The son of two state department parents, Mark Griffin knew that public service was in his blood but also recognized he'd become accustomed to variety. Worried a career in law might pigeon-hole him, he actually stumbled into a career that has kept him interested and involved in lots of things. Find out how keeping your thinking broad and following connections ultimately helps you find your way.
Guest Mark Griffin, Dartmouth '96, had two parents in the state department so had been used to lots of moves before boarding school in Austria. The promise of mountains and persuasive literature sealed the deal for Dartmouth. He loved the intellectual freedom the college afforded and he stumbled into philosophy to round out his genetic propensity toward government. Although he knew that public service was in his blood, he worried that the typical law career might pigeon-hole him. He read about applied policy and public administration and continued on for his masters before law school.
After a couple of shorter lived experiences in the law, including in a public defender’s office, Mark stumbled again, this time into an area he’d known nothing about—campaign finance—and has made a career out of it.
In this episode, find out from Mark how keeping your thinking broad and following connections ultimately helps you find your way on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Mark Griffin is Associate Counsel at the New York City Campaign Finance Board, where he has worked in a number of capacities for almost two decades. His career focus has been on political and administrative law, regulatory compliance and policy implementation. Mark keeps stumbling into good things.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Mark Griffin: There's this image presented that everybody always has everything worked out, this plan, and then A to B, B to C, and it seems to me that real life is a lot more random. And I don't mean that as a copout or in a pejorative sense, but a lot less linear and a lot more ambiguous.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: The son of two state department parents, Mark Griffin knew that public service was in his blood but also recognized he'd become accustomed to variety. Worried a career in law might pigeon-hole him, he actually stumbled into a career that has kept him interested and involved in lots of things. Find out how keeping your thinking broad and following connections ultimately helps you find your way on today's Roads Taken, with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
I'm here today with Marc Griffin, and we are going to talk about taking a path and seeing where it leads us. So, Mark, welcome to the podcast.
MG: Hey, Leslie, Thanks for having me.
LJR: Sure. So I start this the same way every time. And it's the same two questions. And the questions are, when we were in college, who were you. And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
MG: Lord, who was when I came to college, I was a guy who well, let me provide, I guess, a little background without going too far back. My parents worked for the State Department. So before Dartmouth, I'd only spent four years in the states, in the DC burbs and Maryland. And I came to Dartmouth straight out of boarding school in Austria. And I kind of applied to Dartmouth without ever visiting the campus site, early action or whatever it was, it doesn't exist any longer anyway.
LJR: There's mountains.
MG: Mountains, Good. The brochure look good. Yeah, perhaps not the best way to go through life, but yeah, it worked out. This is kind of a recurring theme, I guess. So I came and I kind of was perhaps a bit wide-eyed and kind of thinking, I'll do this, I'll do that. But definitely unfocused, unlike a lot of the other, you know, our classmates. I definitely did not have some grand vision, shall we say, but at least that's what it came across to me at the time. Right so I kind of just popped up. Was this dude going through a little bit of culture shock, coming back to the states, et cetera in this place? But it reminded me a bit of boarding school, but with a lot more freedom. And I loved the intellectual freedom. It was, I kind of stumbled into my double majors of government while my parents being with State Department government interested me political science. But then I stumbled into philosophy because back then we had the first year writing requirement and the only thing that was available was a writing course on Descartes. And that actually worked out and turned me on to philosophy. So you could say I was, perhaps inadvertently, on a quest of discovery. What's that? Yeah, we're OK, but not necessarily conscious of it.
LJR: Right, right, right. And so you took advantage of this, you know, almost serendipitous, leading you into philosophy, cobbled this double major and we, still you had to leave. It wasn't going to be this intellectual nirvana forever. So in awe, as you were approaching the end, were you still in that “ I'm still searching for who I am and what I want” or were you crystalizing at least a first step notion of what that would be?
MGL: Oh, I'll be honest. I mean, crystalizing is such a polite term, right? At least certainly for anything going on. I mean, we were senior year kind of looking around, think, what the hell do I do now? And I looked into law, but a lot of the people who are, quote, prelaw at the time seemed a little more aggressive type than I am. Those who know me generally know that I'm not particularly type, you know, one of those. So I was looking around, and I came across, again, literature about programs and public policy, Public Admin. I thought, oh, applied political science. That sounds interesting. Let me apply to programs because I need marketable skills, Leslie, because with a government and philosophy double major, I had absolutely no idea what in the Sam Hill I would do out there in the world. Again, perhaps not the best way to proceed. So I applied to a variety of programs, ended up getting accepted at Cornell. Went there actually, again, a serendipitous choice, a small program, but an excellent education, and that is perhaps where certain things started to crystallize a little more. I realized that people making policy and dealing with policy often had law degrees. So after graduating there, toyed with the idea of law school, got a gig as a paralegal with Kirkland and Ellis, a large Chicago based law firm with their litigation house and worked with their office in DC, working on forced enslaved labor litigation stemming out of Second World War, which was its own little thing. And after about a year and a half there, got my ducks lined up, applied to law school, went to Michigan, which was a great experience, and then kind of fell into I mean, I've always been a public sector boy, so you could say that's who I am, if you will. Public servant ended up working in you, you know, starting off my real legal career in Western New York and Rochester at an intermediate appellate court as a staff attorney, then did a short gig as an assistant public defender, which was very educational, and then met my now wife there at a wedding. It was actually Shervyn's wedding. She was a bridesmaid. And the people who kind of connected us, if you will, was a bit of an embarrassing story, were Jeff Braciak ’96, his wife, Angela, and then David Villarama ’96. And I'll just say that he was drunk at the time. And despite his best matchmaking efforts, we ended up doing the long distance thing. She's originally from the city. We did the long distance thing for two years. And then had the discussion of where things are going. I ended up moving into her apartment, needed a gig and literally stumbled into campaign finance, which is what I've been doing since April 2008.
