Rana Dershowitz, A Career Driven by Passion, from Sports Law to Public Policy

 

92-153. Rana Dershowitz

SPEAKERS

Will Bachman, Rana Dershowitz

 

Will Bachman  00:02

Hello and welcome to The 92 Report conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992 I’m your host, Will Bachman, and I’m delighted to be here today with Rana Dershowitz. Rana, welcome to the show. Thank you. It’s good to be here. So, Rana, tell us about your journey since graduating from Harvard?

 

Rana Dershowitz  00:24

Well, I’m one of those people who graduated and stayed so after graduating in 92 I actually went to Harvard Law School and was one of those silly humans who went straight to Harvard Law School. Part of that was the economy wasn’t great when we were graduating. And part of that was I actually really liked school and liked Harvard, and didn’t want to get a real job, so figured I could keep going, keep studying, and use that as an excuse not to get a job. So state in Cambridge, really interesting, actually, to be part of the law school class coming in and be the sort of, you know, the old timer, the person who knew the the neighborhood, and could drag people around to different restaurants and movie theaters and things to do in Cambridge. But went from there, after law school came back to New York, which is where I’m from, started on Wall Street because I was convinced that law school didn’t teach you how to be a lawyer, taught you how to think, and I kind of needed to be taught how to be a lawyer. So I went to the best firm that I could get to on Wall Street with the smartest lawyers I could find. Thought I wanted to do constitutional and white collar criminal civil rights work, but figured I needed to get trained at a firm before jumping into doing that. Hated it, to be honest, loved the firm. People were great. They were smart, really capable, but really did not like big law, so tried to figure out what to do after that, and talked to a career counselor, actually five years after, four or five years after I graduated, who pushed me to thinking about what I had done in college, when I wasn’t as focused on getting a paycheck right, But was focused on what I wanted to learn, and that caused me to step back and think about what I did at Harvard. And what I did was I was a ski racer on the Harvard ski team. I did sports radio for W HRB, and I did technical theater work. And this career counselor said, Well, why don’t you look at sports law? And I said, Well, duh. That was really stupid of me not to think of that, but took that advice. Spent, spent a bunch of time trying to, trying to break into sports law, which is not the easiest field to break into. Planned on taking a year off, six months off, really, to travel the world when I couldn’t figure it out, and that was the effective tool to spark getting a job that transitioned me into sports law. Literally, the day I started my six month leave of absence. The day after I started, I got a call from a firm that was doing sports work, saying, Well, would you be willing to come work for us? So I cut my six months short and went to work for a firm that was moving into sports law. Did more entertainment work than sports work, but it was fascinating. Learned about the entertainment side of law, and was able to move from there in house to Madison Square Garden. So I worked at Madison Square Garden for six years, from 2001 to 2007 was Teen Council for the Knicks and the Rangers Madison Square Garden Network was there when the WNBA shifted from being centrally controlled to teams doing their own contracts. So was part of the New York Liberty signing their first contract for their first player contract, which was super cool as a female collegiate athlete. Loved that, and then met my now husband. He was living in Boston. I was living in New York, and New York was a deal breaker for him, so he really wanted to get back to Colorado, which is where he’d gotten his graduate degree. And we ended up moving west. So moved to Colorado in 2007 I was doing a whole lot of triathlons at the time, and came west, well, we sort of made a plan of timing, and I started looking for jobs out west. He started looking for jobs, and he got one in about 12 seconds, which pushed the timeline. And I said, Look, if I can’t find something that works for me, I’ll take six months off and run some more triathlons and learn Colorado and learn what it’s like to live in the same place with you, and whether this is all going to work and on. The same theme as my first time I tried to take six months off that sparked me getting the job that made sense for me, so I moved to the US Olympic Committee. Joined as Deputy General Counsel, not knowing that the general counsel had actually taken a job back East. He was going back east to work for the nets, and he hired me, intending for me to be his successor. He left less than a month after I started. So I became the interim general counsel and then the general counsel and Head of Government Affairs for the US Olympic Committee, which was a phenomenal run, stayed with the Olympic Committee for eight years. The challenge there was that my husband’s job was in Boulder, our house was in Denver, and my job was in Colorado Springs. And for those on the East Coast who don’t know Colorado, the front range of Colorado is actually really big, and Boulder is the opposite direction from Colorado Springs, and from Denver to Colorado Springs, there is one road. It’s i 25 and it’s about 65 miles on a road that has a really, really fast speed limit. And everybody drives even faster than that, but if there is one accident, you’re stuck. And we made that work for, like I said, eight years, it was great. I traveled the world with the US Olympic Committee, which went to a global session on women in sport that was in Jordan, did an anti doping conference in South Africa like it was fascinating. And then we had kids, and it was impossible. Between his job, my job, the track, the travel, the commuting. We made it work with our first, with our son, when our second, when our daughter came along, it just was it was too much, and we weren’t being the parents we wanted to be, and we weren’t being the employees we wanted to be, and we weren’t living the life we wanted to live. So we both started looking, and then the Aspen skiing company actually found me and pulled me all the way back right to having skied for Harvard while I was a while I was an undergrad, and we moved up to the mountains of Colorado. We now live in we’ve lived here for 11 years. We live in basalt Colorado, which is 15 miles outside of aspen in the Roaring Fork Valley. It is incredibly rural in some ways, and incredibly global and sophisticated and urban in some ways. It’s fascinating. It’s fascinating place to live with the Aspen Institute being here. And you know, my first couple of years here, I had friends who were like, Wait, you’re a New Yorker from the middle of Manhattan. I can’t see you in the mountains. And I was like, Well, I’ve seen four Supreme Court justices speak. I’ve seen Secretaries of State speak, and I go for hikes before work every day, and I get on the mountains, and I’m out in the middle of nature, and I’m living my best life. So it’s been really fun. And in the last year now, though, so I’ve been with the company for 11 years, I’ve gotten increasingly concerned about what’s going on in the world and what our democracy looks like. And I probably 1516 years ago, became friendly with a guy named Phil Weiser, who was at the time with CU he then, in 2016 was very involved with the Clinton campaign. He is He had worked in the Obama White House, would likely have gone back to Washington with Clinton, had she won. She did not. And he said, You know what good people need to step forward. And he ran for Attorney General for the state of Colorado. So he’s been this the Attorney General for the state of Colorado for the last eight years. One again, you know, was reelected. He is now term limited, and in December of last year, we were talking and he said, Well, I’m going to run for governor, and I would love you know, do you have any interest in being involved? So I took the leap and have become his policy director for his campaign.

