19. Marina Nitze: “If You Googled ‘Business Efficiency Consultant,’ I Was the Only Result.”

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1:05I was at an in-person conference a few years back, the old days when people used to meet face to face. And a few minutes before we all sat down to dinner, the conference organizer pulled me aside and asked if I would be willing to facilitate the conversation at my table. Now, that is roughly my least favorite thing to do. And it only got worse when I was handed a list of suggested topics, not one of which was remotely interesting to me. So I decided to try something different, something I'd never tried before. I tore up that list of topics, and instead I proposed that to start the conversation, each person should take five minutes to tell his or her life story.

1:41But, with one twist, I told them I wanted no self-deprecation and no modesty, that I was giving them permission to be braggy and arrogant. I turned to the woman sitting on my left. Her name badge said Marina Nitza. She was younger than the other people at the table, small in stature, clearly an introvert. I said, Marina, how about you start? And it was immediately obvious that braggy arrogance was far out of her comfort zone. She spoke slowly, repeatedly apologizing after she noted an accomplishment. Each time I interrupted, telling her I gave her 100 % permission, indeed that I insisted that she tell us about every amazing thing she had done.

2:19And what unfolded was one of the most fascinating life histories I've ever heard. Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt. More than a year had passed since that dinner when I decided to start this podcast. I began by writing a list of possible guests to have on the show. And the first name on that list was Marina Nitza. And I hope that you will find her story as enthralling as I did. Now in this podcast, I can't recreate the intimacy of a dinner table. and I can't promise her that if she brags and gloats, you listeners won't walk away thinking she's a self-centered, self-promoting jerk.

2:56So I'm really worried that the version of her life she gives today won't be nearly as interesting as the uncensored version she offered that night. I do, however, have one thing working to my advantage. I've heard the full arrogant version of her story. So if she leaves the best stuff out, I know what questions to ask her.

3:23Thank you so much for making time for me, Marina. Thanks so much for having me. I'm guessing, from what I know about you, that you were a pretty unusual child. Is that true? I was not good at being a child. I started my first business when I was three years old. I sold curated magazine subscription cards to my neighbors. I presume they only purchased them from me because I was three, but I had customers. I don't think that was your last business you ever started either. No. When I was in fifth grade, I became obsessed with the Soap Opera General Hospital. And I made a AOL homepage for my favorite couple and learned HTML.

3:59And then I made Hangman and Bingo and other soap opera related games for this website when I was 11 or so. And it actually was really popular. And a number of actors and actresses hired me to make their official websites. They definitely did not know that I was 12. You're literally 12 years old and you're The agent to the star. So what did you tell them? I just kind of left the details out. There was no video conferencing at that time, and they could mail a check. So it just worked out. What kind of money were you making when you were 12 years old? Was it good money? Very serious money, actually.

4:30Because again, they didn't know I was 12, so that was not factored into the pricing. And being able to hire someone to make a webpage at that time was a fairly rare skill. That business continued until I was well into my 20s. And then you started your bureaucracy hacking when you were in high school, right? because you tried to figure out a way to get out of high school as fast as possible. I did. I loved high school. I actually met my husband there as well, so it really worked out for me. But I couldn't maintain the pace of keeping my own business and going to school, plus all the extracurriculars and all the demands.

5:02So I read the rule book, and it said that the one thing that kept you senior year was that you had to have four years of English, but they would give you credit if you took the AP English exams, and there are two, at least there was at the time. And so I snuck to a different school. I took the other AP exam for senior year. I passed it flying colors. And then I made a case back to my headmaster that I should be able to graduate from high school. And he said, I think you're right. He handed me my diploma, I think the first week of August before senior year started. And then I found a college that would take all my existing AP credits.

5:35So I actually went from being a junior in high school to a junior in college in one week. And did you graduate from college? I didn't. I really loved my business. I stayed for a year and I thought, you know, I'll go back next year and it still hasn't happened yet. After high school, you kept on doing your, I don't know, call it your AOL business and that was what you were doing for a big chunk of your early life? Yeah. So I made websites and I was a self-taught programmer, but I started funneling that into more of what I think I've always intrinsically loved doing, which is business process re-engineering.

6:06So instead of just making celebrity fan websites, I worked with auto dealerships, other sorts of companies and said, how can you use technology to make your processes work faster and be friendlier for your customers? And at the time, if you Google business efficiency consultant, I was like the only search result, which led to me being offered to write business efficiency for dummies.

