SPEAKER_00 0:00

Nil Mini, it is great to have you with us. Welcome. Thank you for having me, Carolyn. That's a pleasure. You're joining us from Washington, DC, I assume, where you are the uh Chief Policy Officer at HERA. And we're going to jump in to talk a little bit about what it is that you do there and what the company does. But maybe we can start with talking about what was your very first job, maybe not career aligned, but perhaps your very first job uh in the workforce.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

My very first job was working at an ice skating rink in an outdoor ice skating rink in Palo Alto, California. And I tied ice skates for little kids and swept and worked my way up to uh the front desk.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Okay, so I'm intrigued on many fronts, including like outdoor ice skating rink in California. This is very incongruous.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

It was like an engineering marvel, so Palo Alto of it and Silicon Valley, where they an engineer built an outdoor rink with this partial, maybe a quarter-size roof that cast shade on the rink and it kept it cold. And it was open for about eight months of the year.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Wow, that's very impressive. And I think maybe there is a little bit more to your story, which involves ice skating. Maybe you can just touch on that because we we we will return to your policy life, but you have a pretty active life outside of policy as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Well, during the pandemic, I realized my life was fun-free. And I decided to like think about like what was really fun to me. And I just had these wonderful memories of ice skating for fun as a child. So I um decided to get really into ice skating uh during the pandemic, and I started training, and now I compete. So I've gone to US adult nationals and competed against other people in my age range.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

So it is quite a marvel for people listening to watch Nalmini skate. So if you get the chance, highly recommend it. Um just as talented on the ice skating rink as she is when it comes to policy. But also just, and one of the things I think about you when I think about policy Nalmini is that I think of you as this sort of very subtle force in the policy world. You're not like you work in an industry, and we'll talk more about that, which is sort of very out there, kind of very public-facing in a lot of ways. But I think of you as being just this extremely effective making things happen, but not necessarily like the loudest, showyest voice in the room. So we'll maybe talk a little bit about how you sort of developed your own kind of personal space, your personal brand in the in the policy world. That's certainly been how it's been come across to me from the outside. But maybe tell us a little bit how did you get career-wise to where you are today? Did you study something that was relevant? Did you study something that was completely unrelevant? What was the sort of career trajectory up until today?

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Well, like most Asian American children in growing up in the 70s and 80s, I assumed I was going to be a doctor. And I went to college uh to do pre-med and then realized I didn't like being around sick people, um, which is you know really an impediment to medicine. So I uh dropped out of college in 1992 and traveled the world for a while, and then realized I was really interested in international economics. Like, why are some people poor and other people aren't? Like what this accident of birth that has led to you know going to places in in Asia, my family is originally from Sri Lanka compared to where I grew up in Palo Alto, which ended up being a source of immense wealth. It just was just a striking contrast. So I really got interested in that, and that's been really the trajectory since. So I studied international economics as an undergrad at Berkeley, and then decided I was gonna go to the Peace Corps. Okay, and it was not the right fit for me. Long story, won't get into it now. But then dropped out and decided to go to New York because I thought that's the place to prove yourself.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

And ended up working in international macroeconomics at the Federal Reserve.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

