Brad Briner ’99
On this episode, North Carolina State Treasurer Brad Briner ’99 shares about his new role managing the state’s financial assets. He offers insights into how North Carolina’s financial processes compare to other states; the importance of strategizing long-term fiscal stewardship; and his leadership approach for the department’s 400-person team. The conversation, hosted by Stella Smolowitz ’26, also explores his take on healthcare spending and what went into choosing the coverage plan for over 750,000 state employees. Brad assumed office in January 2025.
The alumnus also discusses how his experiences as a Morehead-Cain Scholar led him to his career in finance and public service, and how young people can make an impact in both the private and public sectors.
Music credits
The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.
How to listen
On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on social media @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.
Episode Transcription
(Stella)
Brad, thank you so much for being here today.
(Brad)
Pleasure.
(Stella)
You began your term this January. How have your first couple of months in office been, and has anything surprised you?
(Brad)
Sure. Thanks for having me. It’s really a pleasure to be here. I walk past the Foundation with some regularity, but I don’toften come in, so it’s a pleasure to be in the Foundation. I started January 1, so I don’t know why we swear people in onJanuary 1 in the state of North Carolina, but we do. It makes for tough holiday vacations. I’m about day 60 or so into office. I think when you run for office, you have a great sense for the big things that you’ll face. It’s the little things that sneak up on you. Whether those are incremental responsibilities or small pieces of the job that happen to require a lot of attention, those have been the surprises. The one big one is that the treasurer’s department has not historically been involved in lending, and they asked us to get involved in helping with some lending out in the western part of the state in recovery from Helene. That has been a big effort that I had no idea I was going to get myself into, in part because it didn’tpass into law until December, well after I ran for office.
(Stella)
What were your thoughts on campaigning for public office? What was that process like before even January? I’m sure that started way before.
(Brad)
Way before. So, the filing deadline was December 15, 2023. I was at it for almost eleven months. I think people forget, A, how big this state is, and B, how diverse this state is. No matter where you live, you spend a lot of time there, and you may not get to other counties, towns, and big cities if it’s the inverse. So, you’re reminded of that over and over again. One. Two, I think people who are not overly politically involved or deeply cynical about politics, and there are some good reasons for that, are, in fact, coming from a good place. They really want to see this country get better. I obviously ran as a Republican. I suspect that’s true on the Democratic side, too. I can’t imagine it’s not. You’re reminded of that every time you interact with people that there’s an earnest belief in the power and promise of this country, and it’s really refreshing.
(Stella)
I love that. I think it would be great to start from the beginning of your journey and work our way up to your current position. Starting with your time at Carolina, even before Carolina, actually, you’re originally from Dallas. Why choose Carolina?
(Brad)
Sure. Sure. I went from Dallas to boarding school in New Hampshire. I had considered Duke and UNC as a senior in high school. I was honestly not very impressed with UNC when I first was here. I had a terrible tour guide who, with a group full of out-of-state students, was insistent on describing in detail how she’d never left the state of North Carolina and never wanted to. That was not a great first impression, but it obviously got better from there. I was invited to Finals Weekend through the automatic nomination at that time through my school in New Hampshire and fell in love with the place. It helped that it was February, and down here, it was like today: sunny and beautiful. It probably is in New Hampshire today, but it was snowing sideways in the twenties. That was a not insignificant factor, but there are, of course, many others. Coming here was a natural halfway home, but not all the way. Then everything grew from there. From undergrad at UNC, I went to work for UNC. Managing their money was what put me on the path today.
(Stella)
I love that. More about your time as a Morehead-Cain Scholar. You said that managing UNC’s money put you on the path you are today. Is there anything from your time as a scholar that shaped your perspective on public service or maybe ledto the position, you’re in today?
(Brad)
Sure. The summer programs the Foundation provided at the time, and I suspect still does, were really foundational in why I chose the Morehead Scholarship in the first place. Excuse me, Morehead-Cain, I’m a little older. Still have never quite gotten that right. And for me, working at Goldman Sachs was a big one. I spent the summer of 1997 there. For those who study financial history, the summer of 1997 was fairly eventful with the Asian financial crisis and some other things that went on there. I knew from the get-go that I wanted to be in finance and investments. So that’s not really what I learned at Goldman. What I learned there is all the different ways to be involved and all the detail behind where you want to go and why in your career. The other story I’ll tell from that summer, which actually has a big bearing on why I ran for office in the first place, is we were at the office late one night, and this was the very early days of the internet, so news wasn’t exactly real-time at that time. We got a notification that there had been a plane crash. I was sitting with the airline analyst and his analyst, and he mentioned that the first thing that crossed his mind when he heard there was a plane crash was to ask who the manufacturer of the plane was.
