I have to admit that I’ve never stayed in a job for more than four consecutive years. These days, that probably doesn’t make me so unusual. Most of us have vastly different resumes than the generation before us. My mother worked for over twenty years for the same company, and her father had given over thirty years to the same employer by the time he retired. One notable exception to the modern era of work wanderlust is my good friend, Tony Newman, who defied this trend by staying at the same organization, Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), for nineteen years before moving on to a new and exciting gig at Vital Strategies this month. Because Tony and his job had a massive impact on my life and on the larger world around us, this change has me feeling more than a little nostalgic.  

Tony isn’t old enough to be called the “granddaddy” of anything, so I will call him the “favorite uncle” of public relations for social change. His work harnesses skills not too different from what you might find in traditional public relations and sales, and channels them into championing progressive causes. I’ve heard quite a few people tell him over the years that “we’re lucky you’re on our side” or if he “wasn’t such a do-gooder,” he would have made himself very wealthy. We’re all fortunate that a person with his talents has a heart so big. 

In 2000, I was in my early twenties and had just moved back home to New York after two months of travel in Central America and the Caribbean to learn Spanish. I stumbled (literally landing this gig by running into a friend in a bar in Brooklyn) onto a freelance job at a public interest PR firm called Fenton Communications. 

This was a simpler, quieter time in the world of non-profit communications. As a subset of the field, it was still in its formative stages. There weren’t so many practitioners of this profession. Even larger organizations were just beginning to solidify their communications directors roles and teams. Apart from having edited and distributed press releases (on a fax machine!) when I was at my former non-profit job in DC, it was all pretty new to me and I was still learning the ropes. 

Tony had just left Fenton right before I arrived, to take a job at a project of the Open Society Foundations that would soon spinoff to become the Drug Policy Alliance. People at the Fenton NY office talked about Tony. A lot. Maybe too much. Tony is so optimistic and positive. He is the most encouraging colleague you could ask for. Tony makes everyone feel good. He is a perfect team player. He cheers loudly for anyone’s accomplishments and makes the workplace feel celebratory. Tony is generous in his use of exclamation points. Tony has cute nicknames for everyone. Things just aren’t the same without Tony in the office.Tony this. Tony that. Enough already, I thought. I was frankly sick of hearing about Tony. 

The legendary Tony finally made a real life appearance at a happy hour towards the end of my time at Fenton. He was every bit as charming and likable as all the hype had prepared me for. I got it. I guess I made an impression on Tony too because I heard from him months later, when I was in a different short-term gig, this time at American Express. I didn’t yet have a cell phone back then. I have no idea how Tony managed to track down my number but I answered an office phone – I think I literally picked up and said something like “American Express, Legal Dept. Can I help you?” – one afternoon, and there he was on the line. 

Tony was inviting me to come and meet with his new boss, Ethan Nadelmann, to talk about events they were doing along with Arianna Huffington, called the Shadow Conventions, that they needed help with. “Arianna Huffington? The Republican lady who is friends with Newt Gingrich,” I thought. This was before she’d made a name for herself crossing over to the left and establishing Huffington Post. Arianna was in the process of redefining her public image with two massive events that would run alongside the Republican and Democratic party conventions that year in Philadelphia and Los Angeles to draw attention to issues that both parties were neglecting. The events were meant to attract attention from bored media assigned to cover the party conventions with promises of passionate speakers, strange political bedfellows, and quirky celebrities. 1,000 attendees from the public were also expected to be there. There would be three days of programming to fill, with each day focused on one of three topics, which were 1) campaign finance reform, 2) income inequality, and 3) the drug war. DPA was responsible for the drug war part. 

I met Tony and Ethan for lunch, and apparently this was enough to convince them that I was up for the job. It was clear that DPA’s staff was already at capacity with their work. This project was something extra. I would be the principal person tasked with pulling it off, along with Tony and his three-person media team, including Shayna Samuels, the friend I ran into at that bar in Brooklyn (which old school heads might be entertained to know was none other than the infamous Last Exit). Shayna was the one who brought me into Fenton but now she was also at DPA. I think this lunch with Ethan and Tony must have been some time in May. The conventions were in August. We had a little more than two months. There was no program, no speakers, and no outreach plan in place. Locations were secured but everything else was up in the air. We were more or less starting from scratch. 