And then very very policy wonky at this stage.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Uh because it really was it was the opposite of Peace Corps. Peace Corps was really helping people at an individual level, which is super meaningful. But what I loved about the Federal Reserve and kind of the policy area is it's you're thinking about how to help people at scale. Um, and so I thought it was really exciting. Went to business school and then ended up in DC, where I worked at Treasury. Um, so I spent a lot of time in the US government before switching to doing policy private sector.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Okay. Okay. Um and then what maybe tell us a little bit about those roles in government after you left left the Fed and then how that how you then made that transition and why you made that transition into the into the private sector.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Well, at the in when I joined the Treasury Department, it was around the Asian financial crisis. So you had like two guys on Malaysia, two guys on Japan, two guys on Indonesia. It was all guys. And then I was like the new kid on the block. So they gave me the dog portfolio, and it was Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, like the whole region to do international market. So, you know, like I got to learn a lot, worked on, you know, Turkey's financial crisis, worked on India, and then September 11th happened. And if you can imagine covering Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, like my portfolio was hot. I got to travel with the Treasury Secretary on his first trip to the Middle East. I went with him to Africa. I mean, it was amazing. So it was, it was just a really formative experience. And I worked on the first task force on terrorist financing, it was amazing. Um, and then I got picked up by the White House, the Bush administration, um, to be the director for international finance. And then was like, okay, I just met a guy, and I've never been on a date with him at with that included dinner and a movie on the same night because I would always have to go back to work. And I'm like, I need a different life. These were really great jobs, it just was grilling. So then I was complaining to one of my best friends from Peace Corps, and she was like, My husband's on Capitol Hill. You should, you should look at at Capitol Hill. And I sent over my resume and ended up working in the Senate for for eight years and loved it of doing foreign foreign affairs. But then I was like, okay, um, all this policy work, I worry that I'm never gonna be able to get out of policy. And I think maybe there's like a little bit of grass is greener stuff going on, but I was like, oh no, I'm only gonna be able to do government work. So I was like, let me let me take a break. This this government stuff is always gonna be there. And I ended up um just cold calling people like in the private sector and be like, hi, can I come talk to you? And they would often say yes, and um, I ended up that way um working at the leading trade association for big tech companies. And I didn't do tech at the time, but I would study as it was like a class, like make myself a briefing book and study so that I had the lingo to adjust, and that's how I got in. Uh, but I went back to government because there's a there is something super exciting about being on Capitol Hill and writing law. So I did go back to the house side uh for four years before coming back. And I tried I went to the private sector because of there were opportunities to grow. When I left and I went to TetraTech to lead their international energy division, I had a chance to manage people. You know, I had a few hundred people in 17 countries and see the real world impact. So, like connecting to the dots of these big ideas that we had on Capitol Hill, laws that we wrote on um providing energy in in Africa in a market-based way, to actually doing that and running the companies and seeing how the nitty-gritty gets done. It was really and like it was a nice opportunity to connect to dots. So that was very attractive. But now being in the private sector, I think what's really exciting is is kind of goes back to why it was attracted to policy in the first place, is that right now in our sector in crypto, we are scaling big ideas and pushing the forefront of like the future of technology rails, of payment rails, of like how how things can move forward to lower costs for people around the world. So it's it's a kind of an exciting moment to be particularly on the private sector side of policy.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

That's true. Did you find, having done the MBA, that that was useful for what you you know when you made that move into the private sector? And maybe tell us in that context a little bit about the role you had at TetraTech and was it kind of pure policy? Was it a little bit more kind of business focused?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

I think that the my MBA was really helpful in the management side. Um, it was helpful at Treasury and understanding kind of balance sheets too. Um, but it was mostly like so I had finished my MBA in 1999. It was like before people just had Wi-Fi in their houses, right? Like so it was a different world. Like I think a lot of the things that I learned in an MBA, you could probably learn in an online class at this point. But there were the one thing that I think was super great about the in-person program and doing it that way was learning organizational behavior skills. And that, and and it's like a cliche that that's like the most useful thing you learn in an MBA program, but it was totally true for me. And just when I went to TetraTech, I ended up restructuring the division and using like the organizational, like how do you make changes that align with people's incentives? And how do you structure things so that there's they're smooth and doesn't require people to constantly coordinate, that they understand um how how to work and um what kind of things make people feel valued. So a lot of I guess a lot of that you can get in organizational behavior, you can get in through therapy. Um the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

I think sometimes being a manager can be, you know, has some uncanny parallels.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

So so I'm glad I did it, but I don't know if you know this. I'm actually in law school.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

