GPPR Podcast Editor, Bryna Antonia Cortes (MPM/NUF ‘23), spoke with Councilmember Robert White from the D.C. Council covering a range of topics from his path and lessons as a public administrator, the importance of being a vulnerable leader, to how to engage with the D.C. community in a meaningful way.
You will almost never be the smartest person in the room or in the constituency that you’re representing, there are a lot of people who are really smart who want to give their knowledge, all you have to do is invite them in and listen.
Councilmember Robert White
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Bryna Antonia Cortes: Hello, and welcome to this Georgetown Public Policy Review episode. I am Bryna Antonia Cortes, an interview editor and a Class of 2023 Master’s of Policy Management, National Urban Fellow candidate.
Cortes: I am so excited to have Councilmember Robert White, an at-large member of the DC Council on the show today. Councilmember White is a public administrator through and through, who has served as a community association president of the Brightwood Community Association (and is also the cofounder) to even previously working on Capitol Hill. What I find most warming is that Councilmember White is also a fourth generation DC resident, with a clear passion for the district and what it means to be a leader within it.
Cortes: As an out-of-state student, I find it extremely important to get to know the community I am entering, and not just use the area as a backdrop for my degree, I also get that tapping into a new community can be daunting, so I really appreciate Councilmember White offering amazing insight on how to engage with and learn from the DC community.
Cortes: Councilmember Robert White, thank you so much again for joining me today. I am very grateful for this opportunity to have this conversation with you, to hear more not only about your experience as public administrator, but also about building genuine community engagement and connection within the DC community.
Cortes: So to start things off, you’ve been on the DC Council since 2016. Before that you were in the legislative council to Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and were the Director of Community Outreach for the DC office of Attorney General, Carl Racine.
Cortes: How would you describe the ways to which your role as a policymaker has differed within these varying positions?
Councilmember Robert White: That’s a great question, Bryna, and I appreciate you having me on. I’m excited to chat with you. I really, as a young lawyer, cut my teeth on Capitol Hill, working for Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes, and that’s our Legislative Council, Congresswoman Norden is DC’s representative, our non voting delegate in Congress.
Councilmember: That’s where I learned the ropes of of legislation turning ideas into policy action and creating bills that not only say the things that you want to say, but that in the execution of that legislation, accomplish the things that you hope to accomplish, and and I really learned the ropes, including the fact that so much that you can do from the legislative branch does not require legislation.
Councilmember: You can do things through oversight. You can use your power to convene. You can use your bullet pulpit, although it is always smaller than the chief executive, whether it’s the President on the national landscape or the mayor here in the District of Columbia. When I left the hill and worked for our first elected attorney, General Carl Racine, here in DC, the Attorney General’s office in DC, while independent, is in an executive branch agency. It gave me another lens to view the legislative branch.
Councilmember: I was then doing the legislative branch from the outside. I was in an agency trying to execute within the budget and rules set by the legislative branch, and I understood agency challenges, but better from that experience, and brought both of those experiences and the leadership styles that I learned and adapted.
Councilmember: Pieces of Congresswoman Norton’s leadership style. Pieces of, former attorney general, Carl Racine’s leadership style. So I brought parts of that leadership style with me, but I brought a well rounded understanding of the legislative process from another body, and from an out of DC legislative perspective.
Councilmember: And those things combined have given me a really good understanding of what can be done, because what a lot of people will learn as they work in a legislative branch, is no two legislative branches are the same. Each has its own culture, for better or for worse. There are oversight things and legislative things that were not in the DC culture that I brought to the DC Council, and no doubt I’ve learned some new skills and tricks since I’ve been on the Council.
Cortes: Could share a little bit about what it looked like to bring previous knowledge and experience into your other roles. Can you share any examples of when there was something that you wanted to change? Was there push back? How did you navigate in having this different perspective, or structural change idea?
Councilmember: In bringing a different perspective on how a legislative branch can operate, or a legislature can operate, it did come with some pain for me. For instance, on Capitol Hill, when there is an agency that is consistently underperforming, and the agency head breaks the law, members of congress are going to call for their resignation, and they’re not going to wait.
Councilmember: We have a situation like that here in the district, and I called for the resignation of an agency leader. Very appropriate in the circumstance, but it got a lot of attention, because that’s not something that tended to happen in the district. There was another issue that involved our mayor, and a question of whether she skirted the law in an education matter, and I called for her to come before the council and testify.