 

Rana Dershowitz  09:59

Took a step. Back from my day job, so I’m still advising the company on a on a part time basis, and working for the campaign trying to get a good guy elected to the governorship in the state of Colorado, somebody I really believe in and who I think does politics right. He’s a public servant, not more than a politician. Believes in active listening, believes in, you know, representing the entirety of the state, not just the front range. And the rural, urban divide in Colorado is real. You know, the majority of our citizens live Front Range. Live Denver boulder right, and Colorado Springs and the urban centers that are Front Range is sort of where the Rockies meet the Meet the planes. But we have, you know, we have vibrant, important communities across all corners of the state, and the needs are different. And Phil really leans into that, travels the state, listens, tries to think about win, win, solutions that are innovative and beneficial for all. And so I’ve spent the last six plus months, eight months, sort of juggling the for profit business side, transitioning that and leaning in to try and come up with policies that can help Colorado move forward. So that’s sort of where I’ve been raising two kids, we have one now who is 15 and actually is at Boarding School on the Big Island of Hawaii, at his own choice, by his own choice, learning primarily went there because he’s he wanted to learn more Japanese and More about Japanese culture. My husband is half Japanese, born and raised mixed between the United States and Tokyo. The Japanese side of his family is all still in Japan, and my son really wanted to learn more about that, but stay in the United States. Found the right balance in Hawaii. So he’s there. My daughter’s in eighth grade and trying to figure out college high school now. So that’s sort of where we are, and my husband has been an incredible partner in all of this, and that when we moved up to the mountains, he started telecommuting right before it was virtual or hybrid work, it was telecommuting. And so he started doing that, and probably a year ends, we figured it wasn’t really working, and so he took a step back and has been the primary caregiver for our kids. He’s doing a bunch of stuff on the side, but, you know, was chauffeur, was, you know, parent in charge, and we’ve made it work.

