Reimagining Government s3 e6: Why Work In Government

[00:00:00] Shari Davis: Government is the people that show up and are committed to the promise that public service offers.Service to people, democracy, and fixing the problems that community members face. 

[00:00:17] Adrian Brown: Hello and welcome to Reimagining Government. My name is Adrian Brown. Throughout this podcast, we’ve spoken to incredible public servants from around the globe, and one thing that always comes through is their passion and dedication to public service.

We often hear people talking about their why, their reason for doing something, and I think this is an idea that is deeply important to working in government. To help us dive further into this topic, I’m joined today by Pierre Berastain, who’s the Interim Executive Director at CPI. Pierre, welcome. 

[00:00:46] Pierre Berastain: Thank you, Adrian.

[00:00:50] Adrian Brown: Now, what is your personal why Pierre, for doing the work that you do? 

[00:00:54] Pierre Berastain: Thanks, Adrian. I haven’t worked in government, although all my career I have worked very closely [00:01:00] with, uh, a number of both local, state, and, and federal offices. And for me, there’s always been a vocation to the work that I do and that vocation is grounded on, on my personal experience.

So a lot of my work has focused on domestic and sexual violence in immigration, LGBTQ rights, disability rights, at the intersection of gender based violence. 

My family left Peru when I was young, and, uh, we moved as, as a result of a number of, of, uh, sociopolitical, economic reasons. When we moved to the United States, we were undocumented for, for many, many years. And that began to shape a passion, a vocation in me, in social justice and in changing the conditions that give rise to injustices.  And the role of government is to provide, uh, a safety net to abide by a [00:02:00] social contract for the people who live within that community. And what I saw from a very young age is that, that responsibility of the government was not there or was not being enacted for most vulnerable folks, including my, my parents who had their wages stolen or faced discrimination.

And so government oftentimes didn’t work for my community. And so the why for what I do is rooted in that little kid, in that child who sees that injustice and refuses to live with it. 

[00:02:36] Adrian Brown: Thanks for sharing your story, Pierre. The passion that it arouses in you and, and the connection that you make to your work absolutely shines through extremely clearly.

Let’s, let’s move on to our guest, who is the first person that we spoke with? 

[00:02:50] Pierre Berastain: So the first person we spoke to is Leina’ala Nakamura, who is the administrator at City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii. 

[00:02:58] Leina’ala Nakamura: Aloha. I am the [00:03:00] administrator of the Work Hawaii Division, which is part of the city’s Department of Community Services.

Work Hawaii has seven sections, so my job as the administrator is I oversee all of those sections. So every single day it’s about helping people through our service self, and then complying with the tons of rules we have to comply with. 

[00:03:25] Pierre Berastain: One thing that really came through from Laina’ala is her sheer passion for serving the city and the island on which she was born.

[00:03:33] Leina’ala Nakamura: I see myself and my colleagues here as public servants, and so we are so proud to be able to serve all community members that live on Oahu. And because I reside on Oahu, it made sense that I worked for the city and county of Honolulu. It could work for the state of Hawaii, but I wanted the my impact to be here on the [00:04:00] island that I was born and raised. 

[00:04:03] Pierre Berastain: Adrian, this makes me wonder, do you need a personal connection to the town, city, to the country in which you are serving? What are your thoughts on that? 

[00:04:13] Adrian Brown: It’s a good question, Pierre, and I think as you said at the beginning, there are all sorts of reasons why you might have a connection, why you might feel that sense of purpose, which can be through direct personal experience, but can also be because you have felt a calling to work on a particular topic or in a particular place because you were, you were, you became, uh, engaged with the issue just because you felt it was an important issue, right? So I think it doesn’t matter why you have that passion, but more that you have that passion and you have that sense of service that working in the public sector perhaps uniquely requires.

[00:04:57] Leina’ala Nakamura: Every single day I walk into our front [00:05:00] doors. I know that there are colleagues here who are just so excited to work alongside me today. I know that there are colleagues here who are like, eh, whatever. I have colleagues here who, who just don’t like me. And I accept all of that because I know that I am gonna make today, the best decisions to best serve the people, not us. 