Tony went from mythical figure to someone I worked closely with for pretty much every waking hour of my day. I was rarely more than a few feet away from him, and the Hot 97 summer jams that he played at this desk all day. We got to the office early in the morning and would often leave as late as 1:00AM. We ate almost all of our meals together. 

I’d gone from a recent college grad in an entry level job to an events producer responsible for putting on a program so perfectly tight that it would be ready for television broadcast. This was pre-livestreaming for the masses but we had big hopes that the networks would pick it up. Arianna Huffington enlisted seasoned technicians and stage crews with major awards show experience to make sure we were ready for primetime. 

I had a lot to prove. This was the first real high stakes responsibility that anyone had ever put in my lap. And DPA had a lot to prove. Drug policy reform was still considered a fringe issue, even among progressives, and these events represented unprecedented high profile and mainstream exposure. We could not afford to blow it.

Somehow it all came together. We had an incredible and provocative program with everyone from members of Congress to family members of people serving brutally long sentences for drug offenses to terminally ill patients who needed access to medical marijuana. There was a mind-boggling array of public personalities from Jesse Jackson to Bill Maher to Michael Eric Dyson to Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins (who were still a couple at the time) to Al Franken (dressed as his SNL character Stuart Smalley) to Maxine Waters to Ram Dass. Tony loves to tell the story about me at 23, running around holding a clipboard with a headset attached to my face, giving brisk stage directions to famous people. It’s maybe a good thing but also maybe too bad that social media and selfies hadn’t been invented yet. 

It was an incredibly moving experience. Through putting together the program, researching the speakers, and writing scripts, I came to profoundly understand the devastating human impact and the racism of the war on drugs and how many lives it destroyed, and with such a high cost, with little to no remedy or progress to show for itself. I met a woman younger than me who spoke bravely through tears about having the responsibly to raise all of her siblings because both of her parents were in prison on low level drug offenses. I had an unforgettable experience introducing her and her siblings to the late US Senator Paul Wellstone, because they were from his state, Minnesota, and requested to meet him. Senator Wellstone listened to them with such patience and understanding, and for much longer than his staffers intended. It felt so genuine. I couldn’t help but cry. 

The Shadow Conventions were a success by all accounts. Our drug war program was the standout. True story: at the 11th hour, we got notice that Gore Vidal heard our program was hot and wanted in. I had no idea who he was and grumbled a little about making space on the program but we found a way to make it work. In the (clean version) words of Houston rapper, Mike Jones, “Back then they didn’t want me, now I’m hot and they all on me.” We’d been elevated overnight from the oddball issue that some were a little uncomfortable being associated with (because drugs) to the darlings of Arianna Huffington. 

My relationship with Tony was born by fire, and I couldn’t have asked for a better person than him to walk with me through it. I spent three more years working for DPA with Tony. Then I left for a decade, and returned after Tony lured me back in a new role, this time as his boss! I was in that position for four more years, until I left again in 2017.

During his nearly two decade tenure at DPA, Tony made the failures of the drug war, the push for legalization of marijuana, and a harm reduction approach for all drugs, into a central part of the national conversation. This would have been well beyond our imagination in 2000. While still managing to charm everyone around him, Tony placed countless news stories, and played a central role in making more social change than most of us could imagine in a lifetime. I’m relieved to know that he is staying in the fight. In his new role, he will be leading communications efforts at Vital Strategies around overdose prevention. 

People who make their purpose promoting others often have to learn to be okay with ending up in the background. If we’re lucky, we might make it into a footnote about someone else’s accomplishments. But Tony is seen and openly appreciated by anyone lucky enough to make it into his orbit, and certainly by those of us who have had the enormous privilege of working with him. It’s not the end of an era. It’s the start of a new season. And I’ll always be on call, should Tony ever need me to play a cameo role.