05-04-2002

PEOPLE: People for May 4, 2002

Interest Groups


Labor lobbyist Gerron Levi has taken on a new challenge as an assistant
director of the AFL-CIO's legislative department. Levi, 32, comes from the
Laborers' International Union of North America, where she worked for six
years as a senior lobbyist. Before that, she earned a law degree from
Howard University in Washington and served as a legislative assistant to
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. On the Hill, Levi dealt mostly with
Judiciary Committee issues. "It just sort of happened," said
Levi of her entrance into labor law. At LIUNA, which is one of the 66
unions that make up the AFL-CIO, she worked on construction industry
matters: wages, infrastructure, and job creation. "It was really a
smaller slice of the pie," she explained. Now, while she plans to
lobby primarily on immigration, Levi will also handle such issues as
health care, welfare reform, and trade. And she's gearing up to help the
AFL-CIO oppose presidential trade-negotiating authority. Said Terence
O'Sullivan, the Laborers' Union general president: "Gerron is a
forceful advocate for working men and women."


Media People


USA Today Deputy Editorial Page Editor Carol Stevens will ascend to the
helm of the editorial page in June to replace Brian Gallagher, who was
named executive editor of the paper last month. Stevens spent three years
as an editorial writer before she was named to the deputy slot. But her
connection to the paper goes back to 1982, after she and her new husband
were both forced to leave the Buffalo Courier-Express: "It folded on
our one-month wedding anniversary," she recalls. So the pair joined
USA Today just three weeks after it opened; her husband, Erik Brady, is
now a sports reporter at the paper. Stevens worked as the daily's national
reporter before moving on to stints with Medical Economics magazine, The
Detroit News, and The Baltimore Sun. Although she's not planning any major
changes, Stevens says she would like to "cover a broader range of
topics" and to "think of more-creative ways to present opinions
to readers."


John Mercurio isn't taking much of a break between jobs. He's filling his
two planned vacation days by spending one at Roll Call, his old employer,
packing up his office, and the other at CNN, his new employer, filling out
paperwork. After five and a half years of reporting on politics for Roll
Call, Mercurio is becoming a political editor for the cable news network.
"I'm going to be expanding on some things I've been covering and
enjoying for the past five years-campaigns, elections, some campaign
finance-but to a broader audience," he says. Mercurio, 32, got his
start in journalism as an undergraduate with an unpaid internship at
States News Service. After graduation, he went to the Journal dailies in
the Washington suburbs before jumping to The Washington Times, where he
covered city hall. "Those were the fun years," he says,
although, "not every politician is as interesting as Marion Barry
was."


Techno-File


National law firm Nixon Peabody is launching a federal government
relations practice at its Washington office, and helping out in the effort
will be new partner MaryClare Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald, a specialist in
financial services and tech policy, is the founder of the Electronic
Commerce Forum and the Women's High-Tech Coalition. She got her start in
Washington as a staff assistant at the House Ways and Means Committee, but
she soon moved to California and began lobbying for financial
corporations. Fitzgerald, who declined to give her age, returned to
Washington in 1980. Then in 1996, when "it was very clear everyone
was jumping into technology," she started the forum. Fitzgerald says
she saw a "need to bring the substance and the research and the
private-sector players to the legislators if we were going to move
anywhere on a real policy that would enhance the industry rather than
impede it." Although the tech bubble has burst, Fitzgerald says she
still sees technology as an important arena, pointing to the recent
anti-piracy bill sponsored by Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C. Last year,
she added the women's coalition to her portfolio; she said it puts an
"emphasis on bringing women to the fore" of the male-dominated
tech sector.


Around the Agencies


"The Department of Energy is a very exciting place to be," says
newcomer John Spitaleri Shaw, who is now principal deputy assistant
secretary for environment, safety, and health. His office is tasked with
advocating programs that protect the environment and the health and safety
of Energy Department workers and the public. Current topics include the
prevention of chronic beryllium disease-a subject the office will explore
in a workshop this month-and construction safety. Shaw, 32, comes from
Patton Boggs, where he had worked on and off as an attorney since the firm
hired him straight out of law school in 1995. In between stints at Patton
Boggs, Shaw worked on the vice presidential campaign of former Rep. Jack
Kemp, R-N.Y., and spent a year as a counsel to Sen. Fred D. Thompson,
R-Tenn., on the Governmental Affairs Committee's investigation of
Clinton-Gore fundraising. Shaw also served as an aide-de-camp in 2000 for
Dick and Lynne Cheney during the Bush-Cheney campaign.


HILL PEOPLE


High school leadership programs can have a long-term career impact. For
living proof, consider Cheryl Jaeger, the latest addition to the House
Energy and Commerce Committee staff. Jaeger, 27, first met Rep.
Christopher Cox, R-Calif., during her junior year of high school, when she
came to Washington with a youth leadership program. She asked him about
internship opportunities, and he directed her to his district office,
where she interned during the summer after her high school graduation.
After earning a master's degree in public policy, Jaeger returned to Cox's
office as a legislative assistant and remained there for three years. She
finished up as a senior legislative assistant. In her new role as a
professional staff member on the Energy and Commerce health team, Jaeger
will continue working with Cox, a committee member. "I learned to
appreciate the way that he conducted his business, and the institution of
government, and that government is for liberty and responsibility,"
Jaeger says.


