S1, E10: From the White House to Local Politics: Career Paths in Public Service

Laura: [00:00:00] If I could, I would do it for free. That’s been a real litmus test for me. Is this a job I would do for free?
Georgi: Did you know the average person will work 90, 000 hours in their lifetime? What if you could use those hours to find fulfillment and become a disruptor for good? Welcome to the Work That’s Worth It podcast.
I’m Georgi Enthoven, and I’m here to demonstrate that an Vicious, meaningful and rewarding career is not just a dream, it’s achievable. Each episode will dive into conversations with global change makers who crack the code on combining income and impact. If you’ve ever felt like you were torn between a paycheck and your purpose, or maybe you simply yearn for more purpose, you’re going to be exposed to the ambitious humans who have done it, the.
Ready to make your work worth it. Let’s get started
today is super exciting because we have our first politician as a guest on the show, [00:01:00] Laura caps, who is now the chair of the board of supervisors in Santa Barbara County. She has devoted her career to public service, serving as a White House speechwriter for President Clinton, a communications director for John Kerry’s presidential campaign, a senior advisor to the United States Senate, to Senator Edward Kennedy, and part of Al Gore’s climate change not for profit.
That’s a heavy list. She’s also a lifelong champion of ending the cycle of poverty. Cap served as president of working hero action and national not for profit focused on ending poverty by expanding the earned income tax credit and served as spokesperson for no kid hungry. For six years, she served on the Santa Barbara Unified District School District Board of Trustees, and there she led the charge from the board to create a more sustainably powered school district.
Capps previously served on Santa Barbara County Commission for Women and on the Board of Trustees for her alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley. [00:02:00] She has a master’s from the London School of Economics. Laura, welcome. It’s so great to have you here on the Work That’s Worth It podcast. Thanks
Laura: for having me.
Have fun.
Georgi: Yeah. I am particularly excited to have my first politician on the show and I thought we could jump in. Laura and I actually met at UC Berkeley way back in the day and she got into politics pretty early. So I thought we would jump in right to that early transition point for you and what drew you to it and how you got started.
Laura: Thanks. Yeah. I mean, it’s one of these stories about being told you can do something so that you visualize it. And for me, it was, it’s kind of a corny story, but my parents took my siblings and I to Washington DC for a sort of a typical spring break trip when I was nine years old. And I was mesmerized by that city.
It’s very electric, the vibe, the energy, the change that’s always there. And I remember walking along, looking up at sort of the monuments and the [00:03:00] Capitol. With real amazement. And my dad picked up on what I was experiencing and said, you could work here someday and it kind of blew me away. Like I just had never even thought about what I was going to do yet or anything.
And I, you know, I’m so glad he said that because I kind of decided right then and there that I wanted to try that. And it wasn’t like I was completely driven, I wasn’t sort of this driven kid with an agenda or anything like that, but it was always in the, ever since that point, it was always in the back of my mind that I would go to D.C.
Georgi: So he planted a seed for you, and it just made it, it made it possible.
Laura: Yeah, and just kind of a casual comment that you do with your kids all, all the time, or you do with your friends. But it, for me, it opened a door.
Georgi: Yeah. And then how did you make that a reality? You know, they call it going from earning to learning, but how did you make that so learning to earning?
So how did you make that a reality?
Laura: I just started to pay more attention. And I was, again, I grew up in a household. My parents weren’t political, but they, they paid attention to, you know, we watched the news at [00:04:00] night. We talked about issues. They paid attention to. Local issues. We would show up at an environmental rally after the oil spill or something like that.
Not too crazy. They weren’t, I wouldn’t call them activists, but they were engaged. And so I started to pay more attention to that and just had my sights on going to Washington DC after college. And that’s what I did. And so I just started paying attention to who my Senator was. Sort of who the leadership was, I wouldn’t say I was a junkie at all, but I was definitely paying attention from a young age and found it exciting.
Georgi: Yeah. Yeah. So what did you start off with in Washington DC?
