Spotlight on… Isaac Reyes
December 2023
Senior Vice President, Risk and Government Affairs
Target
You now handle risk as well as government affairs for Target. What does that tell us about the direction of the public affairs profession?
These added responsibilities are, I believe, a recognition of the extent to which policy and assessing the macro landscape are integral parts of managing risk. This is also a recognition, in terms of our organizational structure at Target and other companies, of how teams work today and will work in the future. We work in cross-functional ways. These different functions — local, state and federal affairs and risk management — are interconnected, in what we do and what the results are. This also reflects an evolving understanding of the nature of stakeholders.
In what way?
Not so many years ago, stakeholders were understood to be shareholders, and that was about it. Today, we recognize the fact that our stakeholders are also our customers and consumers generally and our employees. And that’s just for starters. We recognize when functions like government relations, community relations and foundation giving work together in support of an organization’s values that there’s greater impact, which is the approach at Target too.
How so?
These functions were already meeting together multiple times a week, so there can be value in formalizing an already existing arrangement. I think there will be more of this in the public affairs profession as we recognize more and more how these different disciplines work together.
How did you prepare for the career you now have?
I never had any conscious desire to work in politics. When I was an undergraduate at Cal Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo, studying political science, my plan was to become an attorney. But I had the opportunity to work on a campaign for a congressional candidate. And to my surprise, I fell in love with the pace, the chaos and, you might say, the craziness of politics — and the opportunity politics offers to help people.
And you ended up working on Capitol Hill?
Yes, I did. The candidate, who was Silvestre Reyes, won. And in 1996, I became his legislative director. I moved to Washington and have been here ever since. The congressman, who served from 1997 to 2013, and I have the same last name, obviously, and we are related. But it is a distant connection that had nothing to do with my working for him. My stepdad’s sister is married to his brother. Small world, huh? Anyway, what I enjoyed most about Capitol Hill was how you can help people in very direct ways. You can help individuals, like veterans with their benefits, or by working on important matters like water issues, that can help benefit the people of an entire area.
You were also a director of get-out-the-vote efforts for the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008.
Yes, and that feels like a long time ago in some ways. Back then, people in campaigns talked about “cutting turf.” That referred to dividing up precincts so our volunteers could go door to door to canvass for the ticket. We actually made photocopies of images of parts of precincts and taped the image to a manila folder which had the names of voters inside. We’d give these folders to our volunteers. Today, the challenge is the same, but the technology is very different. Even then, though, you wanted your voters to vote early in case it rained on election day and they’d make excuses not to vote. The atmosphere is different, too. Back then, moderates were the majority in both parties, and the challenge was winning over the moderates. Today you have a huge number of independents, and you have to figure out what moves them.
You spoke on a panel at the Council’s Government Relations & Policy Conference in late September that addressed the challenge of handling controversial issues. If there was one key takeaway, what might that be?
Organizations are getting a lot of pushback when they engage on social issues, and they get this pushback from both sides. The challenge is figuring out the purpose, values and beliefs of your organizations — and then acting in line with the best interest of the business.
Reach Isaac at [email protected]
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Organizations are getting a lot of pushback when they engage on social issues, and they get this pushback from both sides. The challenge is figuring out the purpose, values and beliefs of your organizations — and then acting in line with the best interest of the business.
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