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What kinds of activities were you involved in while
you were at Stanford? Did you join clubs or student organizations? What
did you study? What were your favorite classes?
At Stanford, I
majored in Public Policy with a concentration in health care issues. I
also did the Honors Program in Ethics in Society. In terms of
extracurricular activities, I was very involved in the Stanford AIDS
Education Project and the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community
Center. I also participated in activist
campaigns with the Stanford Homelessness Action Coalition (SHAC), The
Coalition for Dignity and Justice at Webb Ranch (a labor activism
coalition), and a few other more ad hoc activist groups. Philosophy
classes taught me to write -- they were the most interesting, and the most
useful for my post-college career.
When
you first started at Stanford, did you have any thoughts about your
career plans? If so, what we?e
those thoughts?
I'm pretty easygoing, so when
I first started at Stanford, the only restrictions I put on myself were
that I should avoid natural science, medicine, law, business, language,
literature, computers, and math. Easy enough...
Did those initial ideas change or evolve while you
were at Stanford?
I took classes
that I thought would help me add tools to my armamentarium as an activist
-- specifically as an AIDS activist. It seemed like coincidence at the
time (but it's pretty logical in retrospect) that those classes happened
to be prerequisites for the Public Policy program.
What
did you do with your summers? Did you work? Did you have any interesting
experiences? How did you find those experiences?
I worked on campus my first summer
-- a minimum wage, no tips, pantyhose nightmare. After that, I used
resources at the Careers center and the Public Service center to find
jobs/internships in my field of interest. My most interesting summer
experience was an internship at a Washington,
DC health policy
think-tank. They had a big single project they thought would take me all
summer to finish -- at the end of the second week, I figured out that a
big DC nonprofit had already completed that project earlier in the year.
The think-tank, ironically, couldn't think up anything else for me to do,
so I spent the rest of my summer hanging out at the office and helping to
start a Washington
chapter of the Lesbian Avengers. The staff at the think-tank ended up
getting weirdly obsessed with the Avengers and helping with our press
releases.
What
was your first job after graduation and what did you have to do to find
it?
I was lucky enough to get a
John Gardner Public Service Fellowship, which paid me a stipend to work
at a government or nonprofit agency for a year. I knew I wanted to work
on AIDS issues in San Francisco,
and I had several informational interviews with prospective agencies
until I found the right fit. I ended up at the AIDS Legal Referral Panel
working in their Public Policy department with Eileen Hansen.
What
did you do at your first job? Was it what you expected?
At ALRP, I was part of a
two-person public policy department -- which meant that I had to learn a
little of everything. The experience was invaluable. I lobbied, testified
at the state Legislature, wrote position papers and reports and fact
sheets, did community organizing, gave bad speeches, labored over press
releases, advocated with state agencies, and generally worked my tail
off. In that kind of hothouse environment, whether or not you have
respect for the person you work for can make or break the experience. I
was lucky enough to work with a mentor for whom I had (and have) great
respect.
How did your career evolve after that? How did your
experiences lead to other opportunities?
While I was
still at ALRP, I applied for and won Marshall
and Rhodes scholarships. I did my
doctorate in Politics at Oxford
as a Rhodes Scholar -- my choice of dissertation topic was influenced by
the policy work I did at ALRP on prison issues. I moved to New England
after Oxford
and have become an independent advocate and consultant on HIV/AIDS in
prisons.
What skills/experiences from college were most
important in your career development?
Learning to
analyze information intensely, to build and make convincing arguments,
and to document sources. If you can do those three things well, I've
found that you have a disarmingly large advantage in the world of
advocacy. In addition, doing an honors thesis forced me get over that
near-universal Stanford feeling of being a fraud ("Everyone belongs
here but me -- how did I sneak in under the radar of the admissions
department?). Working on a major ongoing project with a thesis supervisor
is by necessity a 100% transparent process. By the time it was completed,
I had no doubt that the work was original, valuable, and the product of
my own solitary toil.
Can you provide a brief description of the work you
do and examples of typical task/projects.
I have two
parallel career tracks right now. In the first, I am an independent
advocate and consultant on HIV/AIDS in prison issues. I lead training's,
give speeches, and write articles, booklets, position papers, fact sheets
and curricula on this topic for a variety of non-profits and
publications. I also do political organizing, writing, and research on a
major multi-state campaign to overturn discriminatory HIV/AIDS policies
in state prisons. In my other career track, I'm a morning show host and
DJ on commercial radio.
Can you provide a brief chronology of your career -
probably the major projects or turning points?
1994 - AIDS
Legal Referral Panel -- San Francisco
1995 - Rhodes Scholarship -- Oxford
1999 - First radio job -- Massachusetts
2000 - Started HIV/AIDS in Prison consultancy -- National
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