R. Erich Caulfield SM ’01, PhD '06

INTERVIEWER: As part of MIT's Infinite History Project, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. R. Erich Caulfield, an MIT alumnus and elected member of MIT's governing board. Erich is the founder and president of the Caulfield Consulting Group, a New Orleans based management consulting firm.

Dr. Caulfield is currently serving his second term on the MIT Corporation where he is the chair of the Corporation Joint Advisory Committee on Institute-Wide Affairs and has been actively involved with several Corporation Visiting Committees and Institute advisory groups. As a student, he was elected president of the Graduate Student Council. And he has since become the only person in the university's history to receive the alumni national Distinguished Service Award and all three of MIT's highest distinctions for leadership and student life contributions.

Dr. Caulfield earned his Bachelor of Science Phi Beta Kappa in physics and mathematics for Morehouse College and his master's and PhD In electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us, Erich.

CAULFIELD: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be back on campus.

INTERVIEWER: So let's start at the beginning. So tell me about growing up in Louisiana.

CAULFIELD: Oh, I didn't realize exactly how much of who I am comes from the fact that I grew up in South Louisiana. And I didn't realize that until I had a chance to move back to New Orleans about four years ago were having lived away for 18 years outside of Louisiana I expected there to be some sort of culture shock because whenever I would go home to visit, people would always ask me, "Where are you from?

And I'm like, "I'm from here. And they're like, "No you ain't." And I'm like, oh, OK. OK. I haven't lived here for a long time. But when I got back home, it was, literally, just like being a fish being back in water. It was just very natural.

Just all the things that I thought were my personality uniquely to me was actually a culture that I grew up in. So it was good to be back. So a lot of how I think about and relate to people comes from the fact that I grew up in South Louisiana and that Audrey Caulfield, who is also a South Louisiana woman, raised me to be. So a lot of who I am comes from the fact that I'm a Louisianian.

INTERVIEWER: So tell me about Audrey.

CAULFIELD: She is, without a doubt, the single most influential person in my life. How I think about leadership, how I think about service, how I think about people comes from the fact that she was just one of the strongest and most compassionate people you could ever meet. And she raised all of us to be that same way, both, deliberately and also just by who she was as a person and how she lived her life and the fact that we had a chance to see her growing up doing and being who she was.

Ultimately, me going into politics and a lot of what I've done professionally comes the fact that just my values and the way that she raised all of us. And there are many examples that I could give about that. One which I think is, probably, most illustrative is she did home health for awhile. She did all kinds of nursing. She was a nurse in a hospital. She did private duty for a while.

But for part of it, she did home health, which means she was actually going around to see people in their homes. And a lot of these were just poor folks in rural South Louisiana, a lot of them. And sometimes I would get a chance to go with her when she'd go see her patients. and one particular time I got to go with her.

And we went to see this woman. And we're in her living room. I don't know if, as a non-medical person, I was supposed to be there. But I was. And so she had done doing all the basic, kind of, exams things that the nurse is supposed to do.

And at that point in my 17-year-old mind, I'm like, it's time to go, right. I have places to be, right. But instead of leaving and also I was thinking about how my mom got paid as a nurse for the work that she did. So for every patient she saw, she actually got paid for that person.

So you figured she'd want to see more people so you get paid more money. That's how my mind worked at the time. But she wasn't really built that way. So instead of leaving to go and see somebody else, she took out a comb. And she started to comb Ms. Danzler's hair, was her name.

And when she finished, then she started to braid it. And then, she sat down. And she talked to her some more. How have you been? How are you doing?

What she realized, and I didn't at that time, was that she was the only person that Ms. Danzler was going to get to see that whole week because she lived alone like a lot of seniors. And people didn't necessarily come by to visit. And so my mom understood that talking to her was something that was human and not just a part of being a nurse.

Another thing that was important about that particular moment was that we were going through very difficult financial times ourselves. Literally, we had to go to the food pantry at our church to get free food because we couldn't afford to go and buy groceries. So every moment that we spent in Ms. Danzler's living room was money that was coming out of our household.

