Page 276 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE EDUCATION PROGRAM

In a letter to friends and associates describing his Fellowship experi-
ence, Tom Veblen (WHF 65–66) told of the people he’d met in seminar
sessions who “have gone out of their way to detail their jobs, their prob-
lems, and most helpful of all, their personal views on what makes govern-
ment tick.” Then Veblen began dropping a series of names that certainly
must have impressed the folks back home. He wrote that he and his class
recently had met and talked at length with President Johnson, the Surgeon
General, the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the sec-
retaries of Commerce and Labor, the head of the Peace Corps, the Mayor
of Atlanta, and several more high-level leaders—and he had been a Fellow
for only three months!

A CANDID CONVERSATION
Since the meetings are totally off the record to encourage free discussion,
some Fellows take the opportunity to ask questions they’d never dream of
raising in public. Out of curiosity, Walt Humann (WHF 66–67) asked a
standard question of all the elected officials he met in sessions during his
Fellowship year: Why are you a Democrat or a Republican? The standard
answer usually had something to do with philosophical reasons or party-
line virtues. “But when they were candid, and many surprisingly were can-
did, the answer was always the same—expediency,” Humann said.
“Governor Nelson Rockefeller said it best when he said, ‘I ran as a Repub-
lican because I could never get a [expletive] nomination from the Demo-
crats.’ As a result, my leadership style has been to remain fiercely
independent, work ‘both sides of the aisle,’ and thereby never have people
withhold support for my projects because they think I might be using my
leadership position to springboard into a political office.”

MEETING THE PRESS
Julissa Marenco (WHF 07–08) was the general manager of Telemundo
WZDC-25 in Washington, D.C., that area’s leading Spanish-language sta-
tion. Marenco managed a hefty staff and a multi-million-dollar budget at
WZDC-25, but she’s a broadcast journalist first and foremost. Therefore,
when she learned that her class would be attending a live broadcast of Meet
the Press after which she would have a chance to meet her hero, show host
and NBC News Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert, she was blown
away. “As a broadcaster, I have had a profound respect for Mr. Russert from

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