 Welcome, everybody. I'm Michael Barr, the Joan and Sanford Wildein of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. It is a great pleasure to welcome all of you to this special celebration of the Public Policy and International Affairs Junior Summer Institute. We're here today to celebrate the 40th year of the PPIA Fellowship at the Ford School. We've proudly supported the PPIA Fellowship, formerly known as the Sloan or Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, since 1981. The Ford School is one of just a handful of policy schools to host this seven-week educational initiative for undergraduate students every summer since its inception 40 years ago. A special welcome to our current PPIA students who are joining us here today. I'm really excited that they are here in the Ford School virtually and having a chance to celebrate these programs. I also want to celebrate PPIA students who are here with us, not only from the Ford School, but also from Berkeley, from Carnegie Mellon, from Princeton, from the University of Maryland, and the University of Minnesota. We're thrilled to have you all here today and help you will connect with your fellow alumni at a networking session we are hosting just after the panel discussion. To all of the former Ford School PPIA Fellows, we welcome you back virtually. While we may not see you regularly, we certainly consider you a really important part of the Ford School family. I'm thrilled to get the chance today to celebrate the legacy of our PPIA alumni and all they have achieved. Before I introduce our panelists, I want to say that the Ford School remains dedicated in the future to hosting and supporting the PPIA Junior Summer Institute for many years to come. We hope to ensure that the program continues for at least another 40 years. The active involvement of our PPIA alumni is essential to this goal, and your participation today means a great deal to me. Thanks also to all of you who have donated to the PPIA program over the years. The PPIA program is a long history of institutional support that made its beginnings possible. Those the years have gone by, we've increasingly relied on individual donations to fund the Junior Summer Institute. A gift of any size truly makes a difference, and we could not do this without your help. And now let me introduce our wonderful panel of PPIA alumni here for our conversation today. Farouk Afazo is a 2006 MPP graduate of the Ford School. He is the Chief of Staff of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, the Comptroller of DOD. Mr. Afazo has over 15 years of experience in the federal budget and appropriations processes, serving in a variety of roles on the US Congress, the White House, Office of Management Budget, and the US Air Force. Dr. Kanita Williams is a 2007 MPP graduate of the Ford School. Kanita is the Chief of Staff for the Southern Education Foundation. In her role, Kanita works to strengthen existing programs, supports the work of the President and CEO, and leads key strategic initiatives for impact. And lastly, Dr. David C. Wilson is the Dean of our sister school, the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Wilson is a political psychologist specializing in the use of survey-based instruments to study political behavior and policy preferences. His scholarship focuses on the psychology of political opinion about policies, contentious social issues, and political figures. Before we begin, a couple of quick notes about format. We'll have some time at the end of today for some audience questions. We've received some in advance, but you can also submit questions in a live chat on YouTube, or you can tweet your questions to hashtag policy talks. With that, let me just say I'm really excited to be joined by our wonderful panelists, and I'm really looking forward to the conversation. So if you could bring them all up on screen, we'll get started. Farouk, David, Kanita, another warm welcome to the panel today. Thank you so much for participating with all of us. It's just delightful to have you here, and I know everybody's super busy in this time, so I'm extra thankful. The PPIA program is really near and dear to my heart, and I've loved getting to know the students who have come through the program. I'm wondering if each of you could say a little bit about, if you can recall back to this time, what caused you to apply to the program in the first place, and maybe we'll start with David and then Farouk and Kanita. Thank you, and congratulations on 40 years, and Michael, thanks for your leadership and to all of your staff. Thank you, and all of the students. Congratulations on getting into the world of public policy. It's an important time to study the issues that we study, and public policy is a way for you to commit yourself to the public good. And ironically, this is how I got interested in what I thought was just the study of government. So I was a government major in my undergraduate years, and I was very much interested in how the government makes decisions, and if there are public problems, how it solves those problems. And I never thought about public policy. I just thought about what I saw on television, which was leaders. So leaders decide, and I ignore the mechanisms by which they use to decide, and all of the inputs that go into that decision-making process, and all of the science behind those mechanisms as well. So I was exposed to this idea of a Woodrow Wilson program in the early 1990s, and when I applied and got into it, I was just drawn into this community of folks that cared about solving public issues and wanted to use the tools of public policy. I love data. I love talking about the issues, thinking about solutions, and then proposing one and doing that kind of back and forth to see which one we'd select, and then going all in on trying to make it successful. So that's how I got exposed to programming and why I got interested. Thanks for the question. Thanks, David. Paruk? Yeah, I just want to also reiterate all of the congratulations and also thank you for having us here and hosting us today. I just want to say I have a very similar recollection. I completed the program in 2002, 19 years ago. So it's a little bit hard to remember at all, but I also did have an interest in government and in history. And a lot of folks told me, well, that means you should just go to law school. But I knew that there was another, there had to be another way. There had to be another way to serve the public and to work on really interesting topics. So I was really drawn to policy issues more than more than really anything else. I sort of had a high