From the White House to Silicon Valley: A Conversation with Sarah Feinberg on the Upside Podcast

I have only recently become acquainted with Sarah Feinberg, and for those of you who don’t know her yet, you will.

Sarah is a unique leader who has traversed the worlds of both the public and private sector at the highest levels. When someone references working with Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Rahm Emanuel on the financial crisis in the White House, you can safely assume she has influenced decisions that have affected every person in America.

A quick speed bio, because it’s worth sharing: Sarah spent two years serving as the Acting Administrator and Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, nominated by President Obama, and only the second woman to ever hold the post. She was Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, managing billions of dollars of the federal budget on operational and legislative initiatives across all modes of transportation. Before her time at USDOT, she was Director of Corporate and Strategic Comms at Facebook, Bloomberg’s Director of Communications and Business Strategy, and Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Advisor to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

A few weeks ago, Sarah was in the Uptake office for our Advisor Summit and I asked if she’d be willing to sit down for a quick conversation on The Upside.

Our conversation ranged from White House therapy sessions to #MeToo, and I grew an even deeper appreciation for her candid and straightforward approach to work and life.

Below are three observations from Sarah on innovation and honesty in government and big tech. To hear the entire episode and others, subscribe to The Upside on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your other favorite podcast player.

“As a government, we just culturally have not moved the ball forward with data and with tech the way we could… Washington is always last to get the message.” The government is a massive spender on IT and an archaic user. During Sarah’s time leading the Federal Railroad Administration, which was two years, she prioritized technology as a strategic lever wherever she could. The FRA has all of this data from every expensive accident and every injury or fatality and essentially, she started asking the obvious questions. Where are the worst grade crossings in the U.S.? Where are people most at risk? This took the two of us down a path of (mutual) data obsession and the vision for an efficient, predictive railroad. She made it clear that while progress has been made, we still have a long way to go. Leaders in government often work in silos and prioritize the short, reactive immediate need vs. the long-term transformation that’s required.

One of the greatest crises that she faced in the White House was the H1N1 flu, a problem that made its way to the famed White House situation room (which, according to Sarah, is primarily just a bunch of secure conference rooms - who knew?). They were facing outbreaks that could have potentially amounted to hundreds of thousands of deaths, and pregnant women were dying. Sarah shared, “The lessons were to be really transparent with the American people about what you’re doing to try to solve this… You know, the President (Obama) was criticized for putting the numbers out. I remember that so clearly. And I thought to myself, why would you criticize someone for being honest with you about what might be about to happen?”

With Facebook’s chaotic narrative today, it was interesting to chat about the company from Sarah’s perspective. She shared a story about an organ donor initiative that Sheryl Sandberg kicked off, which would leverage the platform to push people to share that they were organ donors, hopefully to become a forcing function so that others sign up. “With as many users as they had at that moment, I think it was 1.1 billion or 1.2 billion...There are ways that you can nudge behavior that can solve some of the greatest problems in the world. Right?”