Desirous to serve in a policy capacity in Washington, Monica Oberkofler Gorman began on that path, realizing only too soon that she really didn’t know how the real world worked. She left the dream behind and spent her career in industry, getting a broad look at trade and policy, which has now allowed an old dream to resurface. Find out how doing what’s right is ultimately good for others and good for yourself.
Guest Monica Oberkofler Gorman, Dartmouth '96, had been accepted at Yale Law School and had earned a scholarship to study in Oxford, but her heart lay in public service work in DC so after graduation she took the opportunity of a White House internship—ill-timed, perhaps, given her shared name with another intern at that moment. And although she loved DC, she felt that she needed to see more of how the world worked before she would feel comfortable helping to shape policy. She went to Oxford and get both a masters in politics and stayed for a PhD (turning down Yale in the process).
Knowing she still needed to learn more about the work of work, she hit the pavement looking for a job in industry and ultimately landed a communications role at Gap Inc, just as the clothing giant was under fire for labor practices. She was on the team to write the report that became the model for the entire apparel industry and introduced her to global supply chain, international commerce, and corporate social responsibility. She remained in that world, next at American Eagle and then for New Balance, her entire career. That is, until a new opportunity arose to meld her years of experience and a life-long dream.
In this episode, find out from Monica how how doing what’s right is ultimately good for others and good for yourself on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Monica Gorman is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the manufacturing portfolio in the Biden Administration. Previously, she was the Vice President of Responsible Leadership and Compliance at New Balance and held roles in corporate social responsibility at American Eagle and Gap, Inc. She is a former Clinton-era White House intern.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Editor: Worth Rowley Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Monica Oberkofler Gorman: I remember distinctly—I've talked about this in job interviews since—a moment, sitting in a conference room with a general counsel and me. And I'm this brand new little manager and the general counsel’s pounding the table and says, how can you tell me we're not going to get sued if we say this information? Like if we disclose this, we might get sued? And I said, you know, I don't know, but I do think it's the right thing to do.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Desirous to serve in a policy capacity in Washington, Monica Oberkofler Gorman began on that path, realizing only too soon that she really didn’t know how the real world worked. She left the dream behind and spent her career in industry, getting a broad look at trade and policy, which has now allowed an old dream to resurface. Find out how doing what’s right is ultimately good for others and good for yourself...on today's ROADS TAKEN with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
I'm here today with Monica Oberkofler Gorman, and we're going to talk about helping organizations and whole countries understand what's right and what needs to be done and where responsibility lies personally and more socially. It's really great to have you here.
MG: Thanks. It's great to be here.
LJR: So, Monica, I start these conversations the same way every time, asking the same set of questions. And they are: when we were in college, who were you? Who would you say you were? And as we were leaving, who did you think you were going to become?
MG: You know, it's a great question. In college, I was involved in a lot of different things, student government, I had interned with President Friedman at the time, really enjoyed sort of being active within the college. Academics have been important to me, too. And so I really focused on those grades. And the thing was, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do afterwards. The consulting path, the corporate path didn't seem quite right to me. I had interned in the Senate the summer between junior and senior year. And then I had an internship in the White House right after. And I hoped that by taking three, maybe four months in Washington, I'd have some idea of what I wanted to do. I knew that I probably wanted grad school, but I had not applied it during our senior year. So I also knew that I had at least a year to figure things out. So yeah, so I went to the White House and interned ended up staying for six months. And during that time, I applied to law school, as well as to Oxford. I had actually won a scholarship towards the end of our senior year to go to Oxford and then one other one that summer. So that I knew that in the fall of 97, I was going to be either starting law school or going to Oxford or doing some combination, deferring law school to do that. But I had a year in between, so I spent six months on the White House. What I didn't know until about a year later was there was another intern named Monica in the Bill Clinton White House who became very famous. So that that was several months after I left, that all of that became public information.
LJR: I bet you got a phone call from journalists, didn’t you? I was there –
MG: I got multiple phone calls.
LJR: I bet you got many. I was there in 94 and was on the list of like young female interns and what did you know and what did you do? And..But my name wasn't Monica. So I bet you got more.
MG: But the best, because this was before the days of, like, instant news and internet. We had internet. But wasn't widely used. And I was in England at the time. And my brand new friends who I had just met were like, what is Monica's surname? Because they knew I had a funny surname.