level understanding of policy issues. And that's what really piqued my interest in public policy in general. So when I first heard about the program, I applied, not thinking very much of it. I didn't know really a lot of detail. This was 2002. I don't think there was even a website for PPIA. So anyhow, when I was accepted and joined the program, it was quite an experience we could get into. But anyway, that was really how I was drawn to the program. Thanks, Faruk. And I will echo both David and Faruk. Thank you and congratulatory wishes on this momentous event. I'm really grateful to be participating. I have much less intentionality than my colleagues around how it happened for me. It was really serendipity. I was a junior Yale and I just happened to be out in the courtyard talking to a friend who was a year ahead of me. And she's asked me what I was doing this summer and I was like, I don't know. I'm looking at programs here and there. And she was like, well, I know you're a poly-side major like me. I had this great program that I just participated in. She actually had participated at Cal. And I said, oh, I should look into it. But I knew I didn't want to go to Cal because I'm from the Bay, so I didn't want to be home. I knew I didn't want to go to Princeton because I went to Yale. So I was like, oh, Michigan isn't an option. Let's see what it's about. And it really was probably one of the most formative and quite frankly, transformational experiences that I've had in terms of my career. But it was very much luck. I was very fortunate to be in the courtyard that night. That's great, Kanita. So many things in life for that way, right? Just like being in that moment. Maybe we'll pick up where you left off and we'll go in the other order. Kanita, can you say a little bit about why? What about the program led to this big impact? Were there particular experiences that you had that helped launch you on the next phase? Yeah. So like I said, it was really transformational. It might even sound a bit pride or cliche, but I really feel like it changed my life, at least my career trajectory. Because it is, in fact, the sole reason that I knew I was going to apply to University of Michigan for my MPP. And that, in fact, changed everything. It exposed me to new career paths that I wasn't really aware of. It equipped me with some skills and competencies for a number of different roles. It actually, I think, in a lot of ways, makes me much better at my job. And that I have a systemic view of looking at the equities of issues that we're focused on. And I'll just plug PPIA in a lot of ways because I also, before recently being promoted as our Director of Leadership Development and ran fellowship programs. And I didn't know this at the time. I just knew I was having a good time. I was learning and I was going to be paid to do so. But in a lot of ways, PPIA is quite exemplary. Like really a paragon in terms of fellowship programs and really marrying those type of experiences, networking, hearing from thought leaders, practical application, building that and fostering that peer network or community of practice that is effort oriented. And so I actually borrow a lot as I think about how to make our own fellowship programs better. That's wonderful to hear. I mean, as I said, I kind of have a love affair with this program. I just think it's so cool and it's great to hear that it connected with you in that way. Parook, how about you? Yeah, I would say in two ways. The first thing I would mention is that I think it gave me, the program really gave me some confidence, especially in my quantitative ability. I was an undergraduate at Berkeley and I avoided math classes. I actually didn't need to take any to graduate as a history major. So I avoided economics, statistics, anything that had to do with math. I was intimidated, you know, but I knew that going through PPIA would force me to really rely on those skills. And so I think, you know, that confidence was really what was really important to me. And that's really led me down this career path of, you know, the last 15 years working on the federal budget and appropriations in general. Yeah, it sounds like you really flipped from, I mean, if you were math phobe, you went and you chose the wrong field because you're like all in on that. Oh, yeah. I love Excel now. Yeah, it's like my favorite Microsoft program. But yeah, it really did completely. I mean, I avoided that and now it's my career and I love it. It's been fantastic. The second thing I want to say too is that, you know, as a young person, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I mean, you know, I was 20, you know, it was a space that allowed me to explore my interests. So, you know, yeah, I was interested in domestic issues. I was also interested in international issues. And at PPIA through little seminars, we got exposure to all of it. We talked about, you know, poverty in the U.S. We talked about human rights issues. We talked about everything and it gave me a chance to really figure out what it was that I was interested in. So I would say that those are the two sort of reasons that the program has changed the trajectory of my career. Thanks for Rook. It's pretty powerful. David? Yeah. You know, I'll start with something, Kanita kind of slid in there, had a good time. Yeah, I had a great time. I came up to Michigan and a little short story is I had broken my foot. So I had surgery and out of pain, I was on crutches. And so I spent the first half of the summer on crutches and it was a huge campus. So you're trying to get around and you know, you do these things. So you learn the shortcuts, you get on the shuttles and the buses. And invariably they passed, you know, a bar on one of the streets or something. So we'd get out and just kind of lunchtime, just kind of take a little sidetrack. But the West Quad we stayed in, we had great parties and it was a great time. We got to know people in other programs in the summertime. So the most memorable thing about my summer there was all the communities that were in the West Quad and other places on campus that you got to know and you got to experience. I went undergrad to Western Kentucky University. This small regional recruiting school that really wasn't connected or I wasn't an academic star. I just had an interest and a passion for wanting to do something different. And being around other people that had the same interests but really cared about their academics is what really changed my trajectory. And I was writing down trying to think about the people who were in the program with me. Some of them, not all of them are in public