DC Lobbyist: Raise Your Hand When Opportunity Calls

Most people don’t miss opportunities because they’re lazy. They miss them because they don’t recognize the moment for what it is, then they never follow up. That’s why this conversation with Sean Todd hit so hard for us: it’s a real, messy, funny, human story about how careers actually get built when you don’t have a master plan.

We talk about the unglamorous middle parts most people skip: graduating without a clear path, taking chances that look irrational on paper, and pushing through the “do you have a job yet?” season. Sean shares how a few pivotal conversations and a willingness to raise his hand pulled him from teaching into environmental work, then into government communications and speechwriting at the US Department of Energy. The big takeaway is practical career advice you can use today: follow-up is not a nice-to-have, it’s the multiplier.

Then we go deeper into Sean’s long-term specialty: nuclear waste cleanup and nuclear waste storage policy. We break down the basics of radionuclides, why “cleaning up” often means consolidating and moving material, and what long-term disposal solutions like geologic repositories and deep borehole disposal are trying to solve. From there, we get candid about lobbying, the First Amendment right to petition government, how legislation really gets shaped, and why money and access can distort outcomes.

If you’re figuring it out as you go, this will give you language, courage, and a few next steps you can actually act on. Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who needs the nudge, and leave a review if you want us to keep bringing you conversations like this.

Transcript

Kid Charades Cold Open

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Adrian, you have to go. Rabbit. Is that what it is? Well, kind of rabbit. Sister rabbit. No, it's a rabbit. That's fine. Okay, Adrian got it. Good job. So kids get your point. Dad, you wanna do it? Dad, you wanna play? You know what I you know what I asked. Okay, ready? Dad has to get some moments, right?

SPEAKER_03 0:22

Wait, wait a sec, wait a second. Three, two, butterfly.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Super easy. Go. You gotta try some other things. He's not getting it. Try something else. Okay, time's over. All right, now grown up's turn to act. What he wants to go look looking for. Oh he's oh he's like tucking the ground. Oh he's like beaver, beaver. Or what else like tucks the ground like that? And eats like seeds and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Uh birds.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah, like a chicken? Woodpecker. Rooster? Woodpecker. He's like swimming. Wait, are you swimming? Uh are you pecking? He's swimming? Are you swimming? Yes. Are you are you shark? Is that swimming? Are you a fish? Shark. He's swimming. Are you a fish?

Curiosity Beats The Perfect Plan

Teaching Respect And Early Work Roots

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Hi, Let's Red listeners. Quick thing before we start. This podcast technically has a boss. His name is Adrian. He's seven. He checks the subscriber numbers every week. He sets aggressive targets. And I've been told just try harder is his full management philosophy. So follow or subscribe and tell a friend to do the same. It'll help me keep my job. And stick around because this is a real-time journey. Learning, parenting, work, life. I'm sorting through all of it out loud for your entertainment. So come on this journey with us. Now let's ride. Most people don't miss opportunities. They ignore them. Not because they're lazy, but because they didn't recognize them in the moment. Our guest today does, and this episode tells the story of what could happen if you do. When do you follow curiosity instead of a plan? When do you say yes before you feel ready? And when you actually follow up when everyone else forgets. Because the difference between staying stuck and completely changing your trajectory is often just one conversation, one decision, or one moment where you raise your hand. We talk about building a career without a blueprint, turning random encounters into real opportunities, and why most people never get where they want to go, not because they can't, but because they don't act. If you've ever felt like you're figuring it out as you go, this one's for you. Our guest today is Sean Todd. So Sean, I I'm gonna start with the hardest-hitting question I could think. I've had a long time to think about this conversation, and so I'm gonna ask the hardest-hitting question up front, and that is I've heard the phrase somewhere that you should never trust somebody that has two first names. So um is that true? Okay, that is true. So, Sean Tan, can you tell us? Uh yes. Um that's about as hard-hitting as we get on the show, Sean. But um, no, it's okay. As I come up, I was trying to figure out what is the source of that. Have you I'm assuming you've heard that a few times.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

I was gonna ask that same question, Paul, because I've heard that a number of times. But it's sort of like that old expression, those who can do, those who cannot teach. What a terrible insult to the educational profession. Where did that come from? True. I mean, uh, as a former teacher, I take umbrage at that expression. Because a lot of people, a lot of people, in fact, the guy that should be on your next show has been a principal at East LA at Sally High School for 35 years. He has turned that school around. He's sent kids to Georgetown and Berkeley and Yale and uh in you know, influenced countless youth. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Uh I think you know, I was gonna say, I I I don't think a lot of people know this, but I I've been in the corporate world 95% of my life, but I actually left and taught high school for a year. So I'm 100% with you on the uh the educator comments. Where'd you go? Where'd you teach? I taught out of high school, it was an all-boys Catholic high school called Damien High School. Um, I thought I also wanted to be a teacher. Turns out, yeah, trying to wrangle and get a bunch of a room of 30 uh 14-year-old boys to pay attention to you is not as easy as it might sound. So I have a whole level of respect that uh for the educators out there than than the one do. I know a lot of us too, but yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

We have a little bit of a similar way of thinking, Paul, because teaching 30 boys how to write an English sentence 14-year-olds when there's no air conditioning and it's 90 degrees in your classroom, that is by far the hardest job I've ever had. I mean, I was a speechwriter for a member of the president's cabinet. Tough job. Right. But not nearly as hard as teaching English to high schoolers.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

You've got such a vast and ro wide-ranging professional background that I don't even think we could cover all given the format that I use. But let's just touch just so people get a sense of who Shant is. So if you go back to your the beginning of your professional experience, where does that start? And then let's see if we can make our progression through that.

