Welcome back! Five minutes with Jeff Bernstein.
Alum Jeff Bernstein returned to the staff of The Public Interest Network last month as the new Director of Programming at Explore Booksellers in Aspen, Colorado. The bookstore has been owned by groups in The Public Interest Network since 2015. Here’s more about him, in his own words:
Let’s start at the beginning. What are your roots?
I grew up in Miami until eighth grade, then moved to Orange County, California. My parents and their families were all from Brooklyn and Long Island in New York, so I can find my way around Manhattan and play a New Yorker.
Describe your first politicizing experience. Why did it have such an impact on you?
My grandparents were Freedom Riders. They rode in buses carrying food and medical supplies into the deep south in the ’60s to help African Americans there. They’d tell me stories about being threatened by angry whites, and sleeping in the homes of local Black people. Their experience opened my eyes. Beyond that, on an everyday basis in my family, I was taught that we did the right thing simply because it was the right thing to do.
Who or what has most influenced your direction in life?
I’ve pretty much always done what I thought would be a good, fun, interesting, valuable, or enriching thing to do. Take this job in Aspen! No idea where that came from. It’s not so much that I feel compelled to do good, it’s just that selling widgets doesn’t interest me in the least. For example, I had a summer job in law school at a prestigious firm. I had every reason to think that would be the way I would go. The job turned out to be uninspiring and to my mind, silly. I wasn't all about doing good, I was all about doing stuff that meant something to me, and if the work doesn't make the world a better place, it's not meaningful work for me.
How did you get your start working with the PIRGs?
I was looking for a job after graduating from law school. The previous summer I had worked at a fancy law firm in New York and found it, well, I’ll just say it was not to my liking. I saw an ad looking for an Assistant General Counsel for MASSPIRG and the Fund for Public Interest Research. I applied for it and a few other public interest and criminal defense jobs. Joel Ario (my boss-to-be) did my interview, he offered me the job, and I took it.
What skills or lessons from that experience did you carry with you into other roles?
The internet is the go-to place for most people to learn stuff. Not me. I find out who knows what I want to know and I ask him/her. Can’t be sure the folks on the internet know what they’re talking about. In my general counsel job I learned how to find out who knew what I needed to know, and got them to tell me. This has been invaluable to me in subsequent jobs.
What did you do after wrapping up your first stint with The Public Interest Network?
I got another lawyering job setting up democratically worker-owned companies but really didn’t like the whole “law” biz. I’d been a physics teacher in the Peace Corps in Malaysia before law school and had liked it. So I went back to teaching. The state of California certified Peace Corps teachers without having to take any classes, so I got certified and was in a gigantic public high school almost immediately and then at a very interesting Modern Orthodox Jewish "Just Community" school. I wanted to be the principal but wasn't chosen, so I tutored math and did a stint as an industrial lubricant salesman (yeah, wasn't making the world a better place but I enjoyed the schmoozing), and was the occasional lawyer for Telefund. I got married and followed my now-ex-wife to Sacramento where I got a job on the staff of then-State-Assemblymember Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara. I did that for three years when we moved to Seattle, again for my wife's job.
I taught in Seattle for a year, and then was hired by PIRG to be the consumer program policy analyst. I did that for four years under the aegis of my now-good-friend Steve Blackledge. My job was to be a resource for the state PIRGs in their consumer advocacy -- I was to know the laws, the policies, the players, so that the advocates didn't have to reinvent the wheel all the time.
Following that for the next several years I was a house husband and Mattie-the-bookstore-dog's alpha and trainer. I got divorced in 2015 and was tutoring math at schools around Seattle in the federal Title I program that provides tutoring services to underprivileged kids when I got a call from now-State-Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson who asked me if I wanted my old job back. I had loved that job and was delighted to return to Sacramento. She was terming out some three years hence, the same year I'd turn 65, so it seemed a perfect end to my working career.
What brought you back to The Public Interest Network?
Just a few months ago, five months into my “retirement,” I thought I was all set. I had a little pension, I was eligible for Medicare, when Doug Phelps and Faye Park asked me if I wanted to be the director of programming at the Aspen bookstore. “What bookstore?” I asked. My dog Mattie (now the bookstore dog) and I took a look at Aspen, loved it; at Explore Booksellers, loved it; at the job, loved the idea of meeting all those interesting people and being back in the TPIN family, and took the job!
What are you most excited about in your current work?
My job is to better integrate the bookstore into the Aspen community and make it a locus of intellectual activity in the way that the Aspen Institute or the Music Festival or the Film Society fill that role. I will do that via a robust program of speakers and events-- authors, intellectuals, academics, artists, musicians-- who will headline events at the bookstore.
I’m excited about getting to be a part of this town; getting to know people and be known around town; meeting all the interesting folks that live and move through here. Plus, Mattie’s all about the outdoors.
What else would you like people to know about you?
I live in a 300 sq. ft. studio apartment in Aspen. Come for a visit and sleep on the couch! Play with Mattie, Explore’s official bookstore dog, and follow her on Instagram @cikgujeff or @explorebooksellers or on the bookstore's twitter feed @explorebooksellers. You can reach me at jeff@explorebooksellers.com or 206-795-8327.