work now. Some are, one is an award winning director. Christine Swanson is out there directing movies and being awarded for. We have a couple of people in the State Department who I have seen that are doing public work and I have a judge friend who was in the program. And then all of the people that I met that were just Michigan students that were just around created a whole new network for me and helped me think about what I wanted to do next. And the community piece and the having a good time was my first exposure to all you can do both of them. I thought there's just the fun people and the smart people. I didn't know there were smart fun people or fun smart people. So I enjoyed my time there in Michigan. And I think Michigan was a special place to be exposed to all of this. You know, Berkeley is, you know, good, Princeton was good, you know, the other places that were, they're good. But Michigan changed, really did change my experience and what I wanted to do in life. Can I also just say that the program really helped me prepare for the humidity in DC. So as a kid from California, my first experience walking out of the Detroit airport and that blast. That's right. That was another way. This summer, David, it sounds like have you kept up David with your, it sounds like you've kept up a little bit with some of the alumni from your group? A good core of them. Some of them you lose touch with and then they come back and like, thank God for social media because that's how we kind of find each other. And the Woodrow Wilson used to send out the directory a couple years ago or maybe a decade ago. And I try and find people to stay in touch. Yeah. So maybe about a third of the group, we still stay in touch and have a small LinkedIn group in the lights. Nice. Kanita and Farouk, are you also connected with your, some of your peers from that time? Just a few. And as David said, it's social media, like people just randomly find you. But I also am not a big social media person. So I bet if I were more active, I could find more people, but a few of them, we stayed connected. Same. And I think what's been interesting about the group is sort of where everybody has gone and what everybody's done. How they've interpreted their PPI experience and see what they've turned that into. So there's a lot of folks still in public service, not very many in my group in the federal government, but a lot of public service, people have gone to the private school, into academia. So it's been great to see that. That does suggest that there are lots of different paths people take afterwards. And even just the three of you have had very different career paths since your time at PPIA. I wonder if you could, it's hard for students, if you kind of put your head back where it was, thinking as you were a rising senior, to think forward what the possibilities are. I wonder if you guys could each just take a little bit of time and say how you navigated those first moves to get to where you are today, because you're all extremely accomplished in your careers. But those first steps are hard ones to take. So I wonder maybe Farouk, you could lead us off and then we'll change up how you kind of get started on the path. Sure, I think it might be hard to hear, but I hear this, but I think you almost want to take the first opportunity, or at least whatever that opportunity is upfront, not maybe not the first one, but it's hard to be picky. You know, when you're sort of new and you're out there and let's say you have a really strong, let's say you want to be a foreign service officer, you want to join the State Department, you want to represent the country abroad. Well, that job is extremely difficult to get. So you could certainly try, go for it, but there are a lot of careers that are sort of tangential to that. There are some that you know, you can kind of do similar work, or at least it's a gateway into that career. So I would say first, you know, broaden your expectations, widen them a little bit, find opportunities that are tangential, that are similar. So I think that would be sort of the one thing is sort of really think about what it is that you want to do, but also, you know, aim high, but also, you know, make sure that there's other ways to achieve that goal. I also want to emphasize the importance of networking too, in that area that you want to go into. A lot of the jobs that I've gotten through networking, many people are also, for example, interested in working for Congress and working on the Hill. And I've had three different jobs on the Hill, and each one I've had, I've gotten through networking. And that's just the nature of Congress. And so the importance of broadening the way you're thinking about what you want to get into, but also your network, I would say, are really important to start. Farooq, could you just walk folks through the first like two or three jobs that you had coming out of that front, starting after that PPI experience, so people get a sense of the trajectory? Sure. After PPI, I actually, after I graduated with my bachelor's degree, I decided to work for a couple of years because I wasn't ready for graduate school. I wanted to do some, you know, work, wanted to work. I wanted to explore the possibility of going to law school. So I worked at a law firm, and the law firm was a public interest firm, so the lawyers there worked on social security disability issues, they worked with homeless veterans, worked on immigration issues, for example. I thought that would be a great way to figure out, was I interested in the policy? Was I interested in the legal stuff? And I learned that I wanted to do more of the policy work. In fact, I was really interested in social security issues from that job. So I thought, okay, well, it's policy school that I really want to go to. And so that's how I ended up at the Ford School. So that was my very first job after my undergraduate degree. And then I completed my master's degree at Michigan, and then I was a PMF, a presidential management fellow. And my very first job was with the Air Force. I was a cost analyst, diving into my fears by the incredibly quantitative job. My job really was to figure out how much the Air Force's satellite programs would cost. So many people are... A lot. A lot. So for example, the GPS program, everybody uses GPS in their car and everything. That was one of the programs that I worked on early on, where my job was to, as a, you know, fresh out of graduate school, GS9, to look at that satellite program, just three, UPS three, and figure out how much it was going to cost. So that way the Air Force could defend their request