“Vision and Experimentalism and Urgency”: Elizabeth Wilkins and Felicia Wong in Conversation

Felicia Wong: Hey, everybody. I’m Felicia Wong, the now former CEO of the Roosevelt Institute. I had that job for 12 years. And today, I am super excited to be chatting with our new CEO, Elizabeth Wilkins. Elizabeth, it is just great to have you on the team. You and I have worked together closely over the last few years, and I really look forward to talking to you about what you’re bringing to this organization, this really critical moment in history. So let’s get into it.

Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what brought you to Roosevelt? Most recently, you were at the FTC. You were chief of staff and head of policy for Lina Khan. And then before that, you were senior adviser to Ron Klain. You clerked for Merrick Garland. You clerked for Elena Kagan. You’ve worked in the DC attorney general’s office. You started your career as a labor person helping people build power at SEIU, 32BJ. So you’re bringing a tremendous amount to Roosevelt. I just did a big intro of you, of course, but I’d still love to hear you introduce yourself.

Elizabeth Wilkins: Thanks, Felicia. And before I get started, I just want to say, not only is it fun and exciting to be taking over Roosevelt in this moment—it is such a delight to be able to do it with you as a partner and to know that you’ve committed to staying on and also helping us build out one of the things I think is most exciting about what we’re doing right now, which is the people pipeline work. So I feel like I have a lot of partners in crime here as I’m stepping into this new role.

I come from a long line of people in my family who have dedicated themselves and their careers to making the world a better place for people who have fewer tools to do so. That’s kind of what I grew up on. It’s what I drank up when I was a kid. I remember thinking when I was in high school that, obviously, I was going to be a lawyer, and I didn’t understand why people thought lawyers were icky because the only thing that I knew about lawyers is that they were civil rights fighters. And so, obviously, that was the way to do good things, and I was going to be a civil rights lawyer. But early in my career, I was lucky enough to be introduced to other types of social change, in particular community and labor organizing. Forms of change that really understand power relationships in the economy and the idea that the things that people yearn for in their lives—yes, it’s security. Yes, it’s safety. Yes, it is the means to make choices about their family and their circumstances—but it’s also autonomy. It’s the freedom of choice. It’s the ability to have some control over whether your city fills the potholes on your street or not. It’s the feeling of whether or not you’re respected, whatever your place in the community might be. And I think those early experiences with organizing have really informed the rest of my professional choices. I wanted to go into government to figure out how government can work for people to make sure that they have more of those choices, whether at the local level or the federal level. And that’s why I’m so excited to be here at Roosevelt. I feel like Roosevelt is one of the few organizations that I share a personality with. That kind of decades-long, family-long commitment to making a place in our economy, in our society, and in our democracy for everybody in a really meaningful way. So I hope that’s what I’m bringing to the institute and why I’m so excited to be doing it at this moment.

Felicia: I love that description of your own arc. Part of it’s head: Lawyers are going to use their smarts to fight for good. Part of it is heart: your own family, your admiration of the Roosevelt family. But also then the work organizing on the ground, knocking doors. You’ve knocked a lot of doors. You’ve also worked in the most powerful places in government, namely the White House. So that arc is quite capacious. It’s quite amazing. All of us at Roosevelt are really thrilled and really lucky to have you leading this team in this—let’s be honest—pretty challenging moment in American history. So I’d love you to talk about what your priorities are in this moment and also what you’ve seen over the last five or so years that make you say, “Okay. This is what we have to work on now.”

Elizabeth: Absolutely. First of all, I want to acknowledge we’re in a moment that feels precarious for a lot of people. I just talked about folks just wanting to have a measure of security for their family and choice in their life, and I am watching some really incredible people do frontline work right now to protect people’s ability to live their lives in safety and security. It’s also a moment where we can see pretty viscerally the ways in which our government institutions and our economic structures are just not working for people and haven’t been for decades. And that frustration can lead in a lot of different directions, and we have the opportunity to try and harness that frustration into something that’s truly better. Building on the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, what role should government play in shaping the markets that we find ourselves in and in defining the safety net that’s gonna catch us when we fall?