Jesuit Volunteering To The Green Bug

SPEAKER_00 6:08

I'd love to call how you define professional. And then after college, whatever, your first job, right? Right. So senior year of college. I just come back from 12 months in Australia, my junior year. Just a life of fun and hedonism. Yeah. You know, that country back then was there's 10 gears on your bike in life. That country was second year, first gear. Going back to Washington, DC, it's like eight, nine, tenth gear. So culture shock. Like everybody in the world, nobody knows what they want to do after college. Almost everybody. I almost went to China to teach English, Paul. Somehow swerved on that. It's a mix of terror and joy when you graduate from college. You don't know, you know, the world is out there. What are you gonna do? I ended up I went to this one thing at Georgetown, and it was a session on something called the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. And that is the the Catholic version of the Peace Corps. Four values simple lifestyle, community, spirituality, and social justice. And it basically means you help four people, people who are disadvantaged. That's all it means. It's a one-year commitment, not two years like the Peace Corps. I got placed in Santa Ana, California, and my job was to help inner city youth at risk, inner city kids volunteer, actually be willing to volunteer in nonprofit agencies and go help others, even though they themselves were disadvantaged. My job was to go help them sort of a little empower themselves and go help other people. And uh the great Washington Post columnist William Raspberry wrote a column about this very topic, stimulating inner city youths to go help other people who are at risk. It was a it was a good job. I learned a lot. It was a one-year commitment. And then, you know how life throws different curveballs at you, Paul. We were at a fundraiser for the Chrysalis Center, it's this homeless nonprofit in LA, Los Angeles, downtown hotel with the Ambassador Hotel. We're walking out. This is during my one year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. We're walking out of the hotel, and I hear off to the left, thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb. I was like, oh man, what's going on over there? I walk over there. This gentleman at the front door, I said, What's this? He said, This is Salesian High School Palm. I said, Really? Do you need any teachers? He said, Yeah, we sure do. Come on in, let me introduce you to the principal. I go in, he introduced me to the principal, he says, Send me your resume. The next week I interview and get a job as a teacher at Salesian High School, and it's just so full of each little story, as you know, Paul leads to more stories.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

So I want to let me pause there because I think there's a couple things I want to unpack. And so one is, and I was it's funny you were talking about this because I just was posting about this on LinkedIn, and that is I, similar to you, it sounds like had no game plan from college. I didn't I didn't do an internship. I basically said, hey, let me get a general business education degree and I'll figure out what to do with it. When I graduated, I kind of screwed around, you know, spent a couple months burning through my graduation money. And then as as my bank account was getting low, I'm like, oh, okay, I guess that's the the time I gotta go get a job. And so I didn't know what industry I wanted to get into. I didn't know what kind of role. I just kind of started going on monster.com career builder and just looking around. I just kind of applying like willy-nilly to like whatever I thought sounded somewhat interesting. Um, thankfully, I stumbled into a career that I've now been doing for 18 or 19 years. But you one could argue that that's some dumb luck. Um, because I think a lot of the kids say you look at like my brother and and and other people, they're very deliberate in their internships, they're very deliberate in the industries that they want to go into, they're building their network, they're they're doing these things um that are preparing them for kind of more specific careers. And so I'm pleased to know, Sean, that that I'm not the only one that took kind of the um kind of float through the wind and kind of see where you stick approach. So that sounds like what what basically happened for you is that I mean, am I right on that? And if so, what was your plan? I mean, you it sounds like you know, you're kind of you hear some music here, so you go in this direction. You kind of hear about this program, so you go in that direction. So just tell tell me more about your philosophy on how you identify opportunities and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

I love open-ended questions, Paul. So I always thought that teaching, you know, would be a cool profession. I had some amazing teachers in high school and college. You know, you have the opportunity to influence younger people. That always, you know, was attractive to me. I didn't think it would be a lifelong career, but I was open to it. There's a thousand variables, you know, more than a thousand, ten thousand more than that variables about your career path, right? I didn't you're right, I did not have a game plan. But I do think as long as you're moving in the right direction, Paul, broadly speaking, you're gonna be fine. And just keep going forward. How would you define the right direction? It's pretty vague, Paul, but just your general interest. I mean, here's what happened to me. Living in Los Angeles, I met my future wife. She was placed in the same community that I was in the Jesuit volunteer course. So we ended up living together with two other women and two other men for a year. Fell in love. We stayed in LA for another two years. That's I was teaching, but at the same time, Paul, I caught the green bug in Los Angeles, and that's really was the turn for me. I was, you know, flying into LAX. You remember in the early 90s, that giant brown turd hanging over the city when you fly in. Awful. It really made an impact on me, you know, for better or for worse. I was like, this is not the way I was jogging and was it Square Mile Park in Santa Ana, choking on fumes, like throwing up because of the smog at five o'clock at night. Beautiful park. It's one square mile in Santa Ana. And uh, and then on top of that, these one some of the most beautiful beaches on the planet. I'm talking from San Diego to Santa Barbara. When I lived there, there were signs do not swim. You will be violently ill. And so these gorgeous beaches and oceans, I caught the green bug there, ended up working on moving back, getting married, and working on environmentalists for Clinton Gore in the 92 campaign. And so just moving to California sort of chain shaped my viewpoint, outlook, worldview. And uh, I was not into environmental issues in college or high school, but I was when I lived in LA.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

So, Sean, let's let's talk about so you're you're teaching, and how do you I mean, I would say they're similar, but how do you transition from teaching into this other yeah?

