You’ve been a political affairs professional, with a lot of work with PACs, for more than 20 years. How has this work changed during that time?

Our profession has significantly evolved. When I first started my career, PAC administrators mainly provided administrative support for the government affairs team. I’m fortunate to have assumed a true PAC manager role without the additional administrative support responsibilities. But I have also been in the trenches of reorganizing the PAC and LDA reporting in response to Citizens United and the Honest Leadership & Open Government Act (HLOGA). In addition, we PAC managers are campaign finance subject matter experts and internal communicators, skilled in business development, and good speakers. Not to mention, we’re detail-oriented database managers who are really good at data analytics. After January 6, many of us got a crash course in crisis communications. We learned how to prepare brief, factual and consistent “holding statements” for internal and external audiences as well as making sure we communicated more about our governance structure.

You were also Ethics Officer at Lockheed Martin. What did that entail?

That was a great opportunity, and I am so thankful that I took advantage of the stretch assignment. For this two-year business leadership program, I relocated from Washington, D.C. to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I worked on matters of business conduct and integrity, ensuring employees were compliant with internal corporate policies. I worked on employee complaints around procurement issues, time charging, management styles and more. The experience helped me understand the bigger picture of all the liabilities a corporation carries as they seek to comply with various laws and regulations. The ethics rotational assignment has helped me tremendously after leaving Lockheed, especially in my current position.

How will AI affect the day-to-day work of public affairs professionals?

I see generative AI as a helpful tool. For example, ChatGPT can generate a summary of a bill and provide a rough draft of a message to send to employees explaining things like how they are impacted by legislation. While we should not rely solely on what is generated through ChatGPT, using it can reduce the amount of time it takes for us to develop and distribute important legislative updates.