Laura: So this is one of my lessons is I started off as an intern. I had probably Before I actually got a salary, I think I had seven internships in my life. I worked at our local news station, our TV station. I worked at our local paper. I worked for our local state senator, which is a local position, even in high school.
So I had these internships and I do need to qualify that that means that I was [00:05:00] able to financially work for free. And certainly Most people can’t do that. So that was, you know, gave me a huge head start from a place of privilege, which I recognize. So I, right after college, basically I got myself an internship at the white house.
It was very lucky how it happened, but I parlayed that four month internship into a four year. Job at the white house. So once the internship was ending, I went for a paid position, a salary position. I was still, I was two months shy of my 23rd birthday and I was hired in the West wing at the white house.
So the stars definitely aligned from me like right out of the gate. And that always often doesn’t happen. But one of my pieces of advice for people that want to go into politics is internships are. Plentiful. And if you make yourself useful in a very high pressured situation, like I did as an intern, once the position came open to be, to work there, they knew that I knew the ropes, and I had survived [00:06:00] basically this sort of boot camp of pressure.
And then I was hired.
Georgi: Yeah. And for People listening who are interested in following your pathway and taking on internships. How easy is that to find? Is there a central resource for that? Or is, are you looking locally most depending on where you’re, where you’re living?
Laura: Yeah. I mean, two tracks, I would say one exciting way to get into politics is to work on a campaign and literally anyone can volunteer on a campaign and there’s campaigns happening all the time.
I mean, certainly every four years, there’s big campaigns happening, presidential campaigns. But basically every two years, sometimes more frequently, there’s local campaigns happening. It could be for a school board member that you care a lot about, or you have a connection to. And volunteers are, create the backbone of campaigns and no one, I’ve never seen a volunteer turned away.
Instead, they’re always trying to seek and get. Volunteers, and you really have a ton of exposure if you volunteer on a campaign. And if you care about something, it’s a great [00:07:00] way to learn more about it, to get involved. You can volunteer for two hours a week, two hours a month. You can volunteer for 20 hours a day.
Like there’s so much work to be had. And, you know, I’ve worked on presidential campaigns. I’ve worked on congressional campaigns. I’ve run my own campaigns on a local level. Volunteers are. So integral. So that’s one way. And that would be just kind of paying attention to your local news or your national news.
Say you’re really motivated right now with what’s happening in Washington. There are people in your area running for Congress right now for the 20 November 2026. They might not need volunteers in February of 2025, but they’re going to need them this summer. And it’s a great way to get involved just to figure out who, who’s running, who, if you like your current Congress person, then you could volunteer for that person.
But every member of Congress is up for reelection every two years, and they’re basically always running. So if you like your Congress person, you could volunteer for them now. If you don’t like them, you could find out in the next few months, probably people are going to start [00:08:00] declaring running against them.
You could start volunteering for them. So that’s one track. The second track is everybody has. Local elected officials, no matter where you live, you have a mayor or you have, like, I am a county supervisor, you have a city council person, you have a congressperson, you could see if you wanted to intern or volunteer in their office and generally, like, I have a couple college students at UC Santa Barbara that volunteer with me, intern with me.
And it’s great. It’s a wonderful way to get involved. And again, it’s something you could do while keeping your current job. If you were just kind of had this curiosity about politics, you don’t have to like jump in with two feet. You could just dabble and see if it feels good. If it sort of lives up to what you think it might be in the West wing or whatever show you watch and you want to check it out.
Georgi: I’m so glad that you shared that because I think sometimes people think of politics as it’s so hard to enter, and you’ve just lowered the bar and made it so easy for anyone to jump in with even two hours a
Laura: week. Yeah, I don’t know of an easier [00:09:00] profession to enter, honestly. I mean, I couldn’t, if I wanted to be a doctor, I couldn’t just go Volunteer somewhere.