 

Will Bachman  12:46

So there is too much here for one podcast. So this is a little bit of a unfair thing for a host. Well, I mean, you’ve there’s so many elements here, we could spend the whole episode diving in, my goodness, wow. Madison Square, garden, Olympics, skiing, go public policy. But let’s, let’s talk a little bit about the Olympics. Tell us any stories about what it’s like, kind of behind the scenes, the types of legal things that you’d get involved in there? Sure.

 

Rana Dershowitz  13:21

Well, at the Olympic Committee is fascinating in that it is one of, I think, only two federally chartered nonprofits, the other being the Red Cross. It was created by an act of Congress, so it is subject to congressional oversight in the time that I was with the Olympic Committee, it was, it was called the Ted Stevens Olympic and amateur sports act. It’s since been amended, and I don’t know the formal title of it today. It was amended in part to bring the Paralympic Committee into one or in and combine them into one organization. But it’s a fascinating structure. We are the only country that where there is an Olympic committee that is not funded by its government. Instead, what the federal government did in 1978 was give the Olympic Committee what I affectionately called Super trademark rights. And basically what Congress said is you don’t have to prove risk of confusion. You don’t have to prove confusion. You can control the rings and the word Olympic in the United States, period full stop. Now we want you to use that to raise revenue. So the Olympic Committee uses a lot of sponsorships. However, it’s an incredibly complicated structure in that federally chartered the act at the time had 17 different purposes, right, everything from host, from ensuring the best athletes on the field of play during Olympic Games, to protecting the Olympic marks to sports science. Is to enhancing youth participation in sports, right to and on and on and and the Olympic Committee is part of an Olympic ecosystem, so it is also responsive to the IOC, the International Olympic Committee and the rules that govern the Olympic movement at a global level, and with the US being an outlier as the only country that doesn’t federally fund its Olympic team, there are tensions right where the International Olympic Committee manages the portfolio of trademarks globally and sponsors globally, and the US needs a different set of funding mechanisms. Then when you layer on an Olympic Games, and when the US hosts an Olympic Games, which is again another charge of the committee, the tensions become even more exacerbated, because the way the Olympic movement is structured, generally, the global sponsors are are the largest funding mechanism for an Olympic games, but the US needs some of that to fund its own team. So the tensions you end up with tensions between the organizer and the Olympic Committee. So when we have an Olympic Games in the United States, the structuring of that is incredibly complicated. When I was there, we bid for Chicago to host the Games. We did not win. You know, we now have games coming in in California and in LA and in Salt Lake, and the structures for those were worked out after, just after I left. But it was really fascinating to learn the legal ecosystem of trying to figure out the funding structures and how intellectual property can map can be used to support that. But we also I was there for the Beijing Games, the Sochi Games, Vancouver and London, and operating in the differences in what it takes to operate in in a London or a Vancouver versus a Beijing or a Sochi were fascinating, just learning the international dynamics. I could go on and on forever, on what I learned and what it was like. And then you layered on top of that, that because we were federally chartered, and because we were, you know, the Olympics are people’s dreams, and so our athletes, you know, if you made the you made something more challenging, obviously it goes to people’s heart, right? And people care deeply, and it’s not like, well, I’ll just do it again, you know, four years later, right? Like it has to work at the time, it has to work. And so the other piece, the other overlay, that was fascinating, was the congressional involvement. Right? People would go to their own congressman and say, hey, you know, I don’t think this is fair. And we would hear from Washington, from the the local congressman, saying, Well, what did you do for this athlete in this sport, and why did it happen this way? So? Really interesting interplays. I was there. I left before the scandal, the the gymnastics, safe sport scandals broke, and before the US Olympic Committee became aware of what was going on, but I was part of our efforts to launch safe sport initiatives. We under me, we hired our first director of safe sport and we started launching safe sport programs. But the the other part of the challenge from a legal perspective, is that the the sports are run by national governing bodies. Those are independent, 501, C, threes, so independent nonprofit organizations that are that are standalone organizations certified by the US Olympic Committee. So you can decertify a national governing body, but you can’t shut them down. So basically, our tools were, well, you can’t be the path to the Olympics, but for a sport like and this is not about whether they were, say, sport or not, but a sport like tennis, the Olympics are not their primary driver, right? So our ability to influence USA tennis is very different than our ability to influence a sport like swimming, right? Where? Where the Olympics are sort of the pinnacle. So each sport had its own challenges, and we looked at the interplay of, say, sport in a in a sport like hockey, where there’s a professional league, or soccer, where there’s a professional league, as compared to a sport like Taekwondo, that’s a small sport that is not well attended in the United States, and you really need to grow the sport. How do you think about those differently? And. And what are the tools to use to manage and guide without controlling, because they are required to be independent. So finding those balances and and I can say unequivocally, we didn’t, we didn’t hit it right, but we started the path. Ultimately, after I left, it was outsourced into a standalone entity that now gets funded separately from the US Olympic Committee, although I believe it receives funding from the Olympic Committee as well, called the US center for safe sport. But that was a big the start of that path was an important part while I was there, we also restructured the governance of the organization twice while I was there.