to the senior leadership of the Air Force, to the Department of Defense, and therefore, and then eventually to Congress. So that was... And then from there, really, my career just sort of evolved. And I thought about a lot about the kinds of experiences I wanted. And it took a lot of patience and a lot of follow-up, but eventually sort of ticking off little boxes I thought I would need to sort of end up where I am now. So getting Hill experience, working in the executive branch, working at the White House, and so on. That's great, Fruc. Thanks, really helpful. And that GPS investment turned out to be pretty critical for the human society. Do you want to go next and say a little bit about maybe those first steps you took and some advice for current PPA students? Sure. So, you know, I'm a very special person, and I feel like my steps are ordered in a lot of ways, and that things have just happened for me in a way that I have not necessarily designed them myself. But right after college, I did Teach for America. And, you know, TFA has this huge network. And really put me on the path to be in the space of what I say is really working on helping make sure that we are not continuing to perpetuate systems, practices, policies that advantage some while keeping others situated further from opportunity. So that has been kind of my path. And I've done a lot of things along that line. And so after TFA, I actually, I taught for three years in Atlanta, Georgia. And I came to Michigan to do my MPP and actually had some doors open right away. I actually took a law school class while I was there. And the professor actually connected me to someone in Senator Obama's office. So I worked in Senator Obama's office for a while and then actually came back to Michigan to do a fellowship with the Council of Michigan Foundations. And they actually found me in the Ford School career book. So really opportunity directly related to being at the Ford School. And that has really been my path. I've kind of stayed at this nexus of philanthropy, policy, equity, that kind of either directly in there or tangentially connected. So worked TFA, Masters, The Hill, back to Michigan, came and did some work actually doing public policy work for philanthropy for about five years where I was actually building the capacity of grant makers and funders to be able to engage in public policy because it's still by and large an uncharted territory and largely misunderstood because of, you know, nonprofit statuses that are at risk. And so I did that for a while and then went back to school district and then came to SCF about almost five years ago. It's done a number of things in that way. And, you know, it's interesting. I think contrary to popular belief, you actually don't need to know who you want to be when you grow up, when you graduate from college. Probably still are figuring that out. And then I also believe you don't necessarily know who you are until you know who you're not. So you just have to try things. I mean, granted, I'm very much in the reality that bills need to be paid. So you probably do need a job, but you can actually try different things. And so my advice would be to do that. And also, my friends would say I'm a serial joiner fellow shipper. I'm in a number of organizations. I've done a number of different fellowships because they just expose you to different opportunities and to different networks. Then, you know, mentorship, I don't think we can like underscore the importance of just having good old fashioned mentors. They're just critical. They have been still critical for me. And then just good old fashioned informational interviews, like talk to people who are in the jobs that you feel like you want to go into and just really leverage those opportunities. And you'll be surprised what opens up for you. That's great. Canita, maybe I can just ask you to elaborate a little bit more on the mentorship point because I do think that's so critical. But there's a lot of tacit knowledge in how to have a mentor, how to be a mentor. Yes, also, but how to get a mentor. Could you just say a little bit about how you think about that? Well, you know, it's interesting because it is, you know, being on this side of the work, I understand just the importance of social and cultural capital and then how many kids don't come to schools with those type of things. So they don't have access to the people who are doing those type of jobs and don't know, you know, kind of those soft skills or the social kind of steps that you need to take to get those things. And I was one of those. I just, like I said, I've been very fortunate to kind of look into things and have people, you know, for whatever reason, think I'm smart and then want to get to know me. For whatever reason. And so I had people who actually wanted to sew into me. And so like my first actual mentor was someone that actually reached out to me. And then from there, I kind of was like, oh, I get this and really be thoughtful about it. But I think, you know, a lot of the programs that I've been in also too, like they have mentorship as part of the fellowships that we're doing. So I can't say that I had any science or art behind doing it, but just was very fortunate and people wanting to sew into me. But now I am very intentional about helping young folks. I guess I'm still kind of 40. So I'm relatively, depending on what field you're in, I'm still young. But really be thoughtful about how do you do that and how do you navigate those relationships and how you nurture them and understand that it is a partnership. It should be symbiotic. You may not be giving as much, but you need to be, you know, respectful and nurture the time of the person that's investing into you. Thanks, Kanita. David, do you want to go next and, you know, a little bit about those first steps you took and advice for the current PPA students? This is fascinating. This is, you know, the threads that run through all of this. You know, when I left the public policy program, it was 1993. And the one thing that it gave me that helped me throughout was confidence, right? That you're going in there, you get in the trenches a little bit, you know, on the academic stuff, and you get the support through the social and community. But when you come out of there, you know, you have some sense of knowing that you can do this stuff. You know, and it wasn't just the academics. It was this stuff is something you can do as a job, as an interest, and it doesn't have to be work. It can be something that's aligned with what you do well or what you're passionate about in some ways. And so when I came back