But for my mom and what she understood very clearly was that that act of kindness was more important than making money. And in a real sense, that's the woman who raised me. And she raised all of us that way, both, by her example and intent. So for me, the idea of not being able to help and care about people is just not in my DNA, either genetically or whether it's-- and the fact that she is my mother is a lot of who I would eventually become.

INTERVIEWER: So yeah, nurses have a-- it's a professional calling to help others.

CAULFIELD: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it really is. It really is.

INTERVIEWER: And how many siblings did she help raise? She was a single mom.

CAULFIELD: Single mom. It was three of us. I was the baby by far. My sister, on her 10th birthday, was expecting to get a baby doll for her birthday and have a great big party. But instead, she got a new baby brother. I was born on her birthday, three weeks early. I don't think she forgave me for that until I was about 30 years old.

INTERVIEWER: Let's talk a little bit about some of the other sources, earlier sources of motivation and inspiration in your life and in grammar school, high school.

CAULFIELD: Yeah, I was really, really lucky. Growing up, my parents separated when I was very young. But I was lucky enough to have a lot of very positive male figures in my life. Of course, my big sister, Sharon, a huge influence in my life.

You know, mom was working hard a lot. So a lot of times, it was me and Sharon. She did a lot to take care of me. And at very important parts in my life, she was always there to support and to be in my corner.

But I was also lucky to have my Scout Master, Curtis Hart, for example, who, literally, was the first person who taught me about leadership and excellence in Boy Scout Troop 98, which we used to meet on the second floor of Allen Chapel Church. And you know, the idea that you can be as good as anybody as it was.

He was the second Scout Master. But he was part of the founding leadership team. So all of this was brand new to us. He had a huge impact on my life. There was the reverend at my church when I was in high school who was very supportive. He helped me out when I was in college at Morehouse.

Lawrence Carter, who was the Dean of the Chapel at Morehouse, a huge impact on one how I think about academics, and its role, and how you actually use that to help people. Ike Colbert who was the Dean of Graduate Students when I was at MIT, a huge impact.

I remember standing in the sandwich line at LaVerde's Market waiting to get, I think it was, eggplant parmesan sub. And I was thinking about getting involved in GSC at that time in a officers role. And I remember Ike came up behind me in the sandwich line. And he said, "So I hear that you're thinking about running for GSC president."

And I was like, number one, how do you know that? But also, he said, I think you should do it. I think you'll do a good job. And he was a mentor. He was actually my Fellowship adviser for the Ford Foundation Fellowship.

So I met him early when I got here. So he was a mentor to me the whole time. He was there. He hosted one of the first events I had when I kicked off my campaign for State Senate.

And so over that long period-- wow, I just realized how long. I've known Ike for almost 17 years. Huge, huge impact and very supportive. And so just very lucky to have a lot of positive influence.

INTERVIEWER: So going back to high school, when did you first develop an interest in math and science?

CAULFIELD: I'm glad you asked that question because one of the people, which I didn't mention, who was seminal is a man by the name of Diola Bagayoko. Dr. Bagayoko was a physics professor at Southern University. And what happened was I was always, I guess, pretty good at science and math. I liked it. I was never a very good student of science and math, but I liked it.

And I think what ends up happening is Mr. Hart-- or Mr. Curtis, as everybody called him-- he was my scout leader-- I went to go and talk to him. I was trying to figure out what high school I was going to go to because there were two different ones. And he was like, so you like science, right? I'm like, yeah. He's like, you like math, right? I'm like, yeah.

Sounds like you should go to the engineering high school. I'm like, that makes sense, Mr. Curtis. Thanks! And so that was how I ended up there. But really, the turning point was it was a summer program that we went to in the summer between my junior and senior year in high school.

It was a summer science institute. And the reason that I ended up going there was because my best friend at the time, we were sitting in chemistry class. And I looked over at his backpack. And he had these papers sticking up.

I'm like, hey, what's that? And he said, well, it's an application to a summer program. I'm like, oh, that sounds like fun. You have fun with that, right. He's like, they pay you $1,000 for the summer. And when you're 16, 17 years old, $1,000 is a lot of money.