LJR: So you seem to have really good stumbling ability.
MG: Yes.
LJR: And stumbling into things that suit you. So how does one just stumble into campaign finance and then what does that look like?
MG: So I'd never heard of either campaign finance or the New York City Campaign Finance Board, but the job description looked interesting. A variety of work, which for attorneys is a kind of novel because often you get so specialized, you operate in a very narrow space. And sometimes to some extent, what you do is narrow. So I ended up interviewing, ended up getting the gig, and I've been with it since April ’08 which is a lot longer than I ever expected. Again, I didn't really have an expectation of staying, sticking with something or being in the space. And it's been interesting because I spent the first roughly 8 and 1/2 years doing enforcement mostly. And then since early 2017, I've been doing more policy focused work, which is great because that's kind of the area I'd like to be in: policy and providing more counseling advice rather than going to court. So, again, stumbling, I think. Yes looking back and kind of thinking about this more big picture, I would say some of the stumbling were simply due because due to the fact that I never had a mentor of any kind of professional mentor and getting older, I've realized the importance of that in terms of having somebody who's just outside who can at least say whether something sounds crazy or not. And I think some of it was also just getting education lined up and being able to get your foot in the door and do stuff. And be engaged, I mean, kind of going back to Dartmouth, the double major was very useful because what I found is especially dealing with things like policy and policy implementation. There are a lot of moving parts. And if you only look at things one way, you can lose sight of other things that can come into play. And then you can have an often their unexpected consequences, even if everybody has the best of intentions and you could set things in motion that you don't really want to. And I think you're worth going back to the philosophy major also. Being perhaps a little more open to questioning why things are done a certain way, and being more open to revisiting why and asking, well, this was set up a certain way. And it made sense back then. But are the reasons for that now still valid? I mean, is the environment, the same or if things fundamentally changed. And now this is more of a problem? So I think, you know, obviously, the world has changed radically since we graduated as well. I don't think any of us could have really conceived of this, so. But yeah, I think fortune, to some extent played a part in this, but also, you know, taking advantage of opportunities, the educational opportunities, networking at Dartmouth, making connections. I'm still in touch with a bunch of people from school, and some of my closest friends are obviously from those four years.
LJR: Yeah, so I just I'm going to, you know, play armchair psychoanalyst or something, but I'm wondering you didn't actually mention your life with your State Department parents. But it sounds like my guess is when I think of that an itinerant youth of, like, changing things frequently. And I'm wondering how your decision making process…like to go to law school. Many of us would think, OK, there's law school. And then there's a career in law that sounds very monolithic and one sided. And even you said, you know, you tend to specialize and then you're kind of stuck in that. So is there something in your past that makes you think about the way you've made decisions, maybe in light of that or.
MG: Probably probably…the system has changed with the state department, but when my parents were working, you know, you had a tour overseas and the normal tour was only two years, you could get it extended by another tour. But so it meant that the longest we stayed in one place was four years at a time. But usually we moved every two years. Now, that's changed because of financial reasons. I realized moving people every two years is perhaps not the best way. So now you're stuck for years where it is, wherever it is. It gave us the advantage of seeing a bunch of different living in a bunch of different places. But it also meant that year or so, I mean, when people ask me, what's my hometown, I don't actually feel that I have one. I mean, going home for me as a, it is kind of home is where the heart is, right, without sounding overly trite about it, but there's no geographic place where I say amen, hallelujah. I think it also made me a bit more willing to kind of relocate. I mean, I'd never heard of Rochester, New York, but I ended up working there for three years. And then I never intended to move to the New York City metropolitan area, simply because of the large population. I visited friends in NYC and Manhattan and enjoyed visiting, but always thought it was just too much humanity. But I know that sounds kind of crazy.
LJR: Well, you're up in the mountains. I'm envisioning and Maria Von Trapp.
