Dr. Carla Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress, and the first woman and the first African-American ever to hold that prestigious pose.  Born in Tallahassee, Florida, Carla grew up in Queens and in Chicago.  Her parents were both talented musicians – her father taught music at Florida A&M University – but Carla, by her own admission, did not have the music gene.  What she did have was a love of knowledge and of reading. After graduating from Roosevelt University in Chicago, and while looking for work, she became an “Accidental Librarian.”  A college friend gave her a ..read more

Dr. Carla Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress, and the first woman and the first African-American ever to hold that prestigious pose. Born in Tallahassee, Florida, Carla grew up in Queens and in Chicago. Her parents were both talented musicians – her father taught music at Florida A&M University – but Carla, by her own admission, did not have the music gene. What she did have was a love of knowledge and of reading. After graduating from Roosevelt University in Chicago, and while looking for work, she became an “Accidental Librarian.” A college friend gave her a lea ..read more

Carrie Hessler-Radelet – a native of Michigan and the former Director of the Peace Corps – and her extended family have a remarkable and unique relationship with that storied organization. They hold the distinction of being the only Peace Corps family to have four generations serve as volunteers, including both of her grandparents, her aunt and her nephew. In fact, Carrie’s aunt, Virginia Kirkwood – who served in Turkey and was the 10,000th volunteer – inspired Carrie to join the Peace Corps. After her graduation from Boston University, Carrie and her husband served as Peace Cor ..read more

Frank Figliuzzi grew up in southern Connecticut, but with his eyes and ears tuned to the nearby New York City media market and to enthralling stories of mob busting FBI agents. Those amazing tales made a big impression on a young Frank. As an 11-year-old, he wrote a letter to a senior FBI special agent, asking how he could one day join their ranks. To this day, he still has the personal reply that he received, encouraging him to pursue that dream. Back then, the FBI primarily hired attorneys and accountants to become special agents, and so Frank later went to law school, to poli ..read more

Matt Olsen held so many important and difficult jobs in federal law enforcement and national security that it is hard to know where to begin.  A son of North Dakota and a graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School, Matt worked as a civil rights prosecutor, an Assistant United States Attorney, on the staff of FBI Director Bob Mueller, as the Executive Director of the Guantanamo Review Task Force, as the General Counsel of the National Security Agency, and as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Though we could dedicate an episode to his work in any one o ..read more

Mike Bush, the former Commissioner of the New Zealand Police, served for more than four decades in law enforcement – starting as an 18-year-old constable, serving as a detective, and promoting up through the ranks of this highly professional and respected organization.   The population of New Zealand is roughly five million people.  About one in six New Zealanders are of Maori descent – an indigenous Polynesian community – and that community has historically been underserved.  Building ties to the Maori community was a priority for Mike, as was recruiting more citizens of M ..read more

Heather Penney was born in Tucson, Arizona, the daughter of a fighter pilot.  Flying was in her blood, and Heather earned her own pilot’s license while studying as an English major at Purdue University.  Heather harbored a dream of being a fighter pilot, like her dad, except that there was one problem: back then, women were not allowed to fly in combat.   Fortunately for Heather and for the nation, Congress removed the combat exclusion for aviation while she was in graduate school.  Heather immediately applied for one of these highly competitive openings, and secured a ..read more

Jon Jarvis grew up in rural Virginia, in the magnificent Shenandoah Valley. With national forest land in his backyard he learned to love the outdoors, roaming, hunting, and fishing with his father and brother. Shortly after graduating with a degree in biology from the College of William and Mary, Jon began a four-decade career with the National Park Service that culminated in an eight-year tour of duty – from 2009 until 2017 – as its Director. The great American author and Pulitzer Prize winner, Wallace Stegner, wrote that our “[n]ational parks are the best idea we ever had.  Absolut ..read more

Anne Milgram grew up in East Brunswick, New Jersey, the daughter of a college professor and an engineer. But other relatives – including her grandfather who was a New Jersey police chief – were in law enforcement, and so Anne thought of law enforcement as the family business. Though she was to spend much of her adult life in that family business, she was not particularly interested in it growing up.   After attending Rutgers University and New York University Law School, a clerkship with a prominent federal judge in Trenton opened her eyes to life in the courtroom. As ..read more

Robert S. Mueller III – Bob Mueller – is an American hero. Though best known as the sixth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and as the Special Counsel that led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the story of Bob’s public service starts half a century earlier. Bob was born in Manhattan and raised in Princeton, New Jersey. The oldest of five children, and the only boy, he was a star three sport athlete in high school and excelled in the classroom and on the lacrosse fields of Princeton, where he went to college. Following the death of a Princeton team ..read more