from the summer, I was very focused because I had been exposed to this whole new world and it gave me some direction. It motivated me to think about things in a different way. And so I decided to go to graduate school. I mean, I actually, I should be honest with you. I took a job. I came back and I took a job working for the Martin Luther King Federal Holiday Commission. And people don't know this, but the King holiday was a national holiday before it was a federal holiday. And there was actually a commission that helped get the federal holiday established. And I was one of the five people on that commission as a legislative aid. And so that was great. It was wonderful. I got to work in Atlanta and I had an office in DC and traveling. So it was kind of like being a lobbyist, but not being a lobbyist. And it was fascinating, but I had so much fun. I spent all my money and it was Atlanta. It was DC. You're going to spend all your money. And he was like, okay. And I thought I was smarter than my bosses were. So I said, that's too much confidence. But I said, I want to go to graduate school and study this stuff and get better at it. And it led me to Michigan State University and right down the road from Atlanta. And once I got to Michigan State, I got exposed to more stuff, data and different ways of looking at the data and different ways of being in the room and having a different kind of conversation because you could speak data language and stats talk. And I learned that math and stats were not the same thing. That statistics is really a general way to think about finding patterns and information. And the statistics is just a formal way of expressing it and quantifying it. But if you like looking for patterns and being strategic about how to alter or adjust those patterns, boom, then doing research and analysis is there. And it just led me into academia. I worked for SPSS. My real first job out of grad school was for SPSS, training people to use the product. Once again, I thought I was smarter than they were. It wasn't true. But that's how you convince yourself to do new stuff. I got hired by Gallup. And I worked for 10 years at the Gallup Holden Organization in Washington, D.C. I don't know if I mentioned this, but I was in the military. So I joined the armor reserve like in high school, you know, the commercial about paying for college. It's another story. But they don't really pay for college. So they gave me some side money. And Iraqi freedom kicked off in 2003. And I was working in D.C. and hadn't gotten out in the military yet. So I was deployed for a year in Iraq and other parts of the area. It came back and just didn't have a passion for the kind of work I was doing. That led me to go into academia. And I've loved it ever since. The freedom to think about issues, the freedom to help strategize about how to help young people and people who are mid-career think about what they want to do next and how to have impact. And to sell the story of public policy and the social sciences to anybody who will listen because it's something that actually sparked my curiosity and changed my life. So academia is another route you can take to do your professional work but also help other people think about what we should be doing next. And that's what I've... the last nine years I've been in administrative roles doing Dean's work and now I'm here perfectly working with the Golden School. Thanks, David. Just a fantastic and really interesting career path and I think all three of you have had, again, such different routes. I think it helps. It's a little freeing, I think, for students to know that you don't have to follow a straight line and know, as Kanita said, when you're born, you know what you're going to do. When you get later in your career. I wonder if we could reflect a little bit on your different kinds of views of leadership in the next segment. We've been trying to build out, we are building out the leadership side of what we teach our students. We and Berkley's the same way. We have long been known for our strong quantitative training and that's a really important foundation to be a leader. Obviously, we have too often leaders who don't know anything say things and that's not really that helpful. So, definitely having a strong analytic foundation is really critical but there are lots of other skills that students need to have to be successful in leadership over their careers and we're building those into our leadership activities here. I wonder if you could each reflect a little bit on your sense of what leadership skills you've acquired, how you've acquired them, what you think is important in leadership. Kanita, maybe I'll start with you and then go around. So, it's interesting. I actually just defended my dissertation last week. So, that is how I'm... Congratulations. Thank you. But my field is entrepreneurial leadership and education and I'm looking at racial equity and so I've actually studied and looked at leadership quite a bit over the last few years and really came across the quote that leadership is probably one of the most studied but most misunderstood that we have because I think there are just tons of misconceptions around leadership and what it is and I had that and really what I thought was a leader was akin to really just being a boss and it was about extrinsic, motivation, sticks and carrots, compliance, you do what I say and that's not leadership at all. Leadership is much more about social influence and motivating people to work toward a common goal and you do that by speaking to their intrinsic values and making them feel that you actually care about them and that you inspire them and also being a model of a leader, rolling up your sleep and actually exhibiting what it is that you want from those that you lead and if you're a true leader, people are themselves better off and better leaders as a result of having been led by you. And so, these are things that really go into how I try to approach my leadership, particularly in my new role in my organization and just really being thoughtful about actually listening and listening leader is key, listening to understand, actually realizing that I don't have all the answers and knowing that and that actually you have good people on your team for a reason so they should have some of the answers if not all the answers for you and so those type of things are really coming into play until how I shape and hold my own leadership and leaders continue to learn and learn how to be better leaders and evolve and so that is what I would offer. Thanks, Kanita, that's great advice. David, you and I are now sharing the