Volunteer in surgery. I’d have to meet a bunch of criteria before I was able to Do that. Or if an accountant, like I, you know, you have to, they’re literally the barrier, the threshold is, do you care about something?
Georgi: Yeah. Are you aligned and do you care?
Laura: Yeah. That’s the entry point. If you care about an issue or a party or you want to get a crosswalk or whatever.
I mean, these are cliches, but if you care, you can get involved. And I don’t know of an easier profession that, that allows more points of entry.
Georgi: Yeah. Laura, you’ve had experience at the federal and local level. Can you share with us about how to think about those two when you’re thinking about a career in public service?
And also, is it important to experience both?
Laura: Yeah. Well, I love that having both, having had both and in different phases of my life. I mean, definitely working on the federal level, like I worked in the, Like I said, the [00:10:00] West wing of the White House, it doesn’t get more exciting than that. If you, if you care about politics or care about the future of the country to be steps away from the president and these heads of state that are, you know, I was exposed to at a very young age of terms of daily work of working in the West wing.
I also worked in the United States Senate. For this legend, Senator Ted Kennedy, this lion of the Senate who had been around at that time for 40 years and was the author of the civil rights act, et cetera, so excitement and adrenaline certainly defined more of my federal experience. But now, for the last eight years, I’ve been on the local level, and I would say what defines that is actual real life impact on people’s lives.
And so the trade offs, one isn’t better than the other, they’re just different. My excitement level isn’t quite as high as it used to be in terms of what I’m doing on a daily basis, but I think my impact is higher. What I’m doing now on the local level.
Georgi: And maybe you can also see the people you’re [00:11:00] impacting.
So the return on that, like how you can every day you’re motivating yourself to show up and now you can see the people that you are able to help. Exactly, exactly.
Laura: Right. Yeah. It’s much more. National is more 30, 000 foot level, you’re passing legislation, hopefully to help people that you’ll never encounter.
Here, like, I’m literally connecting people to a resource so that the dead brush behind their property, their yard, is cleared out because they’re freaked out because their daughter just lost their house in the Palisades fire. So it’s like, that makes that person feel so much better. I just did that, like, yesterday, actually.
That one person, she was so riddled with anxiety and reached out and we were able to get the, the fire marshal folks to go in and make an assessment of her property and they cleared out a bunch of dead brush. So she’s probably sleeping better now. And that feels really, really good. And I, to be clear, I didn’t do anything other than be responsive [00:12:00] to her and to know how the system works and to know who to call and to do it in a nice way so that they do it, they could do it quickly and they took care of her.
Georgi: So in a way being a connector, like, you know, all the resources and you can connect the right people.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. And to be really lofty. I mean, that’s the beauty of our government. I mean, that’s happening, not just in Santa Barbara County, but it’s happening all over every day for people. And that’s where, you know, fundamentally I’m a big advocate of government and a believer in government because it’s set up to provide the cohesive tissue that, so that society functions and that people are ultimately people are safe.
Georgi: Yeah. Laura, can you give us a recap on what you are doing now locally in Santa Barbara?
Laura: Yeah. Well, it’s funny. I just said that phrase. I mean, I am a county supervisor. When I say that, no one has any idea what I do, even, even around here, so I get some blank looks. So how I follow up usually is say, well, the county exists, county government is there to keep you safe.
So we run things like the fire department. The sheriff’s department, [00:13:00] mental health department, the public health department. We all saw that during a pandemic, the role of the public health department. We run the streets and transportation and make sure that our highways are safe. So it’s all fundamentally, if I had to say it in one word, it’s about safety.
And that’s what the County is there for. So hopefully you don’t think about the County very much. You know, you kind of think about it when you’re worried about your safety, generally.
Georgi: Okay. And this is, you are an elected official.
Laura: So there’s five county supervisors in every county in California, and we are the elected officials that sit on top of this county infrastructure.
So it’s our job to vote on the budget and make sure that the programs are funded in the way that reflects our priorities. So our budget is 1. 4 billion in Santa Barbara County, and every year we vote. On that and we set priorities for how that money is going to be directed to take care of people.
