03-23-2002
PEOPLE: People for March 23, 2002
Techno-File
Journalist Jeri Clausing is making a career switch and heading to the
Business Software Alliance, where she will serve as director of public
relations for policy. Clausing, 40, has spent nearly two decades in
journalism. She said she came to Washington, D.C., from Seattle in 1997 to
be with her future husband; at the same time, a former colleague, Rob
Fixmer, was starting a new section for The New York Times' Web site called
CyberTimes. Clausing soon began freelancing for the section. At first, she
said, "I barely knew how to create an e-mail." But Clausing soon
parlayed the freelance gig into full-time reporting on tech policy for the
newspaper and the Web site. Three years later, Fixmer left to take over
Interactive Week, and Clausing joined him as the tech weekly's executive
editor. The magazine closed its doors in November. Clausing then got wind
of the BSA opportunity from Washington PR exec Gloria Dittus. "I
didn't want to go back to being a reporter, but I wanted to stay in
Washington and work on policy," she said. The BSA, Clausing said, is
heavily involved in copyright, security, and e-commerce.
Media People
"I doubled back and had to ask myself a lot of hard questions"
on September 11, Frank Sesno, CNN's former Washington bureau chief, told
National Journal. That's because on September 10, Sesno had announced he
was leaving the network after 17 years there. He stuck around to help see
the bureau through the next couple of months, then decided his next
adventure will be in academia: He'll join the faculty of George Mason
University this fall and teach courses on public policy and
communications. He also plans to host a series of media and policy forums
that will be open to the public. The first one, he said, will probe the
role and impact of the media in the wake of 9/11. And just in case his
plate isn't full enough, Sesno is collaborating with George Mason and
local public-television station WETA-TV to create a weekly, 30-minute
series on public affairs. Although the show's format is still being
created, Sesno said, "I hope to develop a new genre of public affairs
programming that's topical, interesting, engaging, in-depth, but that
isn't a cookie-cutter mold of what's on the air right now." Sesno,
47, is currently working on a documentary about Ronald Reagan to air on
the History Channel, and he will remain a contributor at CNN.
As a child picking her way through books on jobs for grown-ups, Karen
Hosler read about teachers and nurses before finding a story about a
newspaper reporter. "I thought, `Oh, that's it,' " she said.
Forty-odd years later, that's still it-although she's gone far beyond
writing the sports column for her high school paper. Hosler, 53, will be
joining The Baltimore Sun's editorial page in the next few weeks. After 25
years as a Sun reporter, Hosler said she was worried about leaving
reporting-her first love-but the new editorial page editor, Dianne
Donovan, was extremely persuasive. "She just kind of charmed my socks
off," Hosler said of Donovan, who left the Chicago Tribune and joined
the Sun in late January. Donovan's assurances that Hosler would have the
time to ride and run were also a factor: Hosler keeps a horse, Jasmine,
south of Annapolis, and divides her spare time between fox hunting, riding
Jasmine, and running marathons. She says her new gig is "completely
different than anything I've ever done in my career, but it sounds like a
lot of fun."
Image-Makers
"You did what?" That's the reaction Eileen O'Connor says she
often gets when she tells people she decided to leave a successful career
in broadcasting to attend law school. "The lawyers, especially, say,
`Why would you want to hang around a bunch of boring lawyers?' "
O'Connor said. "But I haven't been bored yet." O'Connor has been
hanging around lawyers since she joined Patton Boggs last month as a
strategic policy and communications adviser. She is part of a team that
helps clients "put their case forward to the regulatory authorities,
to the courts, and at times ... to the court of public opinion."
O'Connor spent 16 years abroad as a reporter and producer. In 1989, she
joined CNN and worked in both its Tokyo and Moscow bureaus. From 1993 to
1997, she was the network's Moscow bureau chief, but after daughter No. 5
arrived, she decided to take a break from covering wars and coups and
moved to CNN's Washington office. She now works with Patton Boggs partners
Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a former Republican National Committee counsel, and
Lanny J. Davis, a former Clinton special counsel, whom she covered as a
White House correspondent. O'Connor, 43, will attend Georgetown University
Law Center part-time this fall.
"I started making movies when I was 12 years old in the basement of
my house," says Jason Meath, the new senior vice president at the
Stevens & Schriefer Group, a strategic communications firm. "When
I came to Washington ... my love of politics and my love of film
collided." After studying filmmaking at Columbia University, Meath
arrived in Washington in 1993 to join the Republican National Committee,
where, under then-Chairman Haley Barbour, he served as director of
marketing communications and helped create the RNC network GOP-TV. Four
years ago, he joined Heintz Media Productions, where he created political
ads, and last year, Meath developed a two-part documentary for the
Discovery Channel that follows the adventures of postal-inspection
workers-a group of "unsung heroes" that Meath discovered before
the anthrax scare. In his new position, Meath, 32, will continue to write
and produce political ads. He also has a feature-length screenplay under
option. The story is about "a hapless man's search for success in his
father's business."