Networking That Actually Changes Things

SPEAKER_00 12:13

All right, great question. I mean, I do think the power of chance is amazing. So one Thursday night, Buddy and I, Todd Johnson and I, go down to the China Club in Hollywood, you know? That's where Madonna used to go dancing in the 90s. So we walk in on a Thursday night, and there's Bruce Willis and Damine Moore. On stage is Woody Harrelson in his band, and there's a private party downstairs, and my buddy and I we sneak into the party, we just go for it, go sneak in the private party downstairs. In comes Woody with two women on each arm, and one of the women put their drink down on my table, and her name, she came back to get her drink. Her name was Bonnie Reese. Rest in peace. Bonnie Reese founded the Hollywood Women's Political Caucus. She was ended up becoming Arnold Schwarzenegger's chief of staff when he was governor. She's deeply involved in the environmental movement. She was an A-list entertainment lawyer, but gave it up to uh start with something called the Earth's Communications Office, ECO Echo. And we started chatting, and uh, I ended up doing volunteer work for her, and she helped me transition back in DC. But the funny thing is she asked me that night at the China Club. We're like, hey man, what do you do? Well, this is I'm the teacher. It's like she says, Paul, Woody would love to hear about this. I'm like, ah, I don't need to go talk to Woody Harrelson, you know. She says, come on. So we go talk. Woody's like, hey, I'd love to come speak at your at your school. Okay. He ends up walking into my classroom the next week, walks right into my classroom, Bonnie and Woody walk. And all the kids, these ninth graders, like, whoa, Woody Harrelson, what are you doing here? So we have a school assembly, and this was during the first Iraq war. Joe Fraley was our principal. This guy was, he wrote this the screenplay Good Guys Wear Black with uh what's that, uh, Chuck Norris. The principal was also a screenwriter. So he loved Hollywood, so he said, Bring, let's bring Woody on. So Woody gives, he's plays his guitar, makes some comments, and he, you know, he speaks out against the war in Iraq. Half the faculty walk out, Paul, because they're offended. Right. That uh somebody spoke out against the Iraq war. And so that was uh an interesting anecdote in LA. But Bonnie, she died of cancer a couple years ago. I started doing work in her office, the Earth Communications Office. And we got to know each other, and she helped me because she was when Bill Clinton was elected in '92, she was taxed to organize. If you recall that inauguration, all over the planet there was a bell-ringing ceremony. Bill Clinton walked across Memorial Bridge over to Arlington Cemetery from the Lincoln, and we rang bells. She organized all that. She was an amazing woman, man. So that's a long, roundabout way, Paul, of answering our questions.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Well, so let me, before we move on, I I gotta make sure I can keep up here. And I want to point out something that I think seems maybe just organic to you, but is very having interviewed as many people as I have stands out to me. And that is it's not every day that somebody goes to a bar or club, meets somebody that they've never met before, and that turns into a friendship and a career move. So let's talk about that, right? Because I think people when people meet, it's usually very surface level, very casual. Hey, you know, the what I have that weather out there, and uh, what do you do for a living? And and things like that. And then you never hear from these people again, right? And you're kind of you're telling a story about I ran I randomly come across this person, we get to talking, and then that turns into a relationship that lasts, it sounds like a couple decades. So I guess yeah, is that a personality trait of yours? Is that something that you learn that hey, I just gotta like go deep when I like meet people? Like, let's talk about just that's network building, right? To like the mo the highest degree.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

I admire your line, your your questioning technique strategy, Paul. I love it. That is one of the fundamental uh two things, Paul. Most people don't follow up. You're absolutely right, especially in DC too. Follow-up is everything. It's three simple words, a cliche, but I really think it happens. If you don't follow up, nothing happens. I got so much follow-up to do right today of potential clients and senators and members of the house that I have to follow up on. I can just let it go and then nothing happens. But follow-up is everything. But the second thing is, do you read Paulo Coelho, that author? Highly recommend. He's written World's Best Selling Authors and you know, Warrior of Light, so many books, so good. And uh The Alchemist, it's a really seminal book that he wrote. Him his one of his theses is, you know, I know it sounds like California psychobabble, but I do believe it's true because you're bringing it up and it's the premise of your question. Be open to the universe, you know. And when you're aligned with your whatever you want, the universe will help you get it. That's Paulo Coelho. But if you're open to a conversation, you could be walking along the street and some guy could offer you a job for$200,000 and you wouldn't know it unless you took made the effort to go talk.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Yeah, I guess that's the underlying theme I'm seeing here, right? You talk about, hey, I heard some I heard some uh heart pounding music, I followed it, I meet this principle, I am in this flow, I talk to this person that's around Woody Harrison, I got it out, right? So yeah, it just seems like you're in a way, you're kind of just like floating with the wind, but like wherever it's taking you, you're you're taking advantage of it.