 

Will Bachman  20:42

It seems that every Olympics, they add a couple new sports. Like, tell us any stories about, like, new sports that got added, like, I don’t know, break dancing got added. Tell us about any new sports that got added, because that must have required setting up a new certifying entity and a new structure and so

 

Rana Dershowitz  21:01

forth. Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. Actually, most of that has happened since I left. I left in 2014 and so there really weren’t, I’m not thinking of any stories on the new sport front for us, it was really more sports that were struggling in the United States, where we were trying to make sure that we could field a team, and by fielding a team, right? It’s not they don’t just pop into existence. You have to build the pipeline. So you need kids doing it. You need kids all across the United States playing the sport, to find the best in that sport, right? You think about a sport like Team handball that is really big in certain parts of the world, and most Americans go What? What is that? Right? So I think that was the bigger challenge for us than than new sports, the new sports like break dancing, or,

 

Rana Dershowitz  21:59

I don’t know some of the other surfing right? Those, I think are more because they’re more well known. And so it’s a little bit, I would say, easier in some ways, because you have the athletes already. You’re bringing the sport to bear, versus sports where the US doesn’t have people who play it

 

Speaker 1  22:18

talk to us a bit. I mean, I’m a adopted New Yorker. I’ve been here for, I don’t know, 25 years. Tell us a bit about your time at Madison Square Garden, any kind of behind the scenes. Stories there about helping New York Liberty do their first contracts, and tell us about some stories about sports in New York.

 

