How I got where I am today, I mean, that's a hard question because that's 25 plus years of education and experience. I am sitting actually in Washington, D. C. where I had my first job just up the street at Capitol Hill. I worked for a congressman, and I started by answering the phone and that was back in 1990 so if you fast forward to 2020 I am now a presidential appointee working at the Department of Commerce, and I lead the Office of External Affairs and Communications at the Economic Development Administration. So packed in those almost 30 years, I guess is a lot of work doing different things but it's always been media communications and external affairs work. So right out of college, I had my first job working on Capitol Hill and that job I had for four years, and it was truly further education because working on Capitol Hill, it's an amazing place in the United States Congress. So learning how you know that legislative body function was I considered it like graduate school so I took all that and went into media communications that I've been doing that since then so there's a lot in between there but the real way I got there I think is just hard work and being curious about what's out there.

So, as the director of external affairs and communications at the Economic Development Administration, I am in charge of all the external activities that the department has. We are one-of-a dozen bureaus in the Department of Commerce, which has 47,000 employees almost, EDA which is Economic Development Administration, we have about 300 employees scattered all across the United States. I managed two offices, I manage the Office of Public Affairs, and I manage the Office of Legislative Intergovernmental Affairs so that public affairs speak peace is when the assistant secretary is out in public, making a grand announcement, visiting an opportunity zone, meetings at the White House, any external activities he has I'm responsible for coordinating that inside and outside of our office. Regarding the side of the legislative affair of the building and the Intergovernmental Affairs that team works with the United States Congress, both the House and Senate every day, and we have intergovernmental affairs for us means any of our government partners could be Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Housing and Urban Development could be the White House could be even within the Department of Commerce so it's all of those activities and interactions that we have with each of those entities and that ranges from having a meeting on the Hill with Senator to speaking with a member of Congress in the congressional district, anywhere in the country. So I manage that staff there about 20 people, about 10 in each office, and it's their daily activities, I'm not a micro-manager those offices are run by professionals. But the work that we do and the fact that we do that all over the country, it's kind of a 24-hour operation so my work hours are long but with phones, you can do it from just about anywhere, I mean, I'm in the office every day about 8:30 leave around 5:30 but I'm on my phone at 5 a.m. and I probably get off it at 10 p.m. It's just managing all of those steps. As far as travel, I speak for the department of EDA as well in my role. Just last week, for example, on Wednesday and Thursday, we were in Long Beach, California, San Bernardino, California with assistant Secretary Fleming, our special assistant for E. D. A. and our head of Public Affairs traveled all the way to California for two or three meetings, a grand announcement and come all the way back. So there's a lot of travel and we're on the road a couple of times a week, it's rigorous, but I do.

When I say tools, when you say tools, they're different, any of Microsoft office suite. But I am on my iPad, I'm on my iPhone, I'm on my desktop there are so many different tools in each of those, pieces of electronics it's really focused on that. I mean, I don't have like I can write on Word, I could do anything on excel, but it's just that suite of Microsoft tools that everyone else has as well.