So what excites me about working is that I work alongside colleagues who do such amazing work. They’re the ones that have to look into the eyes of job seekers and those who are homeless, and hear their stories, embrace their fears, coach them up and tell them we are here to help you. And the fact that I’m here to support that, there’s [00:06:00] no other place I would rather be.

[00:06:04] Pierre Berastain: When people enter a career in government or public service, we often come with big ideas and hopes for change, and we then often come up against rules and regulations and, and that change seems quite impossible. Now, here is how Leina’ala deals with this challenge. 

[00:06:23] Leina’ala Nakamura: You know, we started off this country with, um, some really simple principles, I’ll call them the Bill of Rights. And then as the years progress, we’ve developed thousands and thousands of rules and regulations and what have we done essentially in government is that we’ve taken out common sense. We, we’ve taken out judgment because we’re afraid of fraud, but we’ve taken out, we’ve taken out our own values and convictions in the decisions that we should be making to benefit others. 

So my biggest challenge [00:07:00] is to look at these laws and look at the people who is telling me, no Lei , you can’t do that because it says it right here. I’m like, ‘that don’t make sense’. So my biggest challenge is really to accept that because I’ve tried to change laws.

I’ve tried to change policies and that doesn’t get me anywhere. So my biggest challenge is accepting the, the inflexibility, listening to the person who’s telling me it needs to be this way, and understanding from them why. And then being able to talk them through how, what I wanna do benefits the community.

Because, and typically what I’ll say is, you know, we’re all public servants, and though you are an accountant or fiscal officer, or you are a city attorney, you are here to serve people. And so let me share what we’re aiming to do here. I respect [00:08:00] the rules and we have to work inside of them. That’s what is called compliance, but equally important is service.

So we always gotta remember that do not make one more important to the other. It’s a balance. 

[00:08:15] Adrian Brown: And this really resonates with some of the principles that we have at CPI, particularly around sharing power with those best place to act, trusting people to make good decisions and optimising for learning rather than control, right?

This control mindset can be very pervasive in government, which is well links to compliance. This idea that if we all just follow the rules, then everything will be okay. Well, everything will be at least within the rules, but everything may not well be okay because the, you can never write everything down.

So that, exactly, that tension is something that we can all acknowledge, we can all relate to, and particularly if you’re a public servant, part of the skill [00:09:00] of the role is exactly as Leina’ala was describing there. How do you navigate that space between what the rules require you to do and what your job or what citizens or the community you’re trying to serve, expect you to be doing?

And sometimes they’ll be aligned and sometimes they won’t quite be aligned. And how you, how you navigate that space is an art, uh, which I suppose the best public servants are particularly good at. 

[00:09:27] Pierre Berastain: The other piece that this makes me think about is oftentimes I’ve met public servants who rub up against the regulation or the rule that says ‘you can’t do this’, and what comes next is really critical.

They say, I understand I can’t do it this way. Is there another way in which I can accomplish this? And it almost puts the administrator in a place of creativity, right? Um, in in which it’s, it’s, you might not be able to do it this way, but. Uh, there are other rules, regulations [00:10:00] that might allow us to do it in a different way.

Uh, and oftentimes as as public servants, people in organisations, we hear the no, and we stop at the no. But there is a more important question that comes, uh, after that, which is, how do I do it if I, if I can’t? The, the no is’ I can’t do it this way. How else can it be done’? And, and those are really transformative public servants in my experience.

Leina’ala is a perfect example of what innovation can look like because she and her team, um, at Honolulu worked with the Bloomberg Philanthropies, um, Innovation Training program back in 2022 to transform the city’s hiring practices and help people find and retain work. 

[00:10:42] Leina’ala Nakamura: We had to put our egos on the side and accept that we need the community’s voice.

And it really truly has been a blessing that I learned the importance of this in my one year journey in the innovation track with with Bloomberg and the [00:11:00] university. Our coach was Jenny. She was so gracious, always positive. She was more of a cheerleader than a coach. She really helped us understand the importance of community voice.