So I got it and applied. And so, on the first day of the program, or certainly one of the first days, Dr. Bagayoko was the head of it, took us into his office. And he looked us right in the eye. And he said something, which changed the entire of course of my life.

If there are defining moments in what happens to you and who you are, this was one of them. He looked us right in the face and he said, "If you can master physics, you can rule the world." And that changed everything. It changed everything because what I heard from that-- and he went on to say that, regardless of whatever you want to do, if you can do well in physics, then whether you stay with it or not, you can go into anything you want.

And what I heard from him and what changed all of it was, number one, that I could be good at school. That never occurred to me. And not only could I be good at it but that this was the path to whatever it was. And I wanted to be able to take care of my family better when I got older, to take care of my mom because she worked hard.

I wanted to be able to have opportunities for myself, and also for all the little cousins of mine that I had who were going to come behind me. So that was more nascent. But later, that would become a big driving thing. But it was that moment, literally, that I said I'm going to be serious about school because there was a lot of things that were happening at that time, personally, in my life.

And so that just foundational changed everything because when I then went to senior year and started, then school was important, and it had a purpose. And so from that one instance, that one conversation with Dr. Bagayoko, it changed everything. I ended up majoring in physics at Morehouse because of that conversation.

He wrote my letters of recommendation to MIT and to a summer program at Lincoln Lab. Again, and because of that, that changed everything, even though, obviously, I didn't stay in science as he said. That foundation allowed me to have some experiences that I couldn't have even imagined when I was sitting in the chair talking to him as a 17-year-old. INTERVIEWER: And that you were also first generation from your family to go to university.

CAULFIELD: Well yeah, the first of my mother's children to finish, yeah. And my sister would, eventually, go back to school. And she got a degree, as well. At that time, I was the first person to finish.

INTERVIEWER: So tell me a little bit about that journey, the thought process, that led to you studying at Morehouse.

CAULFIELD: Yeah, so after that summer, again, my good friend, Weldon, he had always wanted to go to Morehouse. So he did for a long time. I didn't really know, honestly-- it's sad to say-- what Morehouse was really about. I just knew it was a good school and that African American men went there.

INTERVIEWER: Alma mater of Martin Luther King.

CAULFIELD: Yeah, Martin Luther King Jr, Martin Luther King Sr, you know, Spike Lee. A whole bunch of people went there. But I didn't, you know-- Weldon knew this. I didn't. And so he was going to Morehouse.

And so after the summer program and I had gotten, kind of, serious about school, I still wasn't good at it, at least, in my estimation. You know, I was like, well, I want to go to a place where people go who are serious about school. And this place had a mission oriented thing, I found out later.

But the question that I had was, really, how good could I be academically because I didn't know. And so I wanted to go to a place where that was a good school where we'd be challenged and that was a good place for African Americans to develop. That much I did know.

And so when I got there, it was just a tremendously supportive place. Like I said, I had a lot of mentors when I was there. And the place was just so supportive. That really laid the foundation for coming to MIT. And in that context, everything is about the mission in service.

So whether you study physics, whether you study math, which I did, it doesn't matter because underneath all of it is how do you make things better for people in the African American community, country writ large in the world. And so that's the foundation of what the place teaches you. And I wanted to get that from there. And I did.

INTERVIEWER: So Morehouse's foundation is very similar to MIT's in that way.

CAULFIELD: Oh yeah. Yeah, in that way and that was, actually, a surprise when I got here because that wasn't something I anticipated finding at MIT. I just didn't. The calculus of coming here didn't include that, at all. And I was very excited when I got here and, kind of, discovered it along the way because Morehouse advertises it that way. It's history, its culture, is that.

INTERVIEWER: OK.

CAULFIELD: But when I got to MIT, my full intention was, well, I'm going to go and get a good technical education. I'm going to get beat up academically. And I'll become tougher because of it. And then, that'll be, kind of, the experience I'll take from it.