6:31So you were doing this efficiency consulting and then somehow you made your way to Washington? How did that all happen? I was involved in the early Seattle tech startup scene. And I heard from a local blog that the city of Seattle was offering a$20 ,000 prize to the company that could make the best web app that used open city data. And I thought this was stupid because$20 ,000 is not enough to make a real app that would really be in production. All you're getting is a prototype that won't ever see the light of day. And so I investigated a source of this$20 ,000 prize, and it was coming from a mayor's advisory board on technology.

7:10So I applied to join the board. I was accepted. Then I volunteered to run the committee overseeing the prize, and then I canceled the prize. And we put that money instead on building relationship and community between the city IT team and the Seattle tech startup community. Meanwhile, I see chief technology officer of the United States, Todd Park, on TechCrunch Disrupt, and he says, I'm looking for a bunch of tech-savvy entrepreneurs to come into government and disrupt it. And when I heard this, my first, second, and third thought was, I am totally not qualified. I'm self-employed. I didn't finish college.

7:44I'm a libertarian. But it said if you sent in your resume, you'd be added to their mailing list. And I thought that could be useful in my committee. So I bought a$3 bright blue resume template online that said, I'm Marina at the top. And I sent it in. expecting to hear nothing. And I actually cried in my apartment that night. And I'm not an emotional person, but I felt like I was a failure. Like I had made so many life decisions that meant I would never be qualified for this really cool sounding opportunity. And I felt really down on myself. A few months later, I get a call from Richard Culotta at the Department of Education asking if I want to be his presidential innovation fellow.

8:22And my first reaction was like, I didn't apply to the Department of Education. And luckily he didn't let me hang up the phone. And by the end of it, he said, your blue resume really stood out in the pile. And so I got on an airplane. I crashed on a friend's couch in Washington, D.C. And then I joined the first class of Presidential Innovation Fellows. It was a new branch of the White House Fellows Program and worked on open data at the Department of Education. And a year to the date, I became the chief technology officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Now, did you apply to that job or did they find you or did you have an interest in Veterans Affairs?

8:53So at that time, the VA disability claims backlog was on the front page of the newspapers, there were literally offices buckling under the weight of unprocessed disability claims. President Obama called an emergency all-hands meeting at the White House to help the VA solve it. And he invited Todd Park, who is the CTO of the United States. Todd had a conflict and asked if I would go and take notes for him. And I immediately fell in love with the problem of solving VA disability claims because it wasn't a technology problem so much as a business process engineering problem. So I flew around the country for a few months.

9:26I mapped out the process end to end. And then the White House appointed me to be the CTO of the VA. I've lost track of how old you are, but you don't seem very old at this point from what you've told me. I was 27. I think I still am the youngest appointed C-suite executive in the federal government. I think it really speaks to the, I don't mean to be self-deprecating, but to the dearth of technical talent around at the time. It is slightly crazy looking back that they put a 27-year-old in it, but I also think I did a good job. So I don't know. Yeah. So a few years earlier, you were working as an independent consultant, and now you're the chief technology officer at the VA.

10:01You must have a huge team and a huge budget. How do you deal with that change? So the VA is the largest civilian agency. It has 330 ,000 full-time employees, and IT alone has a$4.6 billion budget and 16 ,000 staff members. However, I was the chief technology officer, not the chief information officer. So when I started, they told me my job description was to redefine the art of the possible for how America honors and serves its veterans. And to do that, I had a zero dollar budget and zero staff members. That doesn't really sound like a recipe for success to me. I was sitting in my office one of the first days and nobody would let me into their meetings because they were really afraid of the impact that the new person who had just been auditing the VA from the White House was going to have on their projects.

10:49So I was fairly lonely that first week. But I really thought actively about this documentary I had seen about this guy that trades his red paperclip through a succession of barters for a house. And I'm literally thinking about this and I'm sitting in my office and a member of the executive secretary team pops her head in and says, hey, Marina, have you seen Green Pack 82? And I said, I don't know what a Green Pack is, but I have nothing else to do. Let me help you find Green Pack 82. And it turns out when members of Congress write letters to the VA, they actually get hand delivered and then put in a green folder.

11:24And then anybody that may have feedback on the response would have to get their hands on this green folder and handwrite their edits into it. And so the executive secretary team was going all around this building all the time saying, who has this green folder? And I said, what if we printed barcodes on the front of the folder and then you could keep track of who had last checked in. And I had unknowingly unlocked this unbelievably powerful source of political capital because now I was best friends with the executive secretary team that controls everybody's meetings. I thought VA could be a veteran-centered organization where a veteran could actually get all the services and benefits that they were entitled to in one cohesive place.