One of my most rewarding professional experiences was working with Lina Khan, first as a policy director and then also as her chief of staff, at the Federal Trade Commission. It was an extraordinary experience of being relentlessly committed to the idea that the organs of government should be fighting powerful interests on behalf of ordinary people. So we have just come through a demonstration that that can be true again. Now is the time for us to think big about how to spread that attitude throughout the organs of government. How do we make sure that every political appointee and every career staffer is supported and prepared to be that kind of public servant for the American people? We need a democratic system that makes that possible. We need people who are well trained and able to execute it, and we have the time to build that vision. I, in my time at FTC, also ran into what I think of as the wrong kind of risk analysis. People often are worried about the risk of overreach in the kinds of government actions that protect people. And what I always thought was there’s a really understated risk of underreach, of doing so little that people can’t see that government is fighting for them. So how do we build a vision where government is visible and fighting for them? What should it do, and who should be in there doing it?

Felicia: Yeah, that balance between underreach and overreach. In a way that is the story of the last hundred years, the last 300 years. How powerful should government be? How should government be shaping our markets? What should the power of private forces be? What should the power of labor be? I know we’re gonna talk about Franklin and Eleanor in just a minute, which you just teed up. But before we do that, I’d love one or two more specific stories from the almost four years that you spent on the Biden-Harris transition, then in the White House, and then at the FTC. You did see that government could fight for ordinary people. Tell us a story about that, where you saw it worked.

Elizabeth: Oh, gosh. There are so many. It’s a little hard to pick, but maybe I’ll pick one first from FTC. It was an extraordinary privilege to get to lead our work at the FTC on developing our rule to ban noncompete clauses in labor contracts. These are clauses that basically trap workers in their jobs. They say you can’t go work for a competing business or start a new one. And if you think about the basic ideas of the American dream, you are born with a set of abilities and talents. You put work into developing a set of skills, and you get to go out there and ply your trade. And that’s your right to follow that dream—and also the basics of what we all are looking for. I want to find a job that works for my family. I want a commute that works for my family. I want hours that work for my family. I want a workplace that values me. All of those things are wildly undermined by noncompete clauses in the workplace. The thing that I thought was so incredible—of many things that were incredible about the process of writing that rule—was the interaction between the public and its government in the process of policymaking without sacrificing speed. We wrote that rule in record time, especially given the number of public comments that we got.

Felicia: What’s record time? How long does it take to write a rule of that level?

Elizabeth: From when we put out the proposal to when we put out the final was a little bit more than a year. That includes reviewing 26,000 comments, responding to every single one of them, writing a 500-page rule, and putting it out. From very inception to end, it’s probably two years, which is pretty good for the way government works. Although, I will say there are all kinds of ways in which we want to make sure that government works better.

But here are some of the ways in which the interaction between the public and the government institution was really extraordinary: Part of what spurred us to do the rule and do it the way we did was public comment. It was allowing the public to set our agenda. What we said was, “What market problems are you having?” And then we figured out how we can work backward and solve it. Instead of what often happens in government—which is, “Here’s the tool we have. Let’s go find a problem we can fix with that tool”—we’re gonna listen hard to the American public about what their actual problems in the marketplace are, and our job is to be creative with the tools we have to solve them. We actually listened to the problems that people were bringing to us, and we found a solution. That was hard and different, but really important. So that was one.

