Last week, I had the privilege of speaking with a group of students at Tulane University in New Orleans about the connection between funding international development programs and our national security here at home. The audience included several students and faculty from Tulane’s Payson Center for International Development as well as student veterans and undergrads. Big thanks to Truman Partners Andrew Tuozzollo and Katrina Rogers for organizing the event.
I left the Tulane event on my bike and headed straight for downtown to meet with Laverne Saulny, Regional Manager for Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) . I felt like a scrub showing up in a sweat-soaked Make US Strong t-shirt, but it gave me an easy opening for the meeting…”As you can see, I arrived here by bicycle. From San Diego….”
As in most of my meetings, the Senator’s staffer was vaguely supportive, but unable to give me a firm yes or no on any of my specific funding requests. She did offer to help get me a meeting with Senator Landrieu’s office in DC, and was personally very interested in the logistics of the bike trip. We had a great rapport; at the end of the meeting, she told me she’d make sure the DC office had answers by the time I met with them, and that she’d be following the rest of the ride on Twitter.
It was hard to leave New Orleans. It’s a city of layers – weathered doors that open onto lush, walled gardens, vibrant art spaces concealed within battered houses, and brand new homes designed by the world’s most famous architects dropped like spaceships into the semi-vacant neighborhoods of the Ninth Ward. I rode my bike along the banks of the river and over bridges and down a thousand seriously pockmarked streets and I never got to sleep before the early morning hours, but I still feel like I barely scratched the surface. I know I’ll be back.
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