I was excited that they did medical applications of electrical engineering. That was the service part of it was how do you help people with this engineering thing. But the idea that it's all about how do we make the world a better place and, in many ways, train and equip people to do that, it's just I couldn't have anticipated that before I got there.

INTERVIEWER: Interesting. Now I would've thought given the trajectory that your career took that that was very deliberate. That, you know, but it was a--

CAULFIELD: Wow. Yeah, I didn't know. Like, for me, I'm like, oh, MIT does medical research. So that's good. That's a way you could be of service. That's how you can help people.

But the idea of, kind of, regardless of what path you want to take that MIT prepares you to, in some sense, run as fast as your legs will carry you. And that meant a lot to me because in discovering what my ultimate path would be, just the support that I got was overwhelming in a lot of ways. In a good way.

INTERVIEWER: So did you have an academic career trajectory in mind? Or were you just taking it one step at a time?

CAULFIELD: I think the idea, in some sense, when I got here was that I would finish my PhD in electrical engineering.

INTERVIEWER: But when did MIT come across your radar when you were at Morehouse.

CAULFIELD: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: I mean, how do you go from Morehouse to MIT?

CAULFIELD: Yeah. Literally, what happened was the summer after my freshman year, I went back and was a counselor for the same summer program that I had come through my junior year in Dr. Bagayoko's program. And I must have heard about Lincoln Lab from him.

He was like, you should apply to this program at MIT. I'm like, MIT? He said, yeah, yeah. Do you know this one guy who I went to high school where we were classmates. He said, he went there last summer and he did very well. So you should consider going there. And I'm like, MIT? And so he's like, yeah.

So he wrote me a recommendation. And I'm really happy that the guy who went before me did because he did well. And Dr. Bagayoko wrote in the letter, so I'm told, this student, Erich Caulfield, is as good as this other guy. And I never thought that because he was a really good student, and I was not.

And so I got a chance to come and spend-- I think we stayed in Burton Conner. And so that was the first time in New England for an extended period. I visited on, like, a week trip but never stayed on campus. So we were here for the summer. So it was a complete new thing for me.

And then, what I found out is, through Lincoln Lab if you apply, if you did two summers, that helped you get into graduate school. And so it was at that point that I was like, well, maybe I could go to MIT for grad school. And again, there were two students from my high school that had gone to MIT that were twins the year before I got to my high school.

That was the only thing I knew of. I never knew anybody who went. But it was really through Dr. Bagayoko saying I should apply to this program. And then, coming and staying on campus and getting the sense that maybe this could actually be something I could do.

And then, by the time I got to my senior year, it was, kind of, the toss up between here and Stanford.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, OK. And you applied? You applied to both?

CAULFIELD: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah?

CAULFIELD: And after just looking at MIT's program on the medical side, literally, I was like there's no other place that I could be. And then also, MIT was generous enough to help with the fellowship, which helped pay for the first year so.

INTERVIEWER: Terrific. So you said earlier that you weren't that good a student. But yet, you had some driving motivation to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from Morehouse. I think you're a little modest here.

CAULFIELD: Well I would say, the thing that I always like to think about is I always think about many other student's I say who were better students than me because they got straight A's or close to it for years and years and years. I only got straight A's one time in my entire academic career. And that was when I was a grad student at MIT, and I took one class.

So I was a better than average student. But I would say I was a good student if I got straight A's.

INTERVIEWER: Well MIT's pleased that you came to here and not to Stanford.

CAULFIELD: I am, too.

INTERVIEWER: So let's talk about graduate student life at MIT. Tell me about the transition from a historically black college in Georgia to MIT into New England.

CAULFIELD: Yeah, that, actually, was one of the big growing experiences that I had. Growing up in South Louisiana in the 1970s and '80s, and then going to school in Georgia, also still the South-- different, but still the south-- at an HBCU was a great experience. The transition to New England was a growth opportunity.

Up until the political campaign, getting a PhD from MIT was the hardest thing I'd ever done. And the hardest part of that experience was the first year and a half or so because the transition-- number one, switching academic disciplines from physics and math. Going into engineering, similar. But there is a change.