My goodness, no meaning. I did not know this. Welcome to the world of lawyers. I don't know what's possessed you, but tell us more.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Well, during the pandemic, they changed the rules in the United States to allow for more expansive online programs. So I took, I'm taking a program where many of the lectures are online, and we have in-person sessions a few times a year. But it allowed me to do it more flexibly and and I'm only taking a couple of classes this semester because I'm too busy with work to take a proper load. But I found it just to be fun and interesting. I was always curious because having worked on the hill, I wrote a lot of law, but I was curious about just the kind of the other side. And I'm finding it just helpful with like managing outside counsel and you know, you know, like pushing back on things that lawyers say with assertiveness because they have a law degree. But you know, like I don't know if that's true. So yeah, I'm I'm just kind of treating it like book club. Okay. I love this.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

This is classic Neil Mania. You like you think you know Neil Mania and then you suddenly discover, yeah, I'm a like international level ice skater. You're like, right, okay. Now now we've just discovered she's doing a law degree too in all her spare time. Um so take us then, because the tech tech role was more uh, you know, managing a business unit by the sounds of things, like how did we get from there to uh what I might think as a I mean, and this is probably like people think of policy as like a very kind of narrow function. So I would say like a pure policy role, but it actually I think has a much more sort of strategic impact. Tell us about like that transition.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

So in policy, you're trying, it's a lot of sales, right? You're selling ideas and you're trying to get people who don't report to you and don't owe you anything to do what you want. So it's a lot of like convincing and sharing information and showing it why they should care and um and bringing people along in a step-by-step way. And it translates really well to management. Like when I when I started managing people at TetroTech, I was I was talking to to the president of of the company and and I was like, this is so much easier than policy because people report to you. They're actually required to basically So it it did really like a lot of your policy skills transfer very well to to management. Um and I was actually surprised when they asked me to run the division. Uh, I thought, okay, I'll just do this on a temporary basis. And while I have the short period, I'm gonna change all the things that I thought should be different. And then it turned out I really enjoyed it. Um like it it was it was really fun to be responsible for the PL. Like, like you know accountability, you know, your accountability because in policy, you're trying to think, you're changing things you don't actually have control, right? So it's like if that law doesn't change, is it really because I did a bad job or not?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

You know, it it's a lot of the elements are outside of your direct control.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

But when you run a business, it's it is your control. And that's really like fun for a change.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Yeah. Well, I think one of the things I I mean, in my experience going into the private sector was there's something almost refreshing about this extremely clear metric of did I succeed or did I not? And what am I trying to achieve here? It's like, well, the number doesn't lie, so you either hit it or you didn't hit it, and that's quite like obvious to everybody. Um, but it's interesting what you say too about the kind of the soft power skills and their role in the policy function where you necessarily like both in, I guess we can talk a little bit more about external and internal stakeholders, but you don't necessarily have all those people with the sort of an obligation to to kind of follow your your path and you're having to bring them along with you. Um tetrotech to hetero, was that the direct line, or how did that we get there?

SPEAKER_01 14:34

It went tetrotech to um I worked, I did some work um on democracy issues. I I led this organization called Fix the System. So I went TetraTech to democracy for a little interlude and then to Meta, where I served on the global policy team. And while I was there, I had my eye on what the folks at Meta were doing on crypto. And I was like, oh, I want to move over to Libra because I had been on the global policy side focused on international organizations. I'm like, I would love to be over the Libra side. But at that point, it was it was kind of disbanding and didn't it just didn't make sense to to make the switch. So I was like every like every day off that I had, like every vacation day, I would go to like a crypto conference. So I was like, this or the DC blockchain.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

You knew how to have a good time, in other words, in your spare time.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, it was kind of like the same thing I did to get in tech the first time, which was like I want to be around it and ensconced it so I speak the language, so people just like feel like I belong and like have this underlying sense of why they care about the things I care about. And then at this one event, I saw this booth about Hidera and it talked about how little energy the network used. It's very efficient, a hash graph rather than a blockchain, and it uses like astronomically less energy than than others. And I was like, oh, that's really interesting to me because I'd done all this energy work on the and I was like, that's sustainability, right? When it just it just naturally uses less. Um I um they had a chief of staff role and not a policy role, and I applied for that because I was like, I just need to get in, you know, like and uh no, but it's true, I think.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Like when you're making a sector transition, like yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Um so I got hired as chief of staff, and they're like, Oh, you can do policy, we don't have anyone doing policy. Um, you could do that too. So I had like two jobs.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

That's right. Not not you could do that instead, but also, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

And I always like to prioritize the chief of staff role, right? Because you have to keep the trains running. Yes. Um until okay, so so I'm doing them both a little bit. Um, and then I got invited to testify before the US Congress. They had a hearing on on regulation of digital assets at the House subcommittee and um on agriculture.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

And can you time that a bit for us? Because there's there's a lot that's happened in crypto over the years. So which crypto era were we in?

