UCLA SPG: What policy issues do you work on?

JT: I am the policy director with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. I have a really small team: we're a group of three, including myself, in the Office of Policy and Planning. Most of what we do is supporting the work of environmental divisions over the regulatory processes for the state. My group supports our leadership team and we can support all of our technical staff.

Recently we've been supporting program development. You might have heard about some of the big funding laws that have been passed in the last couple of years. First we had the American Rescue Plan, which provided stimulus funding down to state and local governments. Tennessee decided to dedicate about a third of our total state funding to our department to develop a new program for water infrastructure grants, so I got to be part of a small team that built a grant program to push out $1.3 billion from scratch (which was insane, but super rewarding!). We also have gotten the Bipartisan Infrastructure law, which has put a lot of good funding into our existing programs and has also led to some new programs. And most recently we've had the Inflation Reduction Act that provided a whole slew of funding; I've been part of the team that is working on some climate planning efforts funded through that grant opportunity. So we've been getting looped in on a lot of new programs, special projects, and initiatives that don't fit neatly into any one division. 

We also do research and analysis on emerging topics, reaching out to other states and doing state and regional comparisons for policies on new topics. One that I've been working on recently is PFAS, which is this class of compounds prevalent in nonstick cookware, water repellent materials, and firefighting foam. You may hear about them being called the “forever chemicals,” because they don't really break down naturally. There are some really serious health impacts that come from exposure to those chemicals, so it's this new area of policy that we don't have a lot of basis for or regulation around. So I'm putting together working groups and advisory groups and paying attention to what's going on federally and in other states to help inform our department about the direction to go in. 

We also manage our civil rights compliance program and our environmental justice programming. Environmental justice is a broad concept, looking at how different communities and groups of people are impacted disproportionately by both environmental burdens and benefits. For example, it's looking at not just the total amount of pollution that exists, but where that pollution is being felt and where the burden is. Environmental justice has been a huge focus area of this federal administration, so we've been the connection between the federal initiatives that are coming down and what our staff are doing on a day-to-day basis.

UCLA SPG: Many of these projects are dependent on federal funding packages. I can imagine that not knowing what will or won’t pass might leave you feeling unprepared. Is this kind of uncertainty frustrating?

JT: State governments are really busy right now. All of these new funding streams hit federal government first; for us, that's the EPA or Department of Energy. They get the big buckets of funding and push that down to state and local governments, and then we have to figure out what to do with the money. Sometimes we're acting as a passthrough entity, so we'll get the money, but then we have to grant it back down to local governments or community groups or utilities, whoever's eligible for the programs. And so you see this cascading impact of enhanced work streams. 

One thing I didn't really appreciate before coming to work for state government is how staff-constrained we are. So we run into this weird issue where we have all the money, but we don't have enough people to get the work done. We're not alone there; I think a lot of states are are starting to feel that. There's a lot of pressure because you want to take advantage of all the great opportunities out there and not leave anything on the table, but there's just so much to work on and not enough people to get the job done.

I think that's where my group has been really helpful for the department. A lot of groups within our department have things in statute that they need to get done, like processing permits or going out and doing inspection, because they are bound by law to do them. In contrast, my group is much more flexible in terms of what we work on. We get a lot of great opportunities to plug in and support divisions and bring some extra brain power and people to projects that don't necessarily have assigned staff to work on them. So it's been really exciting, but it does leave you with no idea what's going to happen, and it is hard to plan for the long term.

UCLA SPG: Please describe a typical day in your position.

JT: I've gotten that question a lot and there is no typical day! My job is kind of all over the place— we get lots of different stuff thrown our way. I'm not a subject matter expert in anything, but it's super exciting because we get brought in on a lot of these challenging new and emerging issues that we as a state need to think about.

UCLA SPG: What is your favorite part of your job? 

JT: I think my favorite part of my job is getting to work at a mission-driven agency. Government work tends to draw very mission-driven people who are attracted to public service. Our department's mission is to improve the quality of life for Tennesseans and improve and protect our environment, and it really shows in the people I work with. Coming to work every day, I know we care about the same things, and we enjoy putting our skills and expertise to the same general mission. So a really rewarding part of my job is getting to work in that environment.

UCLA SPG: What is your least favorite, or most surprising, part of your job? Is there anything about your current field or position that you wished you knew earlier?

JT: Probably the number of meetings I have — it’s a lot of meetings. I would also say there is a very frustrating side to government work. The pace of government work is very slow, which is something I knew about, but I thought coming from academia (which is also very slow relative to the private sector), that it would be something I could handle. But I think especially working in the environmental field, where it feels like there are so many challenges and so many real impacts that people and the environment are feeling, having to balance the urgency of some of the topics that I'm working on and the reality of the speed of government work has been a frustrating adjustment for me. I’ve had to learn to balance being a passionate idealist who wants to to hit the ground running and make a big difference with the reality of the workplace.

UCLA SPG: What skills or character traits do you think make you or someone else well-suited to your career?