Not how many people died, not where, but really what company was going to be affected by it. And that was and is pretty disturbing when you think about it. We all have skills that we’re blessed with, and you have to ask yourself the question, how are you using them? And that was the first moment that I thought, “Well, maybe he’s not using his skills exactly right.” If that’s the first thing he thinks about, humanity as well, which company’s stock is going to be down tomorrow?
(Stella)
And what summer was that? What year was that between?
(Brad)
That was between sophomore and junior year.
(Stella)
Got it.
(Brad)
Then after your time at Carolina, you must have loved it a lot, since that first bad tour, and you chose to work on UNC’s Board of Trustees. What do you feel like you accomplished on that board?
(Brad)
I joked that I was there for a cup of coffee. So, not a lot, honestly. I was there for fourteen months. So, it was a very shorttenure. There are a number of trustees, there are fifteen. I think that I did have my fingerprints on some things, but in the end, it is a group of fifteen who need to act together. During that tenure, we did have a chancellor change, a chancellor search. So that was the most consequential thing that happened during that period of time. There were other endeavors that had been put in place in advance of my joining the board of trustees, including the School of Civic Life and Leadership, which I think is an important contribution to Carolina and how it’s evolving. Those were the two big things, but it was a very short period of time. One of my biggest regrets of running for office is that I can’t continually serve on the board of trustees as a result.
(Stella)
And then currently, in the student body now, the board of trustees is a little bit controversial, especially with our current political climate. What do you hope to convey to students about the purpose of the board and its impact on Carolina and why is it really important?
(Brad)
I suspect the board of trustees is, was, and always will be controversial for the students. That’s not new. When I was an undergrad, there were protests with the board of trustees around tuition increases. I suspect the political affiliations were different at that time. It is a governing board, and governing boards have to make decisions that will not uniformly be popular. That is not new. The board of trustees has evolved a little bit, in part, in its relationship to the board of governors in our system, and I don’t think that’s particularly well understood. The vast majority of power in the UNC system sits with the board of governors. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is run by the chancellor. The board oftrustees s has certain powers to approve who the Chancellor is and some other actions of it. But what you find yourself as a board of trustees member is often caught between the board of governors, who has most of the power, and the Chancellor, who runs the school. You are much more an advisory board than you are a governing board, which is frustrating at times. What I’d ask people to hear from that is that the board of trustees has the institution’s best interests in mind, but the number of levers of power that it actually has are very few.
(Stella)
Is there a time when you experienced that frustration on the board? Or what are the responsibilities, other than advising? What are some things the trustees would advise on, or you advised on when you were on the board?
(Brad)
So, there’s the business operations in the university, and for me, that’s very much in my wheelhouse. So, I got involved in that in a reasonably deep way, and the finances in the university and how we run it. But that, again, much more as an advisor. We have a wonderful CFO here at the university, which I suspect ten students in total could even name. That’s the nature of things in the business operations of the university. So, getting involved in that and thinking about our long-term plan for how revenue is brought in, the mix of that revenue, and the expenses associated with that, those are interesting topics to me. And so, I was able to get a bit involved in those, but I recognize those are probably not for everybody.
(Stella)
Well, you’ve talked a lot about your interest in finance and how you are drawn to those opportunities with finance. And you said you already knew you wanted to work in finance before going to Goldman Sachs. When was that moment in your life when you decided to work in finance? Or what sparked that interest? Because I agree, that’s not something that most people think they want to work in.
(Brad)
No, it’s not. I joke that I’m the world’s worst business school speaker because you’re always asked for career advice and how you developed your interest in whatever you ended up in. And usually, people have a great story. I don’t. I’ve literallyalways been interested in this. So, the moment that it really was poignant for me was when I was 10 years old and the stock market had crashed. My dad was an investor at the time. He had lost his job before that, and so it was a nice comeback story, but not that day. My mom picked us up from school. She worked at the school and said, “Hey, we’re not going home for dinner. We’re going out to dinner.” We never went out for dinner. That’s when I knew something was wrong. She educated us at the time, the market crashed, and here’s what that means, and here’s why your dad is mad, and all those things. To me, it made it powerful and poignant in a familial sense—this matters to people. It’s not just numbers on a screen. I always was interested in math, but then I really understood how important finance is to everybody’s life, and I’ve never lost that interest.