Changing schools where there's a different culture in terms of, academically, how that works. That was change. The idea that in June, for example, you're still wearing sweatshirts in the first part of the day, that was obnoxious to me. And that took a lot of getting used to. It was, actually, a very difficult transition.

But what I found at the same time was there were people around, both, informally and formally to help with the academics and culturally. So whether it was going to play cards with other friends of mine in the dormitory on some nights or being able to go to the Office of Minority Education, OME, to talk about academics with folks.

And so, both, in a real sense, it was difficult. But at the same time, there were structures in place that helped with it, which is one of the things that I really appreciated about my experience. I expected it to be hard, and it was. But at the same time, you still come out on the other side and stronger for it. And that's something that I appreciated about my experience at MIT.

INTERVIEWER: But looking back now, what, in your mind, is unique or special about MIT?

CAULFIELD: I think and I don't know about other technical places, but I think what's really encapsulated in what they call nerd pride. There was a sticker. At least, it was popular when I was here. People would walk around and have a sticker that says "Nerd Pride". Professors would wear it sometimes.

And I think just embracing that culture is unique because it's not only just one thing. It tends to be, at least my experience, is however or whatever you are there is going to be a group or a group of people who share that. So you can like Star Trek. You could dress up as Star Trek. That's true in other places. But it's unique here.

Star Wars, the same thing. If you're interested in ballroom dance, for example, if that's your thing, you'll find folks who would do that. If you're interested in African dance, you can find folks who do that.

And so I feel like just the diversity of experiences is very, in some sense, welcoming in lots of different ways. Now again, any time you have that many kinds of different folks in a place, sometimes there are tensions which show up. And they're real. Some perceived but real in other cases.

But I think just the embracing of it, oftentimes, around a kind of science and techie kind of thing, I think, is unique. And as a person who is interested in that stuff and like it, it was comfortable being here. And at the same time, when I'm interested in other kinds of issues, obviously, government and policy, issues of justice, there was support for that, too.

So literally, whatever direction you wanted to run in or I wanted to run in, I felt like I was going to have support as fast as my legs could carry me. And so that, I think, is powerful about this place.

INTERVIEWER: So can you talk about the research you did while at MIT as it relates to MIT's motto mens et manus into MIT's founding mission to work towards a better society through science, technology, industry, and the arts.

CAULFIELD: Yeah, and for me, again, one of the reasons why I was really excited about coming to grad school here was exactly that. For my Master's research, I worked in a lab that was focused on, basically, creating a microchip that restores some vision to people with certain kinds of blindness. And Retinal Implant Project was the name of the group.

And the person who was the head of the lab was also my academic advisor. So I got a chance to meet his students. And eventually, after the first, asked if I wanted to be a part of the group. And I said, well, absolutely just because it was very exciting. And so, basically, I did some research on figuring different ways you could actually power the device because the idea is you, basically, put a microchip in, you implant it on the retina, and then you have a camera on the outside.

And basically, the camera captures the image. And then, it transmits it to the microchip. And it stimulates the nerves. And then, you can create an image that way. Now the challenge, the retina is a very, very delicate tissue. And so you don't want to implant something with a battery, and you have to take it out, and change the battery. You don't want to do that.

So you have to find a way to communicate with it. And so I looked at different ways that you can power it without having to take it or remove it. So that was like a theoretical model that I did for the Master's research. And then, after that, I switched to do a PhD on focused ultrasound surgery, which is basically using ultrasound to treat different pathological tissue without having to necessarily cut the person open.

So the idea is that, say you have a tumor somewhere, you don't want to go in and cut it because the recovery time's longer. The risk of infection is higher. What you can do is you can use ultrasound to zap it inside. And then, the body just absorbs it.

Less infection, less recovery time, and also it's just a more effective treatment. And so, basically, I designed a prototype, which used a new way of, basically, creating the ultrasound to treat them. And so for me, in a real sense, that, fundamentally, was what it was all about.