Setbacks Then A Hand-Raise Breakthrough

SPEAKER_00 17:19

And I think that's But then I I love how you're piecing this together, Paul. You're you're you're figuring me out. It's like you're a free therapist here. But there's always setbacks, right? Sure. So let me give you the next stage, which is very difficult, probably the most difficult stage of my life, most depressing stage of my life. My uh my then girlfriend, I proposed to her. We get we're both East Coast families. We go back east, married in 92. I work, um, I volunteer on Environments for Clinton Gore campaign. I get an internship on Capitol Hill. I'm like the oldest intern on Capitol Hill. I'm married 25. 25 is a Capitol intern's extremely old. But they gave me a shot. And uh they treated me with respect. But oh, did I mention I'm going prematurely bald at this point right now? So I'm doing all this. I'm married. My wife is working, she's a social worker. I don't have a real job yet. My in-laws, my father was like, What's he gonna do? I'm gonna go, what's he gonna do? What's his job? Does he have any money? For a year, Paul, I'm looking for a job, and that's I think it's because I was a teacher, and teachers don't really have a ton of respect in the corporate world or whatever, whatever world you're transitioning to. It's hard to transition from education to almost anything else. So that year, Paul. Depressed. I mean, I was low. And every time like somebody would call me up, like my uncle, my dad's always like, Sean, you got a job yet? It was like deflating my balloon like big axe the balloon like no, Uncle Mike, I don't have a job. When I do have a job, I'll let you know. Yeah, but don't ask me every time because it's depressing. So I came to the realization that I needed to go back into teaching. I need to go become a principal, right? So I'm working construction that summer. I just call up Angles Construction, and uh Jay Fryer gives me a job over the phone, eight bucks an hour. Twenty-six years old. And angles construction, we're building like a back deck for King Hussein of Jordan. We're not supposed to know who that is, but he's out in Potomac, Maryland's really huge house. Dan Snyder ended up buying that house. Owner of Gretzkies. But I decide, yeah, I didn't make it in politics and environmental energy issues and policy. So I'll go back to teaching. I started taking uh classes at Johns Hopkins University to get a master's in education administration. And then here comes another frying pan to the face, Paul. The dean of that school says, you know, after I'd taken a couple courses, like, I don't think this program is right for you. I had already gone down the road, started taking class, paying for classes. I get a uh uh Heisman to the face. I'm teaching at another all-boys Catholic school, St. Anselm's Abbey. Great school. You know, in terms of like scholastic accomplishment, they're like the second highest SAT scores in the nation. Each class is like 10 to 15 kids. I had like an eighth grader Paul write a 30-page paper in eighth grade. So these are big-brained kids. It was very easy to teach there because they were so motivated. But but then here comes the break, Paul. My godmother, whom I had never known, Kathy McGregor. She was my mom's best friend growing up. And I tell Ian Kathy, oh, we're talking over the phone. Uh I I'd like to really try to do something in the environmental field here, and that's why I moved back here. She's like, Oh, you gotta talk to uh Tom Grumbly, my husband's best her husband passed away. It was his best friend. So Tom Grumbly was Al Gore's chief of staff. I I get on his calendar. He's got 30 people calling him today because he was gonna be, you know, in the Clinton Gore administration, he was gonna be one of the Senate confirmed, you know, high-ranking cabinet members. And uh I go see Tom and he says, you know, it takes basically, Paul, it takes a year, 12 more months to get hired by Tom. And uh, so that was 12 months, man. But he hired me. He was an assistant secretary of the Department of Energy for Environmental Management, which is tasked with the mission of cleaning up the environmental legacy of the Manhattan Project. When you make a nuclear bomb, it requires, you know, like to make plutonium, you bathe it in acid, it creates high-level waste. So the most polluted site in our hemisphere is Hanford, Washington. And there's 155, 165 million gallons of high-level waste. Toxic, which is a group. And uh so I started working for Tom at the Department of Energy. And I was writing letters because they always get letters. I was writing, editing letters. And then here comes another inflection point. I don't know what how'd you describe this, Paul, but Bev Hefferin and Tom's speechwriter decides to retire. And Tom says it at senior staff and he's like, I need a new speechwriter. Anybody want to do it? So this is what I do, Paul. I go like this. Raises the hand. Okay. I'll give it a shot. I just did that, man. Out of fear and I don't know what, a little ambition. Yeah. But I raised up my hand. He said, All right, Sean, get together with Bev. And uh my God, the first speech was horrible. He Brought it back to the draft. He said, This is not your best work, Sean. Yeah. So over time, you know, Tom was such a brilliant is a brilliant man. Every time I'd walk in to say, Tom, what do you want to say to on this speech to this group? He would open his mouth and out would come this coherent, cogent, fully formed speech. And I would just desperately write everything down as fast as I could to try to capture what he wanted. And then go back and write it. And then Bev eventually left. And then so Tom, I got bet a little bit better. A little bit. Not not that much.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

But um So Sean, this is all. I mean, I it sounds like you really could have uh benefited from ChatGBT because it does all that stuff now. You were back then on up before all that stuff. So I want to keep hammering on this point because I'm a big proponent one of network building and the the other phrase that you mentioned, which is follow-up or follow-through. Because I also don't say that. In fact, I just had a solo episode last week where I talked about this ad nauseum because I was cleaning out my garage and I came across a business card for the owner of the company that I work for. He came into my college classroom, he gave a spiel about what his company does, and he handed out his business card at the end. I took that business card and it was six months later, but I sent him an email and the next day I had a job, right? And so I just think people don't understand, or I don't know, it almost seems like what I'm hearing from you is you see opportunity. Well, one, you you're leveraging your network. You have this friend, friend of a friend, friend of a uh you know, the godmother, this and that, right? And you're kind of like you're leveraging that and you're turning it into something. Um, and then two, seeing the opportunity that's in front of you, because I feel like a lot of people in the moment, they could be getting slapped in the face with opportunity, but they're for whatever reason they're not seeing it or they're not ready to respond to it, or wherever the case may be. So far, what I'm hearing in your story is you are the person that sees the opportunity, that seeks the opportunity, that takes advantage of the opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

You know what, Paul? I don't necessarily agree with that. Okay. Because I don't feel like I see the opportunity. Okay. I feel like the opportunity just kind of like happens or lands in front of me during a conversation. Everybody has an amazing story. You never know what that person is going through or inside or what they do or whom they know. I am leveraging these opportunities. I don't feel like I see them, Paul. I just feel like they land. Like the universe is there, man.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

