Grimm Sees Energy in Campaign

Last summer, Philipp W. Grimm ’11 worked as a policy analyst in Alberta, Canada—but something was bothering him.

“As the summer wore on, I caught myself obsessively following the U.S. presidential campaign, and a sense of urgency started to take over,” said Grimm in an e-mail. “I knew that, come November 4th, I didn’t want to be sitting in a lecture hall at Harvard thinking I could have done more to help his campaign.”

Mid-July, he “decided to bite the bullet and file the paperwork.” Since the first week of September, he has been interning at the Obama for America National Campaign Headquarters in Chicago. He works for the office’s “south pod,” the main communications hub for all the southern states.

Grimm—who has lived almost his whole life in Canada but is a U.S. citizen—spends most of his time assisting the regional research staff in addressing the challenges unique to each state. He said his work straddles the finance and new-media teams, breaking new ground through the use of streaming video, web fundraising, and blogging.

Despite the long hours, grueling pace, and “volatile” nature of the job (“Political campaigns can pop up and bite the dust at any second,” he noted), Grimm said his work has been worth it.

“Day after day, there’s this incredible sense of optimism,” said Grimm, who has exchanged words with Obama, his running mate Joe Biden, and his wife Michelle. “I have yet to experience this breed of excitement anywhere else.”

Though the omnipresence of political spin can often overwhelm a campaign worker, Grimm said he is nevertheless “reminded of how special this campaign’s grassroots movement truly is.”

Grimm said most of his co-workers are young, and that everyone except senior staff works alongside one another in an open space, exposing him firsthand to the “gears grinding” behind the scenes.

“One of the cornerstones of the campaign is that everyone is treated as equals,” Grimm said. “That’s not necessarily what you’d find in your typical Capitol Hill experience.”

Though Grimm has always been interested in foreign and economic policy, he is yet to decide even on a concentration, let alone a career path.

“I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing post election day, but working on a campaign certainly teaches you to embrace last minute decisions, so I’ll be ‘going with the flow,’” Grimm said.

Grimm will continue working through election day, and regardless of the outcome, he knows that this campaign marks what he called an “incredible milestone in history.”

“Thousands of volunteers, all across the country, young and old, are taking time off school, time off their jobs—literally putting their lives on complete hold—all because of the common belief that we can effect positive change in this country,” Grimm said.

“And when you think about that, it’s impossible to be anything but inspired.”

—Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.