How do you help people? Like, theoretically, you could have the greatest idea, but if it doesn't change somebody's quality of life, then, to me, it's not something that I was very interested in. And I was really excited to be able to come to MIT work exactly on that.

INTERVIEWER: Right. And when did it hit you that MIT's mission was, in fact, very similar to Morehouse's? Was there any one thing? Or it happened gradually?

CAULFIELD: I think one of the things, which I realized when I started getting involved in student government was-- and it was explicit, actually-- just before I had arrived on campus, there was a study that was done, which basically created it's kind of like a three-fold mission of MIT's thing for its students. Academics, research, and community. And it's that community part.

INTERVIEWER: The three-legged stool.

CAULFIELD: Yeah, yeah. And it was explicit. And hearing it the way that it manifested was the tremendous amount of resources that were invested in leadership development, in student groups, in places like the GSC and the UA, and also in dormitory Graduate Resident Tutors. Like, all kinds of other things that support students in development.

And so that was a very real kind of thing because they wanted students to have that experience. They wanted us to be able to do that. So in some sense, that's the conscious part of it. But then, as you get involved in student government, then you see other people who are doing that and there's support for them too.

INTERVIEWER: So that leads to one of my questions here that during your time at MIT you assumed many leadership roles in student groups and graduate student government. And what was the motivation there? And how did those experiences contribute to your overall education at MIT?

CAULFIELD: Yeah, it's interesting. One thing that I would say is I remember my first year as a graduate student. A friend of mine was going to school at Harvard. And we had gone to high school together.

And I found out that she was, I think, one of the officers in the African American Students Association at Harvard. And my mind was completely blown. I mean, that's a big deal because how would you even think to run for that kind of an office at Harvard, right. So I'm like, this is a big deal.

It just kind of gives you a sense of what I thought-- again, how I was thinking about what my experience was going to be like at MIT. Then, a friend of mine, that kind gave me a, well, maybe I could run for some office here. And so I think I was the Treasurer for the Black Graduate Students Association at MIT. And a friend of mine was the Co-Chair that year.

And so, at that point, it became a different thing. And they did a lot of great events and activities for African American students and people of African descent on campus, which really helped people and helped the community, both, from an educational standpoint, but also just from a cultural standpoint.

And so, as part of that, I started to hear about this Graduate Student Council thing. And I was on a dorm government just again because there were people I knew who did it. So you just kind of see things. And you're like, well, maybe I could do that too.

But what ends up happening is me and a good friend of mine got involved in GSC because we liked to throw and organize social events. And some of the officer came and said maybe you guys might be interested in doing Orientation, which is basically just organizing a whole bunch of events for students. And we did. And it was great.

It was a lot of fun. And it also turns out that it was the most successful Graduate Student Orientation in the history of MIT. I think we exceeded attendance by 25% of what had come before. And at that point, people started to ask about being an officer in GSC. Potentially, running for President.

And I was like I don't know if that's the, am I the right person for that. But I sat and talked to a group of my best friends. And they said, of course you are, and you should run. And Ike I later ran into. Somehow he got wind of it, Ike Colbert. And he thought it was a good idea, too.

So once I ran and was fortunate enough to be elected, it ended up, again, being a very transformative thing because it was during my GSC year that I really discovered inside the politics and policy. I didn't know it was called policy at that time but that the workings of government was what my true calling was.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

CAULFIELD: And it was part of that process that really led to, I guess, the State Senate race, which was many years later.

INTERVIEWER: So MIT seems to provide leadership opportunities, very deliberate, in all aspects of the MIT educational experience that the dorms, the budgets, and the treasuries are managed by. So talk a little bit about how that leadership development seems to permeate in all aspects of ...

CAULFIELD: Yeah, in a lot of ways, self governance, and that's a term, which is real on MIT's campus-- I guess, as you pointed out, in the dorms, there's a whole government. And they run it. In the undergraduate system, they run the room assignment process in a lot of them.

They run the social events that happen. They have all kinds of team sports, which, again, are run by students. The career fair is run by students. The GSC Orientation, which, at least at that time, it was more than a quarter million dollars-- I'm sure it's probably 1/2 million at this point-- all managed, organized, run, and executed by students.

