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[Interviewer] Welcome to the University of North Georgia's Political Science & International Affairs Department's "Voices of Experience -- What it Takes to be Successful" series.

This series, with the members of the Department's Advisory Board is designed to provide you, whether a current student or a prospective student, not only a first-hand glimpse into the various fields where you can pursue a career with one of our degrees, but the traits leaders in those fields are looking for in today's graduates. Or stated more pointedly, the specific skill sets you should be working on developing and the experiences that you should be pursuing now in order to best position yourself for your future career.

With us today is Ms Madison Arcangeli. Madison is the founder and managing partner at Forza DC, LLC, a strategic advisory, public policy, and business development consulting firm based in Washington, DC.

To start us off, please tell us a little bit about Madison Arcangeli, who she is, and what her career has looked like up to now.

[Madison Arcangeli] Yeah, absolutely. My career, I certainly ended up in a place I didn't think I would end up when I was graduated from college. I graduated and moved out to Washington DC to take a job in a member of Congress's office. And I thought ... it was a two-year plan I would be there. I loved who I was working for. I loved the job, but, I, you know, I had aspirations to go work in a different piece of the federal government, which I did have the opportunity to go do, but within that a little bit later than I thought.

So I ended up going from the Hill into the federal government and then back to DC to do public policy, but on the outside of, off the Hill. So I ended up on the private sector side. And then after a couple of years of  getting the experience that I needed, I had the opportunity to open my own firm, which is what I'm doing now. I have clients from Fortune 500 companies all the way down to nonprofits, working on a range of issues, mostly in the defense space, which is mostly what my background is when I worked on the Hill, and then after I left the Hill as well.

[Interviewer] Let's turn now to the main part of today's discussion. You bring to viewers today a varied set of experiences, and have obviously had a good deal of success in your career. Based on what you have seen and lived, talk to our listeners about those specific skills they should be developing during their undergraduate careers to best position themselves for similar success. In other words, Madison, if you were looking at one of our listeners for a position within Forza DC LLC, or the broader field of which you are a part, what traits would you be wanting that person to bring to the table?

[Madison] Yeah, this is a really important question, because I think a lot of people look at Washington, DC, and it seems very confusing what's happening here and what sort of skills they need,  and everyone thinks that they need to be a lawyer to succeed here, and you don't. I'm not a lawyer. But if you're interested in being a lawyer, you should pursue that. But I think you can sort of break down the skills that I look for and what I have seen people certainly, I think it was part of my success and what I see in other successful people  are what I'm going to call hard and soft skills.

Hard skills being, you know, effective communication, knowing how to write, research, develop, present an idea or a position. But then also understanding and appreciating the history of politics, policy, the issue area that you might be working on. All of that influences what is happening today, even if it seems like it's, you know, doesn't really matter. It really kind of does. And so I think those hard skills of writing, being able to speak concisely, being able to conduct research, and knowing how that research and how that history factors into today. And also having an organizational system that works for you, because working in DC both on the Hill and off is really dynamic. You have a lot of information coming at you, and keeping track of all that can be challenging. So working on ... now while you're in a space where it's safe to maybe fail a little bit in terms of what organizational system works best for you or not, will set you up for success later.

In terms of soft skills, and these are really hard to teach, but I think, you know, it I practice them every day. It's a practice. It's not a hard defined, I've learned this moving on of emotional intelligence, understanding how people think, how they react as individuals, but also as groups, and subgroups within the big group. If you're looking at the Hill, members of Congress fall in two parties, but then within those two parties are subgroups of different priorities and how do those things all factor in?

I think the soft side of what I call a hard skill is knowing how to talk to people based on your own emotional intelligence. So much of what I do and what gets on the Hill is based on trust. People work with people who they trust. If people can't trust you, you're not going to be very successful. You might get one or two wins, but long term, that's not how you build a sustainable career in public policy or in government affairs consulting.

I think another soft skill would, just would be being flexible. I said at the start, I had a very different vision for what my career would be when I graduated from college. And I've said "yes" to opportunities that seemed like a good fit for me, even though it wasn't what I thought I was exactly what I wanted to do, and it's really worked out well.

I think one other thing as you are looking at college and how your degree and how your skills translate outside of the education setting, going into the workforce, especially in public policy, Washington, DC, just keep in mind that so much of it is personality driven. People hire people that they think will fit within the organization as a personality fit because so many of these jobs, you can teach anyone who's smart how to do them. And so just keep that in mind as you're applying. And if you get rejected from a position that you think that would be really great, it has nothing to do with your skills or your qualifications. They just might have found someone who they think might be a better personality fit, and you want to end up where you're going to be a good personality fit with the people, your coworkers. So don't take it personally. Would be my, my last thought.