The second is we got 26,000 comments, which was for our agency a huge amount of comments. A wild number of them were individual stories of the experiences of workers under these noncompete clauses. And even though we were determined to do this quickly, we decided to tell the stories of those individual workers in the actual rule that we published. We wanted to reflect the public in our “government-speak” product. And that really moved people. People felt like it mattered that they commented on a government rule, that they actually did have a way to participate in their democracy in a way that mattered. There was an amazing quote that I saw from one woman who wrote a comment about the awful sexual harassment that she experienced in a bar that she worked in. She wasn’t allowed to leave because of a noncompete. Our team picked that out and put her story into a speech that Chair Khan made about economic freedom and freedom from fear in the marketplace. And afterward, a reporter happened to find this woman and interview her about what she thought about the rule, and she said, basically, “I’ve never felt so powerful before.” Like, I went from someone who was subjected to the worst excess of corporate power and felt like I didn’t have any recourse, I participated in the process of government, and something changed. And I became more powerful, and my life opened up, and I had more options. And that right there is what we’re all here for.

Felicia: I love that story so much because it is so Rooseveltian in so many ways. Somebody in government really truly listening to and communicating in a genuine back-and-forth way with a person—a person in the public, a voter, but just a person, a worker. The idea that this is about freedom from fear, which is very, very Rooseveltian. There are so many elements of that story that tell me a lot about why you are a Roosevelter and why you are now leading the Roosevelt Institute. One of the very best things about this job, one of the things I’ve loved over the last dozen years, is the truly deep connection that we have at Roosevelt to the legacy of both Franklin and Eleanor. (I was reading the UN Commission on Human Rights documents literally last night. That’s how it goes here at the Roosevelt Institute.) Both Franklin and Eleanor have so many lessons to offer us about going bold, about not shying away from a fight, especially in moments when it’s hard, especially in moments of crisis. Can you say a little bit about how you think about Franklin and Eleanor and their legacy specifically, either in your life or in your work?

Elizabeth: I feel very grateful to be leading an organization with such a storied connection to American history and to values and ideals. It gives us a grounding and a North Star that I think is just a true asset generally and personally inspiring. One thing that comes to mind first and foremost is that Franklin and Eleanor walked into the White House in a moment of such crisis. A moment where fears about fascism at home and abroad were real. A moment where our economic system had collapsed and there were real questions about whether either our economic or political system was actually viable long term at all. Big, scary questions. And they met those big scary questions with energy and vision and experimentalism and urgency. I think that that kind of call to action and service in the face of what could be an overwhelming set of challenges is quite inspiring for our moment in particular. That’s one big-picture reaction.

I have a separate one, which is a very personal one. Kudos to the Roosevelt Institute, which is very well run by very thoughtful people and had a very thorough interview process for its next president. During the interview process, I decided to finally pull off my shelf Freedom from Fear, which I had been intending to read for a long time and never had. I thought, Why don’t I ground myself in this? I opened it up, and it turned out it had been written in. At first, I thought, Wait. Did I read this and I forgot about it? That would be very weird. And as I kept flipping, I realized: Oh my goodness. This wasn’t my book. It was my father’s book. My father¹ was someone who dedicated his whole life to public service, to racial and economic justice, who wrote about the founding of this country, both inspirational and imperfect, and the ways in which we can be patriotic in the act of continuing to perfect it. So for this whole time that I’m going through the interview process for this job and I’m going through Freedom from Fear, I’m having a conversation between me and the legacy of the Roosevelts and my dad, who is my own personal inspiration for service, particularly in this very American context. I felt so fortuitous. It was almost like this is where I’m meant to be in this conversation. I kept watching all of his underlines for all of these Roosevelt speeches that were such callbacks to our fundamental values, and I thought, This is exactly where I want to be.

Felicia: That story reminds us that no matter how difficult moments in history can seem, whether it was the Great Depression or—your dad served, if I’m not mistaken, in the Johnson administration?—the War on Poverty, Great Society, there are moments in our history where the forces of more equality and the forces of greater justice for more people and more rights for more people take the forefront. So I love that story thinking about FDR, your dad, and you. All of those people in our policymaking history and our governing history remind us that we can be ambitious. We can be creative in policymaking. We can think beyond whatever we inherited, even now in a moment where it’s pretty difficult. I’d love for you to talk a little bit about how we now can move beyond status quo thinking. Maybe a little bit about the ways in which you saw people move beyond status quo thinking, either when you were an organizer, when you served as a legal clerk, or most recently in the White House. It is important to all of us at Roosevelt that we always push the boundaries of what is possible. So tell us a story about that.

