Page 100 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS ACT WITH INTEGRITY

the attitude that this was a great opportunity. I was dealt a different deck
of cards than I expected, but I stayed there and fixed it as best I could. I
helped change the way a company operated for the better, and then I
moved on,” she said. “You think you know and have faith in yourself—
that you’ll act a certain way when troubled times come—and sometimes
you get the opportunity to find out. I have not one ounce of regret about
any of it.”

Like Pfeiffer, two more former White House Fellows—David Iglesias
(WHF 94–95) and John McKay (WHF 89–90)—paid a high price for
doing what they believed was right. Iglesias and McKay were among the
nine U.S. attorneys fired from their jobs by the Justice Department in
2006—seven in one day—for what many consider political reasons. The
official cause given for the firings was “performance-related issues,” but
seven of the nine attorneys, McKay and Iglesias included, had received
superlative evaluations for their work. Although U.S. attorneys are
appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the position is
intended to be unbiased and nonpartisan to protect the integrity of the
Justice Department. However, many people, including McKay and Igle-
sias, believe that high-level White House and Justice Department officials
ordered the attorneys’ terminations for political reasons.
After graduating from law school, David Iglesias served as a Navy
judge advocate general who defended sailors and marines facing court-
martial at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In that capacity, he
became the model for Tom Cruise’s character in the movie A Few Good
Men. He was an assistant state attorney general and prosecutor in New
Mexico and an assistant city attorney dealing with civil rights police
misconduct cases in Albuquerque before being selected to be a White
House Fellow. During his Fellowship year, he worked on aviation and con-
sumer issues with Department of Transportation Secretary Federico Peña,
who taught him a valuable life lesson: Keep your word. “When I was at
the Department of Transportation I worked with a person who was a long
time friend of Federico Peña. Years ago, this friend needed to move to a
different apartment. Lots of people said they would help him move,”
Iglesias recalled. “But when the day came, the only one who actually
showed up to help was Federico Peña. That left a real impression on me—
the importance of keeping your word. Peña kept his word then, and he

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