"Government is in need of very good managers who have outside
experiences. It can't just be from within the political machine,"
says departing Capitol Hill staffer Bridger McGaw. That's why the
27-year-old fedora-wearing McGaw is leaving the staff of Rep. Martin T.
Meehan, D-Mass., this fall to return to his home state of
Massachusetts-and his alma mater, Harvard University-to earn a master's
degree in public policy. McGaw has already built up a formidable political
resume: He got his start as an advance man for the Clinton-Gore campaign
in 1996, and he parlayed that experience into a job as a public affairs
officer at the Defense Department. Later, he joined Vice President Gore's
staff and was back on the campaign trail in 2000 as Gore's national media
advance coordinator. After the 2000 race, McGaw moved to the "more
relaxed" atmosphere on Capitol Hill as Meehan's press secretary.
McGaw's campaign experiences provided much of the inspiration for a
comedic screenplay he wrote with his college roommate; the two are
currently pursuing production options. Academia, movies-what's next?
"I haven't ruled out running for public office at all," says
McGaw. "And I'm still very interested in perhaps looking at a
teaching career."


Image-Makers


There's a new senior director at the public policy practice of Dittus
Communications: former congressional flack Steven Behm. A native of
Illinois, Behm won a place on the Hill not through connections but through
determination: A week after graduating from college, he picked up and
moved to Washington. "I didn't know anybody, didn't have a job,"
he recalled. Behm worked "a lot of odd jobs" and interned with
the Senate Republican Conference and Sen. Fred D. Thompson, R-Tenn. He
also worked a stint with the communications firm National Media. Then in
1995, Behm landed the press secretary spot in the office of Rep. Philip M.
Crane, R-Ill. After that, he served as the communications director for
then-Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., and, most recently, for Rep. Greg Ganske,
R-Iowa. On the Hill, Behm got to wade into a range of issues, including
health care, welfare, and trade. Now the 28-year-old triathlete is helping
to build integrated campaigns at Dittus, which, he said, "is tackling
some tough issues on financial services and terrorism
insurance."


The communications firm Hager Sharp, which specializes in health and
education, recently signed on a new account executive: Tom Kiley. Kiley,
23, previously served as the senior media coordinator for the Economic
Policy Institute. A former aspiring journalist, Kiley took a PR job with
the Massachusetts Teachers Association after he discovered that "to
be a good journalist, you have to develop a high standard of objectivity.
I wanted to push for things I believed in rather than strive for
balance." Now he's building on his knowledge of education issues by
working with such clients as the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards, which certifies teachers. Kiley is also busy with the
Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which assembled a homeland
security task force to create a cohesive disaster plan. "There was a
feeling after September 11 that there was a really great response to the
Pentagon, but other than that there was confusion," he said.
"The task force is trying to come up with a plan to coordinate the
activities of all the different stakeholders in the region."


At the Bar


Securities and Exchange Commission veteran David Martin has returned to
the private sector to head up the securities practice at the law firm
Covington & Burling. Martin, 55, was previously the director of the
Division of Corporation Finance at the SEC. It wasn't his first stint at
the commission. As a young litigator, Martin says, "I was like a lot
of third- and fourth-year associates wondering whether litigation was the
place for me to be." He took a chance on a position as a corporate
finance lawyer at the SEC and never looked back. He spent five years there
in the early `80s, becoming a special counsel to Chairman John Shad. In
between SEC stints, he spent 15 years in private practice at Hogan &
Hartson-"a great firm," he says. Martin, who will have offices
in Washington and New York City, says he has a good idea of what issues
he'll be covering in his new job. "It's really difficult to mention
anything now without it being traced to the e-word: Enron.... Businesses
are very focused now on compliance and corporate disclosure." When
Martin's not performing financial analysis, he performs on stage as a
member of the Washington Revels, an all-ages singing group.


In the Tanks


"Before grad school, I was intent on becoming a philosophy
professor," says Jason Bertsch. "But I was constantly drawn away
from the great books toward newspapers." Bertsch, who has two
philosophy degrees, recently accepted a position that will feed his
interests in policy and ideas: He's the new director of corporate
relations at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
Bertsch, 30, comes from K12 Inc., a for-profit education company founded
in 1999 by former Education Secretary William Bennett, where he was vice
president of public and government affairs. Before that, he spent two
years at another Bennett organization, Empower America. At AEI, Bertsch
will "tell people in the corporate world about the quality of [AEI's]
work, why it's important to them, and why they should support it."
Also, he says, "I'll be getting feedback ... about what their
priorities and interests are." Bertsch says that AEI plans to be more
aggressive in spreading the word about its work and will continue to focus
more energy on post-September 11 topics of interest, such as foreign
policy.


Erin Heath

National Journal