This week’s episode features Russ Harrison, Director of Government Relations for IEEE-USA, the American component of the world’s largest technical professional society, IEEE, with nearly 170,000 individual members across the United States. IEEE-USA supports the career growth and public policy interests of its members, who are technical professionals.
Our conversation covered a range of advocacy and policy issues, including:
- Common misperceptions about policymaking Russ hears from audiences during his frequent talks with IEEE-USA members, their questions, and how he responds to them
- Areas Russ believes technical professionals – in general – need to further develop to be successful as advocates for their policy priorities
- Which assets technical professionals have in interactions with policymakers and their staffs – including some that perhaps engineers, for example, don’t even realize they have
- How advocacy has been affected by COVID
- Central principles of Russ’s own advocacy approach, and how his approach has developed over the years
- IEEE-USA’s priorities for shaping policy and how Russ sees policy and regulation developing in the future
