(history)

Working in Washington, DC

A political chapter that changed how I think about power, incentives, and what people say versus what they do.

chapter notes

period
Earlier chapter
location
Washington, DC
tags
Politics · Institutions · Work history

One of the major earlier chapters of my life was time spent in Washington, DC, including working for Rand Paul.

That chapter happened partly because my KPMG start date got pushed back by around ten months. Instead of waiting around, I used the gap to get closer to a world I had been curious about: politics, power, and how the federal system really works.

That period matters because it changed the way I read big systems. Politics gives you a front-row seat to incentives, hierarchy, messaging, and how decisions actually get made once they hit the real world.

Even when the work I am doing now looks very different, that chapter still shows up in how I think:

  • who really has power
  • what story a system tells about itself
  • where formal structure diverges from actual behavior

This page will probably keep growing. It is one of the chapters I want to document more fully here.