I told my colleagues just recently, I said, why don’t we include them in developing our programmes and our policies for intake eligibility, et cetera? And they looked at me and they’re like, what? I said, perhaps, do we think we’re smarter than them? But on the other hand, we profess that we respect them. Why don’t we include their voice?

So I’ve done, I’ve done a couple things. I am gonna bring on a position that will be the, the communication liaison with the community. We’re going to make sure that we have focus groups, um, and whatever else the community wants, [00:12:00] you know, so you talked about the dance, the community should lead the dance because it’s only until we understand what they need and let them have their say in how we do programme, will we be able to really say we serve a community.

[00:12:19] Adrian Brown: No, of course, listening to community in, well, not just listening, engaging and really bringing the community into the process is a very, very strong theme for us at CPI. But it’s interesting to reflect within this episode’s topic on how that feels if you’re the public servant. Especially if you’re the public servant who isn’t advocating for that in the first space, but perhaps thinks that, well, look, I’m the expert on this particular domain.

How does it feel then to be asked to invite community voices into that discussion, which presumably make your job more complicated, slow things down that, that feels like it could be threatening. 

[00:12:59] Pierre Berastain: It can. Here’s, here’s a framing that I think of though, is if you are, um, the expert in government, then you have the power and privilege to use your expertise to shape policies, to shape procedures, perhaps even regulations within government.

What you might not be an expert on is an expert on on lived experience who can explain viscerally and who has lived through the impact of some of those processes and procedures. Nowhere is this more evident than in a project that CPI North America is working on with the Department of Health and Human Services and the state of Colorado, which is to provide capacity building, training, technical assistance to, uh, 13 demonstration sites to improve the child support system and make it safer for survivors of domestic violence.

And as a core part of that project is the engagement of people with lived experience, [00:14:00] specifically survivors of domestic violence who have gone through the child support process in the respective jurisdictions. And throughout many of the demonstration sites, the experts, sometimes they, they, they, they’ve said, well, what can this person offer if they don’t know the ins and outs of the regulation, the ins and outs of the process?

And the answer is, they can tell you where the process sucks. They can tell you where the process breaks down for them, where it’s made them safer, right? There is a co-learning that happens. Oftentimes the experts revert to explaining rather than learning. And so, so this is where, yeah, as a learning partner and our philosophy of learning alongside community and other stakeholders is really critical.

[00:14:50] Leina’ala Nakamura: It’s a call to serve everybody. Not just, um, the folks that come through our, our doors, but everyone.  I’m so humbled by the fact that I can do that. That people entrust me to help them. You know, it’s not easy asking for help. It’s not, and so I feel honoured when people, as a public servant to be in this position.

You know, I’ve had many opportunities to work other places. I turned them down because, um, I love, I love the grind. I love the, I love being able to have discussions about compliance. I love to hear about what we are not doing so we can do it. And it, you know, it gives me an opportunity to, to ask for forgiveness too when we as a division fail.

Becaause for me, I represent the whole division. So when there are complaints, you know, comments made that, um, are seen as negative, I embrace all of those and I’m grateful for that because this [00:16:00] means we’re not doing something and someone’s perspective of that is important for us to look at. 

[00:16:08] Adrian Brown: Well, thank you Pierre, and thanks to  Leina’ala for such a passionate insight into why she works in government.

After the break, we’ll be speaking to Councilwoman Pierina Sanchez from 14th Council District New York, about the unique challenges she faces and the power of personal experiences in shaping your why. Stay tuned.

[00:16:39] Naja Nelson: Hi, I’m Naja from the Centre for Public Impact’s Global Development Initiative. I’m quickly interrupting this episode to introduce you to CPI’s Collective. CPI’s Collective is a digital incubator designed for change makers worldwide to experiment, learn, and exchange new ideas and approaches. Right now we’re focused on four key [00:17:00] areas, decolonising the development sector where we’re reimagining how development works with a focus on shifting power dynamics, measuring systems change, where we’re discovering new ways to track and adapt to complex evolving systems.