Rana Dershowitz  22:38

So I’m a born and raised New Yorker, and I will honestly say I thought I would retire from my job at Madison Square Garden when I got it. And particularly so my parents were Rangers season ticket holders. I grew up going to the garden primarily for Rangers games. Huge fan. Was less of a Knicks fan when I got the job, purely just because of what was on in my family and, you know, in my on my in my house when I was growing up, watched basketball, but just wasn’t as connected to it. But we had a story in my for my childhood, when my brother was my brother’s three years older than I am, and when he was four and I was one, the Rangers were in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and my parents were at the game. We had a babysitter. My brother and I were at home, and the game went into overtime, obviously, before cell phones, right? So my game goes finishes regular. You know, the regular game finishes. My dad runs to the pay phone calls the babysitter. Is like, hey, it’s going into overtime. We’re going to be late. She’s like, Okay, fine. First overtime ends, still. Game is still tied. He runs down. Calls her again. She’s getting really pissed off right when the first overtime ends and she says, Listen, you guys, I’m not going to stay so my father jumped my mom stays in the garden. My dad runs downstairs, jumps into a taxi, goes across town, comes to our house, grabs my brother and I out of our beds, throws us in the cab, drives us back to the garden, goes back in. This is when you could re enter, right? These were different then, but so we were, my brother and I were in the building. I me as a year, you know, year old, when Pete stemkowski scored in triple overtime for the rangers to win that game and move on to the Stanley Cup Finals. Fortunately, they did not win in the finals, but it was this, like classic Ranger story. My first day at the garden, they walked me into the corporate offices and walked me to my office and the corporate offices in Madison for for the the entity have, you know, iconic pictures around the walls, everything from. Concerts to sporting events, pro, amateur. And the the photograph that purely by happenstance, happened to be outside my office, was Pete stemkowski scoring that goal, that triple overtime goal, and it was like this moment of, Oh, I’ve come home. This is, there’s no chance I’m ever leaving here. And I still love the garden. I love the people there. It was fascinating, you know, learning the sports world and learning the sports industry and how the garden was structured, because so many people don’t know that Madison Square Garden that it’s one entity that owns the building, it owns the Knicks, it owns the Rangers. It owned the Liberty at the time, people think of them as separate businesses, and they’re all one entity, which I thought was the most interesting thing to learn.

 

Will Bachman  25:55

I will raise my hand. I had no idea about that. Yep. Wait, so the people who own Madison Square Garden also own the rangers and the Knicks and

 

Rana Dershowitz  26:03

Madison Square Garden Network. Yeah, I didn’t know that.

 

Will Bachman  26:07

Okay, what sorts of like legal issues would you have to deal with?

 

Rana Dershowitz  26:14

So a lot of sponsorships and programming agreements for MSG network, I also league rules, right? And so there too, sort of similar to what we were talking about a little bit before, about the Olympic Committee. The teams are subject to the NHL and NBA rules, right? So there are certain things you can do, certain things you can’t do both on the field and in the in the operations of the game, and that those flow, and it’s different by sport, but they flow from everything, from what you can do on the field or on the on the court, to what your signs can look like, to how you how you how you engage with the league, to how, what kind of trades you can make, right? And so was really fascinating to learn the different rule books. And then, particularly on the on the NBA side, I had, I worked with a guy named Frank Murphy, who was a senior vice president for the team who was sort of their capologist, this classic New Yorker, who taught me the, you know, I would read it, but he really taught me the practical rules of the NBA cap at the time. And so I had, I would, the most fascinating thing for me was, you know, not not a coach, not a basketball player, like I’m a fan, right? And I know I know how to play the game, or I know how people play the game. I suck at the game, but know how people play and being able to sit with the rule book and sort of puzzle piece together. Hey, here are different trades you can make. Here’s the salary range you could work with. Here are the types of things you could do and work with the coaches, where the coaches would say, well, we want to get this player, or we want to get a player like this. What are the ways we can do those kinds of trades? I found that absolutely fascinating. I mean, it was legal adjacent, I would say more than legal, but it was legal in the sense of, these are the rules. And you know, how do we think about this puzzle, right? And come up with creative solutions to it?

 

Will Bachman  28:30

Tell us about a proud moment for you of your time at Madison Square, garden of place where you particularly look back and say, Yes, that was a contribution I made.

 

Rana Dershowitz  28:43

You know, the New York Liberty in in 1999 made it to the WNBA finals. And having signed there, you know, having worked with the general manager at the time, Carol Blaze jaski, on signing all of the contracts for the players and signing all of the sponsorships. I don’t pretend to have been instrumental in any way on the quality of the on the field play, but when we went to the finals, Blaze Carol, as she was known, brought me along as part of the team, and we all, you know, got we got team watches and and just feeling like I was part of making that happen was incredibly powerful to me as again, as an athlete myself, and as a kid who grew up In the 70s where, you know, women’s sports was evolving through that time, and you know, continues to evolve to this day. Being there and being in the garden when it was full of fans cheering for a women’s team, to me, was super powerful. It was really, I just like, made me feel so proud to. Part of it, even though, like my pieces were tiny in it,

