Interviewed by Emily McLeod ’19

EM: What have you done since leaving Trinity?

JS: I was in my senior seminar class on political philosophy and Alexis de Tocqueville. There were 12 of us in the class and the professor asked, “Is anyone actually planning on using their Political Science degree to get into politics?” Nobody raised their hand. I don’t know if I was being a contrarian or not, but I raised my hand and said I’m moving to Washington D.C. to get into politics. After graduating from college in 2006, I moved to Washington D.C. and got a job waiting tables. I ended up getting an unpaid internship for a member of Congress from the state of Washington.

EM: Which member of Congress? Just out of curiosity.

JS: Cathy McMorris Rodgers, from the Spokane area in Eastern Washington. While I was there, I was waiting tables full time and interviewing at a number of different congressional jobs.  Eventually, I got a job with a representative from New Jersey by the name of Frank LoBiondo as a junior staff person. I spent a year and a half in that office supporting his legislative agenda and then I jumped over to the US Senate and got a job with a senator from Minnesota. This Senator ended up losing a drawn out re-election campaign to Al Franken about eight months after I got there, which left me without a job. So I got a job with Bob Corker’s office on a temporary basis, and then ultimately with Olympia Snowe, who was a senator from Maine. I stayed with Senator Snowe for about two years while I was studying for the LSATs. I took the LSATs and I got into law school at American University with the idea that I enjoyed public policy, but I wanted to transition more to a different field. I focused on financial regulation during my time at law school. I had an internship with the Securities and Exchange Commission and really enjoyed it.  After graduating from law school and passing the New York Bar, I got a job with PwC in their Financial Services Risk and Regulatory practice, where we help banks comply with financial regulation and I’ve been there for nearly six years now. That’s the work life. On the personal side since graduating, I got married three years ago, and we just had our first child six months ago.

EM: Congratulations! How exciting. Is there anything you learned at Trinity that has helped you in your career?

JS: I learned how to have a conversation at Trinity. I learned how to be an active listener, as well as how to engage with people in a meaningful way and that’s a skill that has served me extremely well throughout my professional career. The other thing probably would be the mafia class that I took, which discussed organized crime in Hartford. I’d say that class probably was one of the first times that I found myself really enjoying school and enjoying learning, and I found something that I enjoyed learning about and having success within a class. It provided me a good jumping-off point for when I went back to school to have an understanding of what it took to succeed in an academic environment. One of the best experiences that I had at Trinity was my externship in the Connecticut state legislature. That was my first experience in politics, and I found the formality, the experience to be extremely interesting and beneficial, and it stoked my interest in politics. In many ways, it set me up for the next step that I made in my career, which was down to D.C. in politics. That was with Representative Pam Sawyer from Eastern Connecticut.

EM: Do you have any hobbies or passions or other sort of external projects from your professional life that you’re pursuing?

JS: Well, I love the Buffalo Bills. I love watching sports. My dream is to retire, buy a fourth Division Italian soccer team, and move to Italy and open a restaurant. My love of Italy started when I studied abroad at Trinity in Rome.

EM: Wow. That’s awesome.

JS: And if that does not work out. I’d like to be a high school teacher and head JV coach, because the JV kids work hard and want to learn.