At the Bar
The international law firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering continues to
build up its Washington office, most recently with the additions of new
partners Gregory A. Baer and David Medine. As an assistant secretary for
financial institutions in the Clinton Treasury Department, Baer, 40,
coordinated policy on topics ranging from the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act,
which lifted restrictions on affiliations among financial service
providers, to cyber-defense. He has also served as managing senior counsel
for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. After leaving Treasury early
last year, Baer cowrote a book on personal investing. Medine, 48, was a
senior adviser in the Clinton White House to the National Economic
Council, where he focused on privacy, financial institutions, and capital
investment. He also spent more than a decade at the Federal Trade
Commission and, most recently, a year with law firm Hogan & Hartson.
Other recent additions to Wilmer, Cutler include counsel Janis C.
Kestenbaum, a former trial lawyer with the Justice Department, and
associate Stacy E. Beck, who came from the Senate Rules &
Administration Committee.
Lobby Shops
Peggy Renken Hudson knows a thing or two about cement. For the past nine
years, she has headed the Washington office of the American Portland
Cement Alliance, the trade group representing cement manufacturers.
Portland cement, she points out, is the most prominent type of cement
produced in the United States. But now Hudson, who once worked for Sen.
Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C., will be mastering new subjects as the vice
president of federal and international affairs at the Washington office of
BP, the British oil conglomerate. Hudson, 50, began work as the head of
the office on March 18. Though based abroad, Hudson said, BP has "a
good understanding of both how Washington and state governments work. BP
has had a Washington office for over 30 years." She added that both
her former and current employers have a keen interest in the
climate-change debate. Hudson replaces Larry Burton, who has been promoted
to a position in London. She said that the search firm Korn/Ferry
International recruited her for BP.
Kyra Detmer shouldn't have much of a problem standing out in the
Washington office of the American International Group, an insurance and
financial services company: As the director of federal government affairs,
she is AIG's first new professional hire in almost a decade, she says.
"They have a first-rate team of people in Washington," Detmer
said, "and I'm really thrilled to be working with them. A lot of the
team has been in place for 12 to 15 years." She was recruited to join
AIG from the Hartford Financial Services Group, where she directed federal
government affairs for seven years. Before that, Detmer, 36, worked for a
brief time with the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents
after logging five years on the Hill as a legislative assistant to
then-House Minority Leader Robert Michel, R-Ill. "I kind of fell into
it," she says of her insurance career. "But I love it. I really
enjoy the issues."
Interest Groups
Jeff Cronin has traded in one cause for another. After working for seven
years on campaign finance as the press secretary for the lobbying group
Common Cause, Cronin has signed on to direct communications at the Center
for Science in the Public Interest, a group that seeks to improve food
safety and promote healthy eating. Cronin, 32, says both groups sometimes
get "unfair reputations as `party poopers,' " but both
"give voters the information to make better choices at the ballot
box." Cronin spent several years working on state and national races
in Massachusetts. He has also raised funds for Washington's Folger
Shakespeare Library. At CSPI, he's pushing for legislation that will
restore the Agriculture Department's power to shut down plants for
violating meat-safety standards. "I happen to have as much enthusiasm
for food as I do for politics," Cronin says, but he admits that
before starting his new job, he had to kick a
"three-Mountain-Dew-a-day habit."
HILL PEOPLE
Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., has filled a long-vacant communications
director slot by hiring Gore campaign veteran Elizabeth Lubow. Lubow, 33,
comes from a four-year stint at the public relations firm Powell Tate,
where her assignments ranged from telecom issues to mergers and
acquisitions to corporate PR. In August 2000, right after the Democratic
National Convention, Lubow took a break from Powell Tate to serve as the
Gore-Lieberman team's state press secretary-in Florida. "As soon as I
got there, I knew Florida would be important. We were playing to
win," she said. "But certainly no one envisioned having to do a
recount." The recount, she recalled, was "tremendously hard
work." Before joining Powell Tate, Lubow was communications director
for the New York chapter of the League of Conservation Voters, which
promotes the election of environmentally friendly candidates. Lubow, who
joined Mikulski's staff last month, has since been involved in the
Senator's work on mammography and on the Levin-Bond amendment, which
allows the Transportation Department two years to develop new
fuel-efficiency standards.
When Matt Thornblad was 11, he saw what he now calls one of the
"great cheap shots" in recent political history: At the 1988
vice presidential debate in Thornblad's hometown of Omaha, Neb.,
Republican Dan Quayle compared his experience in Congress to that of
former President Kennedy, and Democrat Lloyd Bentsen fired back,
"Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." That debate helped spark
Thornblad's interest in politics, and now he's the latest hire in the
office of Sen. Timothy P. Johnson, D-S.D. After working for Sen. Tom
Harkin, D-Iowa, in college, Thornblad headed straight for the Hill when he
graduated in 1999. He started out in the office of then-Sen. Bob Kerrey,
D-Neb., became a legislative assistant, and took the same job with Rep.
Max Sandlin, D-Texas, in 2001. He covered a bevy of issues during those
stints, but his interest in natural resource and environmental policy has
remained constant throughout his Hill career. Thornblad, 24, will continue
to work on environmental topics, such as management of the Missouri River,
as Johnson's senior research assistant.
Erin Heath
National Journal