Justice for the just energy transition where we champion equity in the shift to clean energy. And finally, innovation for democracy in Latin America. A cohort entirely in Spanish, exploring how we can strengthen democracy and community resilience. If you’re interested in any of these areas and want to explore learnings from CPIs collective, subscribe to our substack at cpicollective.substack.com where we share our insights weekly.

Join us as we work together to reimagine a more sustainable, equitable future for all.

[00:17:53] Adrian Brown: Welcome back to Reimagining Government. 

[00:17:56] Pierina Sanchez: I’m Pierina Sanchez and I’m the New York City Council member for District [00:18:00] 14 in the West Bronx. And I am the chair of the New York City Council’s Committee on Housing and Buildings, which means I have oversight into the agencies that try to keep New Yorkers safe within their homes.

[00:18:09] Pierre Berastain: I have actually known Councilwoman Pierina Sanchez for, uh, a number of years. We went to college together, but this was really an exciting opportunity to get to know more about her work and more importantly, why she works in government. 

[00:18:23] Pierina Sanchez: Dating back to my childhood, you know, experiencing a fire very, very young. My mom screaming, my brothers, you know, getting, getting ready and trying to get clothes on their backs before we all sort of piled out of our building and then looking up at the flames and, and understanding that our life would be changed forever. 

And I was, what, three or four years old and, and it truly is the story that I think encapsulates the most why I ended up in government, because what that story was, was me growing up in the Bronx, my parents being immigrants from the Dominican Republic, and us [00:19:00] facing a landlord who was predatory, who did not want to provide heat hot water, um, who did not want to take care of vermin.Uh, we had rats in in that building.

 And my mother and my aunts and a couple of other neighbors, they went to seek help from some legal service providers and sued the owner. And so this very first experience of a fire was also my first experience of tenant harassment. 30 years later, you know, being a couple years outta college, you know, still looking very young, being 10-15 years into a career in public service, it really is the story that that brings it together for me. Because I’m sort of really steeped in that reality that even though that fire, that tenant harassment was 30 years ago, it’s still the reality with which my neighbours are living, uh, with which so many in my, even my family are living.

And so doing something about that, uh, is why I, you know, became a part of government [00:20:00] from, you know, graduating Harvard and coming back to the community and working for the local city council member all the way to being an advisor in government, to Mayor de Blasio. And now being a, a part of the governance structure of the city of New York.

It really stems from that moment. Um, and here we are today.

[00:20:22] Adrian Brown: So that is such a powerful story. And of course not everybody has a story that’s quite so unique at encapsulating an individual’s relationship to their career, and in this case to government. But Pierre, how, how do you think shared, lived experience more generally helps people who work in government to better serve the community?

[00:20:44] Pierre Berastain: I think shared, lived experience acts as a mirror, uh, and acts as a portal into the injustices, the, the discrimination, the fires that people face in their communities. The shared lived [00:21:00] experiences oftentimes create, um, uh, a visceral connection that activates a certain level of advocacy, of activism that makes leaders like Councilwoman Sanchez extremely effective.

Because you’re speaking not just from a policy perspective in terms of what makes sense financially, fiscally, or, or just from a public policy perspective, what, what makes sense to do for the community. But you’re speaking from the, from the heart, you are inserting the soul and the heart of, of what it means to live in a community, in your policies, and so lived experience can be extremely powerful to drive change.

[00:21:42] Pierina Sanchez: I represent a section of the Northwest Bronx that is home to 175,000 of the most incredible people you’ll ever meet. They are 98 to 99% people of colour from either African American heritage or Latinx heritage, or African [00:22:00] diasporic heritage. They’re here and they’re striving and they are working hard and they make the Bronx so amazing.

You can’t walk down any street without smelling the different cuisines of, of the different countries that are represented without hearing the vibes of all of the different cultures that we are home to in the West Bronx. But accompanying that beauty and that and the resilience that they represent is also a set of really, really difficult challenges.

