Even as a child growing up in Greensboro, North Carolina, Graham Sheridan, a 2014 graduate of Brown's Master of Public Affairs program, loved reading the news. "My family got the Greensboro paper, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times," he said. "My dad and I read the papers every morning."
Sheridan's love of news and politics led him to volunteer on John Edwards' presidential campaign in New Hampshire during the summer of 2007 between his senior year in high school and first year of college at Washington and Lee University. "It was the 2008 primary, and when I was up there, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani were the front runners. So it ended up being a lesson on how things don't always go as expected, but it was also just fun to be in the heart of what was going on," he said.
While his debut in the political world was in the national arena, over time, Sheridan realized his true passion lay in local politics. "Four years later, I worked on a campaign for Joe Riley, the mayor of Charleston, South Carolina," he said. "I would go door-to-door and ask people what was on their minds. At the first house, they'd say, 'People drive too fast in this neighborhood. We need more speed bumps.' Then, at the next house, they'd say, 'I hate all these speed bumps. Please get rid of them.'"
"That's what's fun about local government," he said, "I like learning about the granular effects of policy on people's lives." That love for detail and seeing the tangible effects of policy is what eventually led him to his current position as a clean communities economic development director for Virginia Clean Cities, a U.S. Department of Energy designated coalition in the Clean Cities and Communities partnership whose mission is to reduce dependence on imported petroleum products. But Sheridan took a few unexpected career detours along the way.
After working on Riley's campaign as well as Nancy Hoffmann's campaign for Greensboro City Council in his home state of North Carolina, Sheridan set his sights on becoming a town manager, a position in which he could have a direct, tangible impact on people's lives at that granular level. He determined that Brown's Master of Public Affairs program could help him achieve that goal, and he enrolled in the then-two-year program in 2012. "I liked the balance at Brown of access to many different courses and hands-on learning experiences," he said.
In a perfect blend of in-class and hands-on learning, Sheridan took State and Local Government with Taubman Center Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy Richard Kerbel. Then, over the summer, he served as an intern for Kerbel, who at the time also served as the town manager for Narragansett, Rhode Island.
While his MPA experience left him in the position to get onto his desired career track and find a job as a town manager, Sheridan said he "got knocked off that track a little bit." "My then-girlfriend — now wife — and I were getting serious while I was at Brown, he said, "and we took a couple of positions so that we could live in the same place…I sold newspaper ads for two years." He was later hired by one of his advertisers as a leasing associate and worked in commercial real estate for four years.
A move to Richmond, Virginia, and a job as a portfolio manager for Electrify America, where he helped expand electric vehicle charging station infrastructure, led him to his current position as clean communities economic development director for Virginia Clean Cities. Sheridan said that while his career may not have proceeded along a straight line, he has learned a lot of valuable lessons along his chosen path. "Many of the skills I developed were incredibly transferable," he said. "Working for a newspaper was sometimes brutal, but I had to learn how to get in front of people and figure out what their individual needs were."
Sheridan said he works with a broader range of energy sources at Virginia Clean Cities. "We work with the Department of Energy on alternative fuels, not just electricity," he said, "We also work with propane, and we hope to work more with hydrogen, which is big in California but hasn't really made its way to the East Coast yet."
The Clean Cities Program was created by the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and was signed into law by George H.W. Bush. Sheridan pointed out that, historically, "It has had broad, bipartisan support for the entire life of the program. Virginia Clean Cities is fuel-neutral and technology-neutral," he said, "Our mission is to reduce dependence on foreign oil."
"Virginia is not an oil-producing state," explained Sheridan, "We don't drill or refine any oil in Virginia, but Virginians spend $50 million a day on petroleum products, and that's money that leaves our state and goes to the places where oil comes from," he said. "It's our mandate to drive that number down and to help companies and people who are looking for resources in Virginia to make changes."
Many of the persuasion tactics that Sheridan developed while selling newspaper ads and leasing commercial properties have proved helpful in his current position. "It's getting together with people and saying, 'Hey, I know you have these goals. Let me bring in some trucks for you to look at so you can touch them and test drive them to see if it's something you want in your fleet,'" he said, "It's really rewarding to have that one-on-one, person-by-person effect on policymaking."