LJR: Right right.
MG: Yeah so I actually ended up writing an Op Ed for the Boston Globe about that experience just because I mean, even to this day, if I'm introducing myself, I say my name is Monica and I'm a former White House intern. And that might be the only thing you remember about me, but I guarantee you’ll remember that.
LJR: That's right. That's right. So you had that six month experience. You had applied, you, as we know, obviously turned out to go to Oxford for politics, right?
MG: Yeah yeah, I had actually, I had applied to law school, as well. I had accepted at Yale and deferred for two years, planning to go do the masters. I will say in 97 until I left for Oxford in the fall, I sort of toiled in the shadows. It felt like I just needed to earn some money. So I spent seven months as a legal assistant for my uncle's law firm in Detroit, which was an interesting experience and definitely different from Washington. But the whole point was just to go earn some money to help support my graduate studies. And the initial plan had been to go to Oxford for two years, do the masters and then come back and go to Yale for law school. That also did not go as planned. I got to the end of the two years at Oxford and thought, you know, I don't know if I want to be a lawyer. A lot of folks from our class, a lot of friends had graduated law school. They were a year ahead of me because I take it that year off and were really unhappy working in big law firms. And I was listening to their stories going, I don't know if I want to do that. So after the two years, I finished the master's and Oxford offered me a scholarship that would pay for my doctorate. And so I wrote to Yale and said, I'm not going to come after all. And I stayed at Oxford to do the PHD, which sounds great in theory again. But my recommendation is don't do a PhD unless you really love what you're doing. And if you want to be an academic, which I discovered fairly early on, I did not. So I would say it's the longest marathon I've ever run. And I've run real marathons. But that doctorate by far was the longest thing I've ever done. I finished it. And most of the work was done in 2002. It was finalized in 2003. But yeah, it certainly was a learning experience to be wrestling with something and sort of the soul capacity. It's all on my shoulders. There's nobody walking me through it. But knowing that I felt like if I had left, if I walked away from it, I'd be a failure as what I felt like. So I did finish it. But I spent the last probably year trying to find somebody who would hire me. Because I knew I didn't want to be an academic. So trying to break into the corporate world. And it took quite a while to do that.
LJR: Well, Yeah. And while you're trying to write your dissertation.
MG: Yes Yeah.
LJR: It’s hard to do. So, when you were reaching out and trying to find somebody who would hire a very highly educated person that hadn't quite found her thing, how did you know where to look and who to ask?
MG: It's a great question. And as I talked to people coming out of college now and in grad school, I mean, I think I talked to everybody on my network. And I must have done hundreds of informational interviews with many, many large name firms. So, I mean, I one of my favorite ones was driving out to Chevron out in California. And they were talking to me about this global council they had where they would sort of wargame things that might happen in the world, and how it might impact Chevron's business. And I was like, wow, that's really cool. But of course, they're not going to hire somebody at my level to go do that. I talked to Citigroup. I mean I talked to the banks. I mean, I talked to just probably every industry. I got pretty far down the road at Bechtel as they were looking at bringing in liquefied natural gas terminals again onto the West coast. What finally happened, and it's kind of ironic, I had been interested in the apparel industry and sort of consumer brands. It's something we all know and experience. And again, I've been sort of thinking of wanting to live in San Francisco. And Gap is a big employer there. I did an informational with their head of communications who didn't have anything. But he said, you know, it's great to meet you, and, keep your resume on file. I had gotten that interview because I had been looking for an apartment and the woman who showed me the apartment. I ended up not renting from her worked at Gap. And so she said, I'll send your resume to the head of communications. And so that's how I got the informational. But so he held onto my resume. And some months later, I saw a job opening that I thought, you know, I really think I could be good at this. So he had actually put me in touch with the recruiter. I had spoken to a recruiter and she couldn't really tell me much. And so I emailed the recruiter when I saw this job opening and said, you know, I'd really like to apply for it. And she said, I don't know why you would go into fashion. Smart people don't go into the apparel industry. And I said, well, would you please pass my resume on? And she said, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. I didn't find out until months later, so, I mean, long story short, I applied, I got called for an interview from the hiring manager. I went through two interviews that still took them a long time to make a decision. Eventually, they made a decision. I was offered the job. I didn't find until after I got in that recruiter had never passed along my resume. She did not think I was right for the role. It was the VP of communications who had sent my resume down to the hiring manager who had decided to call me for the interview.