And when you come into something like that as an 18-year-old undergraduate and you have that responsibility, and you have lots of people who were supporting you as you develop and get better at it, then you just get very comfortable. And you assume, well yes, I can do that. And I can do a good job, too.

And it's, kind of, the culture of this place empowers that kind of stuff. And the idea of doing new things is always supported. And there are resources for it. Again, whatever direction you're trying to run in, the Institute will support you in doing that, as evidenced by the number of student groups that has grown. I mean, it's almost double since I was a student here.

INTERVIEWER: Well that clearly spoke to you because your initial career aspirations pointed toward becoming a medical research engineer. And certainly, your degrees and field of study supported that objective. But can you talk about the change in direction your career trajectory took while you were at MIT?

CAULFIELD: Yeah, in an interesting way, one of the things which also was happening at the same time was there's this whole service aspect and leadership aspect, too. And I grew up in the church. Mom was you know, we went to church a lot. She was the church Secretary.

So we went to Sunday school at 9:00 AM, 9:30, and then stayed for 11:00 AM service. And of course, we had to stay afterwards because, as the Secretary, she was responsible for counting money. And then, on Tuesdays, it was choir rehearsal. On Wednesday, it was Bible study. We spent a lot of time in church.

And so the religious part of it was also important to me. And so, in a real sense, that was also something I was wrestling with was leadership in the church context, as well. And so I was trying to figure out how you balance that. But at MIT, what I discovered through student government was you can serve people and solve problems at the same time because the medical thing was that.

How do you solve problems and help people? But then, there was this broader context for issues that were facing people, whether it was housing, whether it was health care, or whether it was issues around equity and equality. One of the projects w worked on as a student government through GSC was a maternity leave policy for women graduate students. And that was something which happened during our time.

And so while not narrowing it to the medical aspect, there's a larger context where you can solve problems and help people. And so, for me, what I discovered was that policy-- again, I didn't know it was called that at the time-- but this whole government thing that we were doing around health care as students, around housing as students, and around maternity leave as students, that's what I wanted to do.

And MIT made it easy to come to that realization. And then, once you've gotten involved, then the whole resources of the Institute end up being behind you. I couldn't have run for office in Louisiana if I didn't have the support of not only the MIT Alumni network, but my colleagues in the Corporation and people in various groups affiliated directly or loosely with MIT.

And again, this is something which has continued even after I was a student. And I think that really says something about this place. Again, I'm a kid from South Louisiana. The idea that I would work for the White House one day and talk about running for office in Louisiana was foreign to me.

But this place made it real in a way that I just couldn't have anticipated. And of course, in conjunction with Morehouse, too. But I was here for a long time. And it really opened a lot of people's eyes to what's possible.

INTERVIEWER: Well clearly, there was a shift given your involvement in student government.

CAULFIELD: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: And then, your mindset of wanting to make a difference. You could've taken your training. You could have worked for a startup. You could have been a design engineer. But yet, if you take a look at, and I'd like you to, some of these choices that you made upon leaving MIT and, basically, how each of those experiences have aligned with your career objectives.

CAULFIELD: Yeah, yeah. So leaving from MIT, I went and worked at McKinsey for 2 and 1/2 years. But I focused on public sector and processed things around how do you make government and government agencies work better. I did a lot of work in that. And that was deliberate because I knew I wanted to go into government at that point. Leaving MIT, I knew it.

But I didn't want to go directly into government because then I would just be the science person, right. And you're doing the engineering thing. And so you'll be a technical advisor.

So going to McKinsey was deliberate because what it did was it, kind of, allows you to hit the reset button and have a new set of skills, which is business and general problem solving. And that was a great experience. Glad I did it.

After leaving McKinsey, I actually went and worked in City government in Newark working for then Mayor, Cory Booker, doing urban policy and a number of different things there. So the business problem solving training, in a broader context, that I learned at McKinsey, I could apply there.