same kind of job. It's a different kind of leadership job certainly than I've had before. The academic leadership is a different kind of leadership but I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on your experiences both at Delaware and now at the Goldman School and leadership and maybe also on your service in the Army which probably influenced your thinking about leadership as well. Yeah, you find bad leaders really quickly in the Army of course. I mean, I agree a lot with what Kanita said in terms of skill sets. Listening, listening with intention, making sure that other people feel valued and are part of the team. We talk a lot about diversity, equity and inclusion but inclusion you have to be really active and intentional about and making sure that their voices are included in every conversation and you hear people talk about community in our campus but there's always people excluded around these boundaries of academics and disciplines and the like and you have to be more inclusive in order to really grow and do things. But the one thing I would say is that the most important investment you can make in leadership is knowing thyself. Knowing something about you, what are your skills? Use the tools that are out there to help identify your strengths and your traits that really make you who you are and use a team, mentors are good but assessment tools are as well to help understand what do you do well? What resonates with people that you have? What do you bring to the table that you can invest in? And by really focusing on you if you can lead yourself in that direction of studying you, having a vision for you and having a mission statement for you then you can maybe convince some other people they should follow you. And so the leadership piece is it's true, there is no one definition and you've got to constantly be prepared for change and that means understanding others being able to listen and being able to know whether or not you're a good responder to change and not everybody is. So investing in yourself before you try to go out there and ask people to do other things for you and don't have. Thanks David, that's great advice. So we say the same thing at the Ford School. You've got to learn how to lead yourself learn how to lead others and then you can talk about leading organizations once you've got a good foundation and people lead from lots of different places in the organization. You don't have to be by any means running a place to be leading it. So I'll tell you one of the most just really quickly one of the most powerful things so I went to with our rank in the fall of 2003 and we had a general that sat down a small group of us I was part of the team that actually recruited and built the new Iraqi army in the fall of 2003 and he came in the room and he said I know I'm the person with the highest rank but there's no monopoly on good ideas and so you can imagine for the first time us kind of hearing that saying you actually want to hear what we have to say and in that way that person gained a lot of respect in a very difficult time period in a very difficult task that will have an ability to just get voice so you don't have to be in a role and the person that is in the role has to communicate that out so it's very good. I totally agree. Farouk, what are your thoughts on leadership? So I haven't studied leadership so you'll have to check me if I say something crazy but what I think what I can say here is just really based on my experience working for some pretty fabulous leaders in the federal government and some of the skills that they possess maybe I don't know if that's helpful but I think some of the best leaders that I've worked for have been incredibly humble people people who are I want to say likable but I know that sometimes that term is coded and so just people who are well respected and that comes through a lot of different ways whether it's their experience whether it's something they did like set a group of people down and listened to them for the first time and that sort of thing I think in the government somebody who is really focused on teamwork that they are recognizing that they are part of a team a much larger team and lots of different concentric circles of teams and being able to work properly in that way and being able to use an amazing negotiator in every way I mean not just not like these people not like you have to be a great negotiator on a treaty but also negotiating what room we are going to have a meeting in who is going to be in the room and that sort of thing so I feel like in the government those are some of the skills that have made really great leaders Thanks Farouk we are getting a lot of audience questions in so I am going to start weaving those into our conversation one question from the audience is in the course of your careers how have you resolved conflicts in professional settings have you ever needed to do something that does not align with your personal beliefs or values and maybe Farouk if you could start us out on that question Sure Yes there is definitely conflict is not easy in the workplace at all a lot of people come to work in different places their home life is different their how they sort of have grown up so people come to the workplace from various backgrounds and so first off and I will say in the federal government conflict management has there are certain social ways to address conflict so obviously those tools exist but I would say having a good understanding in the event of a conflict having an understanding of where folks are coming from is incredibly important and not just where they are coming from from the professional standpoint but also even personally and so I think that is sort of one way to work with conflict is to understand people in general I think a lot of conflict comes from poor communication as well whether that is a staffer communicating upward or a boss communicating downward so I think looking at how you are communicating with people even whether it is tone whether it is in person or in email so I think that is another area there is conflict to figure out was the communication clear and consistent is that what is the end of conflict in my experience a lot of the time it is about poor communication so those are just some things off the top of my head that I can say in terms of conflict management Thanks Farouk Kenita how about you either personal conflict question or sort of internal conflict where you might have to do something you personally don't agree with what do you what is your experience been I have been very fortunate where I haven't had any roles that have really