And I know I sound fruitcake, but No, no, but Sean, let's let's I didn't seek it out. I rarely disagree with people to this extent, but I'm gonna disagree with you, Shanton. Because you literally just told me that they said, hey, we need a speechwriter. You were hesitant, but you were the one that raised your hand. So that is taking advantage of that opportunity. All right. Sorry to make you sound like the liar, Sean, but you are because that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

I raised my hand with a lot of trepidation.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Not you know where you're not, but that's the point is that you did, where I think maybe 95% of people would not. So that's my point. But um, okay, so you your speech writing, God. Okay, let's go. Let's keep going. No, go on.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Well, I I do like the way you're pulling these threads, but I because I kind of never see them, saw them the way you see them, but um I I have been really fortunate, Paul. And um, but I do think I do think like you have to take that what you just observed. Take that one step to give it a shot. If you don't give a shot, I mean it's the old Mike Wayne Gratzi or Jordan who said it, I missed a hundred percent of the shots in every toe. Right. Um but that's why I think if you're an introvert, man, are you disadvantaged? Unless you're an introvert that's learned to take a little step. I mean, I think 75% of the world is extroverted. And I was actually deeply introverted, but kind of grew and evolved out of that in high school as a military brat. I grew up all over Paul. And, you know, cut off my arm to ask a girl out or or go meet someone new, you know, zero through nine, zero through ten, zero ages zero through twelve, zero through fourteen, sixteen was tough. Then we moved from South Dakota to West Germany, and every time you move, you can you can have you have the chance to start over and be a completely new person. So, in between my sophomore and junior in high school lives, all right, I'm kind of a little bit tired of being the shy guy. I'm gonna do it be a little bit more forward and open. So kind of eventually grew out of my shell, and my dad is super extroverted, my mom's pretty introverted, but I kind of I guess evolved more from my mother to my father over time. I mean, most people would call me a big extrovert. I still don't think of myself that way. I mean, if you look at Myers Briggs, my E I, my E was plus one. That's pretty in the middle. So taking a chance, so you gotta you gotta take a little bit of a chance, man.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

A hundred percent. All right, so you are speech writing, and then let's let's fast forward a little bit more. So I think there was a point at which you were working. Well, there's so much to cover. I want to get on, I want to get all of that. Uh, the I think you're working for the actual government then, right? At that point.

Nuclear Waste Storage Without The Jargon

SPEAKER_00 27:04

I was working at the U.S. Department of Energy. Don was assistant secretary, he went to be undersecretary. And at the end of the first Clinton term, a new secretary came on board. Hazel Leary left, Federico Pena came on board. Tom Grumley, thanks to him, all the gratitude. He set me up with a new incoming secretary, Federico Peña from Colorado, who was Secretary of Transportation and then went over to DOE. In the second term, so I became his speechwriter. Here comes another roadblock. You ready? I was speechwriting for Peña. I wrote his inaugural, you know, his swearing-in speech. I wrote the speech that was like the groundbreaking for the national admission facility up in Lawrence Livermore lab, up in the Bay Area. It's the world's largest laser. It's created fusion, actually, 20 years later. So I'm writing speeches, but then a new uh communications director comes in, and uh she wanted a different person. So I was like reshuffled out of that job. But I did a different job my last year, and then I transitioned out of the Department of Energy. But what I did was, this gets into like some real policy wonk stuff, Paul. Nuclear weapons and nuclear waste storage, which is what I still do. So in 1997-98, we were opening up the world's first geologic repository for nuclear waste, it's called transuranic waste outside of Carlsbaden, Mexico. And as you know, NIMBIA is not in my backyard. Nobody wants nuclear waste in their backyard. But this facility was actually technically good enough, an order of magnitude better than what it needed to be. So there's still a lot of opposition. I mean, this is a geologic repository, it's super deep in these salt caverns, and so it's encapsulates by salt over time. It's not high-level waste, it's intermediate waste, transuranic waste. So what we did for a year, we did the national dialogue on nuclear waste, and we did this outreach to students and stakeholders and locally elected officials and state government in New Mexico, and we had a dialogue about what this facility means. It ended up through that dialogue, you establish trust and credibility, and you get to know the facility. It would it opened up in 1997. First, world's first nuclear geologic repository, the waste isolation pilot plant in uh New Mexico. So I did that my last year there since I was fired as a speed rider. And then I got a job. Again, follow-up. Somebody of mine, Mark Mallon, said, Hey, Sean, this company's looking for a lobbyist. You could do it. You want to apply? I said, I'd love to, Mark. So it was called International Technology Corporation. And they're looking for a partner of energy guy. Assent, I stuck my hand up, interviewed, and got the job. And so I was there's three kinds of lobbyists. There's in-house lobbyists, which means you work for Coca-Cola or Ford or Walmart. You work for that company, you're the government affairs lobbyists inside the company. There's trade association lobbyists. The trade association represents the entire industry, like American Petroleum Institute that represents oil and gas. Right. The Car Dealership Association, uh, the Nuclear Energy Institute represents the nuclear use. So that's trade association lobbyists. And then you have independent four-hire mercenary hired gun lobbyists, independent lobbyists. And they get hired by companies and trade associations to work on projects. And so I was an in-house lobbyist for international technology. I was the deputy, there's two of us, senior, my boss, Craig Crotto, and me. And then we had hired guns too, and we also along the trade associations. So I did that for three years, got another great education, and then got the bug to start my own firm. So at this point, we had three kids, but I got the bug to uh start hang out my own shingle. 2001. Right. I'll tell you two quick stories, Paul. Can I go on off a tangent again? Sure. You see that scar right there?

SPEAKER_02 30:36

So we're looking at something on his upper chest, that's probably yeah, five or six inches long, maybe?

