Dr. Eric Waldo never set out to enable positive outcomes in national education and public health policy, but those experiences ultimately led him to leading the District of Columbia College Access Program (DC-CAP). The University Innovation Alliance (UIA) invited Dr. Waldo to the Weekly Wisdom series on our Innovating Together Podcast, where he talked about the dollar value of higher education, finding his way into the White House, stellar leadership examples, and commonsense leadership advice.
Value of Higher Education
In January 2023, Dr. Waldo joined the District of Columbia College Access Program (DC-CAP), a nonprofit dedicated to equipping DC youth for college and career success:
“DC-CAP gives away over seven million dollars a year to over 1,300 students. We partner with 13 universities. Our cohort scholarship program delivers incredible results for first-gen, low-income DC students. We’re proving that if you bet on young people, if you give them the academic, social, emotional, and financial resources, they can compete, succeed, graduate from college, enter the workforce, and live the lives they want to live.”
DC-CAP is the creation of holding company executive and philanthropist Donald Graham, whom Dr. Waldo called an incredible public servant:
“In 1999, he recognized that there were no school counselors in DC high schools. To transform college completion in DC, he helped raise money to put a counselor in every high school and provide a small last-dollar scholarship for students. Now we're a much larger scholarship and completion organization, but Don’s work at DC-CAP and TheDream.US has been extraordinary. He’s entirely mission focused, all about students.”
Dr. Waldo offered a compelling statistic supporting DC-CAP’s unique position in the community:
“Many people are questioning the value of higher ed. Well, college still is worth it, and here in DC, we're lucky to have great colleges. Tony Carnevale from the Georgetown Center for Education Workforce has this study showing the value of college. It's up to $1.2 million more versus a high school diploma. He did a state-by-state analysis. Well, guess where college is worth the most? Washington, DC. $1.9 million is the differential of a college diploma versus a high school diploma in DC. We're a knowledge economy. We know being a lifelong learner will be critical, so creating ladders of opportunity for young people is so important.”
A Voice in Education Policy
As DC-CAP’s leader, Dr. Waldo can leverage his Executive Branch connections:
“I brought Michelle Obama as a surprise speaker to a college signing day event. We announced a moonshot goal for the city to have an 80% six-year college graduation rate by 2050.”
As a comparative literature major, pre-med student, and stage actor, Eric Waldo never foresaw a future of shaping national education policy or calling in favors from a former First Lady. The shift began, he told us, while reevaluating his personal mission after 9/11:
“I made a list of people I admired, and I realized that they were all educators. So, I made a plan to get a master's in ed, go to law school, and work in education policy. I went to ed school at Harvard where I took a Kennedy School class. As an assignment, I volunteered in the John Kerry campaign in 2003. Then at UChicago law school, I met Barack Obama, who was still teaching during my first quarter. After law school, I was clerking, and when I saw that he’d announced, I got myself hired as an unpaid legal intern on the Obama campaign. I turned down a six-figure job at a big law firm in New York City, and I bet on Barack Obama because I believed in him. That was my first step on the Obama roller coaster and rocket ship.
“On election night, I find out that I'm getting a job on transition. I started vetting cabinet officials a few days later and met Arne Duncan. I told him my story, and he invited me to work for him. I spent the next five years working for Arne, becoming the deputy chief of staff, and it was like my Ph.D. in learning about the intersection between federal and local government in education policy. One of my jobs was liaising with the White House. When Mrs. Obama's team called us after the 2012 reelect, they said, ‘We want Mrs. Obama to take another initiative. Will you help us?’ So, I worked with her for about a year, still at Ed, workshopping ideas around her new initiative. That became Reach Higher, and she invited me to work for her. That became the final three years of the White House and another seven years of my life.”
Inspiring Leadership Example
Having worked in the President Obama’ Department of Education and President Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Waldo spoke proudly of the federal-level leadership he’s witnessed:
“Arne Duncan was a leader of character, strength, and no ego. Our first day at Ed, he put up one slide at an all-staff meeting that said, ‘Just call me Arne.’ That small code had a lot of power for the team we built. It's not about us. It's about getting things done for students. The worst insult that our communications director, Peter Cunningham, could give was, ‘Not a lot of courage.’ Arne embraced difficult conversations with people who disagreed with him. If something's scary, you don't want to hide your head and say, ‘No comment.’ You want to run to the fire. He would bring young people to the table. It didn't matter what your title was. Wisdom is not a one-way current. Distributed leadership comes from anyone. You’re keeping a fresh mindset.
“Michelle Obama’s leadership superpower is authenticity. When she was thinking about what she wanted to tell young people, school counselors, or educators, her process was, ‘What is a unique story that could change their lives?’ She was willing to be vulnerable so that people could see themselves in her and grow. When we talked to young people, she’d sit on a table and share her story about her own journey from the South Side of Chicago, about being doubted by her school counselor. And there'd be this moment when those students went from thinking, ‘This is a celebrity I can't even believe’ to ‘Wait, her story isn't that different from mine.’ You saw her unlock their growth mindset and potential.”