pushed me or asked me to do anything that didn't align with my beliefs and values because like I said I know I have a path and what I am working on and my job is typically aligned with that that does not mean that conflict does not arise in the context I think it is a natural thing I think one of the things that came to me later after this leadership when we were talking about leadership earlier is really the importance of emotional intelligence and really taking time to hone EQ I think hard skills talent get you in the door and help you do a good job in your job but whether you are successful or not in a particular culture I think is largely tied to how you are how you show up as a person and that is not to say places are just not toxic and you need to get out that does happen but also being able to self-regulate and understand where you are and how you show up and forecast really kind of tangible concrete strategies that you and managing relationship and others are very important when it comes to conflict resolution I think also for what was saying just communications we talked about listening earlier are you actually listening and not just listening but hearing what the other person is saying to you I think oftentimes we don't always separate issues and personalities you have to be able to do that and sometimes we don't always separate issues and personalities but keep in mind that things are really good I think we are having a little audio problem so I am going to come back to you and we will pick up with David and hopefully the audio will get resolved David yeah in terms of resolving conflict I mean probably the first three or four years what did I do all the wrong things because I was focused on resolving the conflict in that moment and not thinking about the problems that led to the conflict in the first place and many times you have to think about as a leader whether you are the right person to be trying to resolve problems that just come up maybe you should delegate some of that to someone else and that is a skill you have to take into consideration in academia everybody is important everybody is brilliant and then there are these rules that exist where people have rights and privileges and so you are balancing all of that so sometimes time will fix things and sometimes you have to do a strong intervention on the more serious things and conflicts are just everywhere just waiting to happen and the key thing is trying to eliminate those areas at the beginning by communicating what the values are what the standards are when I start a committee or something I always the first meeting I say how are we going to operate what are our rules for this committee how are we going to interact with one another do you want to encourage disagreement or should we shy away from it as long as we are clear on the rules that happens outside of that then we can say hey we agreed on this and if we can't do that then it might not be useful to kind of proceed the other thing I wanted to say is going against your values and this is you know a behaviorist so I study people and stuff like that it's really tricky as soon as you study them they start changing and then you have to figure out what to do next so yeah you are always having to make decisions as a leader many times your loyalty is not to your own values your loyalty is to the organization the institution the rules that you have agreed to the policies your mandate your higher authority whatever it is and you are constantly weighing that going against your values and that happens and the best thing in anybody who thinks they can get through work or life without that kind of cross pressure I got a bridge in the desert that's cheap but the bottom line is find ways to prepare yourself for when you got to make those tough choices and when you do something you know that's boring on crossing the line in your mind be prepared just for whatever consequences of doing it or not doing it are and learn to live with them that's the best advice you can offer is that if you in academia you get scholar advocates and you want to push the needle and push the button and unfortunately we have a tier system where not everybody is protected and even if you are protected you are not protected from the person that can just show up at your door randomly and tell you how they feel about your work so you do have to always be thoughtful about your actions and set in place some protections but also some ways to give and take a little bit whatever you decide to do that goes against your values find some way to balance that out with something else and that may help you get through it Thanks David as I said we have lots of questions so I might just ask one of you to do each of the next ones I'm going to turn to David why don't I turn to you next because this is a question that you and I deal with in our day jobs and I'm sure you can either do too but very specifically how do we encourage a new and diverse generation to go into public policy given the current political climate so maybe David you could take that on Yeah I one I collect data on what they see as their interest areas and then try to align kind of programs and give instruments for the programs to kind of give them there if it's tools you need to solve problems we can identify tools but we also need to have curriculum that exposes people to the problems because in many ways sometimes the problems that you look at are just in your own community but the real problem in the world is completely different and so you need to have the tools understand the big problem so the community local one doesn't exist and so I think exposing people with tools and curriculum in the classroom and outside the classroom why learning stuff is the best route Thanks David Farooq maybe I'll ask you to take on this one there are lots of different formulations but there are a lot of questions about what advice you would give to your younger self what do you wish you could tell yourself back when you were a PPIA student Oh gosh this one's this one's really hard I don't know well I think you want me to put punt to Canita and I'll get you a different one if anybody else has you know it's hard to really think back partly because I've really enjoyed the path I've been on and obviously I've made mistakes and there's definitely a lot of things I wish I had known back in 2002 just none of it's coming to my mind right now Canita or David if you have anything feel free to chime in you know that it is a tough question one of the things that I would have said or just some of the things that we talked about earlier really taking advantage