LJR: Oh, my goodness.
MG: And even then, the hiring manager, who's now a dear friend, she's gone on to other things. She's not one of my closest friends, but she was my first boss. It took six weeks after the second interview. I still hadn't heard from them. And so I said, you know what? The job involved a lot of writing. I'm going to write a letter to her that shows that I'm a good writer. It's going to be the best letter I've ever written. And I'm going to explain to her why I want this job Mind you, I was at a point where I was running out of money. I was going to have to move back home like I knew that I needed this job or I didn't know what was going to happen to my life. So I wrote the best letter I ever could. And the next day, she called me and said, you have the job. She told me months later, she said it was your letter that did it. You did not have experience. We had people with more experience, but I just felt like we wanted somebody with a different perspective. And so your letter made the decision for me, and that's why I hired you. And that is literally how I got into my corporate career.
LJR: Wow and what division was that in Gap? Because they're gigantic.
MG: They're huge. So this at the time, it was called Global Compliance. I mean, today, it would be global sustainability or corporate social responsibility. And I was specifically hired…so Gap at the time, folks, probably remember the late 90s, all the protests against sweatshops, the Seattle WTO. Gap was under huge pressure from sweatshop activists. They would have naked protesters in front of their stores, in front of their headquarters in San Francisco. The CEO was really tired of walking over naked people to get to work, and they had a shareholder resolution that they needed to publicly report on their problems. And so I was hired to write that report. And I came in. And in a sense, it was probably good that was somebody who didn't have any sort of preconceived ideas because I came in and basically played journalist for six months and traveled the world and visited what they were doing. I had a team of nearly 100 people focused on sweatshop issues, and they were doing a lot of great work. There were a lot of problems, but they were doing a lot of really good things about it. And so I said, OK, well, let's tell that story. Here's the problems we have and here's what we're doing about them. And I remember at the start of the academic and me was, well, let's just say what we do. I remember distinctly—I've talked about this in job interviews since—a moment, sitting in a conference room with a general counsel and me. And I'm this brand new little manager and the general counsel’s pounding the table and says, how can you tell me we're not going to get sued if we say this information? Like if we disclose this, we might get sued? And I said, you know, I don't know, but I do think it's the right thing to do. So we ended up publishing and the initial media reports at the time. I mean, now it doesn't mean much, but it ultimately generated about 80 million positive media impressions, which in the early 2000s was a lot. And the initial media reports came in and said Gap admit sweatshops. But as it the story evolved throughout the day, it really switched to here's what gap is doing to combat issues in its supply chain. And what's interesting is it sort of set off a whole new way of approaching these issues within the industry. So a year later, Nike published a similar report that had the exact same data charts that we had created in our report. And literally, I had sat in a cubicle with one of the guys on the team and created those charts. Reebok published a couple of years later, a very similar report that actually plagiarized some of what we had written, literally took word for word some of the things that we had done. Walmart published it and it sort of became the norm in the 2000s after that report was published as to what others in the industry would do. So, I mean, this is kind of a funny story. And that's what launched my career from I went from writing about it to moving into more strategic planning, strategic roles and then ultimately to other companies running their departments. But, yeah, it's kind of a crazy story how I got into it.
LJR: So did your time intersect with Darryl Knudsen? We just talked to him.
MG: Yes. Yeah so very funny story. I had started at Gap. Three weeks after I started, this guy Sean Ansett who was hiring for this other role, which, by the way, that role was open. There were two job openings at this time. And Sean Ansett comes to me and says do you know this guy and puts Darryl’s resume in front of me. And I'm like, Darryl, we were on our FSP together in Germany. And yes. So Darryl started a few weeks after I did at Gap.
LJR: Oh, my gosh, that's so funny. Well, if listeners have not listened to that episode, they should go because he talks about being in the trenches there at that early time, too. So I'm going to let you leave Gap, though. And let's talk about your decision to leave Gap, how that came about and where that ultimately kind of stair stepping has taken you.