Challenges that, you know, make me just quite honestly, like wake up in some mornings and be like, what am I doing? Like what, what can I really do about the fact that we have, you know, almost triple the unemployment rate of the rest of the city, that we have nearly 70% of our residents and our, and our families living in my community who are one income shock, one problem away from being displaced, being, you know, going to housing court and facing an eviction.

What am I gonna do with the, the [00:23:00] high asthma rates and the, the, you know, all the, the way that our inequalities show up in our health outcomes. What am I gonna do about all of these challenges? Just in December, right before the holiday, we literally had a building collapse in my district. A building collapsed in the city of New York because it was in bad shape.

It was in disarray. They had a hundreds of housing code violations. They had hundreds of complaints lodged against them, and violations issued by the city of New York and the owner heeded none of those. And the building quite literally fell, part of the building fell. And so it’s, it’s issues like that, it’s instances like that, that really highlight the challenge of, of this work.

But, you know, I, I keep going because there, it’s not an option to quit. It’s not an option to, to stop, you know? I just think about those resilient, yummy, delicious cuisine cooking, um, neighbours that I have and, and how for as challenging as the realities they face here in the [00:24:00] Bronx are, um, they’re coming from even worse uh, challenges and, and even harsher realities. And so it might, it might be tough here, um, and it might be a lot of, uh, difficulties that we have to fight against in the Bronx, but, you know, we’re, we’re up for the task. And, you know, that’s, that’s really what keeps me going.

[00:24:23] Adrian Brown: It strikes me, just listen to Pierina there, that there’s a paradox here of some sort, which is on one level the closer you are to a community, the more you really understand the issues, the more you see the potential and where that potential is falling short. The more you understand, the more you can represent that community, the better you can be a voice for those people.

But on the other hand, in order to make change happen, you have to sort of step above the details in some sense, or be able to sort of see the bigger [00:25:00] picture, engage with those, uh, in power, who are not deeply part of that community and talk on their, in their terms and on their language. And so in order to play this role, clearly you have to bridge both camps.

But is there, is there a sense that you can be almost too embedded in a community and therefore it makes it harder for you to sort of step out and, and play that leadership role, or is that unfair? 

[00:25:26] Pierre Berastain: I, I don’t know if you can be too embedded in a community. I, I think you could be too embroiled and too enmeshed in your own distress and in your own emotions in, in seeing the injustice that happens to someone else and seeing yourself reflected in that experience, right. 

The things that keep Councilwoman Sanchez up at night,  might keep her up at night because there might be flashbacks to her own childhood or her own parents, her own family members. Um, but what I found quite, uh, inspiring [00:26:00] here is that what she said at the end, which is stopping is not an option, right, you continue.

And there is that level of personal self-reflection, awareness of that distress that these stories cause or that these shared experiences elicit in someone and the ability to take a step back and say, how do we make change? How do we progress? 

[00:26:24] Pierina Sanchez: So just last year, um, you know, we, we had a major success in the city council.

As, as I mentioned, my district is one of the lowest income districts in the city of New York. You know, we, our median income for an individual worker is around $24,000 per year. Um, that is not enough for most things. It certainly keeps folks, um, you know, housing insecure and, and food insecure and, and all the rest.

And so as the chair of housing buildings in the New York City Council, I’m always harping on we gotta build, uh, affordable housing, but it has to be affordable to the lowest income New Yorkers. We have to do more [00:27:00] for the lowest rung of incomes in the city of New York. We must, we must. It has often felt that nobody was listening, that none of my other council members cared because they don’t have, you know, similar income profiles. Their constituents are not in the same situation. It just felt like I was shouting into a void. 

And then, uh, I introduced the bill and the speaker, uh, got behind it, um, in a very, very strong way. And our colleagues are in the city council and the nonprofits, the whole ecosystem of partnerships just kind of one day just sparked and everybody put their energy behind this reform to the way that New York City, uh, subsidises housing, like rental costs. I mean, the nuts and bolts of the bill, uh, are, are tedious, but essentially it would allow for more low income New Yorkers to receive housing vouchers and do it faster.

