Voices in Leadership

Senator Trent Lott represented the people of Mississippi in Congress for 35 years and is one of a handful of officials to have held elected leadership positions in both the House of Representatives and Senate. During his 16 years in the House and 19 years in the Senate, he worked closely with seven presidential administrations and was regarded as a savvy coalition builder and deal maker. He was the former Senate Majority Leader, Senate Republican Whip and House Republican Whip. Senator Lott joined the House in 1973, representing Mississippi’s Fifth Congressional District. From 1981 to 1989 he served as House Minority Whip, the second-ranking Republican in the House. In that position he forged the bipartisan alliance that enacted Ronald Reagan’s economic recovery program and national security initiatives. He also founded the House’s first modern whip organization with a focus on regular member-to-member contacts and extensive outreach to sympathetic Democrats to secure passage of major legislation. In 1988 Senator Lott was elected to the Senate where he was a member of a group of pro-growth stalwarts who opposed the tax increase forced on President Bush in 1990. He became the Senate’s 16th Majority Leader in 1996 and, along with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, was instrumental in the passing of the historic welfare reform bill of 1996. The next year Senator Lott worked with Gingrich and congressional Budget Committee chairmen John Kasich and Pete Domenici to produce a landmark budget and tax cut agreement that limited some federal spending while, more importantly, stimulating the economic growth that brought the federal budget into balance for the first time since 1968. As the Republican leader in the Senate during the first two years of President George W. Bush’s administration, Senator Lott led the fight for passage of the President’s tax cut package, the President’s historic education reform bill, the largest increase in defense spending since the Cold War, the most significant trade legislation in a decade, and the resolution supporting the President of military action in Iraq. Senator Lott later helped to reach the compromises leading to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. In 2006 Senator Lott was elected Senate Republican Whip, giving him the distinction of being the only person to hold that position in both the House and Senate. Today Senator Lott co-chairs the Public Policy practice and provides strategic advice at Squire Patton Boggs, consulting and lobbying clients on a wide range of public policy matters, including defense and homeland security, tax and financial services, energy, transportation and communications. Senator Lott and fellow former Senator John Breaux founded the Breaux-Lott Leadership Group, a bipartisan public policy firm that quickly became one of the 20 largest government relations firms in Washington.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy spoke in the Voices in Leadership series on Monday, February 29, 2016. Watch the on-demand video of her talk entitled “A Leadership Career in Government: EPA Chief Speaks.” McCarthy discussed the importance of communicating clearly and honestly around complicated scientific issues, and how she views EPA as essentially a public health prevention entity, among other topics.

Gina McCarthy is the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Appointed by President Obama in 2009 as Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, Gina McCarthy has been a leading advocate for common-sense strategies to protect public health and the environment. Previously, McCarthy served as the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. During her career, which spans over 30 years, she has worked at both the state and local levels on critical environmental issues and helped coordinate policies on economic growth, energy, transportation and the environment. McCarthy received a Bachelor of Arts in Social Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a joint Master of Science in Environmental Health Engineering and Planning and Policy from Tufts University.

Thomas Daschle, Former Senator Majority Leader and Founder of The Daschle Group, spoke on “Leadership In and Out of Government” on Tuesday, March 8. Daschle discussed the need for bipartisanship in the U.S. Congress.

Senator Daschle is the Founder and CEO of The Daschle Group, A Public Policy Advisory of Baker Donelson. The Daschle Group is a full-service strategic advisory firm that advises clients on a broad array of economic, policy and political issues. Senator Daschle has participated in the development and debate of almost every major public policy issue of the last three decades. He served in the US House of Representatives for eight years, and later was elected to the US Senate and was chosen as Senate Democratic Leader in 1994. Senator Daschle is one of the longest serving Senate Democratic leaders in history and one of only two to serve twice as both Majority and Minority Leader. During his tenure, Senator Daschle navigated the Senate through some of its most historic economic and national security challenges. Since leaving the Senate, Senator Daschle has remained an active and learned voice among policy-makers. Senator Daschle has also emerged as a leading thinker on climate change, food security and renewable energy policy. He serves on both advisory and governing boards of a number of corporate and non-profit organizations and currently co-chairs The Cuba Consortium, an organization dedicated to an improved relationship with the people of Cuba.

In 2007, Senator Daschle joined with former Majority Leaders George Mitchell, Bob Dole and Howard Baker to create the Bipartisan Policy Center, an organization dedicated to finding common ground on some of the pressing public policy challenges of our time. Senator Daschle is Chair of the Board of Directors at the Center for American Progress and Vice-Chair for the National Democratic Institute. He serves on the board of Edward M. Kennedy Institute and the LBJ Foundation. He also is a member of the Health Policy and Management Executive Council at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the Council of Foreign Relations.

Senator Daschle attended South Dakota State University, and then served for three years as an intelligence officer in the US Air Force Strategic Command. Following his military service, he spent five years as an aide to South Dakota Senator James Abourezk. After leaving the Senate in 2005, Senator Daschle joined Alston & Bird LLP as a special policy advisor and then went on to work in the same role at DLA Piper before establishing The Daschle Group in 2014.

Dr. Stephanie Ferguson, in a conversation with Dr. Sara Bleich (Professor of the HSPH), discusses what inspired her to be a nurse, why she became an entrepreneur and provides lessons from her career path and the decisions she made as a leader in global health.

Drew Faust, President and Lincoln Professor of History at Harvard University, spoke about, “A Conversation with Drew Faust on Leadership,” on Wednesday, April 24, 2018. President Faust reflected on her 11 year tenure at Harvard University as the first female president, and what she sees as future challenges that higher education faces going forward. The talk was moderated by Michelle Williams, Dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.