Councilmember: Seemed like a very fair request. But, it was received with a number of gasps. Not that it was wrong to do or bad, it’s just that, because that type of thing didn’t happen in the district very much, It caught a lot of attention. I didn’t want to do it for attention, I did it for effectiveness. But the drawback was that it’s not the type of thing that happened here, it was received with a reaction that I didn’t initially expect.
Cortes: Thank you for sharing that experience, not an easy task to navigate how something comes across especially in a new environment, with an unfamiliar tactic to some people.
Cortes: In your current position, people are competing for your time and to bring awareness to many issues in DC. What is your advice to newer policymakers to stay informed, connected, and engaged in community, once you’re in such a position?
Councilmember: That is an incredible question, it’s something that I am learning to get better at day by day. The advice I would give to new legislators is to hire very competent people, because you can’t do the work by yourself, and you have to be able to trust the things that you need to do and the things you promise you do to other people. So take the time to hire the right people. Put the right people on the bus.
Councilmember: Also stay in touch with the people that you represent, and their issues. That will take a lot of time, but it will make you a better leader, and as you spend time in communities talking to people, meeting with people, it will necessarily mean that you have to shift your role from a worker to a leader, and that’s something that I struggle with. I’m a policy guy.
Councilmember: I’ve been a staffer, and when I got elected, I was still operating as a staffer, which meant that there was a lot of duplication between what I was doing, and what my staff was doing. There were also a lot of things that weren’t getting done, because I was spending so much time helping to draft bills and draft press releases that I wasn’t in the community as much as I should have been, or would have liked to be.
Councilmember: It is important when you become an elected official, to start to understand that your job is no longer as a staffer, you have to learn how to rely on people. You have to get better at giving direction, and you are giving better direction as a leader, if you’re listening to the people that you represent.
Councilmember: The other piece of advice that I’ve learned the hard way over the years is that it is okay to not know, and to be vulnerable as a leader, and if you become comfortable in that space you will be phenomenally more productive, because you you will almost never be the smartest person in the room or in the constituency that you’re representing, there are a lot of people who are really smart who want to give their knowledge, all you have to do is invite them in and listen, and that’s one of the most important things I’ve had to learn in the time that I’ve been on the DC Council.
Cortes: I really appreciate your comment around leadership vulnerability, as leaders we can’t know everything and we definitely should not be controlling everything. In this time of government skepticism and even cynicism, I think it’s even more important to recognize the varying roles and impact teams have as a collective.
Cortes: For what you said about staying in touch with people and issues, could expand a little bit more on what it looks like when you’ve transitioned between these different positions? Also, how have you kept up with those people that you knew from before, while gaining newer connections?
Councilmember: So this is a phenomenal question. One piece of information I didn’t share about me, my mom passed when I was young. When I was 8. My dad raised me and my brother, and while my dad worked in an hourly wage job, which means he didn’t get paid if he wasn’t at work, he encouraged me to participate in programs, activities and sports. 99 out of a 100 times, he was gonna be there, in the audience in the stand, it always impacted me as I grew up. That my dad showed up. The first philosophy I bring to my work is just show up.
Councilmember: When you show up, people know that you care, and then they build on that relationship. But there’s no foundation for a relationship, if people don’t know that you care and don’t don’t trust that you will show up. Now when you show up and take on issues, and start making progress on issues, then others will come along. They’ll be hype. They’ll be sort of bigger, badder people who want to be your friend, and you have to be careful to not believe the hype.
Councilmember: The higher you go in your career, the more funny your jokes are, the more wise your ideas are. As soon as you start believing that, you start slipping. One, don’t believe the height, but two, stay surrounded by the people who are gonna be honest with you, people who are going to give you feedback because that’s gonna help you do better, but also don’t lose touch.
Councilmember: There’s one woman who got my cell phone number, when I ran for office, and she asked me: “Is your number going to change when you get elected?” And I said, “My number is not going to change”. Not long after I got elected, she texted me just to see if my number changed, and I said to her, “I, Robin, I told you my number wasn’t going to change, it’s still the same, and I’m still here”, and people want to know that you don’t change as you go into your career, and I think that’s where most elected officials go off courses, it’s that they change. They change their circle. They don’t get that good, honest feedback, and they lose touch with the people that they’re supposed to represent.