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Yeah, it's a I was I had a blood clot in my chest. So they took out my top rib. That's where your top rib is. My top rib was cutting off my subclavial vein. So they had to go take it out. So I was in the hospital for a couple weeks, and um, priests came in, and you know, it was a little hairy. My lung cavities filled up with blood because there was a suture in there, it was not it's a long story. But at one point they had to do emergency surgery. They stick a chest tube in me and two liters of blood flies out. But I got out of it. I got out on Easter Sunday. I was 33. On Easter Sunday, I came out of the hospital. And that year I was telling my wife I wanted to start my own firm, and she was so busy with three little kids. Three kids under the age of five. She had no idea what I was proposing. She just said, fine, Sean. Whatever you want. No. I can't deal with anything. So I've got to give her credit. She gave me a lot of um, it was a statement of confidence that I could go do this. Right. And so I had this this guy, Dr. Dev Schukla. He was the first guy in the world to license a nuclear power plant using probabilistic risk assessment technology uh techniques. So he's this big brain from India, Americ, you know, American citizen. He was naturalized, but Indian American from Walnut Creek, California. And Dev said, Sean, I need a Navy lobbyist. Give me a Navy lobbyist. So I gave the name of my buddy, who has one of the biggest firms here in town now. But here's the little quirk, toll. My buddy never called him. And I started thinking, Dev, I could do this for you. Yeah. And thank God Dan never called him because I said, so we dialogued over a course of a couple months, Dr. Shukla and I. He said, Coming out. So I called in sick on a Friday. I flew out to Walnut Creek. He said, Okay, I like entrepreneurs. Come back tomorrow morning. So Friday, I'm in the holiday and I don't sleep all night. I show up tomorrow at Dev's office at 8 a.m. with two cups of coffee. He pulls up in his Audi and he says, I propose him, here's what I want to do. I'd be happy to help you lobby for you and do some marketing for you in DC. Because the federal government's the largest consumer on the planet buys more products and services than anybody else. So Dev looks at me across the table and he says, Okay, I'll fund you two months. But I can't sign anything because international technology is my biggest client. That's who I work for. He was the big subcontractor. So I said, okay, I shook his hand and uh walked out to the parking lot. I called my wife and I said, Well, honey, I think we got a deal. I shook his hand, I looked him in the eye, and he said, Great. So no sick, no contract, nothing. Quit my job. And here's the biggest irony, Paul. Two weeks later, my old company, International Technology, goes chapter 11. Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

I would have been fired anyway, man. Okay, well, there you go. Well, here you go. So there's uh Sean Todd raising his hand again, right? Because somebody passed on an opportunity, and here comes Sean Todd walking up with his hand up in the air saying, I'll do it. So again, we're seeing the theme here, right? So it doesn't take much. It's when when opportunity presents itself, just raising your hand and saying yes, and then just kind of see where that takes you.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Yeah, it's like just a conversation, Paul. Um here gets better though. So I'm working for Dr. Shukla. His name of his company is ITSI, Innovative Technical Solutions Incorporated. IT Group, International Technology, it's owned by the Carlisle Group, the largest equity funds in the world. Rarely do they have a company that goes chapter 11. This other company comes in as Shaw Group and buys them on December 26th, 2001. I know a guy who works for the Shaw Group, Steve Marlowe. He hires me to help at the transition in 2002, right? January 2002. He becomes my second client, and they've been a client for the last 25 years. Yeah. I don't know why, but they stuck with me. So I got two clients all of a sudden. And then I go back to my grad school, University of Maryland, and I brainwash them into hiring me. So all of a sudden I have three clients, and this is like, whoa, hair's on fire. What's going on here? Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

So I think that you know, uh, to be an entrepreneur is a whole nother level, right? But from what I'm hearing from your story is one, your ability to network, especially in the consulting and the type of work that you're doing, is paramount. And I think you you've already demonstrated throughout your career history that you're able to do that. And then the second thing was identifying opportunity. And then the third thing is follow-through. So if you basically have those three things, there's probably a good likelihood that you can succeed as an entrepreneur. That's what I'm hearing. If you don't, then you might want to just consider uh working for somebody. Is that sound about right?

SPEAKER_00 35:17

You've captured it, Paul. Like I think you really captured that really well. It's I mean, the concision, you just captured everything right there, man. I'm doing my best.

SPEAKER_02 35:26

So uh I do want to talk, I think what you do, what you do, what you've been doing the last 25 years is fascinating. We don't really talk politics on here, but I do think it's fascinating with what's happening in Iran and and the whole thing around, you know, nuclear weapons that you mentioned that that's basically what you do, but maybe at the end of the life cycle, right after it's maybe been a weapon or it's its life cycle, now it's it needs to be stored somewhere, waste. And so I don't think anyone talks about we talk about it uh a nuclear uh being uh I'm gonna sound like an idiot here, but basically enriched uranium and then that turns into nuclear weapons. And no one talks about after that though, right? Like, hey, this actually didn't get used because people talked each other off the ledge. Thankfully, in the world and we didn't destroy ourselves. But now that uh, or whether it's coming from a power plant or what however nuclear um you know substances are being used, it then has to go somewhere. And that's what you've been doing the last 25 years, right? It's like, what do we do with that stuff after its its life cycle? Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 36:22