Georgi: Yeah.
So what kind
Laura: of skills do you need to be able to do your job? Being a good listener is the first and [00:14:00] foremost, really just being responsive and kind of understanding where people are coming from. You have to be. I like to say I’m, you know, I have to be a very skilled generalist, right? I’m not an expert on one or two things.
I have to be generally up on probably, you know, I don’t know, 80 different issues related to the way that communities function, right? And to be able to jump, to be able to pivot really quickly. So a task switcher. Yeah, task switcher. That’s what I’ve had since I was a young person is that ability to kind of grasp information that might be very detailed and sort of quickly assess what I need to know from it so that I can do something about that rather than I admire like more of an academic mind or a scientific mind that goes real deep.
My mind has never been quite like that, but to sort of, but I can discern fairly easily of like, what’s the need to know.
Georgi: Yeah. So what is it like to go through an election? What does it take from like a human standpoint? Like what does it? [00:15:00] Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
Laura: it’s a very vulnerable experience. It’s literally putting yourself out there, your brain, you become kind of a brand.
People are critical of you. It takes a real thick skin. People. Like we’ll put in writing in the newspaper, you know, that someone called me vapid or, you know, like it’s, it’s mean, there’s a lot of real personality criticisms to it, but it’s also really thrilling. And I’ve viewed it as this, the times that I’ve done it as this real expression of myself.
And what I vision that our lives could be and having that reason to think deep about, okay, what do I want the world to look like? And to be able to express that as a real privilege. So there’s really hard parts about it, but there’s really beautiful parts about an election because it’s such a outcropping of your hopes and dreams.
Georgi: Yeah. So like your, your vision for how you see Santa Barbara is more important to you than the criticism.
Laura: Oh yeah. And, and, you know, I think about the criticism I’ve gotten quite used to it. Just, I was on the school [00:16:00] board, which was really tough during COVID. So it was a very fractious time in, in education.
I’d say things still probably are, but, but I kind of, one day I realized I was meeting with a friend of mine who is our former fire chief. And I thought to myself, you know, like he’s run into burning buildings. Like, I don’t know if I could run into a burning building, but I can read something negative about myself and kind of move on fairly quickly.
So I just kind of think about it and. That people have different skill sets, but definitely having that as a skill set is required. The further you go in politics,
Georgi: like learning not to take it personally. It ideally doesn’t hold you back. It’s going to be there.
Laura: Yeah, it definitely gives me pause. I wouldn’t, I’m not oblivious to the criticism, but it doesn’t hold.
That’s a great way of saying it. It doesn’t hold me back. And so therefore that’s kind of a signal to me that I found the right. The right trajectory for myself because I don’t, I think that that’s fairly unique amongst people. I mean, I, I just hear [00:17:00] that all the time. People say to me, Oh, I could never do that.
I don’t know how you do that. Like you have things be, you know, out in public record negatively about yourself.
Georgi: But for some reason I can. And there’s no way to learn it other than to do it. Like you can’t prepare yourself for that. Like you have to actually put yourself out there and experience it and get over it.
Exactly. You can’t go do reps in the gym for this.
Laura: That’s right. Or you can decide, Hey, this is not for me. Like this feeling of I carry that with me too long, or I don’t, I’ve known people who’ve, they were on the school board for a little bit and they just decided with good reason, like this isn’t for me, I can be more productive in another.
part of education or whatever the example might be.
Georgi: Yeah. For people interested in politics, can you jump in at any time? Like you did say the volunteering can happen at any time, but if you want a longer career in politics, like, are there certain hurdles where it’s easier to get in than not? Or what are your thoughts on that?
Laura: I think unlike a lot of professions, I think you can jump in at different stages of life. [00:18:00] I mean, the best example in our current times is Nancy Pelosi had all five kids. And before she even ran for anything herself, I think she, I don’t know the exact age, but I imagine she was already in her forties. So you can, it’s harder the longer you wait for sure.