 

Will Bachman  30:05

I think you said you were also responsible for the entertainment acts at Madison Square Garden. Tell us a little bit about how does Madison Square Garden, like decide what concerts are going to have, and are there sort of thresholds of where they have is it just sort of, if you pay to rent it, you get it, or is it like, Oh, you have to be some level of popularity or forget

 

Rana Dershowitz  30:29

about so I actually wasn’t. When I said the entertainment acts, I meant the entertainment acts during, during team sports, okay, so during the professional games, I we had a separate, well, there were other attorneys who managed the entertainment side. So I honestly can’t answer your questions. There’s a whole group that was separate from the sports side, who managed that piece of it. I mean, I think you know, Madison Square Garden is an iconic place to start your tour, to be to finish your tour. We had some incredible acts while I was there, and I certainly took advantage of being able to get tickets to all of them. But the business side, on of the on the entertainment side, I really don’t know. I never learned in myself, it’s

 

Will Bachman  31:18

like the it’s like the biggest venue in New York City, right? Yep. Let’s talk about Phil Weiser. So tell us a bit about what is involved in being a policy director, and what are some of the big issues, what are some of the policies that you’re working on, some of the big issues in the Colorado Governor campaign?

 

Rana Dershowitz  31:38

So we are, and the way that we are approaching it is very much an active listening approach. So we are connecting to people all across the state and trying to make sure that as we’re building our policy, we are thinking about it from all ranges, you know, all different perspectives, or urban, rural, west, east. Colorado bridges the Continental Divide, and you’ll hear people talk about the western slope versus the Front Range and the eastern plains. And so we’re really right in the center of the country. Some of our issues are similar to issues that you’re hearing in other parts of the of the country. Affordability is critical, you know, I’m we’re thinking about how we solve some of the housing crisis that we have right both in terms of cost to own, but also cost to rent, accessibility. We look at climate change very seriously and how we as a state can continue the fight against climate change, particularly in light of the current administration’s approach to the issues. Colorado is a leader on clean energy, and needs to stay that way. Needs to progress, both in terms of wind and solar, but also new technologies and innovative technologies. Geothermal are there? You know, hydroelectric approaches we can use water is a critical issue in the state of Colorado, it is a critical resource. We are at the headquarters of the Colorado River, and agriculture is a big part of our state economy, as is outdoor recreation, both of which, have you know, are dramatically impacted by drought. So thinking about how we protect our water infrastructure, how we protect our water rights as a state, is a big issue. The and how we protect our outdoor rec and our public lands, which you know, as as you may or may not have heard, the current administration has talked about trying to sell public lands to private bidders. So it’s something that is not acceptable to the state of too many people in the state of Colorado, certainly to fill and our team and so how we fight back against that? You know, Colorado is an interesting state. It’s increasingly a blue state, but it is in many ways, a purple state, and we are. We have a range of different political points of view. We have a libertarian streak as a state and a real collaboration and collective support streak. And so we bridge gaps where there are certain ways where we’re very progressive in certain ways, where we’re more right leaning right. There are a lot of hunters in the state, a lot of sportsmen, people who care deeply and want to be able to. To utilize their guns in ways that make a lot of sense, and we have appropriate gun rules right and gun laws to control to find that right balance. And I think that’s actually been the most interesting thing, is understanding and really trying to drive policy that bridges and doesn’t just think about things as a left, right or a, you know, Progressive Conservative, but rather what works for our state, and how do we think about things a little bit differently? Think about things the Colorado way? And, you know, another issue that is a big issue for the state of Colorado, we have a youth mental health crisis, and that’s a combination of kids spending too much time on their phones, not getting outside enough. Some of the affordability issues that cross the state obviously impact kids when it impacts their families. So we want to lean in and build mentorship across the state and and we really want to try and come up with innovative programs that utilize some of the special opportunities you have in a place like Colorado, to get kids out into nature, to get them to understand humans place in in the global ecosystem, and what it can be, what it can be like to Be off your phone and out in nature and present. That builds resiliency. It builds physical and mental health, and we as a state need to do more of that for not just our kids who live in the mountains, but our kids who live in the in the Front Range. And you know, may see the mountains, but never get there, and we want to change that. Yeah,

