The Public Service Project

Jess Anderson is Mayor of Chapel Hill.
Many know her as a public policy analyst, a Professor, a Mom, a wife, a friend, etc. but she's also the child of two clinical psychologists. After her own little demi-rebellion in high school, she tapped into her innate curiosity about people (again, psychologist parents!) and decided to explore how systems make life better or worse. Listen in for highlights from the journey, insights into the job of being mayor (spoiler: collaboration is mandatory, and failure to pass a budget is not an option), and reflections on career and life and being many things to many people - especially as a Mom.
You'll leave this one wanting Jess to be your friend.

Nina Hachigian was the first U.S. Ambassador for City and State Diplomacy from 2022-2025, the first Deputy Mayor for International Affairs in the City of Los Angeles, and she currently leads the Alliance for Local Leaders International (ALLIES), which is a nonpartisan nonprofit that brings together professionals from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to solve the big challenges facing our cities, our country, and our planet. So naturally, Ambassador Hachigian is the perfect person to help us kick off Season 4 of the Public Service Project, where we will spend time exploring what diplomacy looks like at the state and local levels. She's here to explain why American cities benefit from diplomatic expertise, and how diplomats can grow enormously from serving communities across America.

Gary Barker, PhD, is President, CEO and Co-Founder of Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice. A quick Google search reveals how wildly impressive Gary is, so we'll skip the recap and go right into the questions driving this conversation: Why and how is Gary Barker so compassionate, resilient, and deeply principled? Where did that come from? How did his childhood experience witnessing gun violence shape how he thought about safety, and what predisposed him to look upstream for the causes of violence in communities? How do we all experience gender dynamics in our homes and in society, and how does economic pressure exacerbate the frailties baked into rigid norms around what is expected of men and women? What is equality, and how is a focus on care central to understanding that we are all underserved by the status quo? This episode weaves its way through Gary's life and somehow answers all of these questions, and that is why he's the best.
For more on Equimundo, head here: https://www.equimundo.org/
And for Gary's TED talk on revolutionizing the role of men in dismantling gender inequality: https://www.ted.com/speakers/gary_barker

Maryum Saifee is living, becoming, rethinking and rewriting the American dream. She is her parents' greatest wish come to life, and she holds herself to the highest possible standard when it comes to serving the country that made her. She challenges herself, and all those around her, to face each day with conscience, courage, and moral clarity, and she does it with humanity and grace. Her credentials are impressive, from time spent serving with PeaceCorps to AmeriCorps to the U.S. Foreign Service. She experienced the Arab Spring up close in Cairo. She witnessed the impacts of the U.S. troop withdrawal from her post in Baghdad. She helped shape the State Department's approach to tech and diplomacy, and she is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, but what comes to the surface in this conversation is not just where she's been - it's how it has changed her. Despite being separated from her vocation against her will one year ago, Maryum is not done. She's not looking away from the many contradictions that make us who we are. She continues to hold us all accountable: to ourselves, to each other, and to the promise we made to form a more perfect union.
Stick around at the end of this episode for a special visit from Maryum's mom, whose relentless courage and incomparable work ethic have rippled throughout her community and across the globe through her own service, and her daughter's.

Jeffrey Levy served the public in the U.S. federal civil service for 31 years, through 21 years at EPA and 5 each at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department. With a background in Physics and Environmental Policy, his digital communications career came as a surprise. His impulse to embrace the web as a powerful tool for connecting the American public with the agencies that serve them became a life and career defining choice, and now one year into retirement, Jeffrey is sharing stories from the early days of the interwebs; insights into the role (and value) of public affairs work; and deep reflections on ethics, integrity, and personal redlines. His wisdom and sincerity are unmatched.