But a lot of the discipline and the way that I approached the work came from experiences that I had at MIT and Morehouse before. And so in a real way, it was an extension of the same kind of thing. It's how do you help people based on what you know at that time and in the context where you are? And then, you learn from that experience.

And then, from Newark, I went and did White House Fellowship working at Domestic Policy Council doing urban development in economically distressed areas. How do you help low income people-- a lot of whom were like me and my family for periods of time-- have a shot at this whole American dream thing, which I was never--

INTERVIEWER: And that brought you back to Louisiana?

CAULFIELD: Yeah. Ironically, one of the projects that I was working on during my fellowship year was a program called Strong Cities, Strong Communities, which President Obama was developing. It was a pilot program where they send federal staff to be embedded in city governments around the country as a way of improving how federal work gets done on the ground so that the federal government can not only learn what's working and what's not but also work side by side with the people who are living with and doing the work every day.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to lead the team in New Orleans. It was 25 of us on the federal side, 25 on the City side, and that was all she wrote. That was all she wrote. It was great being back in Louisiana.

Very exciting to be in New Orleans, which is a tremendous story to be told about-- I mean, I can't say enough about and I'm going to say my people because I'm in New Orleans, and I have no intention of leaving there-- about what it means to be in New Orleans at this time. 10 years post Katrina, and just to see the transformation, even that's happened in the last 5 to 10 years, has been astronomical. Has been amazing, rather.

So that was a two year assignment. And so when it was up, they asked if I wanted to come back. And I'm like, no, I'm good. I'm home. I found the place where I'm going to be.

INTERVIEWER: Now how ironic is that. I mean, there must have been a assignment that you volunteered for. Were you assigned it? I mean, how did that kismet happen?

CAULFIELD: Yeah. I was trying to get back to Louisiana because I think, once I realized that government was the thing, I wanted to get home as quickly as I could because I love my state. And I felt like there was ways that I could be of service to it.

And so I actually looked at some work earlier. And then, it ended up being not the best time to go. But when the project came up for the New Orleans team as part of SC2, it was a no-brainer. I was like, of course, I'm going, right. Of course. But I was actually a part of a team that went down early to see would it be a good fit for what the President was trying to do and got a chance to meet all of the same folks that I would eventually be working with.

And when I came back and you give the report-- I went down as the White House representative as part of this team that was, again, doing the opportunity assessment, we called it. And then, afterwards, that was just my only role with New Orleans because I was also looking at two other cities, as well, that I went and visited with no intention of staying. That was just part of my role.

But then, they asked if I wanted to go to New Orleans. And I was like, yes. Thank you.

INTERVIEWER: And modesty may prevent you from talking a little bit about some of the successes, but could you, in fact, just talk a little bit about the success that I've learned about in terms of Strong Cities and Strong Communities. That initiative.

CAULFIELD: Yeah, I'm very excited and, in some sense, very proud about what we were able to accomplish. One thing that I will say is the City's team is outstanding. That was one of the criteria for the program was to find a good, strong team that was doing good work there.

One of the best professional experiences I've ever had was working in that partnership. As part of that work together, the City and the federal team, we created $4 million in construction jobs. And we got a very important roadway project done. And that construction job, or rather project, had a local hiring preference, which means that people from in and around the community and the state were doing the work themselves.

And the way that that project got done, which was very interesting, was using a policy pilot program that hadn't been used anywhere else in the country. And it was one that has a flexibility that allows mayors all over the nation to move projects forward in a way that they've never been able to do before. I was very excited about that.

We also helped the City put together it's low income safety net access program. So for low income folks. We also found housing for almost 70 homeless people, again, just by understanding how policies worked.

And another thing that we did was also some important work around behavioral health, as well. We cut the number of people waiting to get psychiatric care in emergency rooms by 25% in a year. And all of this we did without a single dime of new funding. It's literally about how do you make government work better for the people it's supposed to serve. And at the end of the two year project, I was really happy to be able to say I was a part of that work at a time when it really mattered for the City.

INTERVIEWER: So it seems that, in retrospect, when you look at the steps you made, of course, the next step is a run for the senate.