I have to say that, that that is my, my proudest moment, which is you, you, you yell into the void. You scream into the void. And, and then others, sometimes there’s other people who are, who join you and they’re also screaming [00:28:00] into the void, but it still feels like the void. And then one day it isn’t. One day, uh, you have made enough noise through all of the different, you know, lanes in which you’ve been advocating for this issue.

And I say you as in everybody who cares about that issue. Uh, and, and there’s a spark and, and there’s an opportunity for change. And I think the, the prospect of, uh, bringing more housing security to District 14, that’s gotta be at the top of my list right now.

[00:28:30] Pierre Berastain: I, I touched back on Pierina’s childhood to ask her, uh, what would’ve helped her and her family during that time, during situations of grief where we are called to show the best of our humanity. And this is what she said. 

[00:28:42] Pierina Sanchez: What I find the, the most reassuring in it, you know, I, I, I can’t exactly remember words that were said to, to my family and, and, and to me or to my mother.

But what I do remember is the feeling, the feeling I felt when someone put a [00:29:00] hand on my mother’s shoulder and said, it’s gonna be okay. Uh, when, when someone said, this is gonna make you stronger. Sharing that sentiment with someone who is going through a struggle in the moment is important. And then doing everything that you can to make that true is important.

And so I think that’s, that’s what we need more of is people, no matter what lane you’re in, uh, just, just trying to make your institution, your, your piece of the puzzle, uh, as strong as you can so that it’s, the puzzle is stronger for everyone.

[00:29:45] Adrian Brown: And that’s a, that’s a powerful way to draw this, this section to a close. Uh, my reflection is that, you know, at a very simple level, and it’s picking up something you, you were saying just a minute ago, Pierre, that we really just need our, our [00:30:00] government and public institutions to be human, to work in a, in a way that recognises our humanity, that demonstrates empathy, that doesn’t just treat citizens as problems or transactions or statistics, but recognises the humanity in all of us. 

And that government, as you said, is populated by humans as well, right? We all would like to work in systems and in institutions that allow our humanity to flourish. Uh, rather than feeling we have to somehow, in some sense sort of diminish it or, or leave it at the door when, uh, when we step into those roles that I think that’s… I’m not sure if that’s really very coherent, but that’s one of my final, that’s one of my thoughts at the end of this section, especially as, as she was describing what mattered really. And, and then that story from her childhood.

[00:30:53] Pierre Berastain: Certainly, and, and also a reminder that we can all be public servants, even when we’re not elected officials [00:31:00] or working in government, right. 

I mean, it is the community that put a blanket over the family, it’s the community that put a hand on her mom’s shoulder and said ‘things will be okay’. And it’s a reminder of the collective care that we can enact in our daily lives with all of those around us. It sounds minuscule, but ,but a smile can honestly change the world and can change people’s day and saying thank you can change people’s days.

And I see it every day in, when I pick up food, when I buy groceries, when I, when I just walk the street, right. And you can brighten someone’s day with just a kind gesture. And that, that’s, I think, the reminder of Pierina’s story. 

[00:31:46] Adrian Brown: Maybe there are some people who’ve listened to this and were thinking, well, why would I work in government?

They, they don’t work in government and maybe they’ve listened to this and thought it’s something I might explore. And if that’s the case, then I’m happy that through this episode and the conversations we’ve had, [00:32:00] it’s given people perhaps some different perspectives than they already had about what it means to work in government, why you would work in government and the benefits of doing that. 

That concludes this episode of Reimagining Government. Thank you so much to my co-host for this episode, Pierre Berastain. And if you are a public servant or policymaker, we want to hear from you. Why do you work in government? Let us know. Uh, and that’s the end of season three.

Thank you so much for joining us through this season. It’s been a real pleasure to host all of the different conversations. I’ve always learned a huge amount when I’m sitting in this chair, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the season as much as I have.

If you have, and you’d like to see us come back for season four, please leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform and let us know your thoughts and any ideas you have that we might wanna cover off in a future season.

But until season four, my name’s Adrian Brown. Thank you for listening and [00:33:00] goodbye.