 

Will Bachman  36:43

the one thing I’ve had in mind for years is it always seems like politicians, especially those are sophisticated ones running for a governor or national office, they always seem to have like the grasp of these issues in this understanding of different interest groups. And I always thought it would be pretty interesting to read, if you could, like the briefing book for presidential candidate who probably you know, doesn’t you know in advance, know all this stuff, but they get briefed really well to say, Okay, for this particular issue, you know, like the Cuban exiles in Miami, care this way, and this other group like this is what they care about. This is what these guys care about. And so I think that would be fascinating to be kind of behind the scenes getting, you know, helping a politician or get smart on all of these different issues, and really delving into, like, the size of different constituencies and what they care about, how much they care about it, and why and so forth. Beyond thinking about the legal aspects, how do you and your team kind of get a sense of what the different constituents groups are on particular issues, and you know which ones of them this is, like, the most salient, important thing. How do you go about doing that research?

 

Rana Dershowitz  38:08

So it’s a great question, and it’s been a fascinating learning for me. It’s a lot of it is active listening, right? And being present, and we have the benefit of a candidate who is brilliant and absorbs information unbelievably fast and has been present in the state, right? He so. So Phil came west for a clerkship, and then was, was a professor at CU, then went back. Was in the Obama administration, came back. Was the dean at CU for a number of years before being the attorney general. But he makes it a point to spend time here in the state, in all corners of the state, and he will sit down and talk in small groups. We will all sit down and talk in small groups and just listen right? And the goal of active listening to the to people across the state of Colorado is how we’re trying to build a grassroots campaign that’s in some ways easier in a state like Colorado, right? Where 6 million people, we’re not, you know, mean that’s, you know, smaller than the size of the actual New York City, right? But it’s a lot bigger. It’s a lot harder to get to different places, right? So you got to take the time, and you’ve got to be willing to spend the time sitting down with people and hearing them where they are. And Phil does that spectacularly, and he has built a team behind him that is committed to that, and it’s why I said he’s a public servant more than a politician. I mean, he is a politician. Obviously, he’s in politics. But his first effort is, is to do it from a space of public service. And so he wants to know what what different people’s thoughts are. And then you have to build that. You have to marry that, obviously, with, you know, expert thought and finding the right people who know the challenges and building that network of smart thinkers who are committed to doing it for the right reasons, is that, to me, is the biggest challenge. There’s the political side as well, which is its own challenge that I try to stay away from, if I can.

 

Will Bachman 40:38

There’s so many more areas to explore, but I want to turn now to Harvard. So tell us about any courses or professors that you had at Harvard that continue to resonate with you in some way.

 