(Stella)
Very cool. I love that. You do have a story. Technically, you do have a story.
(Brad)
It’s not very good advice, though.
(Stella)
No, it’s great. Did that story contribute to why you wanted to run for treasurer, or is there another reason?
(Brad)
When you are blessed in life, you develop choices. Over time, that happened to me. The old adage about needing to feedyour family becomes a little less true. I think others in my age group are well past that conversation. Then it becomes about, are you satisfied with who you’re working with and for? At a moment, at the end of 2021, I was running an organization of over 100 people and many billions of dollars under management. We had a great year. I went in to see the guy I was working for, and I needed him to tell me so I could pass it on to my team. I said, “Hey, here’s how much money we made for you this year. Here’s how that compares to other people.” And he looks at me sincerely and says, “What am I going to do with all that money?” It was the wrong response in that it started me down a path of thinking, “Well, what is he going to do with all that money? And does it matter? Does it matter to him? And is the work I’m doing important to even the person I work for, let alone the world?”
(Brad)
And that led me down the path towards really seriously considering running for treasurer. It’s something I’ve always been fascinated with, back to the finance interest. So, it was a natural blending of those two things over time.
(Stella)
That makes sense. I think that insight of “Am I satisfied with what I’m doing?” is not something that a lot of people would think. I think a lot of people would feel like they’re feeding their family in a really stable job and maybe not have that thought across their mind. I tend to see that more with Morehead-Cain Scholars, that thought of, “Oh, am I satisfied? Am I doing something for the greater good?” Is there any something that you could point to of why you think you have that leadership quality?
(Brad)
I think it all begins with knowing you’re blessed. I think many times people aren’t always conscious of the blessings they’ve received and how they’ve received them. It begins there, of saying, “I don’t deserve everything I have.” I was blessed in many ways by my parents, by the Morehead-Cain Scholarship, by many other things. A debt is how I wake up in the morning thinking every day. And then it becomes, can you pay that debt? And how? So, for me, the skills that I love to employ happen to be valuable to the state. And the nice, harmonious matching of those two things is what led me on a path that I think makes sense for me.
Making that advice that’s more broad is hard because it is always facts and circumstances dictated. First, you have to be able to step back and have the capacity financially to do that and say, “I want to sacrifice.” Then you’ve got to find something that is worth making that sacrifice for. I think you get to a really great place for public service in the long run.
(Stella)
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. Sure. Moving into your day-to-day role now as the North Carolina Treasurer. I actually had to look up exactly what the role was. Just to tell listeners what your responsibilities include, I see that you manage and distribute state funds, invest and manage the state’s pension fund, manage and select the health plan for the employees, provide financial support to local governments, manage unclaimed property, and even more. And that sounds like a lot of responsibilities. So, what would you say is your typical day in office?
(Brad)
Well, that’s one of the things I love about it, is there’s no really such thing. I’ve got six, so these are seven different core responsibilities, and so every day, one of those takes up more time than others for different reasons. In the end, the common theme is this: For those who speak accounting, I manage the state’s balance sheet. For those who maybe are less inclined, I’m the financial advisor for the state. So, we’re not the accountant. We don’t collect the revenue. We don’t set income tax policy. But the assets of the state and the debts of the state,that’s what we do.
So, we touch a number of different areas as you think about that. We manage in total just a little shy of a quarter trillion dollars. I am well aware and conscious every day I walk in the office how many great people work at the Department of State Treasurer. There’s 463 of us. It might be a plus or minus one. It’s a lot of people. So, we move around. And they’reall specialists in different things, different parts of the list you just articulated. Everything from the small, unclaimed property, which is a couple of billion dollars. Any time you’ve left a deposit with a company, it gets turned over to us eventually. I encourage anyone listening to go to nccash.com. It’s a little bit of a commercial, but we probably have some of your money. We’d love to send it back to you.
To the big, which is the state pension fund. It’s $130 billion. So, managing large pools of capital like that is what I’vealways done in my career. So that’s the most comfortable responsibility for me of all those. And the most challenging one is we’re a self-insured health insurance company as well for 760,000 state employees and their beneficiaries. So that’s a lot of people. There’s just about 11 million in the state. So, we manage money for a lot of them, and in a really importantway that affects their lives.
(Stella)
Is there one specific issue that you’re particularly passionate about addressing in your tenure?
