review.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, roger Ream, and until next time, show courage in things, large and small.