By Claire Jeantheau

The day of the last conversation for this article marked five days until an odd-year Election Day, thirty days of the soon-to-be longest federal government shutdown in American history, 1,344 days of the Russo-Ukrainian war—and found six Commonwealth alumni/ae with a lot on their minds.

In Government Center, a mile’s walk from his old high school, Matt Costas ’14, Chief of Staff to City Councilor Liz Breadon, kept tabs on grassroots efforts to feed residents in the face of impending cuts to food benefits. At the Massachusetts State House, Senator Will Brownsberger ’74 worked to pass limits on the eviction of federal workers affected by the shutdown. Across the Charles River, Kevin Ballen ’16—current Harvard Law student, former White House staffer—was already anticipating the 2026 midterms. (“Elections are long,” he notes.) In New York, Camille Simoneau ’10 joined a State Department delegation at the United Nations General Assembly; in Michigan, State Senator Erika (Swanson) Geiss ’89 moderated a session of complex procedural discussions as president pro tempore. And overseas, longtime diplomat Peter Galbraith ’69 delivered a speech in Croatia, where he was once ambassador, while observing signs of weakness in American institutions that alarmed him.

It was a turbulent denouement to a year variously described by these six in government and politics as “uncertain,” “a roller coaster,” and “a constant inferno.” But in their careers and study, they had to continue to address what Peter calls the “first question about any proposed policy or law”: “Will it work? If it won’t work, you don’t need to consider whether it is the right thing to do.”

If you’ve been pondering that question around something you care about, you’re at the same starting point as the alumni/ae you’ll meet here: several never thought they’d enter their roles until they ran up against a problem they wanted to tackle. They all attest that one critical step in finding any solution is listening deeply to others’ experiences. Start now by hearing theirs.

The Internationals 

“Paris to Stuttgart to Nuremberg…Warsaw to Brest-Litovsk to Smolensk, Moscow, Novgorod, Leningrad…” Peter Galbraith can still rattle off the names of the cities he passed through on a transcontinental Volkswagen bus trip with two classmates from Natasha Grieg’s Russian class at Commonwealth. Since then, he says, “so much of my career has concerned places that didn’t exist on the map” at that time—places like Kurdistan, where as a U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations staff member, he documented Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons; Croatia, where he was the first U.S. ambassador to the newly independent country; or the Southeast Asian country of East Timor, where he covered foreign affairs and constitutional issues as a minister in the country’s first cabinet during its transition to independence. 

Over the last decade, Peter has moved from diplomatic posts like these to two terms in the Vermont Senate to serving as Chairman of the Board of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. (“We can say we’ve been wildly successful—the world hasn’t blown up,” Peter quips of this last role. “But there’s always a danger that it will.”) Above all, he leverages his past connections and knowledge for humanitarian aims through his self-titled “freelance diplomacy” work.

As Peter was working on behalf of emerging nations, a younger Camille Simoneau was preparing to do so, too, as a Model United Nations delegate. The Commonwealth team ventured to Cambridge to compete at Harvard, where Camille and her classmates jockeyed with the “powerhouse schools.” “They all stayed in the same hotel, and we all stayed at home,” she remembers. “We always got tiny countries…we were not going to get the United States.” 

It was, perhaps, a sign of things to come, even as Camille prepared for a career in science. Following a Ph.D. and years in virology labs, an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellowship brought her into the U.S. Department of State. (“When I was going to my first trip to the UN in Geneva,” she says, “I suddenly was like, Oh my God, it’s real.”) As a Foreign Affairs Officer, she specializes in biological and chemical weapons policy, drawing on her research background as she consults with governments and businesses. 

Both alumni/ae—one still early in her time in foreign service, the other eager to pass on his lessons from the field—attribute their successes to the same quality. Social awareness (not necessarily, as Peter says, “international relations theory”) is vital in a high-stakes situation. 

“People skills in all of this are really undersold,” Camille says. “People think scientists are just people who work alone in a dark corner; that’s not really how a lot of science is done these days. Also, in a diplomatic setting…everything runs on relationships.” One collaboration, for instance, required her team to be attentive to the unique needs of Congolese engineers handling Ebola pathogens in a high-containment lab. “Being able to respond to these deadly viruses at their source requires capacity there,” she notes, “and often in countries that don’t have reliable electricity—things that we don’t think about in our labs [in America].”

