Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program Career Talk with Cody Keenan '02: Chief Speechwriter for President Barack Obama
This episode is a recorded Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program event where Cody Keenan talked with students in the fall of 2019 about his career. He has been a speechwriter for President Barack Obama for nearly a decade, rising from a campaign intern in Chicago to Director of Speechwriting at the White House. He is also now a visiting professor at Northwestern. Though this talk was from 2019, which was a very different time compared to today, we are excited to share this talk with you and we hope you enjoy it! Learn more at Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron or email us at waldron@northwestern.edu.
Cassie Petoskey (00:00):
Welcome to the Weinberg In The World podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking for today's complex world. This episode is a recorded Waldron student alumni connections program event where Cody Keenan talked with students in the fall of 2019 about his career in speech writing for President Barack Obama. Cody graduated from Northwestern in 2002 with a major in political science. He moved to DC and didn't know he wanted to be a speech writer until he wrote his first speech for a politician. He has been a speech writer for President Barack Obama for nearly a decade, rising from a campaign intern in Chicago to director of speech writing at the White House. He is also now a visiting professor at Northwestern. During this event, Cody shared more with students about his path to where he is today. Though this talk was from 2019, which was a very different time compared to today. We're excited to share this talk with you and we hope you enjoy it.
Cody Keenan (00:49):
Raise your hand if you know exactly what you're going to do with your life. That's good. Raise your hand if you have a job lined up for when you graduate. Well, your friends must love you guys. That's good. That's good. Don't be ashamed of it. That's really good. I didn't. I'll kind of briefly take you through my career arc and what I learned from it and then take all your questions. But I entered Northwestern as pre-med. I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. I tore my knee playing high school football. I thought it was super cool to put joints back together. I took chemistry. I was like, "I'm not doing this anymore." So I switched to Poli Sci and I got really interested in politics. Started paying attention, I was here for the election of 2000. And when I graduated, I was just kind of cut off and on my own. Which most of you will be and it's useful to get yourselves acclimated to that.
(01:45):
When I graduated, I didn't have a job. Moved back in with my parents, this is June 2002. Then ultimately moved down to Washington just to kind of hit the ground and start looking. And I figured, I went to a really good school, I've seen every episode of the West Wing. How hard could this possibly be? The thing in Washington is nobody's impressed that you went to a good school because everybody there went to good schools. They're not impressed that you have a political science degree. Because nobody in an interview says, "Tell me more about your thoughts on the Central American political economy." They want to know what you can do. And there wasn't much that I could do. So I was interviewing in all these different places, failing most of them. And finally I just kind of set my sights a little bit lower and went for an unpaid internship in Ted Kennedy's office. This is Senator Ted Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy's little brother. Knew he believed in the same things I believed in. He had undoubtedly the best legislative staff on the hill.
(02:44):
So I started in the mail room just opening letters, routing them to the right places, reading people's concerns. And I learned a lot. And that's the most important thing about your first job is that you're going to learn a lot. A lot of students now come up and talk to me in office hours or email or whatever, and you're so paralyzed by indecision or fear that that first job might somehow ruin your entire career trajectory. I don't have many students come in and say, "I'm really excited that maybe my first job will set me up for something great someday." It's usually, "What if I make the wrong choice? What if I pick the wrong job?"
(03:22):
Well, who would've thought that an unpaid mail room internship was the right choice? And it turned out to be that. I was reading these letters from perfect strangers and that's when I learned that politics isn't really like the West Wing at all. It's serious stuff. It matters. Perfect strangers would put their private hopes and pains on the page, asking the senator for help and you realize just how important this stuff is. So I kept my nose down. I worked hard, I was nice to people. I ultimately got hired for the entry level job, which was answering phones out in kind of the receptionist office. Where I was paid the princely sum of $18,500 a year, right around minimum wage. But that's a time when you can do that. I mean, I was 22 years old, and I lived in a group house with three other guys and two girls. We were all working entry level jobs. None of us had any money. We just hung out together and drank cheap beer and roamed town looking for intern food specials.
