Related Stories: Intro: The New Washington · Technology: Boomtown · Itching For Change · Diversity: The Rainbow Push · Tale Of Two Lobbyists · Public Service: For The Cause [an error occurred while processing this directive]

By Gregg Sangillo, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007

An organization with a name like the Save Darfur Coalition probably wouldn't have existed a generation ago. For one thing, it's a single-issue group, and not many of them were around then. Even the word "Darfur" -- the troubled region in Sudan where the international community believes that genocide is occurring -- would have drawn blank stares in Washington as late as the 1990s. And the group, formerly housed at public-affairs firm M+R Strategic Services, now has its own office and full-time staff. A recent meeting with three Save Darfur Coalition workers provided a window into the mind-set of people who have chosen to work at nonprofits and who encompass the new Washington.

Alex Meixner is a traditional lobbyist. A 29-year-old native Californian, he graduated from Tulane University and started out as an intern for Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. Later, before joining Save Darfur, Meixner was an aide to then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and worked for the late Rep. Robert Matsui, D-Calif., and his wife, Doris Matsui, D-Calif. "I started here in September of '05, which, believe it or not, makes me the longest-tenured staffer" at Save Darfur.

Ashley Roberts, a communications associate, is just 23. She grew up in Nashville, Tenn., and came to Washington right after graduating from Northwestern University. "All of my interests lie in the nonprofit world. I knew I wanted to do something that was either environmental, human-rights, or public health-related. So this just seemed like the logical place to move." She gained an interest in Darfur when she was in college minoring in Central and Southeastern European studies and studying the Holocaust. She also studied in Croatia, where she learned a lot about genocide in the region.

Sarosh Syed is director of online communications, an extremely important position at just about any organization in the new Washington. Syed grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, and came to the U.S. for college. Like Roberts, he graduated from Northwestern. Syed worked at a software company and several nonprofits, including the ACLU, before arriving in Washington to attend graduate school at Georgetown University. Explaining how he ended up becoming an online specialist, Syed says: "I graduated from undergrad right when the dot-com boom was in its peak. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do ... and any idiot at the time could get a job making a decent living just doing something online." Explaining why he likes nonprofits, he says, "The work you do for governments, and your ultimate objectives, change as governments change. When you're signing up for a nonprofit, you're signing up for a cause."

Brendan Doherty, a Foreign Service officer at the Office of War Crimes in the State Department, certainly isn't complaining about his government job. He is a presidential management fellow, a participant in a program devised to attract talented young people to government. Doherty works on issues of life and death in Rwanda and several other African countries. And he travels to Africa about every three months for work-related missions. "There's a number of opportunities that the government presents that working for a private firm can't. And that's the ability to go out and represent the American public, the president, and the secretary," says Doherty, 30. "You have access to a lot of audiences, stakeholders, and decision makers.... Especially at a young age, like myself, it's an opportunity that isn't necessarily readily available."

Part of Doherty's interest in war-crimes issues comes, indirectly, from his time working in a San Diego group home with adolescent boys who had been physically and emotionally abused. "It exposed me to the challenges and the processes by which you work with victims," Doherty says. He later interned at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania and in the office of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., before earning his law degree at Boston University.

Doherty grew up in Chatham, Mass., a small town on Cape Cod that, he says, was anything but cosmopolitan. But through a program for underprivileged youth, his parents hosted a young boy from New York City who stayed with them during summers. This taught him the value of helping people and made him aware of the world outside his hometown. "But when I was in Chatham, did I think I would be flying to Rwanda every few months? Certainly not."