“Listening to people is the most important quality for a diplomat—listening and empathy,” says Peter. Those skills have been critical to his freelance diplomacy, which makes up some of the work most meaningful to him. In 2021, his negotiations enabled young Yazidi women from Iraq to reunite with the children they bore while held captive by ISIS members in Syria. He’s also worked to resettle dozens of children—some orphans, others relations of dead and missing ISIS members—from Syrian camps. “Thirty years ago, I negotiated the peace agreement that ended the Croatia War, still Europe’s longest war since 1945. A peace agreement saves lots of lives, but there’s not necessarily a personal connection. With these [Yazidi] girls—and I say ‘girls’ because the youngest of them was ten when she was enslaved…it’s very personal,” he says. 

Peter and Camille also both think through the arcs of long-term threats daily. For Camille, that’s weaponized disease. One of her office’s most important aims is to enforce the bans of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1975. “We saw what COVID-19 did to the world,” she says—speaking from the expertise of her time as a researcher studying how the virus replicated. “I think someone doing something like that deliberately, as either a lone actor or state, would be far, far worse. [The Weapons Convention] is one of those things that people don’t necessarily know underpins a huge part of their safety and security…because we’ve seen diseases have no borders.” 

Peter is concerned about another kind of border incursion in Ukraine, believing that Russia’s invasion of the country will lead to a return to the kind of wars that took place for “thousands of years…where a tribal leader, a prince, or a country tries to seize and annex the territory of another,” overriding international law on sovereignty. Right now, however, his focus has been on what he views as “the decline in democracy” within his own country. 

“The Congress in which I worked for fourteen years shaped foreign policy as well as domestic policy,” he says. “We passed sanctions on South Africa over Ronald Reagan’s veto. After I uncovered the genocide against the Kurds, I was able to get the U.S. Senate to pass comprehensive sanctions on Iraq in just a few days.” He contrasts that with the prior year’s controversies on the limits of executive over legislative power—whether the Trump administration can impose tariffs without congressional action, for example. “The Congress does nothing today,” Peter argues. “Our institutions are really weak.” 

The Senators 

As Peter Galbraith warns of legislative weaknesses at the national level, in Massachusetts, Senator Will Brownsberger is navigating the downstream effects of federal actions. A freeze on federal grant funding could have a pronounced effect on Boston’s ecosystem of hospitals, universities, and biotechnology research, while policy on immigration and visa issues could impact area workers. “There’s a lot of concern around immigration issues, and we’re feeling our way on those, working with federal law,” he says. “It has the potential to really reduce economic activity in this area. I think we’re going to see job loss.” 

Artificial intelligence also occupies him: “I graduated from Commonwealth just a little over fifty years ago. If I look back on my career—I’ve been a lawyer, I’ve done software development, I do a lot of public-policy research,” Will says, “all of those things that have been such a big part of my life are things that artificial intelligence really makes a difference in.” The level of research needed to parse a dense legislative proposal used to take weeks; with a large-language model like ChatGPT, it can be done in seconds. That will bring undeniable economic changes: “If you don’t have some kind of physical basis for what you’re doing,” he predicts, “the jobs are just going to get scarcer.” 

It’s not the first season of change, personal or institutional, over his two decades as a Massachusetts legislator, first as a representative in 2007, then as senator beginning in 2012. “I’ve grown through a lot of issues; I can think about the trajectory I’ve taken on each one,” he says. He thinks of balancing the preservation of parks and public lands with addressing the state’s mounting need for housing, and of expanding virtual school options for educational flexibility while trying to encourage face-to-face socialization (a need made particularly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic).

He thinks especially of the legal complexities surrounding substance abuse and drug crimes, a problem he studied extensively on a Harvard working group and addressed through a statewide elimination of mandatory minimum sentencing in 2018. “I spent some time…thinking that the solution was using the criminal justice system to force people to be in treatment or to abstain,” Will says. “But now…I think there’s a role for punishment in the criminal justice system, but that should primarily be focused on the things that people do that hurt the community, not their drug use.” 

Will’s high-school self was not expecting to enter politics. “I was sort of a hippie, and I thought maybe I’d be a farmer,” he recalls (though he ended up applying to study mathematics at college). Starting a family and settling in Belmont was one key catalyst. “I think the thing that really forces your engagement is when you do have children and you’re really concerned about making sure that they get the best of the best,” he observes. “You want to make sure the streets are safe for them. You want to make sure they’re getting a good education.” 

