What Morgan Searcy Learned from 200+ Interviews with First-Time Political Staffers

Pro Politics with Zac McCrary

Morgan Searcy is a graphic designer whose work has supported some of the top brands in corporate America (Nike, MTV to name a few) and has also worked in campaigns for names like Warren and Ossoff. After the 2020 cycle, she embarked on a new project to capture and record experiences of first-time political staffers - a project that turned into the book One Year in Politics. In this work, she chronicles interviews with more than 220 first-time political staffers...with in-depth information about their motivations, challenges, concerns, aspirations, and more.

IN THIS EPISODE

Morgan's roots growing up as an Asian American in Huntsville, AL...
What drew Morgan to politics from a largely non-political family...

Morgan talks her background in graphic design and best practices for effective visuals...

How Morgan transitioned from corporate design work to working in politics in the 2020 cycle...

What led Morgan to tackle the project that turned into her book, "One Year in Politics"...

Morgan's takeaways from 220+ interviews with first-time political staffers...

Hurdles identified by first-time BIPOC staffers...

What interviews from 2020 revealed about staffer experiences during the pandemic...

The types of "burnout" first-time staffers report feeling...

How first-time staffers' ideology compared to the candidate or cause for whom they worked...

Morgan's advice to staffers early in the career...

AND 5-Star hotels, all-hands meetings, art kids, bigger logos, Boeing, brand recognition, Emerge, EMILYs List, Google Forms, hierarchies of information, Jason Kander, NASA, Jon Ossoff, traditional job boards, video game designers, Werner Von Braun & more!