SPEAKER_01 17:10

It was um not last what it was 2000, I think it was around April 2023.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Okay, so a couple of years ago.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

And I think it was then, or maybe it was 2024. I'm gonna have to look that up.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

It was sometime time in crypto is fluid.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

So um that went really well, and then they were like, then it was just it was it was obvious we it made more sense for me to just focus on the policy work, and things were heating up in the policy, as we all know, and and policy. So so I ended up being able to um I was promoted to chief policy officer and now I'm 100% policy.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Wow. Wow. Well, I mean, congratulations to you because honestly, I think making career transitions is not easy, and I admire somebody who had so much experience to to bring to the table, but also you clearly have this humility to be able to say, like, I will come in and this is how I will get my foot in the door, and then we will we will go from we'll and clearly, I mean, yeah, you your the skills you bring, you know, become evident over time, and and and you kind of found your way into in into this role that that you have today. And I might come back at the end to talk a little bit about how you manage those transitions and and kind of tips you might have for people who are thinking about that. I love that idea of a personal briefing uh book. But maybe tell us just briefly for those who don't know what Hedera does, what role it has. You've you've touched lightly on the kind of some the technical side, the hash graph versus the blockchain. But yeah, tell us a little about the company and then we can deep dive into kind of the policy function and how you think about it and what it actually looks like day to day.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Hedera is a network, um, and we call it a layer one. And so it's a a public permissioned network that you can build on different products, whether you're doing um, you know, a product that that tokenizes real estate or a project that that verifies information that goes to um on pharmaceuticals. Like they're just like, why you can do anything really when you're building on on our network. And what makes our network unique is that it's a hash graph rather than those blockchains, so it is really fast and efficient and secure. But what is also unique is that we have the governing council that makes the major decisions with the node to really ensure that it's around for a hundred years, that sure it's it's stability. And that includes really major organizations, so like London School of Economics and Google and IBM and LG, uh, so just this wide range Mondalays that the people, the the company that includes Oreos. So just a wide of companies um that that govern our network. And we really have um, you know, if we kind of bring a maturity to to the network because of that, because they're they are established companies, they are in this for the technology, not they're not interested in drama, you know, they they just want want something that's stable, that works.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Okay, okay, interesting. How do you think of the purpose of the policy function? Clearly, I mean you were sort of conceived of it in a sense, and I'm sure you had to put together some sort of a business plan about why this was important. What do you really think of the role, the role that kind of policy has in an organization?

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Policy is okay, so this is gonna sound a little self-serving. Policy is here to address the existential threats to the company. How do we make sure that we can survive and thrive in this policy environment? And it's particularly important in industries where there are big policy changes, right? And there in some industries, it's not as important. There's not as much happening on the policy regulatory front. But for us, it's massively important because things are changing, they're changing around the world, they're changing differentially differently in different places. So we need to like address that. But so um I think that Hidera recognized that the need for policy even before I joined. They were thinking about it, and and I think that that I was able to like kind of help them pull it together. We don't have a large function. We have uh two people now on the team. So it's me and uh my colleague Isadora Ardondo, who is based in Zurich. And together we're kind of carving out different places of the world, but it's with such a small team, we do have consultants that we rely on who are experts in that. In that area, and we lean very heavily on trade associations who uh provide us with a lot of intel and opportunities to provide comments to officials.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

I'd be very interested in how you think about what you look for in a trade association and how you use them to kind of supplement the function.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