Rana Dershowitz  40:51

You know, I always talk about justice as the class that that sort of shifted things for me. So my last name is Dershowitz. I come from a family of lawyers. That is my born last name, so I certainly was well aware of law. My dad both you know, my uncle is Alan. He is the one who’s most well known, obviously, but he and my father were partners for most of their careers. My dad was involved in most of my uncle’s legal cases until, you know, they retired more recently, and they’ve sort of shifted. My mom went back to law school when I was in high school and became a lawyer. So I grew up in a family of lawyers, and I was committed to not being that when I got to Harvard. So I was actually an anthropology major. I was in the archeology wing of anthropology. There were seven of us, and I was absolutely definitive that I was not going to law school. I was not following in people’s footsteps. I was going to chart my own path. And then as part of the core, I took justice, and I was like, this is fascinating. I love this. So I took his next his seminar. He had a constitutional interpretation seminar, and it was Socraticaly taught, and I absolutely loved it. And then, so I sort of give him a bit of credit that I stepped back and said, You know, I’m not going to follow somebody’s footsteps because their footsteps are there. But, man, it would be dumb for me not to go down the path, if it’s what I like, and do it for my own reasons. So I I credit justice with me taking the path that I took. And you know, we didn’t talk about my time at Aspen at all, but one of the things that’s been fascinating for me has been that I’ve branched out from legal. So I oversaw legal my entire time at Aspen, but I also oversaw sustainability and community engagement, and then about two, three years into my tenure, I was also given planning and development, then PR for a hot minute, until we determined I was not very good at PR. I’m good at the crisis communication side, the sort of marketing side of PR is not my not my strength. And then in 2021, I was asked to lead mountain operations, the non revenue side of mountain operations, so grooming, patrol, lifts, Guest Services. And I did that for three years before our most recent restructure. And then at our most recent restructure, we created a department called employee housing and child care, which really is looking at how we build housing, how we manage housing, how we support our employees needs we live in, in one of the most expensive communities in the in the country, and so figuring out how we can support our employees in their housing and childcare needs. And I bring up those different parts of the organization because I was particularly fascinated by the ability to branch out beyond law. And so while I go back to justice to your question, what I am really fascinated by is how structures work and how systems are set up for success and the sort of multi dimensional thinking and looking at, you know, looking at systems from a range of different perspectives. I would have said that thinking about thinking was one of those classes, except that I never took a class that my uncle taught, because I figured I could just get that learning at the dining room table rather than paying Harvard for it. But I did audit thinking about thinking, and I think it’s a great it was a great class to do just what I’m talking about, right, like, and I don’t know. Or how many people remember that class? But it was Stephen Jay Gould, Robert Nozick and Alan Dershowitz. So biologist, philosopher, legal scholar, looking at different issues like abort. You know, abortion, end of life, right to care, and looking at it from the different perspectives. And that, what is, what, to me, is most fascinating, is saying, taking an issue, and rather than saying, Okay, what’s the legal question behind it? Saying, Yeah, we need to know what the legal question is behind it. But what’s the efficiency question behind it? What’s the human dynamic behind it? Where are we trying to get to? How do we think about it from all these different perspectives? And that’s why the policy work for Phil has been so fascinating to me, because he similarly, sort of doesn’t want to just drive in one direction. He wants to make sure that he’s thinking about it from all the different perspectives. So for example, you know, climate change is obviously a critical issue, and and the conversion to clean energy, but you also have to think about it from the affordability perspective, and making sure that you’re not saying, Okay, we’re just going to convert and cost people more, right? And, and so he wants to make sure that as we look at green energy, we are looking at wind and solar, which are cheaper now than coal, right, and talking about it from that person, but not only thinking about it from the range of perspectives, but talking about it from the range of perspectives, so that we’re not just saying, Hey, this is only about this issue. But how do we find the cross functional solutions that solve a, but also solve B. At the same time, I distracted us from what classes, but that’s the best

 

Will Bachman 46:48

I could do. Fantastic. Rana, wow. What incredible trajectory you’ve had. Where can people find out more about what you’re doing or keep track of you. Where would you point them online?

 

Rana Dershowitz  47:02

LinkedIn is probably the best for me. I really don’t have a Facebook presence, and given all the transitions that I’m doing, that would be the best place to look under Ronit Ursu, it’s on LinkedIn.

 

Will Bachman  47:15

And if people want to find out about the evolving policies of the Phil Weiser campaign. Where

 

Rana Dershowitz  47:21

would you feel for governordotcom? There is a tab on his campaign website called issues with tiles of all the key issues, and you can dig in underneath each of those. There’s layers upon layers, because we really have gone deep on all the issues for the state of Colorado.

 

Will Bachman  47:44

Ron Phil for Phil for Colorado, Phil for Colorado, Phil for coloradodotcom. So Ron is behind many of those tiles, okay? Ronna, thank you so much for joining today. This is great discussion.

 

Rana Dershowitz  47:56

This has been fun. Will, thank you.