Early in the Biden administration, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy invited Dr. Waldo to run his public engagement team after a conversation about how to use the bully pulpit of the Surgeon General's Office:
“Vivek thinks a lot about the mental health crisis across America. One value that he talked about was kindness. We are in such a difficult time in our country. The world feels tough, and everyone has their own private struggles. We're all complicated, multidimensional people, and so we focused our mental health work on creating safe work environments that see people in their full selves. Kindness is a value that can help us get the work done. Vivek helped me crystallize my thinking that the how is just as important as the what.
“For me, getting to work with people like Arne Duncan, Michelle Obama, and Vivek Murthy was about following passion over prestige. I learned about courage from Arne, authenticity from Mrs. Obama, kindness from Dr. Murthy – and countless other leaders who were willing to give me water and sunshine.”
Career Advice for Rising Leaders
Dr. Waldo added that he’s received great career advice from sources other than those DC luminaries. For example, a peer once told him over coffee:
"’Always play the long game.’ I interpreted her to mean that not every day will go your way, but always show up with your values, your integrity, keep doing the work, and eventually you'll get there.”
He also credits his father, an electrophysiologist who ran a medical lab at Case Western Reserve, for promoting what they called the Waldo Rules, one of which was:
“’Get found out.’ If you’re doing innovative work and nobody knows about it yet, make sure people know. Maybe you don't want to self-promote, ask for something, or say how good you are. Virtue in obscurity is not useful. If you share what you want to do and be, that helps people know how to help you.”
Recommended Leadership Reading
The UIA is always looking for leadership book recommendations. Dr. Waldo was happy to add some new resources to our list:
“Andrew Gumbel’s book Won't Lose This Dream is about the work at Georgia State University – on completion, technology, and data – and how Tim Renick and other leaders helped create and transform that institution. It took multiple leaders multiple years. It was playing the long game with all these chess pieces that had to be moved.
“For folks thinking about podcasts, I'm a huge fan of Adam Grant, a behavioral psychologist at Penn Wharton. His podcast WorkLife talks to leaders across multiple sectors around what they do to, as he says, ‘make work not suck.’ How to give feedback, challenge yourself, and surround yourself with great folks. I listen to that like my own mini-MBA therapy. It's a little like what you're doing with Innovating Together, talking to leaders. Anecdotal ideas are a form of data. Maybe this is a little bit better way to think about things.”
Note: This interview in the Weekly Wisdom series originally aired on July 22, 2024, as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast, appearing live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Eric Waldo
- District of Columbia College Access Program (DC-CAP)
- Donald Graham (founder of DC-CAP)
- TheDream.US (college and career success program for undocumented immigrant youth)
- Georgetown Center for Education Workforce (research and policy institute within Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy)
- Arne Duncan ("Partnership and Policy for Academic Advising: A Conversation With Arne Duncan, Former U.S. Secretary of Education," UIA, 8/25/22)
- Reach Higher (former First Lady Michelle Obama’s college-focused initiative for U.S. high school students)
- Won't Lose This Dream by Andrew Gumbel
- Tim Renick ("A System for Student Success: A Conversation With Tim Renick, Executive Director, National Institute for Student Success at Georgia State University," UIA, 8/5/21)
- WorkLife (podcast by Adam Grant)
Bios of Guest and Co-Hosts
Since January 2023, Eric Waldo has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the District of Columbia College Access Program (DC-CAP), Washington, DC’s largest scholarship foundation. Prior to joining DC-CAP, Dr. Waldo served in the Biden administration as Chief Engagement Officer for U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, spearheading public health campaigns around youth and clinician mental health, health misinformation, and workplace well-being. In 2019, Dr. Waldo joined Common App as Chief Access and Equity Officer while also continuing to lead Higher Reach, Michelle Obama’s college access and success initiative, to which he’d been named Executive Director during the Obama administration. An attorney for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Chicago and a member of the Transition Team after the 2008 election, Dr. Waldo served five years as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. From 2006 through 2007, Dr. Waldo clerked for Judge Ann Aldrich in the northern district of Ohio, also serving on the board for the Military Child Education Coalition and the National Postsecondary Institute. Before graduate school, he was a working actor in the Boston area, following a post-college job with AmeriCorps as a middle-school English and improv acting teacher. He earned his J.D. degree from the University of Chicago, his master’s in education from Harvard, and his B.A. in comparative literature from Brown University.
Co-Host: Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
Dr. Bridget Burns is the founding Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA). For the past decade, she has advised university presidents, system chancellors, and state and federal policy leaders on strategies to expand access to higher education, address costs, and promote completion for students of all backgrounds. The UIA was developed during Bridget’s tenure as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship at Arizona State University. She held multiple roles within the Oregon University System, including serving as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor, where she won the national award for innovation in higher education government relations. She was a National Associate for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and has served on several statewide governing boards including ones governing higher education institutions, financial aid policy, and policy areas impacting children and families.
About Weekly Wisdom
Weekly Wisdom is an event series that happens live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also becomes a podcast episode. Every week, we join forces with Inside Higher Ed and talk with a sitting college president or chancellor about how they're specifically navigating the challenges of this moment. These conversations will be filled with practicable things you can do right now by unpacking how and why college leaders are making decisions within higher education. Hopefully, these episodes will also leave you with a sense of optimism and a bit of inspiration.
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