And there’s definitely a pecking order. I would imagine there definitely is in my area, but I imagine that’s pretty universal. So you can’t just sort of expect to jump in and run for. Higher office and and leapfrog a bunch of people. Sometimes you do and you get lucky, but no, I think it’s something that particularly if you care about an issue and you might not want to be elected on the ballot yourself, there’s no end to volunteering or being involved or maybe volunteering and then getting picked up as a staff person or something like that.
Georgi: Yeah. Do you have a North star or something that you’re working towards that drives you every day?
Laura: Yeah. I mean, I, I talk about kids. I think I’m really grateful that my first, I mean, I’d worked for a lot of elected officials and I’ve worked on campaigns for other people, but the first time I did it for [00:19:00] myself was for the school board and I’m just grateful for that grounding because that is my North star is how I was trained during experience of six years of just always.
Thinking through the lens of what’s best for the kids and then that I’ve just carried that with me into this bigger job of, okay, well, how is this going to impact kids? It’s just a really good question. Whenever I’m looking at any issue, it helps me kind of narrow out a lot of the other noise and just focus in on what, what’s probably the best thing.
So if I had to say I had a North star, it would be that when we do right by our children, we do right by everybody. And that’s something I often say to kind of keep me reminded and keep me focused.
Georgi: Yeah. What makes your work worth it now? Like you’ve brought in a few things, but if you had to say, tell somebody why you do what you do.
Laura: Because it’s, it’s very satisfying to help people. And. That sounds, I’m not Mother Teresa. I have, there’s also excitement. There’s [00:20:00] also somewhat, there’s competitiveness to it. There’s, there’s drama with voting and different priorities and working with different coalitions. But ultimately at the end of the day, it feels really good to, what’s worth it for me is that I get to do a job where my charge is to make my hometown better.
The place that I grew up in the place that I love, like it’s literally my job to try to make it better. If I could, I would do it for free. That’s been a real litmus test for me. Is this a job I would do for free? Absolutely.
Georgi: Yeah. But better than it’s paid. Yeah. Not paid much, but yeah. Yeah. So your return on the effort you put in every day, it’s beyond financial means.
Like you have to be really excited about what you’re contributing because that is part of what gives you energy to keep going.
Laura: Oh yeah. I mean, I’ll flip it sometimes and like, we’ll have such a great experience with a constituent or. We helped get this homeless shelter in our, in our area. And we went, met with one of [00:21:00] the homeless residents who’s living there now.
And he’s getting his life turned around. He was five years living up in this encampment above this riverbed. And he came out and thanked me for having helped get this shelter going. And my colleague and I, we walked to our cars. It was a couple of Fridays ago. And I just looked at her. I was like, you know, we get paid for this.
Georgi: This is what you’re doing it for.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, we were doing it for this guy, Jay, who now is trying to reunite with his daughter, who’s 15 and, and then it’s like, it’s almost like the secondary part is that the paycheck comes, I don’t even really think about that on a regular basis.
Georgi: Yeah. If you were to give advice to young people looking to get involved in politics beyond volunteering, but if they’re.
programs or anything to sort of learn skills and learn to use their voice, learn to public speak or whatever is needed. What are some of the resources nationally or locally that you really recommend?
Laura: Politics is a meritocracy, so certainly connections help get you in the door. If you [00:22:00] know your congressman or whatever, and there might be a position open, but it’s really a trial by fire.
And I don’t, I think as much as there are good programs out there, and of course, you can study political science, but I just found that it’s being a practitioner of it is the best. Certainly there’s, yeah, different leadership programs. I don’t think those are required by any means, but I certainly think that they would help public speaking.
Like that’s something I wish I’ve taken classes. It’s kind of on my list, but I’ve never done it, but I, I do public speak a lot now and it’s just practice. So I would say a program is, is a plus, but not a requirement.
Georgi: Yeah, yeah. And for you, as you move ahead in your career, are there aspects that you still want to reach to make your overall career worthwhile?