MG: So I had been at Gap that was coming up on five years. And I was getting a little bit antsy and Gap as a huge company. It was a huge team. And I really I was in the strategic planning and communications side of it, but I really wanted to run something and manage, sort of see if I could actually be more of the boss as opposed to advising the boss. So I had gotten a call from American Eagle outfitters, a $3 billion company, as opposed to Gap, which was $16 million at the time. But they were looking for somebody to come run their responsibility program and somebody to run their trade compliance program. And going back to my internship days in DC, I always had an interest in policy and trade and in the responsibility space. You see a lot about trade and how trade creates or creates and ebbs and flows and supply chains and the issues that creates, too, and globalization. So this was an opportunity not only to help to build up their team, but also to learn more about the trade side. So in I accepted the job offer in 2008, literally got married, accepted a job and moved all in a span of a couple of months, and then initially moved to Pittsburgh, where their headquarters were and then eventually to their New York office to build up that program, which was a tremendous learning experience, sort of being in charge this time. But I certainly credit a lot of the work at Gap and the down in the trenches that Darryl talked about with teaching me about how to do it. And the bosses that I had at Gap. I still got back to the role models that they set. It certainly set me up for success, trying not to build a program myself.
LJR: Yeah, which you did. And that was at a time where there was more recognition that this was necessary and kind of not a sideline or not a, you know, just a PR thing. Yeah, this was real. And so that then ultimately, after your stint there led you to where you've most recently been, right?
MG: Correct. So I was in New York. I was very happy at American Eagle. But my husband is an engineer and has always wanted to live in the Boston area. And this is a great place for engineers. They've got MIT, you've got all these startups. And so we had always had a sort of a deal that my job being slightly less portable than his if I found the place I wanted to work in Boston, that I would take it because that would get us to Boston. And funnily enough, in 2006, I was still at Gap. I had been looking at who's in Boston and had spoken to New Balance because they're a big, very well-known consumer brands here. And they didn't have anything at the time. But I spoke to this guy, Fran Allan, who's a Tuck alum and just sort of said, hey, I'm interested. Like, OK, nice conversation. Well, in 2011, I get a call out of the blue from a New Balance recruiter saying that their head of corporate responsibility has left and they're looking for somebody to run their program. So even though I was very happy to American Eagle, didn't really want to leave, I went home to my husband and said, should I talk to these guys? Because they're in Boston. They're one of the few companies in Boston. And it would certainly get us to Boston. And I would say I mean, certainly to young alums, or students listening to this. I mean, it's just an example of balancing a two-career household. Sort of balancing your professional ambitions with what you want in your personal life. That decision at the time was very much, both of those. It was it was very much a lateral move. It was not up. But I sort of said to myself, you know what, 1) career is not everything; 2) in five years, I'll probably be in the same place whether I stay at American Eagle or I go to New Balance if I do a good job. And this really gets us to Boston, which is something my husband really wants. It was, interestingly, an opportunity to work at a privately held company as opposed to publicly held, which has certainly expanded my experience in the corporate world. And for that I'm grateful. I never imagined I'd be at New Balance nine years. It's now literally just come up on nine years. And it's been a tremendous ride. I spent the first couple of years toiling in the trenches of New Balance. There were a lot of basics that they didn't have any place that we really had to start from scratch and build. And there were definitely times in those first couple of years, I thought, why on Earth did I leave American Eagle to come back and sort of go back to the basics again? But it's really evolved into an incredible experience here. And in addition to global supply chains, I run our trade policy now, building off that experience and American Eagle. Yeah, and our CEO sits on a cabinet level committee, it's called the advisory committee for trade policy negotiations, the ACTPN that directly advises the US trade representative and the secretary of commerce. And I'm the liaison for that. So it's I mean, it's really sort of launched the trade side of what I've always wanted to do it. New Balance also has a very strong commitment to US domestic manufacturing. And so I've learned a lot about how we manufacture in the US and how that can be done. The challenges of that as well. New Balance makes for the military. And so government procurement, I've learned about and that. Of course, we have a large global supply chain. And so it's really opened my eyes to another aspect of this industry. New Balance has a pretty large wholesale business in addition to retail and e-commerce. And I previously worked for vertical retailers, so I didn't know it when I took the job. And I certainly didn't know the first two years, I toiled in what felt like the shadows. But it's definitely opened up just my experience in ways I couldn't have ever dreamed.
