Leah Hill: Legislative director, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)

Leah Hill is no stranger to a tough crowd.

The legislative director for Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) started her career teaching first- and second-graders in Chicago with Teach for America. But the issues facing her classroom felt too big to ignore, and she became curious about how lawmakers in Springfield, Ill., and Washington were making decisions that affected her students’ lives.

When she decamped to North Carolina, Hill had planned to substitute teach. But she was drawn instead to then-President Obama’s reelection, so she volunteered and then worked as an organizer.

Hill remembers standing outside convenience stores, encouraging people to vote and talking about problems like food and housing insecurity, transportation and education.

“I had to talk to anyone and everyone about anything, right?” Hill said. “And so trying to find like a common space where you can talk about a common value or goal, and then trying to get an action item out of it is something that even when we’re in tough meetings here or you’re trying to problem solve from the legislative perspective, it’s like, well, this is our shared goal. Here are diverging perspectives. What action item can we get, knowing that information?”

She was still figuring out what she wanted to do long term. That’s when she heard about the Teach for America Capitol Hill Fellows program, which sent alumni to congressional jobs.

Hill came on as an education policy fellow for then-Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio). She then bounced between the Senate and House, rising through the ranks of policy roles, until becoming a legislative director in 2021. She’s been in Booker’s office as the “coach” of his policy team ever since.

The thing people don’t understand about policy staff? How much research goes into being prepared for every news outcome, she said.

“Often you hear from folks and they’re like, Congress isn’t doing, and it’s like there’s a lot of things that people are doing, even if bills aren’t being passed the way that you would like them to be,” Hill said. “There’s a lot in the ecosystem, and there’s a lot that goes on, even to have that one speech on the floor, that one letter that came out in one article, or that line in an interview that a member says, it’s a lot of different people’s hands in it, trying to get it where it needs to be.”