Senator Erika Geiss could relate. “I never in a million years…would have imagined being in office at all for any reason,” she says. “It was really accidental.” She was teaching humanities at a Michigan community college following an art and architectural history M.A. at Tufts, plus years of museum work in both states. (“There are alumni/ae who will probably say, ‘No surprise there,’” she laughs, recalling classes in the discipline with Judith Siporin and Polly Chatfield.) Then two dates suddenly loomed: the term expiration of her husband, Doug, a legislator in the House of Representatives, and an upcoming merger between two local school districts. 

Expecting an influx of new students at her oldest child’s elementary school—“How are we going to welcome these kids and families?”—Erika first planned to follow the situation through parent-teacher organization meetings. After thinking more deeply, though—“Who is going to be able to handle it if something [like this] arises again?”—she sought, then won, the House seat her husband represented at his term’s end. That was in 2014. She’s now approaching her own term limit of twelve total years in the legislature, serving, like Will, in the state’s House and then Senate. 

Michigan is a “vast state,” Erika says; she holds her palm outward in mimicry of its mitten shape as she speaks about various regions, motioning to them on her fingers. Her current First Senate District includes a large portion of metro Detroit, while more rural areas lack easy access to resources like public transportation or hospitals. “These are the things that we have to mitigate when we’re coming up with policy decisions,” she says. “I think you get more well-rounded legislators when you have folks who are farmers and doctors and lawyers and accountants and teachers from all different areas and walks of life.” 

 

The divisive rhetoric has definitely amped up over the last few years. There was a time when people could disagree on issues, on policies. There were always going to be certain core things that you were never going to get the majority and minority to agree upon. But there were basic elements of doing the right thing for our constituents you could get people to agree on, and it seems there’s less of that now."

Her legislative successes include a consumer-protection law requiring ID numbers for anyone preparing taxes for remuneration, a bill package on address confidentiality for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, creating standards of care for pregnant prisoners at the state’s only women’s prison, and Michigan’s Clean and Renewable Energy and Energy Waste Reduction Act. “I think about my residents, the people who I see picking up my kids at band practice and see at the market,” she says, reflecting on who she works to represent. “And I think about the people who don’t have a voice or feel they don’t. How do we make sure that they have resources?”

Along with Will, Erika was anxious in November about the consequences of the government shutdown, including the loss of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. “This is going to break my heart,” she recalls. Now, “we’re trying to navigate what we can do on the state level to help stem some of this pain that is coming. It did not have to happen this way.”

Another less tangible loss hangs over her time in the state Senate: “The divisive rhetoric has definitely amped up over the last few years,” she says. “There was a time when people could disagree on issues, on policies. There were always going to be certain core things that you were never going to get the majority and minority to agree upon. But there were basic elements of doing the right thing for our constituents you could get people to agree on, and it seems there’s less of that now…and it doesn’t end just because the gavel has indicated that session is over. It bleeds into everywhere else, much of which unfortunately comes from social media.”

From his seat, Will sees an inverse. “There’s a narrative…that the [state] legislature is not transparent or is not productive. It’s stuff coming from outside with people not understanding how we see each other inside,” he says. When he was first elected, people would ask what surprised him on the job. His go-to answer: “I really like my colleagues. I’m impressed with them. They’re pretty sharp, and almost all of them are there for the right reason, even if they might come from a very different place than I do.”

“We’re supposed to be here to do good—the common good, because I’m speaking like a true Commonwealth alumna,” Erika echoes.

The Locals

The drive for productive conversation is felt just as keenly by alumni/ae running the ground game of local politics. “Money in politics nowadays has an impact…but the data shows it doesn’t compare to that face-to-face conversation with somebody,” Matt Costas argues. “You can spend $100 million on targeted ads or text blasts or super PAC ads, and it doesn’t necessarily compare to a conversation with somebody that genuinely is passionate about an issue. That’s the most persuasive thing.”

Take Matt’s first campaign experience in 2018. Unsure of his next steps after studying history in college, a friend pulled him onto the No side of the Massachusetts ballot’s Question 1, which would have mandated particular staffing levels of patients per nurse in the state’s hospitals. As a drizzly election night drew to a close, he set out for eleventh-hour canvassing near a voting site in the Boston suburbs.

“I was standing outside of the poll with my sign,” Matt remembers, “and a guy pulled up and got out of his car to vote.” After greeting Matt and asking what cause he was outside for, the voter said, “‘I’m gonna do that [vote No on Question 1] because you’re standing out here in the rain.’” That kind of effort “does go a long way with people,” he says. (The No vote ultimately won.)