When we're looking at a trade association, the first thing we think about is coverage. Are they covering a region we need assistance with? The second is who else are members of the trade association? Because you know, it often comes down to the lowest common denominator on what the trade association promotes, and we want to make sure that we're aligned with the others that are in there. And we look at, you know, what how how do they make decisions? So what committees do they have? What kind of decision making do they have? Because we don't want to join an association where they end up taking positions that are counter our interests. Um they a lot of different associations have different decision-making processes. So that's something I've learned the hard way to like really pay attention to. And then the third is uh the fourth would be is outreach. Like what kind of events and supports are they planning? Organizing things with the the FCA in the UK or with members of Congress in the US or with regulators in Japan. Like what are they offering that we wouldn't otherwise have? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

That that kind of leads us into something quite interesting, which is this idea of kind of external um engagement and you know, all the side of public side that can happen, you know, attending events, speaking at events, so on and so forth, versus the more behind the scenes curated conversations with you know, policymakers in in government and and and so forth. How do you think about like how you spend your time with those external aspects?

SPEAKER_01 24:05

I really try to focus our time as much as possible because when you have two people covering the world, the the most scarce resource is time. So I'll I'll like really try to minimize how many meetings that we we go to, even our internal meetings, try to really focus that and then think through like what is really focus on what our goals are and like nail this down in advance. Like, what are our goals for Europe? What are our goals for for the UK, what the US, and that so that everything else can follow, right? So our engagement with the associations can be like in advance in those goals because what's so easy with guess just life in general, but especially with associations, it's really easy to get distracted by other people's interests, and you're like you're weighing in on other you know, things that don't matter as much to you, or you're getting sucked into working groups that you're like, this isn't really our core business. And so we'll just really constantly trying to stay focused.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

How do you work out those focus areas? Is that something that you do in the policy function, or who are the general stakeholders that you work with to decide what's worth your time and what's not worth your time?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

What I do is a process like starting kind of in December for like what our goals are in January. And I imagine in the next December, so like a year from now, what do I want to write down that we accomplished? So I I try I find it's easier to think backwards than think forwards. So, like, what do I want to say we did? And like what what policies did we secure? What and then and then I back into what steps do we need to take to have that be the result? And then I put those down as our goals. And and I really then try to prioritize it because you have competing goals. Like I think one of the challenges with policy is that we get confused with marketing. It's very true. Yes, yes. So really going okay, these are my goals, but then because so much time is spent on coordinating with marketing, I like really like nailing down what is my specific marketing goal because it's like a symbiotic relationship I'm seeing with marketing, um, where I can leverage them to help communicate our message to policymakers, but they can leverage us for content. Because they can't always like every post for marketing can't be our technology is the best, you know, and so they need additional content and they they they look to us as subject matter experts to add in. So so really kind of thinking through my policy messaging and then goals and then look at it.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

And how involved is that with what I might think of as like, say, the business side, the commercial side, or the product side? Do you engage with them a lot? Is that you know something that you do in a structured way? Is it more organic? How does that work?

SPEAKER_01 26:59

For us, it's become organic. It's kind of like on a when do we need it? So I find instead of like this monthly meeting or bi-weekly meeting, it's like we'll have a bunch of meetings in a row and then not talk for a little while. But it's usually around a legislative proposal, I'm finding. So like someone is making a proposal uh related to our industry, and they what's surprising about crypto is that people like to make proposals on like the actual technology and not how it's used or the impact of the technology, which is very different than than other sectors, right? So in like social media, you will see people talk about like the impact of it and how to work, but they won't go down to like the actual structure of the technology. Um no one's doing that. So so I we need to to talk, especially with conversations now around permissioned versus permissionless in different contexts, or around decentralization and what's that definition? Like I find that I'm talking to our tech team more and more.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

You mentioned before that you you have yourself based in the US, you have another person based in Europe. You also mentioned the UK in there. How do you think that the way you do policy, maybe not what you're doing or what your goal is, but how you do policy changes across those different regions?