Elizabeth: You called it out. I started my career in organizing. I think a thing that you can never get away from if you are organizing people and communities who don’t have power is how different the world looks between those who don’t have power and those who do. You and I and all of our colleagues work in a world where, wherever we came from, we now have power. We are in a set of elite circles that has its own set of incentives, feedback loops. But if you talk to someone who’s not in those circles and who doesn’t have that power, none of that matters. None of those constraints matter. None of those rules matter. What matters is how they get through their day and whether they can make ends meet or not. Here’s an example. This is not an example that I personally worked on, but it’s my favorite. To say, “Hey, guys. I don’t really have an opinion on whether or not economists believe that a $10 or an $11 minimum wage level is economically feasible or not. What I’m telling you is that I need $15 an hour or more to feed my family.”

Felicia: This is when you were at SEIU, you were hearing this.

Elizabeth: This was, yes. And that’s a different conversation than, “Let’s start with the trade-offs . . . ” That’s us starting from, “What is it that makes people’s lives possible?” It doesn’t mean that the elite conversation isn’t important. In fact, it’s crucially important, because it’s not that there aren’t trade-offs. It’s not that there aren’t important policy design questions. It is: How do we remind ourselves what the goal of our policy interventions are and on whose behalf we are making them? And that helps us change our risk tolerance. It helps us frame what we mean by trade-offs. It helps us probe and question the status quo and the presumptions behind the status quo and who benefits from it. Because it turns out that many of us elites who have something to lose might set up the trade-offs in a way that privileges the status quo we already have. So I think our constant mandate is to question those assumptions, to stay true to our core moral values of the kind of economy and society that we actually want to see that is inclusive, that is equitable, and to be radical in our thinking about what we are willing to trade off to get there. If we start from those principles, the world opens up in terms of policy options for what we might be willing to try.

And, again, I’ll go back to the legacy of the Roosevelts. I wish I could quote it. I’m not able to do it exactly. But FDR had a great quote² basically about saying, do we have all the answers? No. But the answer must be action. We must try something. Because he was in a world where people were hungry. They were crying out for a solution. It didn’t matter if we had all the answers. It didn’t matter if we had worked out to the nth degree every exercise of power. What mattered was that we were in the seats with power, and so we needed to do something. That needs to be our starting-out-of-the-gate attitude. It’s that urgency about a crisis of people not having the means to live the lives that they want to be able to live.

Felicia: Right. FDR basically said, try something. It might not work. If it failed, admit it frankly, then try something else. I feel like your whole career in government has been to try things. You pushed on the noncompete role. You pushed when you were in the White House working with Ron Klain. You were trying things, and if it didn’t work, you would move to something else because you had the power and the means to do so. Speaking of listening to people who really know what it takes to feed their families or to get through their day or to keep their job in a way that is dignified: As it turns out, plenty of places in this country went to a $15 minimum wage thanks to the work that you and your colleagues at SEIU did. Not only did the sky not fall, economists—we love economists—but actually many of those economies and those local economies ended up healthier. As it turns out, a $15 minimum wage was, at least for some places in this country, just the beginning. So you listened to people, you got things done, and you made economies better at the same time. I love that.

We’re in a different moment now. I think it’s fair to say that much of what you worked on in the White House and that we worked on at the Roosevelt Institute before you joined us feels like it’s a little bit on its back heels right now. It feels like there are lessons to learn, good lessons, which we should not forget, but also, are there places where we should have done something differently? So my question for you is, at this particular moment, how do you think that we get from where we are today to something that is more hopeful and that builds on the best of the legacy of the last 5 or 10 years?