Cortes: Love that example of the phone number changing. I still have my 714 from when I was in Southern California, and that’s always been something that feels like no matter where I go, I carry with me.
Councilmember: Yeah, a lot of people with their cell phones don’t change their numbers anymore, even if they live somewhere for a decade or more. It’s just that sort of calling card to where they grew up.
Cortes: Exactly, it’s very sentimental.
Cortes: And thank you for sharing about your parents. I love that motto about the impact of showing up for people, and the importance of consistency.
Cortes: My next question is about data sources. What are data sources that your team connects to? And how does your team and community efforts work to increase data equity and data collection to best represent community demographics and need?
Councilmember: We are a very data driven office, because again, the work that we do. We want to make sure it has the impact that we intend to. We are always looking at data to understand what we might be able to predict in terms of outcomes, but also what we might be missing in terms of underlying issues.
Councilmember: One example is that to public education and the district you will hear the narrative, and the narrative is true to an extent that we are the fastest growing urban school district in terms of improvement in test scores.
Councilmember: Well, that is true. But then I dig into the data, and I realized that our public school population has expanded over the years with more fluent white students, which is a great thing, except that it skews the numbers. And so when you dig into the data, you find out that black students and brown students are doing virtually no better now than they were a decade ago, despite significant investments, despite a narrative that everything is great. And so it is important to dig into the data. What I have pushed for, and then some instances, demanded some times successfully and sometimes not, is more disaggregated data to hit at that data equity issue.
Councilmember: You can tell any story you want with the right data, but it doesn’t mean the story is accurate, and sometimes folks skew stories with data deliberately, sometimes not knowing. Many people will read a headline about scores in the district and say, let’s not do anything different, and that’s not a deliberate choice to say, let’s take an approach that is inequitable. But we have to continue to ask the next question.
Councilmember: Who is this data talking about? Who is included in this data? Who was not included in this data? And that’s important. And then collecting data. It requires those collecting it, or researchers or policymakers to understand who doesn’t generally respond and then to understand why they don’t respond to see if there is a way to get more accurate and therefore more equitable data.
Cortes: Absolutely, and I grew up around a lot of data skepticism in my family, we often felt that we are not represented in the data. In this age of technology and news overdrive, staying informed about the right things is very crucial. There are opportunities with desegregated data, and deeper attention to what data is being used when we see headlines about an exciting new thing.
Cortes: If it’s okay could you recommend any local DC news platforms?
Councilmember: I hesitate to answer this because I’m gonna leave out some good ones, but a couple that I think do a phenomenal job in different ways are DCist. This is an online publication that covers a lot of real news, and they go in depth in these stories and do a good job of getting perspectives that don’t often get covered by the Washington Post.
Councilmember: There are local news outlets. One that I look at frequently is Petworth News. It is focused more on a particular geographic region of the district. But if you, if you pick up the Afro or the Inquirer, which are Black-led news publications, and in the district you will get a lot of news that you won’t find in other places. But the people, places, and stories they cover are ones that are generally overlooked, but just as valuable. When you try to deliberately look at and listen to diverse new sources, you get a more holistic understanding of what’s happening in the district.
Councilmember: I definitely want to support efforts of local news. So thank you. I should mention 2 others that I actually do read frequently. One is Bisnow, which is online, and the other is the Washington Business Journal. The business community is part of our community. People’s lives are impacted by the economy, these are things that are a little drier generally, but also important. Not everything that is important is sexy for news, and so they cover the things that are important, but maybe don’t get a lot of coverage in major news outlooks.
Cortes: Excellent, I think that’s a great segue into getting to know more about the community. As a graduate student coming into DC, being very new, since DC has a handful of major universities. There are opportunities for community projects and policy reviews, how might you recommend students to get more involved and learn more about the area?
Councilmember: The most important thing I recommend particularly to students or anyone else who moves into a new place, spend time listening before you start opining. These days there is no shortage of not people who believe they have all the answers, and know better than anyone, but taking time to understand perspectives is really important.
Councilmember: In the district what I think a lot of people will find is when you move into a neighborhood that has a deep history, be it a historically African American, historically Latino, historically Asian, historically white neighborhood, there are customs and practices and thoughts and beliefs that come from generations of experiences in those neighborhoods.