Laura: Yeah, well, there’s a lot of specific things I want to get done for Santa Barbara County. We have the second highest poverty rate in the state of California, and that really troubles me on a On a daily basis. So I have a lot of, I [00:23:00] have a lot of goals in terms of my career path. I’m at a really good place where I could see myself doing this for a long time.
And that means I’d have to get voted in every four years, but I, it feels really good, I think for the first time in my life to be settled and to think, okay, I could do this job eight, 12, 16 years, potentially, I’ve never had that feeling before, so it was novel to me.
Georgi: Yeah. How do you know you’re settled?
Like, what is it that you, how do you have that personal information loop?
Laura: I’m just not striving as much as I had in previous where you’re at a job and you’re kind of looking up to say, Oh, could I have that person’s job above me in a good way? I don’t have that right now.
Georgi: Yeah. Your list sounds long of all the things you want to accomplish and can accomplish within this job.
Absolutely.
Laura: Yeah. And I should add, I mean, I have a 13 year old son. This job is very conducive to work life balance and I’ve had jobs that were not [00:24:00] that they were thankfully at times in my life before I had, before I was a mom, but you know, where I literally worked seven days a week and was not necessarily the healthiest, but this, I mean, it’s a real factor for me that this job also has really good work life balance, which is important.
Georgi: Yeah, I love that. I was wondering if you have any books that you have loved that have really helped you understand politics or a career in politics that you could recommend.
Laura: Yeah, in fact, I have it. It’s right here because I give it to everybody. This, it’s not like an inspire, I mean, it’s, I wouldn’t say this is like Winston Churchill or anything, but it’s um, writing for busy readers, communicate more effectively in the real world.
And I’ve like highlighted this book. Book to death and given it out as gifts to everybody I work with, because I just communications is so important, especially in the world of politics and government, making sure people understand why we’re doing things and what for what purpose. And the more we can communicate [00:25:00] clearly this book is by let’s see.
Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky think they’ve just done a lot of science behind, like, how people skim and what people look for. And the more that you can land your idea and resonate with people is increasingly important with all of the attention demands we have on ourselves right now.

Georgi: Yeah. What a great resource.
Well, I just want to thank you so much for your time, and I love that you’ve given such a low bar to get started in politics, and I really appreciate all the information that you shared. So thank you so much for being on the show.
Laura: You’re welcome. Thanks, Georgi.
Georgi: Yeah. Bye. Bye. I would love to share my take on this interview.
Two things to remember. First, if you are interested in politics or public service, try it out. While other professions require extensive credentials or certifications, politics has perhaps the lowest barrier to entry of any field. The only real requirement, according to Laura, is that you care about an issue.
Anyone can [00:26:00] start by volunteering two hours a week on a campaign or in a local official’s office. The accessibility is remarkable. Though, it’s worth noting what Capps acknowledges is her early unpaid internships came from a place of financial privilege. The second thing I want to point out is about variety.
Laura’s career exemplifies how politics rewards adaptable generalists who stay true to their values. From the White House to local government, each role leveraged her ability to synthesize information and pivot between diverse challenges. While specialized careers demand mastery in one area, her political path thrived on quick comprehension across many domains, from public safety to education policy.
The constant thread. Her unwavering focus on core principles, especially improving children’s lives. For those who love variety but hate compromising their values, politics offers a unique career path. And that’s a wrap for today’s [00:27:00] episode of Work That’s Worth It. Remember. Every conversation we share is designed to empower you to build a career that’s truly worth your time and energy.
There are future disruptors out there just like you who would appreciate the conversations in this podcast. Please support me by spreading the word and sharing this episode with a friend or two, or visit my website at georgienthoven. com. That’s spelled G E O R G I E N T H O V E N.com. Until next time, ask yourself, What problems am I solving and are they worth my valuable time?

Your intentional choices today can lead to exponential impact tomorrow. Thanks for listening!