Elizabeth: I do think what we’re seeing now is a product of a lot of people’s frustration that is not as much attributable to the last 4 years but is really attributable to the last 40 years of increasing inequality. We are living in a world of anger at institutions and an instinct to tear down—an understandable one in some ways. But someone has to be the holder of the question, “What do we do after things are dismantled? How do we build back something that works?” If we’re totally honest, for example, with our government institutions, with our executive branch—I have worked in government, as we have said—I would never have said that everything about our government institutions is perfect. If we want to have the state capacity to deliver on industrial policy in the way we want, to have nimble enforcement policy for market-shaping regimes that check corporate power, for enforcement schemes that ensure that workers actually get their rights, there were many ways in which our government institutions were not well set up to deliver fast and efficiently. We need a vision of a capacious, expert, dedicated federal service and set of federal institutions that can deliver the goods that Americans want.

I think that the Roosevelt Institute has a role to play in pushing that forward. We saw incredible gains in thinking about corporate power, not just from the antitrust enforcers or the bank regulators but across government. What do industrial regulators have to do to ensure a distribution of power in various markets? We are also seeing what it looks like for powerful concentrated wealth to have significant access to the organs of government. That is a huge backsliding. So, again, what does it take for us to have government institutions that are capable of regulating those interests in the interest of the public? I suppose I’ll be beating a repetitive drumbeat for a lot of this (and I’m professionally obligated to), but FDR also thought that the executive branch needed to look different to be able to deliver the goods that he wanted to deliver to the American people. We have a lot of inspiration to take for what it means to paint a vision of a capable state apparatus that can regulate the economy in service of the public good. And we need a fleshed-out vision of what that looks like, which is what we are all about. I think we are very well positioned to lead that charge over the next several years.

Felicia: I could not agree more. I also think that one of the things that FDR thought about was all three branches of government. First, he had, like, a 70 percent majority in Congress. That was not a perfect Congress, as we both know. But he thought about government as both the executive branch and the legislature—the seat of the people, as it were. And he thought about how courts needed to be better. So I do think that one thing that we can think about is not just power that comes from the executive branch agencies but also a kind of democratic power that really checks and balances, across all three branches. I know you think a lot about that as a lawyer.

Let me ask you one more thing before we close out. This could be about your work, your first week at the Roosevelt Institute, anything. But what makes you hopeful in this moment?

Elizabeth: This one is easy, surprisingly. This is day six on the job, and I have loved getting to know the Roosevelt staff. I have never walked into an organization that is so obviously mission-oriented, collaborative, and excited about the mission. It’s really buoying. It just lifts you up. And I think that translates really well into the people work that we do. Roosevelt cares about its own people in its organization, and it cares about the broader set of people in our movement, their care and feeding, their development, their opportunities. Especially in times of challenge, the danger is to feel as though you are alone. In this moment, one thing has been so clear to me, even in the first six days: I am not alone in this new job, but also we are not alone in this movement to create a more progressive, more capacious, more integrated, and inclusive future. And I have so much. I think I’m great, I have faith in myself, but I have so much more faith in us collectively to move that project forward.

Felicia: I think you’re great too. And it warms my heart for you to say that, on day six, you have found the entire team at Roosevelt enthusiastic, nerdy, studious. But also people at Roosevelt want to win. They don’t just want to be right. They also want to win. I am so thrilled that you have found the team here to be one that you are excited to lead. Because we are really excited to have you here leading us. It’s a new chapter for us. I am looking forward to helping you make your vision a reality. You have such a great ability to bring people together, to have fun while doing it. I’ve had fun the last six days. Roosevelt, under your leadership, is in really great hands, and I’m excited to be on your team.

Elizabeth: Me too, Felicia. I am excited that we are on the same team.

If you ask Eleanor

“Our type of democracy requires more patience than does any kind of authoritarian government. Such governments may call themselves democratic but they do not have to wait for the people to be educated to a new idea. They can act, then wait for the people to catch up later.

That is not the case in the United States. Therefore, it is frequently necessary for the executive part of our government to mould its plans to meet the requirements of the legislative side of the government.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn By Living  (1960)

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