SPEAKER_01 28:22

How we do it is is is very much different based on the culture and how they design their their policy. And what if what I would have liked is to also have someone in Asia because it's so relationship-based. But but you know, we're a small team, so I'm I'm grateful what for what I have. With with the UK and Europe, it's devolved from our our strategy from from being more educational and relationship building to really being more substantive. And that's impacted the type of consultants that we're working with and and like kind of products because they especially in the UK right now, like they really are looking at like deep substance. And for us to interact, we need to like really provide them with materials. So my colleague has been leading that. But what's been really interesting about what she's doing is that it's not just what I've mentioned, the consultants and the associations, it's also informal groups of like-minded entities. So she's been working with other layer ones in developing letters to regulators explaining the technology. And I think that that's a very helpful approach because I know from the government side, like I don't want to have to coordinate all these people. Like, I want you guys to work out your stuff and tell me what's really important to you, you know? So I'm I'm really happy with that approach.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

That makes sense. And when you think about you set those annual goals, how do you think about metrics? Because as we said at the start, like policies can be this like there's not some number, right? There's not like, did you hit this revenue number or not? How do you think about actually measuring?

SPEAKER_01 30:10

I struggle and like constantly asking other people, like what numbers, because number of meetings is like a stupid metric, right? Like you could just make meetings or like number of things you got published is also like whatever. So it's really, really, really hard to measure influence. And at the end, and if you then say, okay, it's the amount of my language that they actually put into the bill, even that is it's not like you totally have control over that. So I would what I'm trying to get at is okay, here's a menu of things that we can look at. And let's be a little flexible at the end, because you really don't want your policy team working towards a specific numeric goal and missing the vote as things evolve. Things are changing so rapidly, what could matter doesn't. So even like testifying before Congress, it's great to do, but you know, the companies that might be the most successful in legisl in in their legislative work this year might not testify. So it's like they're kind of just seeking flexibility and understanding, and that's really, really hard, I think, with companies that are not as ingrained in policy, right? So like your Googles and your Microsofts and your Amazons that are like have they totally see that their policy interests are entwined with their business interests. They're all of their management leaders and boards totally are focused in on policy. Yes. But in our sector, that's not been their primary focus. And so it's can be harder because they won't have this intuitive sense of like the team did well.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

No, I think that's very true. I try to think of input, output, and impact. And as you say, you can put the measures around some of those. But we've only got uh a few minutes left, Normini, and there's two things I want to touch on with time. One of those is what are the tools you use to do your job? And as part of that, does AI feature anyway? And secondly, um, I want to go back to the tool more and get your kind of hot tips on people looking to make a transition. I think you've managed to do it very successfully, but also very humbly. And and so I think your ideas about how people invest. Well, let's start with the the tool.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Well, for tools, we do use AI when I just want to do like a scan of the internet, because AI is only good for like summarizing what already exists. And what the challenge is in our sector is that we're doing stuff that's new. So it's just not out there. Like it can't be like, you know, write me a new clause or new definition of decentralization. So so it can be like, I think, helpful that way. And then, you know, I use like the online tools that everyone else uses, like Politico Pro work, um, where to do like legislative research. And yeah, I I use the newsletters and information from from the associations and and kind of the online sources. But I think that the most important thing, the most important tool that I use is relationships. And it's like really sharing information with people and being open with what we have to offer. So it's not like you're you're you're not just asking people, but like and then and then learning from others and then cooperating with others. And it's those like informal relationships that can be the most productive of anything that you do. And the other thing is to remember in policy, it's it's long. Everything takes a long time. Relationships develop to try not to make things transactional because these are people you're gonna know in 20-something years. Like a lot of the people I work with, I just ran into someone from the banking sector and we had a really good conversation about stable coins, but I met him in '99. Yeah. So it's just really like being um being your best self all the time. They might be your competitor now, but they might not be in six months, especially in our industry, which moves faster. So um I I think that yeah, in policy, it's like all about relationships and trust.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

No, I I think that's that's true. And and as to your point, you never know who you may be able to, and that might be helpful in a very tangible sense, like someone who you can brainstorm with and get some ideas about.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Yeah, and like even people who don't agree with us, like there was someone who wrote something that was very at odds with the way we think about things. And so I reached out to him and I was like, this is a draft of what we're thinking about. Like, can you comment on it? Like, I would love to get your feedback and address it. So, yeah, it's it's definitely also reaching out to people who don't agree.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

