Profile: Legislative assistant worked with at-risk youths, but wanted to solve the root of the problem

Position: Legislative assistant for Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga.

Age: 26

Alma Mater: University of Notre Dame

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Washington Examiner: How did you get to Capitol Hill?

Bob Burkett: It was kind of a long pathway to get here. I originally thought coming out of school I was going to go into social work, so I went and did a year of service with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and I worked at a homeless shelter for at-risk youth in inner-city Detroit. Through some of my experiences there, I realized that social work wasn’t going to be for me.

I really enjoyed building the relationships with the at-risk youth. I really enjoyed working there. It’s really fulfilling work, but at the same time it wasn’t incredibly mentally stimulating, and I also didn’t feel like I was addressing the root causes of the problems.

I wanted to come out here to D.C., because that’s the natural place to work in public policy. I extended my resume everywhere, but I felt like it was going into a black hole. I was never hearing back from anyone. Then I realized you have to have connections here, and I didn’t have a whole lot of connections here.

I ended up doing a public service fellowship out at the John Jay Institute in Philadelphia, or Bala Cynwyd right outside Philadelphia, and then through that made some friends and some connections, and then one of them helped me land an internship out here on Capitol Hill. That’s where I’ve been for about the past year and a half, two years now.

Examiner: And do you get to work on those social welfare issues?

Burkett: I’m still sort of aiming for some more social welfare issues. But I do get to touch on a lot of them. I mean, the thing about social welfare issues or welfare issues or anti-poverty issues in general is that they’re so multifaceted that it’s hard to say that there’s one policy area that completely encompasses them. I do get to touch on a lot of those issues, even though supposedly that’s not completely in my portfolio.

Examiner: What’s been the biggest surprise about working on Capitol Hill?

Burkett: It’s pretty wild to work on Capitol Hill because it seems like everyone here is roughly my age, and there are a lot of people with a lot of positions that have a lot of authority and a lot of capacity to make changes for the better or for the worse. I think it’s pretty amazing that a lot of us are just fresh out of college and a lot of us are making a lot of pretty important decisions or helping members make important decisions.

Examiner: What do you do when you’re not working, for fun?

Burkett: Outside of work, I try to keep active. I like playing basketball. There’s actually a Hill league, sort of, or just a bunch of my friends who are Hill staffers who get together and play some football.

I like to read a lot of books, a lot of philosophy, a lot of novels, a lot of history.

Examiner: What philosopher are you reading right now?

Burkett: Alasdair MacIntyre, he’s probably my favorite. After Virtue. You just gotta return to the book every once in a while and remember the fundamentals.

Examiner: If you weren’t in D.C., where would you like to be?

Burkett: I think there are two places. I really miss Indiana sometimes — it’s where I grew up. I grew up in Carmel, and went to the University of Notre Dame — go Irish! I still have a lot of family back there. But there’s also North Carolina. I have some family there and that was sort of my family’s vacation spot every year so I have some good memories there as well.