of mentors trying new and different things one of the things that since I do kind of emerging kind of leader fellows with graduate undergraduates students communications I would have called myself to really work on understanding the importance of communications both written oral communications and taking opportunities really seizing and seeking out opportunities to do public speaking to write because those things are so critical right now so that is the one thing that I would have told myself I think fortunately the Ford School really shapes you into a great writer and I know Michael didn't pay me to say that but it really does and so I feel like I've been in programs to do that but I could have done so much more on my own and I'm a really I think a really good writer now but I could be so much better or so much sooner if I had really taken time to do that that's a good point we do invest a lot in the writing program for our PPA students and also again for our master's students and our undergrads too it makes a big difference and probably there are other schools who don't quite spend as much investment in that as we do and I'm really glad we do I do think it has many many dividends for many years if you can have that basic skill of really succinct and sharp reading you can use it in lots of different areas actually there's an audience question that probably David and I both need the answer to we're doing some thinking as are the other deans about what the future of PPIA should look like it's had it's evolved over the years it's changed over the last 40 years and so maybe we'll put Kenita on the spot for me and David if you all were thinking about the program and what you would hope to see for the future what are the things you think that we might want to change or emphasize or focus on that we wouldn't have 20 years ago well one thing I don't know what the program is like now it's been 19 years I'm sure it's evolved in very different from what it was back in 2002 I think one thing I can say is kind of a little bit of an emphasis on I don't know how to correctly put this but maybe some of the softer skills maybe so for example a focus on negotiations and learning how to negotiate sort of just working in an office and learning about organizational structure leadership development and skills that kind of thing back in 2002 we did a lot of we didn't really do any of that stuff at all it was mostly coursework, policy focused quantitatively focused but I think that's one area that I would explore if it's not already being explored that's great so yeah so I would I don't know what I don't know about what the program is actually doing now but I could see if I were to see this in 40 years and I would come back 80 year old canita on a panel I would hope to see more access to other schools like why is it not at HBCUs at this point or it might be I don't know if it's not that I would love to see more leveraging of the alumni network the network is powerful even just while I'm on the panel with the day I'm like wow what are we actually doing to leverage that to help the program stronger to help elevate the students out there just really leveraging that alumni network and just more of the program just general awareness about it like this is a fantastic program that people just kind of like me locked into those type of things yeah I think those are great points we would love to leverage the alumni network more and engage alumni as we're going to do after this call we're going to have a time for all of you and the other students and alumni to network together if you are listening on YouTube you can look for instructions in the chat and those of you who registered in advance you can also see in the email you got for the call should give you instructions about how to log in for the networking session for PPIA I think it would be wonderful to get more PPIA alumni involved in mentoring current students and each other I mean the peer network is I think pretty phenomenal we are almost at time let me give each of you a brief moment for a last word and start out David any final thoughts for the group my thoughts are just congratulations you're already on the right path this is what the world needs people committed to being in the trenches of doing the public's work and really thinking about something for yourself there's no greater reward than to help society by giving back thank you David, canita so you would have thought I would have been prepared to say a final remark but I'm just not at all I would just echo David like congratulations on 40 years looking forward and knowing that we will hit 40 more I think the work is critically important I think a lot of the issues that we see you know we don't need bad actors, mal intent they are by and large a result of deliberate policy and choices that were made and so we need to be attacking them at the policy level and you all are through PPIA charting that path for people to be thinking along those lines and I just appreciate the work thank you canita just two quick things if you are interested in the federal budget or appropriations process or national security please reach out I'm happy to connect on LinkedIn or if you want to get my information through somebody at the Ford school I'm happy to share it and then the second point I want to make is Dean Barr please keep funding this program I know you are all really supportive of it if you are going to be even more supportive of it great so that's all of that thanks Farouk as I said I love the program I'm 100% committed to continuing it and really excited about it and I hope you don't mind I'll say shamelessly as I did at the outset that part of how we do this is through individual donations it's hard to run the program we don't have the funding for it I have to scramble every year to raise the money so anything anybody can do to help is in any size is always appreciated congratulations to our current students PPA students from around the country and to our alumni PPA graduates just lovely to have you all here and thank you for helping us to mark this special moment the 40th year, the 40th anniversary of the program I'm really proud of it I know David is proud of their program at Goldman and the handful of schools that have been involved since the start so I'm just really delighted to have you all here and let me thank Farouk and Kanita and David for joining us to mark this occasion thank you everybody and please do join for the networking session right afterwards again you can look in your registration email or in the YouTube chat for instructions about how to join for that thanks very much