Councilmember: And generally, folks have no issue with new people moving into their neighborhood. The issues come when people who have lived there feel disrespectful, or feel like people move into a neighborhood and believe that this is somehow new discovered land or blank slate.
Councilmember: There are no undiscovered neighborhoods in the District of Columbia, that’s probably true of just about everywhere else. You spend a little bit of time talking to people who have been there for a long time, you will learn a ton, but you will get a lot of love and respect in return, and in that way you’ll learn how you can be most helpful, because we all bring not just different experiences, but different skill sets.
Councilmember: For instance, I was at a community meeting in Southeast, DC last night and listening to people’s thoughts and concerns. I was asking myself, what can I say to this group that would be helpful. And what I thought could be helpful was not at all to tell them what they should do, but to give them a perspective on how they could accomplish what they plan to do through the government.
Councilmember: I have experience in making government work, they didn’t need to hear my ideas about how to solve their problems. All they needed to hear from me was how to take their plan and get the government to implement it. And so, if we spend time listening and then say, alright, what do I have that I can contribute to this. I think you’ll find yourself understanding the city well, and also being an instrumental part of progress.
Cortes: And would you have anything for folks who have been local, maybe growing up in the area and are just looking to get more involved into local advocacy efforts. Just in case there’s anything else you wanted to add.
Councilmember: There is something else that’s important there. There are a lot of advocacy groups in the district, and many of them do a phenomenal job, one under utilized space that always needs help are neighborhood organizations, like the advisory neighborhood commissions and local civic and community associations
Councilmember: There’s no shortage of people with thoughts and opinions. There is a shortage of people willing to do the work particularly, the grunt work, or time consuming work, and as a former community association president myself, I know that I was always praying somebody was going to show up to a meeting and say: How can I help, what can I do?
Councilmember: Almost every neighborhood needs people to take on work. It’s fun. It’s meaningful. It’s everything from advocating for stop signs and speed bumps to community clean ups, to efforts to pull communities together, to efforts to get more funding for your neighborhood school.
Councilmember: But there’s a lot of work to be done, and if you just show up and say, hey, how can I be helpful at your advisory neighborhood association meeting or your civic or community association meeting, you will be put to work in a valuable way.
Cortes: Thank you for sharing about that. I know these associations are actually quite unique to DC. Could you share a little bit more about how this structure is different from other areas?
Councilmember: Absolutely, like any particularly urban area or quasi urban area, we have community associations and civic associations.
Councilmember: What is very unique to the District of Columbia, when we got a Home Rule from Congress in 1971 is these hyper local seats of people who represent approximately 2,000 people each, called advisory neighborhood commissioners. So there are about 400 advisory neighborhood commissioners around the city, they represent their individual communities, and they are grouped in advisory neighborhood commissions. So they’ll be anywhere between 3 and say 10 advisory neighborhood commissioners who work together in a group.
Councilmember: Now those are elected officials. They are hyper local. They are unpaid volunteers. They have very small budgets, and generally don’t have staff. If they have staff, it’s a part time, or shared staff person. So even for these you don’t have to run for the office to be of value. They have subcommittees and other needs and volunteer opportunities.
Councilmember: But the role of elected advisory neighborhood commissioners is very unique to DC. I don’t know Chicago’s system very well, but I think it is more akin to their alderman system than any other system of governance I’m aware of.
Cortes: Learning about these unique neighborhood commissions has been really cool. Thank you for those recommendations.
Cortes: My other question is about your team, they sound like a great group of people. How do you all stay up to date with local issues? And what are your expectations for your team in how they continue to build their repertoire as informed advisors?
Councilmember: We stay up to date by really engaging the communities consuming news – we also read a lot of reports, and so when you’re getting official reports, hearing a lot from residents, and meetings with residents, going into a community to visit, and reading news – my team has a very holistic understanding of the any issues that they cover.
Councilmember: When I interview people for my team, what I’m assessing is one, their skill set. Do they have the skill to do the thing that we need the person in this seat to do?
Councilmember: But also what is the reason they come to this work, because that matters. If you are here to serve people to make the district better, to make life better for people, you’re gonna approach your work differently than if you’re there for a different reason. And so to make sure we are a unified team, I try to make sure we have that common thread, but also have diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Councilmember: I also really hammer away on ownership, because when people see me as the expert or authority in anything, then they are less inclined to make recommendations to ask the next question, to dig deeper. So I continue to remind my team all the time, you own this thing, I need you to advise me.