(Brad)
The one issue that, if we can solve, unlocks so many other solutions is the investment performance of the state. On our $130 billion, we are ranked forty-ninth or fiftieth out of the states in investment performance over medium- and long-term periods. And for me, that is a huge challenge that has real benefit for our state. That’s one-to-two-percent-a-year difference, times $130 billion every year. Our total state budget is $30 billion.
So, if we do our job right, we should have another one and a half billion or so that we don’t need from the state budget. Imagine the difference we can make with a billion and a half a year out of state coffers. It doesn’t matter your political affiliation, I think you’d find a good use for that. No matter the farthest left, the farthest right, that’s the General Assembly’s prerogative. I’m just trying to get that money back to the state.
That is a big focus. We’ve got a big legislative push to change some things about statutorily how we govern it, which is probably a little more dry than this podcast calls for. But that’s something I’m very passionate about, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to socialize in front of the legislature already.
(Stella)
Well, that sounds pretty amazing, to increase the money by that much. Is there a reason that we are the 49th or 50th? What are the barriers to being able to do that? It seems like someone of any political affiliation would want to increase our state budget and allow that.
(Brad)
Sure. As with any higher return, there’s high risk. And that’s the conversation, what’s the appropriate level of risk? Most people think of pensions as reasonably short-duration assets. And by that, I mean we need all the money tomorrow to pay our pensioners because they’re older and they need it. That’s not really how pensions work.
Pensions are some of the longest-lived creatures around. So, I always tell the story: the Civil War era pension closed in 1865 to new members. The last check out of that pension system was sent in 2021.
(Stella)
Wow.
(Brad)
It takes 100-plus years to close a pension plan. If you wanted to close it. We do not want to do that. ur pension plan is open to new members, and we think it’s a really valuable benefit. So, these things exist for a very long time. And that means you need to invest the assets across a long-time scale. We have been taking a short-term approach. We have been scared of market drawdowns. We’ve been scared of risk. We have been sitting on a lot of cash. We need to make 6.5 percent. To make 6.5 percent, to make the math work for our retirees and our state employees, we have
been making five.
And that is all the difference in the world.
(Stella)
That makes a lot of sense, even to someone who doesn’t understand finance. So, thank you for explaining that. Sure. So, you just talked about something that North Carolina is maybe ranked below a lot of other states in. What are some innovative North Carolina financial policies or initiatives that other states are seeking to replicate?
(Brad)
Sure. So unclaimed property is top of the list. We do a fantastic job of this. It is rather esoteric, but it is important. What happens when you leave property in a safe deposit box, which people your age probably don’t even know what that is. But in the bank, you could have your own little safe. And if you leave it there and you stop paying, ultimately the bank needs to open that. So, they drill it, they take the property out, they try to find you. If they can’t find you, what happens? Well, it ends up with us.
We’ve got a full automated solution. Literally, if you go to nccash.com, you type in your name like any commercial website, it’ll search it in a fraction of a second. It’ll automate a claim for you right thereafter unless it’s too big and then we’ve got to get involved. If it’s ten bucks, we don’t worry about it too much, but if it’s a lot more than that, we do. So that is a tech-enabled and tech-forward solution to a data problem. Many of government’s problems, at least in the Treasury Department, are data problems.
(Brad)
And so how do you use modern technology and modern data processing and even artificial intelligence in the context of government? That is a really tough question, but one that we are beginning to walk down the road of. In unclaimed property, we’ve started that process from the tech side, at least, and other states have noticed. So, we had folks in Virginia down the other day who are trying to learn from us on the unclaimed property side. We do a really good job there. Thepension side,we’ve got a little bit of work to do on the investments, bt on the administration, we’re probably the most efficient administration of pensions in the country. Again, tech-forward and a team who does a great job there.
(Stella)
Very cool. Everyone needs to go to NC Cash and check if they have some money there. Maybe you have some $10 waiting.
(Brad)
You never know.
(Stella)
And then something that I’m super interested in as a health policy management major is that you get to decide the health plan. What are some of the challenges of deciding the health plan for approximately 760,000 state employees? And how do you make such a big decision?
(Brad)
Yeah. So first of all, there’s a board of eight folks who are fantastic, and they bring different policy expertise to that board. So, we leverage them heavily to answer the last question first. So yes, we cover from a health insurance perspective760,000 folks. We’re the largest private payer in the state, and it is a very complicated plan.