That's accurate, Paul. You really can distill things down really well. A radionuclide is a particle radioactivity, it's not a particle, it's a wave. And that's what measures radioactivity. So the thing is about a radionuclide is that you cannot clean one up, it doesn't go away. What you can do is if there's a radionuclide in soil or water or debris, you can mechanically cleanse it and consolidate it such that it's you can move it and transport it into a safe disposition. But probably the best success story is Rocky Flats, Colorado, where we made plutonium. It was one of the most polluted sites in America. And we that's a great success story. We cleaned that site up and took down all those buildings and gathered all that plutonium and all that these glove boxes that had those plutonium contaminated and cleaned it up and disposed of it at certain other sites, such that Rocky Flats is now this, you know, natural park. It's really cool. It's a great story. And so but all that radioactivity in its different media form is somewhere else. I can it's I think it's being s stored safely, in my opinion. But there's two different types of nuclear waste, Paul. There's commercial nuclear waste, which is what's burnt gets burned into commercial nuclear reactors to make electricity, and there's defense nuclear waste, which is used to make weapons from the Manhattan Project. So that's kind of a basic division of the two different types of nuclear.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

So without getting into too much of the technical components, um, especially for someone like me that probably can't keep up with that, but just at a very high level, how does it work? I mean, you had mentioned something about salt mine and we are they just digging really deep holes and bearing the stuff there? Like, how does I'm just just curious how that stuff works.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Well, it's a great question. And our our nation hasn't come to grips about what our final solution is, our final repository. For many years, it's funny how public policy gets made, but you may have heard of Yucca Mountain in Nevada. That was the designated site for all the spent nuclear fuel from the commercial and from both sources to be stored there for final disposition in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. It's about just north of Las Vegas, about 90 miles. But the way that decision was made, this is where how you know, in writing legislation, they say it's like watching sausage get made. So the Nuclear Waste Disposal Act of 82, there were different sites about where to put this repository. And there's staffers from the House and Senate, you know, during conference, you have two different bills from the House and Senate, and they had the conference to work out the differences. There was nobody in the room from Nevada, and they said, well, let's put it at Yucca Mountain, and that's how Yucca Mountain got designated because nobody was in the room from Nevada. And um, I mean, you can find that in different case studies and different anecdotes, and different staffers will tell you that story. I mean, I don't know how widely known that is, but so for years we did this technical evaluation. Is Yucca Mountain good enough? I happen to think it's good enough. I think it's technically good enough to store waste there, but there's a lot of, you know, you get a lot of people, and there's a lot of people in Nevada who feel the same way. You know, you always see the other two sides to every story, Paul. A lot of people think it's not safe because of geologic movements, etc., etc. But that was effectively, you know, Yucca Mountain was effectively severed as an option about 15, 10, 15 years ago. So for commercial spent nuclear fuel, it's sitting in these commercial reactors in pools of water, and it's safe there for about another, I would say it's relatively safe there for another 30 to 60 years, but eventually it's going to be needed to be stored somewhere. And Finland's on top of this. You can reprocess that waste. That's a whole other, it's a whole other story about reprocessing spent fuel. That's a long, long story. Finland is on top of a new repository for geologic disposal. There's an Indian tribe, Native American tribe in in Utah called the Ghost Shoots who wanted to take it over, and the state government effectively squashed that idea. So, but you are right, like de-borehole disposal is sort of the flavor of the month right now. So this administration is going, is doing some feasibility studies on de-borehole disposal for different forms of nuclear waste.

What Lobbyists Do And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_02 40:17

All right. And then I think the last thing I want to talk about is just the industry as a whole. So you're kind of uh, you know, lobbyists or you call yourself a mercenary or hired gun. And, you know, again, as an outsider looking in, you just hear a lot about this lobby and that lobby and whatever, right? And just backroom uh deals and uh things like that. And so do you think that lobbies are are misunderstood? Are they properly understood? And what is just Evan, and this is a very big question, I know I'm asking, but just how do they fit in the overall ecosystem of just how governments are making decisions?

SPEAKER_00 40:50

Yeah, well, another really great question, Paul. So yeah, I've been a registered lobbyist for 30 years, and uh how does it fit in? Well, it goes back to the First Amendment Constitution, the right for citizens to petition their government. That's where lobbyists get their right to do what they do. However, I do feel like we definitely distort a system. You know, you know, more cliches, Paul. Congress is controlled by special interests. Rarely do they do things that are like for the good of the entire country. I think. Right. Most of these most of these um bills are written with, you know, some lobbyists' hand, maybe even drafting legislation. You know, I've written a lot of letters and committee report language that just came from my typewriter for my clients. I'm just being honest. Yeah. Now, in my defense, I do think it's the right thing to do. I think we're uh my clients have always not always, almost always, saved government money, doing things cheaper, faster, better. That's how you have I like to start with the merit of the project, the merit of the program, the merit of what they're trying to do, the aims and intentions. So I mean that's me being self-righteous. But ask yourselves this question: Who can afford lobbyists? People who have entrenched corporate interests, who have cash to hire? You would say on the other side, unions have a lot of money too, and they can hire people. Also true. Entrenched corporate interests have most of status quo hard Machiavelli said the hardest thing to do is change something in government. Most people want things to stay the way they're doing.

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Yeah, I think um, you know, so you uh you do hear some of these um politicians um like Bernie Sanders comes to mind, and maybe some of these that are self-funded, meaning right they're getting small donations from lots of people as opposed to from super PACs and things like that. And they're kind of trying to tell the story of like, hey, you don't want us to be bought and sold for, then you know, you guys, the citizens, you guys have to give me five bucks, ten bucks here, and you know, then we will really have your interest in mind versus just the normal way of doing things, which is hey, they're gonna go, they're gonna get, you know, half a million dollars, a million dollars from these people, and then they're gonna be bought and paid for. So do you buy into that? Is there legitimacy to that, or is that just a wishful thinking kind of scenario?