Councilmember: And so, if they ask me, what should I do about this? I will say, what do you recommend that I do about it? And when you feel like you’re sort of the last recommendation, or the last set of eyes or set of hands on a thing, you’re gonna approach it differently than if you think somebody else is going to finalize the work product or the recommendation.
Councilmember: And so I really stress ownership, but also professional growth and development which is not attending you know these 1, 2, 3 day conferences or seminars, although there’s a place for those. But developing your skills as a professional.
Councilmember: One of the things I always want to know from the people in my team is, where do you want to be in 5 years, because that helps me to figure out where I can best help you develop your skills and also your network.
Councilmember: I want everybody on my team to stay with me forever. But if they don’t, and they go out in the world elsewhere, I want them to be very successful, and I want them to feel like this was the best, most growth-impacting place they ever worked.
Councilmember: And that’s my goal, but something that requires ongoing, second guessing. What more can we do? What can we do better? And I have to be aware that this is a very difficult space to work in.
Councilmember: One because legislative branches are always difficult. There is always a lot more work coming in, then there are bodies to do it, or time in the day.
Councilmember: But in the District of Columbia, our entire legislative body. We have one legislative body representing 700,000 people, and there are only 13 of us.
Councilmember: Vermont and Wyoming, as examples, have fewer people. They both have large bicameral state legislatures between 90 and 180 people. They have city councils, and they have county councils.
Councilmember: We have 13 people doing the state work, the city work, the county work, and that work falls onto the staff, so if they are drinking from a hose every day, I want them to feel like they are growing, and that they are valued, and that they’re doing work that they’re invested in.
Cortes: What a helpful comparison of Vermont and Wyoming to DC’s legislature! 700k to 13 legislators, that’s no joke.
Cortes: Well, I have one more question, and it’s a fun one.
Councilmember: Go for it.
Cortes: Just celebrating DC, two questions, where’s one place that you love to think, and, I know this will be tough, but just one place you like to eat in DC?
Councilmember: Great questions. Okay, to eat and anybody listening, you have to go there. It’s called Georgina’s, also called The Players Lounge, in Ward 8 on MLK Avenue. They have been there for decades. So much political history has happened in this space. That’s fun.
Councilmember: But they also make good food, and they have a heavy pour. So if you want to not pay a lot for a good drink. It’s a place to go. If you want to be in a place with history, it’s a place to go. If you want some good soul food, it’s a place to go. Also one of the best jukeboxes in the city. Their music selection in terms of my musical taste, is off the charts. So Georgina’s/Players Lounge in Ward 8, southeast DC.
Councilmember: My favorite place to think is Rock Creek Park. I will take a fold up chair and walk into Rock Creek Park and spend time going through my thoughts. And most people wouldn’t think it, because the District of Columbia is a city, it’s entirely urban – but we have eagles, owls, foxes, snakes, turtles, frogs.
Councilmember: There’s so much wildlife there, it’s a beautiful, beautiful place, just flush with acres and acres of trees. You will never believe that you’re in a city, even if you might be a stone’s throw away from a road. So go to Rock Creek Park, and think. I won’t tell you exactly where I go, because there’s this overlook, and I sit on this big stone, and it overlooks a little stream, and I see eagles, and you know turtles. And I don’t want to see anybody else there, so find somewhere else in Rock Creek Park other than my spot.
Cortes: That’s absolutely wonderful, and I think Rock Creek is just amazing.
Cortes: Also, I started off in the U Street/African American Civil War Memorial district area and I saw an eagle up in the sky on the day I was moving and it felt incredibly serendipitous. Sometimes you just have to look up to catch them!
Cortes: Thanks so much again, Councilmember White, and take care.
Cortes: Thank you for listening to the Georgetown Public Policy Review podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If so, please subscribe, and check out more of Georgetown Public Policy Review at GPPReview.com. Thank you!
Established in 1995, the Georgetown Public Policy Review is the McCourt School of Public Policy’s nonpartisan, graduate student-run publication. Our mission is to provide an outlet for innovative new thinkers and established policymakers to offer perspectives on the politics and policies that shape our nation and our world.