LJR: Yeah. And we’re going to get back to that trade part and the global chain and things, but all of your experiences giving you different, you know, public/private lens, bigger, even bigger sizes, all kinds of dynamics. But you've also this is giving you an opportunity to see the world too. Talk a bit about that and what that's meant to you.
MG: Yeah, I mean, truly, one of the favorite parts of my career, my corporate career has been that I've had the privilege and the opportunity to travel to nearly 50 countries. I mean, I'll never forget my first trip to Asia landing in Hong Kong, and then going on into China, very eye opening. This was back in the early 2000s. At the time was my first time in Asia. But since then, I mean, I've become an old hand at going to Asia. I go multiple times a year. China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Africa. It's just, it's been such a privilege to not just visit these places, but really get to know people. I have a global team based in Asia. I'm as close to them as I am to my team in the United States. I mean, just to be able to be part of other cultures and walk the ground. And I don't know, it's just it's been such a privilege. It has certainly opened my eyes and my world in a way I could not have fathomed leaving Dartmouth. But I, I will be forever grateful for that. And it is always having friends literally around the world is going to color everything I do throughout my career and throughout my lifetime. Yeah so I couldn't be more grateful.
LJR: I want to kind of take you back to what you said earlier about telling the story and that journalistic route of how you began in this world that really paid off because I'm speaking to a 2020 Emmy nominee. Talk to me about that.
MG: Yeah so that was exciting. We never thought we would get nominated. So New Balance was a little bit late to the game in communications, being privately held. It's just it's something that we do in our own time as opposed to when Wall Street dictates to us. One of my learnings being in a private company. And so when we did communicate, we wanted to do it in our own distinct way. And we knew we needed some video content, but we didn't want to just sort of do your standard corporate responsibility video. And so we put our heads together and said, you know, New Balance really does lead with people first. And our team, really we feel that's what distinguishes us. It's really about the people who work in the factories. It's the people on our team. And it really is a people first story. So we crafted this video script, working with the film company. We had an agency, a film company, and then our marketing team also weighed in and just told the story of our I mean, this amazing guy on our team, Jamie, who leads our field team and just what his life is like every day. And he gets up, you see his family, but you see him, you see him riding through the streets of Vietnam. You see going to the factories. You see him talking to people. And it's really just all of the people along our supply chain. Really short video still on the website. And we were super proud of it. We did on a total shoestring. I mean, marketing budgets would laugh at us as to how cheap it was, but it's authentic and it's real. And we did not know that the film director put it in for the Emmys and then he called us up one day and says, hey, guess what? It's been nominated for an Emmy, which we didn't ultimately win. But given that this was our first foray into producing videos, we thought it was pretty, pretty exciting. And more, even more than that, just the short two minutes just helps people understand what we do and provide some visibility into the people who make our shoes and our clothes. And that was the whole goal in the beginning. So beginner's luck, but something that we were super excited about.
LJR: Yeah And that is you're right, a lot of what you do and think about and talk about is not talked about and is behind the scenes. And so really a lot of your work is talking to players and whether that be individuals or in some cases, entire countries. So you've had this opportunity to be involved in kind of representative work through commerce and that really has probably led you to what you are now able to talk about more publicly. So tell me where you're about to go.
