Mishal Montgomery wants to enhance the common good. Through her work in city government in Anaheim, Mishal traverses the ups and downs of the political landscape because she believes in the systemic change that is wrought through service with the local government. In this episode of the CFWLA Podcast. Mishal shares about her own entry into the political landscape, remembers a professor who reshaped the arc of her career, and outlines why curiosity can be the cure to cynicism in our current political landscape.

MISHAL BIO

Mishal is the principal at Mishal Montgomery Strategies, a public affairs consulting firm she founded in late 2018. Prior to her consulting role, Mishal was a senior public policy advisor in city and county government, serving elected officials in Orange County and the Greater Los Angeles area.

On What Others Should Know About Government Workers: (19:42-20:24)

“I think there needs to be a curiosity in how things run and how things are done rather than the tendency we all have—I have it, you have it, we all have it—to be knee-jerk in our thoughts. We go from zero to ten quickly in our assumptions about why a decision was made rather than trying to unpack a bit how a decision was made, whether it was a local school board that made a decision that you didn’t like or your local city council, trying to unpack why something happened and being curious about how it happened.”

On How to Handle Political Conflict With Coworkers and Neighbors: (26:15-26:44)

“I’ve often heard this phrase and I’ve embraced it for my own kind of value system and that is, in my conversations every day that clarity is more important than agreement, and it’s helped guide the way I navigate public policy. It’s understanding what the other person is saying and making it clear and saying it out loud.”

On the Beauty and Goodness of Local Government and Politics: (44:40-45:15)

“I think it’s exciting to see that at the end of the day what we’re all trying to achieve is a version of what we think ought to be for humans, for the human dignity that we all want to strive for. I just love the multi-faceted nature of local government and the satisfaction of seeing good things come to pass and also learning from our mistakes.”