JT: I think approaching problems with an analytical and a holistic perspective is helpful. We're often described as sitting in the middle of our scientific and technical experts and our legal experts. We've got an entire team of attorneys at the department who live in the legal world, and we've got all of our amazing scientists who live in the technical world, so one value add that we bring is being able to bridge those two and look at policy more holistically: thinking about the community impacts, the economic impacts, and the political realities around some of these policy issues. So having a broad perspective has been really helpful. 

Being curious is also helpful. This is something I've had to talk to my team about. Like, we are not here to be the subject matter experts, we're here to be generalists and bring that perspective to the department. This can be really hard, I think, for PhD students, because your PhD is the opposite experience where you get so deep in your field that you become the world expert on your one very specific topic. And my experience is that policy needs you to be more of a generalist, so you have to be able to pick up and talk about a lot of different issues that you may not have deep familiarity with. Being a quick learner, being curious, and not being afraid to engage in a new conversation about something that you may be don't know a ton about is an important skillset to have. 

I think another piece that's helped me a lot is being organized and able to manage time and projects well. One thing that grad school taught me really well is how to long- and short-term plan: how to balance a lot of different priorities and projects and not lose track of the different work streams that you have going on. The ability to schedule and keep things on track and organized has been really helpful in my position as I'm managing and overseeing a bunch of different projects.

I do feel like communication is huge, too, and that was part of the reason I got involved with Knowing Neurons and Hill Day visits— it's getting you comfortable talking to different audiences about complex topics. I've had a bunch of people in my department tell me a huge value add I bring is being able to distill a complex topic down into something manageable for people. Some of our technical experts are not as skilled in that. It's hard to take a complicated and technical topic and be able to talk about it to someone who's a non-expert, but I feel like that's another really valuable skill for people wanting to go into policy: figuring out how to distill complex information and how to make it something that people relate to and care about and have a connection to.

UCLA SPG: What was the application and interview process like for your current position? Did you have relevant expertise prior to starting your position?

JT: I'm one of those statistics about how networking can get you a job. When I left grad school, I took a postdoc at Duke tracking federal science policy, and we ran a website that communicated ongoing federal science policy in a few different areas to the public. I was overseeing the neuroscience and the genetics content for that website. My plan was to go to Duke for a couple years and build up my skills around policy and communication, and then move to DC. And I was always very federally-focused; state policy and state government work just really wasn't on my radar.

When I was in graduate school, I had the opportunity to do this two-week program in Chicago around sustainability and energy policy, and I made great connections with the people there, including someone who is now my coworker at the department. During my postdoc, I took a trip to Nashville and reconnected with this person I'd met at the program. He let me know that there was an opening in his office and that I may be interested in the position. So he made an introduction and I submitted the application.

It was a pretty normal process, I would say. I submitted a resume and cover letter and answered some brief questions about my work experience. I also had a two-step interview process: I did my first interview by phone and then they brought a couple of us back for a second round of interviews in Nashville. I left Duke and I started the job in Fall 2019.

It was tough for me because I knew I wanted to pivot into the environmental space, which is not something I had an educational background or work experience in. I'd done some coursework; at the time there was a certificate program at UCLA called Leaders in Sustainability which let me take some coursework in the environmental space. I'd done quite a bit of volunteer work trying to build up that piece of my resume, but I didn't have any formal education or work experience in it. I do feel like I got pretty lucky in that all these things came together in the right way. 

UCLA SPG: You mentioned doing coursework and volunteering to help you make the transition out of neuroscience into environmental policy. How did you balance this with your graduate school work?

JT: I learned a lot about time management. Also, I was really upfront with my PI about wanting to pursue a non-traditional career after graduate school. My advisor was really supportive of me taking a different direction. In retrospect, I was probably not the best grad student; I was definitely trying to use my time in grad school to build up other skills that I knew would support what I wanted to do post grad school. I did a lot of things in graduate school that some advisors would probably not really be thrilled about, like working at the Career Center at UCLA for a couple years as a career consultant, [founding] the Science Policy Group, and writing and editing for Knowing Neurons. I got involved with the AAAS workshops and Hill Days, and I did the Society for Neuroscience early career ambassador program.[Dr. Faneslow] was really supportive, as long as I was still showing up, doing my lab work and getting stuff done. Having an open and honest relationship with my advisor helped a lot. 

UCLA SPG: What is some advice you would give to current graduate or undergraduate students looking to pursue a similar career path?

JT: I think my biggest piece of advice is to be open-minded about what a career in policy looks like. Be really open-minded about what opportunities look like and what can be a fulfilling job for you. There are a lot of other options out there to make an impact in policy.

UCLA SPG: What’s next for you and your career?

JT: I've been in my current job as the policy director for about two and a half years, so I feel like I still have some growing to do here! I'm trying to stay open-minded, talking to my mentors here about what opportunities are out there and what could be next. So, I don't really know yet— to be determined! 

UCLA SPG: We’re excited to see where you land next!