While she was still an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University in the early 2000s, Zakiya Smith told one of her professors that she was interested in working for the U.S. Department of Education someday. The professor, a staunch conservative, told her to forget about it; Republicans were going to abolish the department soon.
Fast forward to today. The department is still very much alive, and Zakiya Smith, now 27, has not only worked there but moved on—to the White House, where she’s in charge of shaping and promoting the president’s higher-education proposals. It’s a role that requires policy expertise and sales skills, vision and pragmatism. And it’s a role that, lately, has her defending accountability measures and cost controls that make some colleges very nervous.
Ms. Smith’s ascent is remarkable even for Washington, a city that is in many ways run by the young. Here 20- and 30-somethings wield unseen power, writing the laws and drafting the speeches that members of Congress and agency heads will claim as their own. It’s rarer, though, for a recent graduate to become the public face of the administration, particularly on a centerpiece of its domestic agenda.
Former colleagues attribute Ms. Smith’s rapid rise to a mixture of intelligence, passion, and drive. They describe her as a quick study who is confident yet humble; determined but not dogmatic. College lobbyists say she’s been open and approachable, willing to hear their concerns about the president’s accountability agenda and to work toward a compromise.
Claude O. Pressnell Jr., president of the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association, said Ms. Smith “won people over” when, four days after the president put colleges “on notice” that the government would not continue to “subsidize skyrocketing tuition,” she promised to conduct an “honest and open dialogue” on his plan to tie Perkins Loans to college costs and student outcomes. “I think she’s going to be a really good consensus-builder,” said Mr. Pressnell.
Zakiya Smith was raised in Decatur, Ga., the daughter of a community-college professor of anthropology and a medical bacteriologist in the county AIDS clinic. Her grandmother taught at Morris College, a historically-black institution in Sumter, S.C., and served on the state’s commission on higher education. In the 60s, she worked as a lobbyist for the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.
Ms. Smith graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2006 with a degree in political science and postsecondary education and planned to become a social-studies teacher after graduate school. That summer, she got her first taste of Washington as an intern for the Congressional Black Caucus.
Later, while studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she worked with a Gear Up college-preparation program in Boston. The experience piqued her interest in college-access issues, convincing her that more low-income, first-generation students should be given an opportunity to go to college."It’s the best way to the middle class,” she said in an interview. “I really believe that.”
She also sought a spot in a popular policy seminar taught by Bridget Terry Long, an expert on college access and choice. Though the class is geared toward doctoral students, Ms. Long accepts “a few really talented master’s students” each year, and Ms. Smith’s maturity impressed her.
“Some students are bright-eyed and idealistic, but it’s clear they are young,” she said. “Zakiya had this wisdom beyond her years.”
After graduating in 2007, Ms. Smith applied for a job with the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, a nonpartisan panel with a history of attracting the top graduates from the nation’s most-selective graduate-education programs. Though there were many qualified applicants that year, she had “an energy that excited all of us,” said Michelle Asha Cooper, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, who was deputy director of the committee at the time.
Professor Long’s endorsement didn’t hurt, either. “When Bridget Long calls you about somebody, that’s good enough for me,” recalled William J. Goggin, the committee’s executive director.
Ms. Smith joined the committee as an assistant director in 2007, contributing to its “Early & Often” report on financial-aid information and to its “Apply to Succeed” report on aid to community-college students. After less than a year on the job, she was promoted to director of government relations.
Ms. Smith’s work at the advisory committee introduced her to the intricacies of the higher-education programs and some of the key players in Congress, giving her the “knowledge base” to translate her passion for expanding access into “tangible policy ideas,” Ms. Cooper said.
Her résumé made Ms. Smith a natural for a transition-team post after Mr. Obama was elected in 2008. For the first few months of the administration, she and her boss, Robert M. Shireman, were the entire higher-ed team, in charge of an ambitious agenda that sought stimulus funds for colleges and an end to bank-based student lending.
“It was kind of like drinking out of a fire hose,” she recalled.
Ms. Smith was “delightful to work with” and “a fantastic researcher,” Mr. Shireman said. “Every task, she just dove right into it and figured out what needed to be done. She impressed me and everyone else.”
That included Carmel Martin, a longtime aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who had recently been confirmed as assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development in the department. She brought Ms. Smith into her shop to work on the president’s budget proposals, including his First in the World program—a Race to the Top-type program for college affordability—and his American Graduation Initiative, which called for $12-billion for community colleges.
Amy Laitinen, a former policy adviser to Martha Kanter, under secretary of education, spent so many hours working with Ms. Smith on those proposals that she referred to Ms. Smith as her “work spouse.” Ms. Laitinen said Ms. Smith is “incredibly focused” on achieving the president’s policy goals.
“She lets personal politics roll off her back,” said Ms. Laitinen, who now works as a senior policy analyst at Education Sector. “In this area, with all the egos and personalities, it’s easy to get distracted. She doesn’t—she really stays focused.”
Ms. Laitinen, who is in her late 30s, said she and her other work friends joke that they can’t compare their career trajectories to Ms. Smith’s because “it’s too demoralizing—we’ll just feel bad about ourselves.”
At age 27, Ms. Smith knows “the players, the programs, and the politics” of higher-education policy better than most 40-year-olds, Ms. Laitinen added.
That knowledge appears to be serving her well at the White House Domestic Policy Council, where she has been put in charge of the higher-education portfolio. Lately, she seems to be everywhere, speaking to the American Enterprise Institute on “rebooting higher education” one week and to the Center for American Progress on the “student voice in higher education” the next.
Becky Timmons, assistant vice president for government relations for the American Council on Education, has met with Ms. Smith about the president’s plans several times. Ms. Timmons said “it’s obvious” in meetings that Ms. Smith has the “complete confidence” of colleagues in the Domestic Policy Council and the under secretary’s office.
“I think they’re content to let her run things,” Ms. Timmons said.