(04:20):
But it was really fun, because you learn a lot in those first jobs. You watch, you pay attention. Ultimately, I got promoted once, promoted again until I had my own legislative portfolio. This is now almost four years after I first got that internship. And here's where I had to make another decision. You guys ask me that all the time too and that's, do you go to grad school or not? I ultimately decided to go. I was a legislative aide, but I was the only one on staff who didn't have any sort of advanced degree. And I'd go sit in these rooms with people who worked for other senators on both sides of the aisle trying to hammer out legislation and they were running circles around me. So I went to my boss and said, "I don't think I'm serving the senator very well, I think I should go to grad school."
(05:00):
Here's where I wish somebody told me that, if you just keep working in your job for two more years, you'll learn everything you need to know. Whereas I was like, "Sure, to learn how Congress works, I'm going to go to Harvard for two years." Instead of just saying, "Sure, to learn how Congress works, I'm going to stay in Congress for two more years."
(05:19):
So I end up going to grad school to get a master in public policy at Harvard. And I guess I'll say my general advice on grad school is this, know what you want to do with your life before you go. It's not going to help you figure it out. That's what college is for. And even if you finish college not knowing what you want to do, that's okay, because you've still got tons of time. But if you go to grad school without knowing what you want to do, it's not going to help you figure it out. If you do know what you want to do, it can help your career take off like a booster rocket.
(05:49):
Some of my really good friends, one was interested in urban policy, city planning. One was interested in education policy and it just vaulted them to much higher levels. But for me, not only have I barely ever used it. Probably the only good thing about it is that I got 10 of my best friends from there. So if anybody ever asks you what price can you put on friendship, it turns out it's $100,000.
(06:14):
But this is also kind of when fate intervened here. People will ask, "All right, so how did you get from Northwestern to the White House? And the answer is, a lot of luck. Hard work, not being a jerk, and a lot of luck is really kind of it. I mean, if you'd have come up to me in June 2002, and said, "Within 10 years, you're going to be the chief speech writer for the first black president," I'd be like, "What?" If you said, "Within 17 years, you'll be a professor in the political science department." I'm like, "Get the fuck out of here. That's definitely not happening."
(06:51):
I had worked hard. I was nice to people. People had seen my product, and a woman named Stephanie Cutter, who I worked with in Ted Kennedy's office, connected me with John Favreau on the Obama campaign, because the campaign had just started. And he was kind of desperate for help, just swamped in speeches. So he'd seen some of the things I'd written for Senator Kennedy. We had a phone interview. He said, "You want to come out to Chicago and work for free?" And I said, "Yes."
(07:15):
And I was fortunate enough to be able to do that. So there's a little bit of privilege involved in my journey too. And so I interned on the campaign as a speech writer. Picked up the kind of smallest possible speeches, talking points, things like that. Again, learning on the job because it was my first speech writing job, but I stuck with it and learned a lot. Ultimately, kind of climbed my way up, clawed my way up until I became deputy director of speech writing under John. And then director of speech writing in the second term in the White House. On the way out, Obama asked me if I'd stick with him, and we still work together today, four days a week when I'm not teaching on campus.
(07:51):
So that kind of brings me back full circle. The reason I am teaching here is actually directly related to when I first left and couldn't find a job. When I moved to Washington, and I didn't know anybody. Well, not true, I knew one person. He was one of my fraternity brothers from Northwestern, but he was in Teach For America. So it's not like he was helpful setting me up with meetings on the hill and stuff like that.
(08:13):
So I called the political science department from which I had just graduated, and I was like, "Hey, do we have any alums in DC? Any Poli Sci alums who I could talk to, meet with, interview with, network with, whatever?" And whoever I talked to, I still don't know. She says, "Well, Dick Gephardt went to Northwestern." And for those of you who don't know, he was the Democratic majority leader in the house. He was like Nancy Pelosi in 2002. So I was like, "Cool, I'll just call Dick Gephardt," and be like, "Hey, I went to Northwestern too. Can I have a job?"
(08:46):
So that's actually why I've created, the speech writing class I created so that my students can graduate with actual marketable skills and with a portfolio of work and show up and say, "I want this speech writing job. Here's stuff that I can do." You may not always have that kind of portfolio of stuff depending on what your majors are. But you can try to create something like that, find out if there's any kind of extracurricular work you can do or whatever, so that when you get to looking for that job, you have something to show.
Cassie Petoskey (09:17):
For more information about Weinberg College and this podcast, please visit weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron. Also, we'd love to hear your feedback. Please email us at waldron@northwestern.edu with your thoughts on today's program. Thank you again for tuning in to this episode of Weinberg In The World.