MG: Yes yes. We…actually, a total tangent here, the house that they filmed, the sound of music and was within walking distance of our boarding school. It wasn't the real Von Trapp house, some hill in Diddi-wa-diddy. But I've come to realize that, you know, in real life, when you get out of school, et cetera, having everything, quote, planned out or figured out from the get go is not necessarily how most people operate or how it actually works out, people have plans and then, you know, chaos, I guess we'll just say, kind of throws some things in. It could be health. It could be kids could be meeting someone or it could be landing that gig that you didn't realize would resonate with you. And suddenly find yourself off somewhere, you know. Spooning with octopi in the ocean because you're saving them and you discover they're intelligent and, you know, this is what resonates with you. I will make one observation. I've been quite impressed by what Kelsey Graham has done with her conservation efforts over the years. And, my god, commitment. Amazing, quite in contrast to the guy who had no plan, ended up at a gig. Now going on 13 years, never envisioned that. So…
LJR: Yeah, but the thing is, she didn't have a plan either. And so we're a few dozen episodes into this podcast. And if there's one recurring theme, it's like either you have a plan that goes awry or you have a you don't have a plan. And and what we've all been thinking is everybody else had a plan and no, no we didn’t.
MG: No, which was, I guess, good. And I hope for the younger generation, perhaps they realize this, I think, and. I don't want to say popular culture, but more broadly, everything, you know, there's this image presented that everybody always has everything worked out, this plan, and then A to B, B to C, and it seems to me that real life is a lot more random. And I don't mean that as a copout or in a pejorative sense, but just less linear, a lot less linear. And a lot more ambiguous. I think ambiguity is what kind of strikes me, at this point. I'm happy that I'm in the space. I'm in. You know, like I said, I was fortunate to land a job where I could do a variety of work because for attorneys, again, you often get very specialized and it gets narrow. And that can I'm not saying that the work isn't complex, but emotionally it can become a bit of a rut because you feel that the wheel to some extent just keeps turning. And I've also had the fortune of ending up working with some having great coworkers. So I'd say one of the revelations that came to me, I used to think, well, if the work is great. I can handle anything, but the older, I get, the more I've discovered it's important that the people you work with are important. And that makes the difference between, you know, slogging through a tough week and wanting to say. To hell with this, you know, I can go golfing, fishing or binge whatever streaming service makes me happy or put together models. So, again, nothing particularly profound though or earth shattering, but I think that's been one awakening I did have over the last few years.
LJR: OK, “put together models”? Is that a thing? It didn't sound like it was just a pie in the sky. Say something. What’s this about?
MG: Oh, my wife, way back in the day, used to put together models. I've got no skills. Nobody who knows me knows…I've got I have zero zero skills. I mean, I did love the jewelry workshop. And I admire the three workshops at the Hope: the jewelry workshop, the wood shop, and the costume shop. And I got no skills. I’d pretty much die in any frontier town. Yeah.
LJR: You're there in the Metroplex. You’ll be all right. So you said that you'd like to do more policy. Are there other ambitions that you have now or are you kind of in this philosophical state of mind like what will be and I'm going to ride it out?
MG: Oh, I mean, I'm fortunate enough to be in a pension system, so I'm keeping one eye on that, especially given, shall we say, some of the lack of stability in the world that we've seen in the last decade or so. So I'd like to have that little thing because I have no idea what the future looks like. But I think down the line I want to pivot roles to something a little more involved with strategic level decision making. I don't, I'm not particularly interested in being the head cheese, but I'd like to influence the decision making, especially for mission-oriented entities. I'm not in it for the profit. I want to work for an outfit that's got a very specific mission, you know, could be related to public health or resilience, you know, to environmental change, things like that, or even democracy, civil society, because I think there, I think what we more recently saw in January to me is symptomatic of a much bigger problem, a lack of civic engagement, but also grotesque failure of civic education across the board that goes back decades, just decades. I mean, finger pointing is easy, but when people don't understand how things work and kind of working in the campaign finance and election space, I am aware that this is a huge just a huge problem. I think it's critical that people understand how the mechanics of elections work, the logistics, all of those horrible details, because it is almost a logistical exercise and people don't realize that. And also how government works, people often literally don't know what the structure of the local government is or their state government or regional government if we want to be international, and don't understand where to go if they need help or that help for certain things, services are available. And I think this is just a grotesque failure, especially since we're in the information age.
LJR: Yeah, so well, that sounds like a way you can certainly add some strategic thinking where it's needed. So I think this is it's been a great road to hear how you've stumbled. It doesn't sound like a stumble from those who are watching it from afar, but stumbles take you forward anyway, right?
MG: Yes, I guess I'm the stumbler, if you will, the fortuous stumbler.
LJR: Well, we're glad you're one of us. And that it's worked out for you so far. Mark, Thanks so much for sharing your journey with us.
MG: Thank you, Leslie.
LJR: That was Mark Griffin, Associate Counsel at the New York City Campaign Finance Board. His career focus has been on political and administrative law, regulatory compliance and policy implementation. Mark keeps stumbling into good things and we hope you've enjoyed stumbling onto our classmates' stories. To make sure you don't miss any, please subscribe at Roads Taken Show.com or wherever you find your podcasts. And join me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, for the next episodes of Roads Taken.