Groundwork on other campaigns, including Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 run for president, followed over the years. But it’s never forever, Matt says: “You’re working your butt off for months, and then the election happens and you’re out of work, and it’s on to the next thing. Working sixteen-hour days is not something I miss.” Then a Chief-of-Staff position opened with Liz Breadon, a Boston City Councilor he admired representing his neighborhood of Allston-Brighton, and he landed it.

Working for city government has sharpened Matt’s perceptions of the place he calls home. Allston-Brighton’s nearly 80,000 residents are often mischaracterized as temporary occupants in a neighborhood where students and young people disappear from short-term rentals. In his view, there are deeper structural issues at play keeping residents from putting down roots.

“The vast majority of people my age want to stay there, but it’s increasingly difficult. You talk to anybody, and far and away, their biggest issue is ‘my rent is too high,’” he explains. Matt counts a lack of housing supply and an “archaic and Byzantine” Boston zoning code among his obstacles. And right now, there are “big existential threats at the national level,” he says, “that are impacting neighbors at the ground level,” like the fall’s mixed federal messaging on food assistance and fears of mass deportation sweeps. “It makes it hard to focus on what you want,” he continues, “like delivering city services to people and fixing potholes.”

The time Matt spends hearing from his neighbors one-on-one is deeply valuable to him and to combatting those obstacles: “You’re not sitting around debating the great questions of our age. It’s very face-to-face and local, and that’s what I appreciate about it.” That’s the kind of work that Kevin Ballen loves, too. A student leader of the Harvard Votes Challenge as an undergraduate, Kevin learned that to encourage his classmates’ attention in races at all levels—whether in Cambridge, statewide, or national—he needed to zero in on their specific interests. “A lot of [issues] have super-local implications,” he observes. “While change might seem very incremental…it’s happening at a local level.”

After graduation, Kevin shifted from the local to the national, serving as both Deputy Chief of Staff and speechwriter at the White House National Economic Council under the Biden administration. He sought “an opportunity to be a part of social change at the highest level” and believes he found one: “I loved it.” Tasked with tracking economic policy work across the government each week, he remembers feeling “exhilarated” by the breadth of initiatives: eliminating ticketing junk fees, manufacturing and clean-energy investments, semiconductor funding through the CHIPS and Science Act. “We were providing incentives of hundreds of millions and billions of dollars that were going to drastically change communities,” Kevin says.

He will readily share, though, that before reaching that “highest level,” his work began in Boston—first, in fact, at Commonwealth. He entered high school with a “service lens,” he says, but what he terms the school’s “environment of civic purpose” truly nurtured that instinct. For Kevin, that wasn’t just present in classes like City of Boston or friendly debates. It was created by traditions like Hancock, where students learned collaboration over van loading and meal prep, and a baby-goods supply drive for families in need, the latter led one year by Kevin with the encouragement of his advisor, Frédérique Thiebault-Adjout.

“I remember feeling a huge sense of agency: I can lead a project. I can do something that’s going to impact people’s lives. I can lead a team,” he recalls. “As a young person…you often don’t feel that kind of agency in your life. So a lot of the work that I was doing was about how we get people to feel that civic spark, to think about the things around them that they care about and realize that they have a lot of skills and passions to partake in change.”

From there, his endeavor to build a civics-focused curriculum for students across Boston expanded from one Project Week at Commonwealth to two pre-college gap years. As Kevin points out, “[Students] spend thousands of hours on math throughout their K–12 careers,” while “things like civic engagement, learning about social issues, [and] engaging in leadership do not get much dedicated time.” Now in his first year at Harvard Law School, he’s focused on the kind of political and economic systems he analyzed at the White House, but he won’t discount the effect that talking to one person can have.

“It’s hard for people to have political conversations right now, and I get it,” Kevin says. “I also think those are the types of conversations that we need to have to continue to move forward—to reduce polarization, but also to have conversations about what kind of country, what kind of cities and towns, [we] want to live in.”

Matt Costas offers similar guidance to those who feel “disillusioned”: get out there. “It’s the people who show up to every public meeting that are the ones who dominate the conversation,” he says. “Find an issue you care about, find a candidate you care about, and get involved at that grassroots local level—because there’s something going on in your town.”

Claire Jeantheau served as Commonwealth’s Communications Coordinator before becoming the Marketing Manager for the American Exchange Project. This article originally appeared in the winter 2026 edition of CM, Commonwealth's alumni/ae magazine.

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