MG: Yeah, so I mean, again, longstanding interest. And I would say more policy than politics. But going back to the DC days, I was reflecting on this recently. I did the two internships in DC and at the time sort of faced a choice. Do I stay in DC, at least till graduate school, come back after graduate school or do I do something else? And I just I had this gut feeling like early 20s of I feel like I need to know how the world works. I would like to come back to DC someday and be part of policymaking. But I also feel like I should know something about the world before I do that. And that came out of working on the Hill. The Hill, especially where there's a lot of really young legislative assistants who have not done anything else, and I decided I didn't want to be that. So I've always had this in the back of my mind. I wanted to go back to DC someday, but I didn't know what that was going to look like or how. And the farther you get out in, the more you build your career sometimes the more it seems just a pipe dream. But with the 2020 race, I had some contacts who were connected to the Biden campaign and thought for me, I really wanted to work on the campaign. Thought this was an important election. Did try my hand at fundraising and discovered that was not my calling in life. Oh, I'm definitely more a policy wonk that I'm a fundraiser, but just did what I could to help the campaign during a crazy year in 2020 with being a mom, with a small child working a job at home, but did what I could to help. And then as part of that, I had some other contacts in DC and said, you know, I'd love to serve in the administration, but obviously, I'm not a government person. I have not done that before. I just sort of made it known that I would be interested. But I didn't know what would happen. I literally got a call out of the blue in early January saying…Actually, it wasn't a call. It was a text that came through as I was putting my daughter to bed saying, we would like you to interview tomorrow. It was at about 10 PM and they had sent an email, but it had gone to my junk folder, so I hadn't seen it. So I had an interview the next morning. I had another interview that got scheduled soon after that. And then I didn't hear anything, but I noticed I was getting all these new pings on my LinkedIn profile. I thought, well, gee, somebody knows my name because they were coming from inside the government. And then the following weekend, I got an email from the campaign saying, we would like to hire you as deputy assistant secretary of commerce for the manufacturing portfolio. And so, yeah, so that is going to be my next adventure. I will be, as I understand it, I will be essentially in charge of manufacturing policy for commerce. I've been told the reason I've been asked to do this job is I come in with industry experience. I have walked factory floors. I've walked factory floors, goodness. And more than 40 countries around the world. And I’ve walked factory floors right here in the United States. I know what it takes to for US manufacturing. I have sat on an Association Board around the U.S. for manufacturing. But I also know what it takes to build factories outside. I understand global supply chains. I also understand domestic supply chains. And I sort of the pitfalls and all of those. And clearly, manufacturing is a key priority for this new administration. How do we let's see, how do we reinvigorate American manufacturing and what does that look like? That's not going to be a return to the 1950s, but that certainly there's a ton of opportunity in what the future of manufacturing in advanced manufacturing looks like. And so I'm hoping I can bring that knowledge and that experience that I've built up in industry and knowing how supply chains work to bring it to bear for policy as the new administration gets going.
LJR: Yeah, that is so exciting, and yet. I heard you earlier in the conversation, although you didn't make the decision for, quote, advancement, you were aware, like, OK, I'm looking at a lateral position. This is what it means, and this is what's going to happen in a few years. And where I am. This seems to be there's no way you can know what would happen after this. And I think you have said, this is such an important time in our country, right? That I'm hearing that you're living for today with that. What does that feel like? It probably hasn't been like that for a while.
MG: Yeah, this. This is a leap of faith. This is also the realization of a dream. So this is something I've been wanting to do since my early 20s. That conscious decision, I'm going to leave Washington. I'm going to figure out how the world works. I mean, I didn't really know what I was doing as my early 20s, but it just hit me that this is the realization of that dream and that decision that I made in my 20s. I would like to see if I can help. I am bringing an expertise that, from what I've heard, sort of talking to folks who know more about government than I do, isn't all that common within government. I know how industry works. I know how supply chains work. So I want to see if I can help advance our nation's economic objectives by bringing that experience to bear. I don't know where it will go from here. Again, this is I would like to serve my country, so I hope that I can do some good in the same way that with corporations, the guiding light has been, how do we help corporations do more good? And I'm a firm believer that corporations are big, important actors. And so there is a responsibility there. And I've built a career doing that. Similarly, I would now like to help the United States government do that. How do we do more good for the people of our country? How do we be that shining city on a hill, shining light on a hill for the rest of the world? So let's see where this goes. I don't expect to be in government forever, but I certainly want to see if I can do some good through this.
LJR: Well, Monica, you have done so much good. And you have helped others do so much good, that I have no question that you will continue to do that. And do that on behalf of our country. And I'm really proud of that. And so thank you so much for your service and all the things that you're going to bring to this role. I'm sure it's going to be exciting and we'll want to hear about it. Thank you so much.
MG: Thank you so much.
LJR: That was Monica Gorman, formerly the Vice President of Responsible Leadership and Compliance at New Balance, but as of the airing of this podcast the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the manufacturing portfolio in the Biden Administration. She is a former White House intern. For more stories like Monica’s, a little meandering but leading to where she’s supposed to be right now, visit RoadsTakenShow.com or join me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on the next episodes of Roads Taken.