I wanted to finish with a question about transitions because I think you sound like you've done a few and you probably have some hot tips of people who are looking to change either sectors or get into policy when they're not from policy originally. Tell us a little bit more about those briefing books you mentioned.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Yes, so when I'm planning a transition, I'll do a briefing book of like all of the big pieces that people refer to in that sector and backgrounders, and anything I can get my hands into, and I print it out double-sided, put it in a binder and highlight it and act like I'm in the class. But my advice generally to people who are transitioning is uh to remember nobody wants to hire you to do anything new. Like no one has that interest. That's your interest, that's not their interest. They want to hire someone who already knows what to do. So you have to demonstrate that you already know what to do. You're not there to like learn. It's like you've already learned on your own time, you're there to perform. And so you're not, yeah, you're not asking for this stretch. You're asked, you're asking for an opportunity to perform. And so to do that, it's partially like, okay, getting the knowledge by like studying up and getting getting your your briefings for yourselves together. But then also figuring out how to go to like relevant events, go to relevant trainings, show up at places that the person who already has that job would go. You want to make it, you want to have in other people's head that you already do that. So like use your days off already show up and make it really, really easy for people to find you. So either it is in the in-person stuff or online, you're sharing articles about this new field that you want to be in and like commentate on it on LinkedIn, or you're you've changed your LinkedIn profile to use keywords that would click with someone looking for that new role. You know, there are gonna be a few at least crossover words. And then if you do see a job posting, don't be too precious. So maybe it's not exactly what you want, but like try to be like somewhat adjacent and be a little bit flexible because um, you know, I've seen a lot of people I've interviewed basically like tell me that they're too big for the job. And it's like I'm not gonna hire you because you don't want to do the actual job. You don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

You don't want to have the job that I need. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a piece. And I think I've heard that when you were talking about your own choices, right? Like not necessarily going to get uh the exact thing you're looking for straight out of the gate.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

And what I found is like some people make the mistake of when in interviews, they think that as a manager that I'm hiring for the whole company. I'm not. I'm only hiring for that role. I'm not thinking about like jobs that might come down the pike, or you know, I'm really thinking about that role. So like show me you can do that particular role. And if you have other interests, that's awesome too. But like you still have to be interested in the particular role that we have. And then I guess the uh one other thing is just that people are interested in helping you and meeting up with you and doing informational interviews, but they don't want to spend as much time as you think they do, right? So, like if you ask someone to chat with you, already do your research on everything that's already available online and think of the questions that they haven't answered online somewhere, and then ask them for like a 15-minute Zoom.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Yes, okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Yes. Don't ask them for a coffee. They don't want to do coffee with you, they already have a job. You know?

SPEAKER_00 38:49

I love it. It's brutal, but true, Delaney.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

And then just yeah, make it really short and sweet, get to like what you want, and then make it really easy for them to do what you want. So, like, write write the email you want them to write. Like, here's draft text that I'd like you to send this person to the interview. Just make it really easy for people to do it because they their priority is not you get getting a job. Your priority should be that you should make it easy for them. And another thing that I've noticed with job seekers that trust drives me crazy is they'll they'll like try to set up a time and they won't send you the calendar invite. It's like you're the one asking for the meeting. You need to make it super simple so that it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Like, send the calendar invite, send the follow-up email, and send send me, send me like the readout of the meeting of like what the all the things you want me to do.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Yeah. It's those things, but I think it's really helpful that you've spelt them out because it's not about being more important or anything like that. It's just also a sign of respect and like attitude for this person taking their time when, as you say, like they're they have a job because they're trying to help you and they would like to help you, but you know, there's also there's also some limits to that. No one, you have been so tangible and concrete. I think you will find this incredibly interesting. Thank you for being so generous and open with your time and with your your experience. I'm really glad you could join us.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Well, thank you for including me. It's always really fun to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Thank you.