We face a reasonably generic set of challenges, though, and that’s that everyone knows health care costs continue to accelerate faster than just about any other cost. There is a much bigger problem in play there that we’ve got to try to solve, probably collectively with other folks. We’ve had a conversation with the Medicaid program here in the state and some of the large employers in the state to see if there’s a way to work jointly on different pieces of that problem. In health care particularly, when you try to squeeze costs in one area, it just balloons in other places. And that’s the problem that is really hard to solve,the conjunctive problem as opposed to the individual problem. So, we’re not at all unique in that.
Where we are unique is scale and the fact that we have a balance sheet. So, we can begin down the road of self-sourcing, i.e., building our own solutions for our members if we need to. We can promise volume to providers in exchange for discounts. And so, there’s some basic economic tools we can leverage to help. I don’t know if they fully solve the problem. Our simple challenge is that our costs go up about 5.7 percent a year, and our revenues go up about 3.3 percent a year. And so, if we can figure out a way to close that 2.4 percent difference, we will have done a great job here.
There’s no blueprint for this, though. Unlike the investment side, where many other states do the thing that we want to do, unlike most of the other divisions as a Department of State Treasurer, it’s not quite clear how we’ll solve the health care challenge. I’m sure you well know all of this from your studies.
(Stella)
Yeah, definitely. I’m sure. I cannot imagine choosing a health plan for even just myself. Choosing it for 760,000 employeeswould be very hard and difficult and challenging. Yes. Still on the health care side, I wanted to talk about costs, and you already talked about that, which is a huge issue in the U.S. But you’ve also taken a stand on getting weight-loss drugs covered for state employees. Why is that important to you?
(Brad)
So, I tend to think about most of life in investing terms. And I think about health care often that way as well, investing in people’s health. How do we use money now to keep people healthy in the medium and long run? Because in the end, that is, first of all and most importantly, great for them. It also actually has a financial benefit for the plan, too.
So GLP-1s, weight loss medications, weight loss programs even, are an essential tool to solving long-term health costs. Of our 760,000 members, we have something like 325,000 of them who have obesity-related comorbidities, two or more, of heart disease, diabetes, etc. Treating these problems after they’ve occurred is very expensive. Preventing them from occurring is not cheap. The GLP-1s are not cheap. But the math of that makes sense for them and for the state health plan.
The other piece of this is price right now is a problem. Price 24 months from now will not be a problem. In the end, capitalism works. People understand these GLP medications are effective, and so every pharmaceutical company who has money is trying to create their own. So, there are two right now.
There will be, in three years, maybe more. And there are only shots right now. There will be pills in the future. So, innovation continues. Competition continues. The effect of that is price comes down. $1,000-a-month Ozempic, Wegovy. We can cover it at $150 or $200. It’ll get there. I’d like for us to enter into an agreement well before then because the benefits of this for our members start now. But in the end, we got to make the plan solve it, too. The difference between state government and the federal government is we have a requirement to balance our books. We can’t deficit spend, and we won’t.
(Stella)
That makes sense. Let’s also move on to the state pension plan. I don’t know a lot about this, but I saw that it was in a big deficit right now. It could reach about $507 million by 2026. What is your plan to address that deficit?
(Brad)
Yeah. So, we have two big deficits in the state. The state pension plan is about $16 billion we owe retirees in total. Your number is an annual number, mine is the total number. Makes sense. And then the state health plan is about $35 billion. So, we talk about just a frame for people. There’s about a $30 billion state budget here, and we have about $3.5 billion in state debt. That sounds great, but we have $50 billion of what are non-debt liabilities, and those are the ones that I need to tackle. That’s why this job ends up being very important for the average taxpayer, and certainly the average state employee.
From a pension plan perspective, it really is about investments and changing the rate-of-return paradigm over time, moving that 5 percent up to something closer to the 6.5 percent, which is what . . . it doesn’t really matter your political affiliation. You can find another state that does it better than us. If you’re right leaning, you’d look to Florida and Texas, and you’re left leaning, you’d look to Washington and Oregon, and it turns out they’re all doing the same thing. We’re not doing that.
(Brad)
So, we’re going to shamelessly borrow from them and follow in their footsteps to help deal with the pension challenges. I think we can absolutely solve those. The state health plan, which is the bigger liability, as I said earlier, we’re going to keep chiseling away at it. We’re going to keep trying new and different things. We will fail at some of those. I think the risk in this one is not trying,whether it’s providing our members different medications early, whether it’s entering into agreements with providers to provide them much more volume in exchange for a lower price. Really, everything’s on the table because, in the end, if you fast forward ten years, the state health plan will either be governed by some market-based competition or some prescriptive price paradigm from the top down. I am a Republican, I am a capitalist, and I strongly prefer the former. But if we cannot make that work, we don’t have a whole lot of time until we’re mandating this from the top down. And that’s bad for everybody, in my opinion.
