Professional looks back on his time in Washington, D.C.
HUSCO International’s Ramirez was White House Fellow for past year
It was last August when Austin Ramirez, chief executive officer of Waukesha-based HUSCO International, embarked on two great adventures.
The first one took him to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, where he competed in the Leadville Trail 100-mile race, an ultra-running event. Donning running shoes and a head lamp, racing through a long day and night, he crossed the finish line in a little more than 24 hours.
The next day, tired and sore, Ramirez began his second great adventure in Washington, D.C.
He was among 16 of the country’s best and brightest mid-career professionals to spend a year as a White House Fellow, working at the highest levels of the federal government.
It was an immersive experience at a pivotal time in political history: the end of Barack Obama’s administration and the beginning of Donald Trump’s.
“It’s a unique way, without being on a campaign or being a policy expert, to come in and work at the very top of the executive branch,” Ramirez said. “This was an opportunity to go in a low-stakes way to dive into the deep end of the pool and see what it was like.”
Ramirez, 39, is now back home. Next month, he’ll return to work at HUSCO International.
While he was gone, his father, Agustin “Gus” Ramirez, served as interim CEO. The elder Ramirez built the company that manufactures components for the automotive and off-highway sectors.
Austin Ramirez said he eyed the White House Fellows program for awhile and navigated the rigorous application process.
He’s civic minded — over the years, he has served on seven local boards, including the Greater Milwaukee Committee.
He has a strong interest in education. The Ramirez family spearheaded St. Augustine Preparatory Academy, the Christian choice school that recently opened on Milwaukee’s near south side.
And he is intrigued by politics. He calls himself a “right-leaning independent,” and donates to mostly Republicans, but as a White House Fellow he served as a “nonpartisan actor.”
While at the White House, he worked with the National Economic Council, which advises the president on economic policy.
Ramirez focused on three areas — autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial drones and semi-conductor industrial policy.
“We’re not writing policy. We’re coordinating the work that is happening with the agencies to make sure the policy that gets presented to the president is ... fully baked,” he said.
He experienced the ebb and flow of life in the White House, as one administration wound down and another administration took power.
“My desk moved six times,” he said.
His second day on the job, Ramirez was sitting in the West Wing lobby when Obama and then Vice President Joe Biden walked by.
During the first month of the Trump administration, Ramirez was at the White House mess, buying his morning bagel and cup of coffee. The next person in line was Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, whose name wasn’t yet in the payment system.
So, Ramirez picked up Mnuchin’s tab, too.
Ramirez never discussed policy directly with Obama, but he and the other White House Fellows listened intently as Obama spent 90 minutes with the class.
“He was reflecting on his eight years,” Ramirez said. “He both offered his counsel to us as people who are civic-minded and want to make a difference, and reflective on his presidency.”
Later, he was in both public and private meetings with Trump, discussing policy while observing president interact with business leaders.
His take on the two men?
“It’s amazing, the character of the president permeates through the White House,” he said. “The White House is the extension of the man in the seat. And President Obama, this isn’t news or surprising, he is contemplative, deliberate, he’s into the details. It was a very process-oriented, focused White House.”
Ramirez said: “President Trump, on the other hand, was much more an instinctive president, much more casual in building processes. If you followed it at all, this has built over eight months. Certainly at the beginning, even now, he’s not a guy who leans heavily on process. He leans heavily on people and his instincts. And that created a much different environment.”
“My biggest takeaway from this year has been around the differences between running a business and being a president or a political executive leader,” he said.
Ramirez said he always viewed his job as a chief executive “as building organizational culture and then delegating as much as I could outward in the organization. So I rarely had to make a decision. By the time it got to me, decisions were already made.
“As a political executive, the decisions are so much more complex and so much more far-reaching that it becomes that the process of how you get to a decision is as important as anything else. It’s more important than the experts you have in the room.”
He said, “I went in thinking gosh, we need more decision-making, more leadership, and I come out with a much deeper appreciation for the need to have really robust, deliberate, slow process to make sure these really complex decisions get made well.”
Ramirez said he learned quite a bit on leadership from his bosses at the National Economic Council, Jeff Zients for Obama and Gary Cohn for Trump.
“Most of what I learned will impact how I engage in the community more,” he said. “It’s mostly an enhanced appreciation for how slow and deliberate things should work at the government level.”
He enjoyed diving into policy, but he is ready for direct action.
Is a political career in his future?
“I went into this year thinking that I would ultimately want to have some public service element to my life, not knowing if I wanted to run for office,” he said. “I leave the year still feeling that way to an extent. I feel part of my purpose in life is to make positive impact in the community. There’s opportunities to make positive impact you can only do in the public sector. I don’t know going forward.”