Alumni Profile: Five minutes with Rich Williams
We had a chance to catch up with campus team and U.S. PIRG alum Rich Williams, who currently serves as the chief of staff for the Office of Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education. Here’s more about him, in his own words:
Let’s start at the beginning. What are your roots?
I grew up in Broad Brook, Connecticut – a place better described as Red Sox territory close to the Windsor Locks Amtrak station – and eventually Arizona.
Describe your first politicizing experience. Why did it have such an impact on you?
My parents understood the importance of social mobility and made an early commitment to ensuring my sisters and I would be first generation college graduates. Everything was aligned toward this purpose and everyone pitched in. College tuition is closely aligned to state funding and when every penny counts, government policies can either create opportunities or close them off forever. I was able to afford college but many of my friends could not. Experiencing firsthand the role of elected leaders and government policies to the success of their communities was my first politicizing experience.
Who or what has most influenced your direction in life?
My family. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up but our relatives always worked together to do more with less. It was an early exposure to the importance of organizing together with shared purpose and empathy.
Rich at a 2012 press conference calling on Congress not to double interest rates on student loans.
How did you get your start working with the PIRGs?
The PIRGs’ Affordable Textbooks Campaign! Everyone remembers the sticker shock of buying their first college textbook. You’re warned about it in high school, you know it’s a lot of money, and it seems like there is nothing you can do about it. Enter Nicole Allen, who was the Student PIRG’s Affordable Textbooks coordinator. She organized a few students to talk about making textbooks more affordable as she was driving through my college town of Flagstaff, Arizona. She explained how tactics by profitable publishing companies are behind the high cost of textbooks. Not only did she tell me I could do something about it, but showed me how I could work with other students at Northern Arizona University (NAU) to fight back against powerful special interests. With the support and training of other amazing organizers like Arizona PIRG’s Diane Brown, Erin Eccleston, and Serina Unrein, together we succeeded at getting more than a third of professors at NAU to take action on reducing textbook prices, saving students hundreds of thousands of dollars.
My post-college plan was to stay in Arizona and become a teacher. As a lesson to “always be recruiting,” I never knew professional organizing could be a career until someone at PIRG asked if I wanted to keep working on campaigns. I packed up my bags, helped the New Voters Project get a bunch of new students registered to vote in North Carolina for the 2008 election, and then moved to D.C. to work on the U.S. PIRG Higher Education project.
I was fortunate to work with amazing folks like Chris Lindstrom to double the Pell grant and lower student loan interest rates; Ed Mierzwinski, Gynnie Robnett and Gary Kalman to end high-fee campus debit cards and create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; the immensely talented Student PIRG organizers to defend the rights of students to organize; and so many more.
What skills or lessons from that experience have you carried with you into other roles?
The ability to define a problem and truly understand the cause, identify a strategy with actionable tactics, and organize coalitions and volunteers to win has been a skill set I have used in every job. The problem, solution, and opportunity flow of a canvass rap still informs how I communicate with co-workers and leaders.
What have you been up to since your time with The Public Interest Network?
I first transitioned to the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor where I gained a deeper appreciation for developing and advocating for legislative solutions. I spent several years taking on powerful interests from a regulator perspective at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And before joining the Biden Administration I worked at Pew Charitable Trusts to launch a program to make it easier for borrowers to repay student loans. I’m now the Chief of Staff for the Office of Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education.
I also got engaged and plan to get married to my partner Max in 2022!
Max and Rich
What are you most excited about in your current work?
Advocating for underserved students and institutions. We are working to make college more affordable and equitable, and hold colleges accountable to higher outcomes, but we’re doing it all with laser focus on promoting equity for underserved groups. I’m proud to also represent my own LGBTQ+ and first generation college student communities at the highest levels of higher education policy.
Helping students and institutions recover from the pandemic through our oversight and implementation of the $76 billion Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund has been both challenging and inspiring.
Wyatt the cat being cute and generally not helpful.
Are you working from home? If so, give us an insider look at your work-from-home setup: any frequent pet visitors or interesting scenery off screen you care to share?
I worked at home for the first few months but we’re back in the office now. It’s nice to have a routine again but it was fun to work at home with Max. Meanwhile our cat seems overjoyed to only have one person home all day.
What else would you like people to know about you?
We’re working 80+ hour weeks but I love trying to keep up with folks in the network and am always happy to share thoughts and swap tips on ways to advocate for change in all areas of the federal government. I’m at rtw321@gmail.com.