(Stella)
Right. How do you make sure that retirees, current and future, are going to have long-term financial stability if you’regoing into taking a little bit more risk with that 6.2 percent or 6.5 percent?
(Brad)
Yeah. So, a couple of different pieces of it. The pension as a general instrument is fading away,not for North Carolina, but in the corporate world, people do not offer these things anymore. They are wonderful benefits. And the reason for that is often forgotten in the midst of a bull market. We are, maybe the bull market is over, maybe it’s not,but we are not so far from all-time highs in the stock market, and people’s memories are not that long. Most folks don’t remember 2008 or 2009 at this point. 2020 with COVID was just such a very short blip that it doesn’t really count. And so, people don’t value the promise in a pension plan appropriately, in my view, right now.
The pension payments that we promise to our teachers and our state employees are not just out of the pension fund. They are off the back of the full state’s faith and credit as well. So, you are going to get those payments as long as North Carolina is solvent. And I think that is a really important peace of mind for people who serve our state over a long period of time.
(Brad)
But it also can be very expensive, and that’s why the corporate world has walked away from them. So, to me, the first thing is value the pension appropriately. The second, for those who don’t have that option, is begin early. If you have a 401(k) match, that is the best investment that you can make. They are matching you 50 cents on a dollar or a dollar for every dollar. Take advantage of that because starting early and getting that off-the-bat return is the best investment you can make. And as I believe Einstein once said, compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.
(Stella)
Yeah, I started my,not 401(k),my IRA already. It’s going. All right. Let’s look at this from a general view. You said you are in charge of 400 employees in your office. How have your experiences in the private sector, the public sector, really shaped your overall leadership philosophy? And how does that philosophy influence your approach to addressing these key responsibilities as a state treasurer?
(Brad)
I’ve always believed in hiring great people, giving them the tools to be successful, and getting out of their way. And the last part is actually the hardest part. Great people you can find. Convincing them to work for you, particularly for a state wage, can be a little bit of a trick, but there are many people who are so interested in seeing the state be successful, and in the psychic income that comes from that, that has been actually pretty straightforward.
Getting them the tools to be successful can be a bit of a challenge at times, but in many cases, it’s just giving them the authority to make decisions. Getting out of their way is the hardest part. I have to remind myself every day that I have hired people who have much more expertise than me in a specific area, and I need to let them run that area because as good as I think I might be at whatever they’re doing, they are better. That’s why I hired them. And so, to me, that is the leadership philosophy that has worked. But it is hard. I think investing and running a company,because this is running a company, the emotional challenges, the emotional self-control that’s required to be good at that is the central challenge.
(Brad)
Making sure that it is about the people who do a great job for you and not about you is what’s essential to my leadership style.
(Stella)
I love that. Thank you for sharing. Sure. Then just to finish our episode, why should scholars consider careers in public service? Why should scholars have this thought in the back of their head about, Am I really satisfied with my career, or should I serve the public good?
(Brad)
Listen, I think in the end, we all know that the public discourse has not exactly been what we wanted it to be. Again, that is not a left or right statement. I think we all agree that we’re leaving something, and we need to backfill for it.
As I thought what I’m going to say about going to public service and why to advocate for as many people who are willing and able, because it is a financial sacrifice, and you need to make sure you’re prepared to do that, is that you have to try. We all have to try. It’s not enough to sit on the sideline and complain about it. In whatever way you can, whether it’s your school board or something bigger than that, get involved. Because sitting on the sideline and complaining about the fractiousness of our politics.I understand that’s a safe place. But if everyone makes that choice, then we’re sunk.
I’d advocate for anyone who’s got the stomach for it,and it does require some stomach. The first time you get criticized publicly is not fun, and neither is the second, but it gets a little easier. But we all have to try in our own way, whatever that is.
That’s why I’d advocate it. I get up in the morning and I go to work, and every meeting I have, I realize that the state could use my skills and the skills of everybody who works with me, too. That is true for everyone who’s listening, too.
(Stella)
Thank you so much for sharing that. That is very powerful to a lot of our scholars, and maybe alumni will consider this. Brad, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your stories.
(Brad)
Thanks for inviting me back. I appreciate it.