SPEAKER_00 43:00

Well, keep in mind I'm a small bit player. I'm not a first-tier lobbyist, I'm third tier. And so there is um if you're gonna follow the money, there are laws passed and pre-court decisions that allow dark money to enter the process. There's so much dark money in this in the system now. Yeah, it's hard to trace it. Hard to get things done because most people want to block what's happened, you know, block change. I think that to me the biggest concern is this. I mean, the turn of the century, the national debt was what, under 10 trillion? I think it's 30, it just crossed over to 37 trillion this week. That's red ink. That's the enemy, is the red ink. We are way in debt. And Social Security and Medicare are m most of the budget. Most of the annual budget are those you know. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt. Interest on the debt's gonna exceed one trillion dollars this year, Paul. That is an enormous suck on our our government. So we have to come to terms with this. Then nobody Talks about it. Last time there was serious, there was a couple serious efforts. Grand Rudman Hollings in the 90s, that was a deficit reduction. There was a big panel. I'm getting really wonky, Paul, so sorry, but there was a big panel in the Clinton year, uh Obama years. There was known by two persons there, I forget the name of it. But they had a real plan and that got scrapped. So I feel like this country go walks right up to the abyss, looks over the edge, and then we finally find somewhere with all to step back and do the right thing. But it's gonna take the abyss, I think, for Congress to do it. Because right now, how many people do you talk about the$37 trillion debt we have in this country? Now I don't hear it.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

It was a hot topic for a while. Uh, but yeah, it seems like it's kind of fallen into the background and we got distracted by all the other uh major events that have been going on.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

I think it's a big deal, man. Yeah. And I I mean that's a top, to me, it would be a top national priority if I were president.

Your 20s As A Career Workshop

SPEAKER_02 44:51

So let's uh I want to end on a high note here. We could probably go down that hard of all pro. No, no, no. It's the price super depressing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Um, I I think so. I think it I it's really fascinating what you do. Your career journey's really been amazing. I think if I what I heard and how I would interpret it is where you are today, career-wise, is probably nowhere near where you possibly could have imagined that you were gonna end up. First of all, is that correct? And two, what would you say to just people that maybe if we go all the way back to the beginning of the story, they're just like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I mean, how would you kind of how would you talk to them about that? So is this this is always your master plan, right? You're gonna be a lobbyist, you're gonna be I had no plan.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

You had no plan. I no, although I was like it just these little tiny nuggets. Well, when I was in college at George How, one year I was a research assistant in the Smithsonian Castle, that beautiful red brick building on the on the National Mall. And I was working for Dr. Showkash from Iran. His wife was actually got imprisoned in Iran, but I was summarizing books from Hughes and Historian. And so it was called the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and I was just a research assistant. But I was having lunch and I was there were two grad students over there. I overheard their talking on their lunch, and the guy said, Well, what do you want to do? It's like, well, I don't know. What do you want to do? It's like, well, I want to be the gun behind the door. I want to become a lobbyist. I don't know if that's stuck in the way, way, way recesses of my mind or not. But I was like, okay, what does that exactly mean? I was like eight, nineteen years old or something, but no, this is not a master plan. You follow your nose, you follow your instinct, you give life a chance. I had no idea what I was gonna do. I mean, I think it's rare. Um I I have four kids, Paul. One is Sten, science, technology, engineering, and math. He's an engineer. And my wife and I saw him from the time he could crawl and walk. He was interested in mechanical things. He was looking at escalators and elevators and trucks and uh cars and planes and trains and automobiles. And we knew he was gonna be an engineer. Right. I mean, I would have bet a lot of money he would turn out to be a mechanical engineer. So he goes to college, uh mechanical engineer mechanical engineering, he says, Well, Dad, I'm changing to systems engineers. Oh, that's cool. Why are you gonna change to systems or aerospace? Yeah, it's gonna be aerospace or mechanical. He's like, well, it just makes more sense to me. That's a great reason. Go for it. So he's a systems engineer. He works for the National Geospatial. So uh so engineers, I think, are lucky. They know from the beginning, Paul. Most of us don't. Liberal arts type. Yeah. I think you just gotta keep searching, man, keep the search going. That's all you have.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

That just sparked a memory for me. And that was I remember my best friend uh growing up, his dad was an architect, and he knew at an early age, he's like, I'm gonna be an architect, right? And so I remember thinking to myself, well, wait, then this is me. I like 12, 13 years old. I'm like, I don't know what I want to do. Is something wrong with me? What's going on? Right? Uh, because I had this friend that like seemed to have it all kind of figured out, and so I connect with you a lot in that way because I feel like we kind of both took very similar paths. We ended up in a really great place. I would advise against taking our approach though, unless, unless you're the type of person that can identify opportunity, that can build a network that can follow through. If you can do those things, then go with the win and see where it takes you. If you cannot, then you better have a client. That's my two sense. Did you do you agree or disagree with that?

SPEAKER_00 48:10

It's a great plan. I wish I had thought of that years ago. But I will say this too, man. I think you're all four of my kids are in their 20s, Paul. You know, look at your 20s as like a project workshop. You have plenty of time. I mean, you can you could do like at least three jobs in your 20s and get a taste, explore, sample. Yeah. And then, you know, get serious around 30, I think. Might be one, might be one line of thinking. I like your encapsulation better, though.

SPEAKER_02 48:35

All right. Well, hey, we really uh appreciate having you on. You know, I this all this business about two first names. I I mean, after spending an hour with you, I'm throwing it out the window. I think uh I think you're uh person.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

So I don't know where that came from, man. Appreciate the time. You never know where some stuff comes from. Paul, my pleasure. It's been great. Okay. Thanks for having me, man. Really enjoyed it. All right, thanks.

SPEAKER_03 48:59

We talk about that.