12:06As part of traveling around the country, I had spent some time sitting at VA hospitals. And I remember meeting this woman who really changed my life. Her husband had been hospitalized at the VA for the last nine months. He had not been in the VA for decades because his private sector doctor told him he would never be able to get through the application process. And one day his doctor was out sick and a different doctor came in and said, hey, why don't you apply for VA healthcare? So he gets into VA and as the woman's telling me her life story, I'm asking her what other VA benefits and services do you take advantage of?

12:40Because they were eligible for home loan, their kids could go to college on the GI Bill. And she looks at me and says, what other benefits and services? So it struck me, you could live at the VA for nine months and not have any idea of all of the things that you were eligible for. We were really falling down on that. And so I laid this vision out for what a 21st century VA would look like and partnered with a colleague who had beautiful visual design skills, Molly, and I spent an entire paycheck printing this vision document book out at Kinko's. I later discovered that the VA also has a printing press on the sixth floor, but I hadn't found that corner yet.

13:17And so I leveraged my relationships with the executive secretaries to get meetings with all of my senior leader peers at the VA, and I gave them copies of this vision book. So right now you are working as the chief technology officer, but essentially nobody knows anything about you. You deliver this thing. And what happens next? I start seeing it peaking out of every senior leader's briefing book. They're carrying it around with them. My next meeting, I get called into the public affairs office who is angry with me because this vision book had been faxed to an investigative reporter who had follow-up questions.

13:49And I knew I was onto something then. And the senior leaders helped me give it to the secretary. And when he came back, he said, hey, Marina, I believe in this vision. and I will give you a headcount of two people, which was much larger than my zero.

14:05You're listening to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt and his conversation with Marina Nitza. After this short break, they'll return to talk about how Marina's working to fix foster care and her personal experience with type 1 diabetes.

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15:47Did you notice how reserved Marina was initially? She said, oh, I was not good at being a child. I started a business, but they only bought stuff because I was three years old. And she described the things she did, but she usually left the most impressive part out until I prodded her, and then she revealed it. But as the conversation went on, I think she realized I was going to force her to reveal her accomplishments, so she started to volunteer them much more freely. For the rest of the interview, I want to ask about her latest work-related endeavors, but also about something much more personal that came up at the dinner table that night a few years back, her lifelong battle with type 1 or juvenile diabetes.

16:25I have to admit, I knew nothing about type 1 diabetes before that conversation, and what I learned from her that night was stunning to me. She's never talked publicly about her diabetes before, But I asked her in advance of this interview whether she'd be comfortable sharing her story, and she said yes.

16:44So eventually you left the VA. Did you do what you wanted to do at the VA? My vision booklet had 48 ideas in it. Each one was a couple of sentences. What if VA could attract and hire some of the top technologists in the nation for tours of duty? What if VA could have one website where a veteran or their family members could apply for all their benefits? And when I left the VA, we had accomplished 46 of those 48 things. Wow. Great. Which my team had to remind me of because it was five years later. I was on to a whole new list of seemingly impossible tasks. But it was a really nice moment before I left my office for the last time to go back through that booklet and feel good about what we had accomplished.

17:23And even now, I can go to va.gov and see the real-time scorecard and see that a million veterans have enrolled in health care because of something that we built. 700 ,000 people have applied for disability claims, and that feels pretty good. What did you do next? I thought I was going to take some time off, but I also knew that I really wanted to work in foster care. I had been something called a court-appointed special advocate since I was about 21. It's sort of like Big Brothers Big Sisters, but you are legally assigned to a foster child's case. I describe it as being like their tile grout, probably not the sexiest of descriptions, but my job is to help keep them from falling through the cracks.

17:59And I saw these kids falling through crack after crack. And before I ever went to government, it was a space I was interested in bringing my business process re-engineering to, but I didn't quite know how. And it turns out that Richard Coulada, who had called me to join the government for the first time, had then gone on to be the chief innovation officer for the state of Rhode Island. And he said, hey, why don't you come here and see if there's anything that we could do in the foster care space? When I talked with families that had dropped out of becoming foster parents, they said The process is so complicated to get through and so lengthy.

18:32And I call and nobody has any idea who I am or if you've gotten my medical records or how many training classes I have left. If this is how you're treating me when you're recruiting me, how are you going to treat me when I have a child in my home that's in crisis? And so I don't want in. And so I worked with Rhode Island on redesigning their licensing process. And the problem is that this licensing process is long and complicated and discouraging, and those incentives get in the way of people signing up to be foster parents. Absolutely. In foster care, licensing is the process that a family will go through to get approved to take a child into their home.

19:11In foster care, we have two goals. We want to safely keep kids out of foster care in the first place. And then if you are in foster care, we want your first placement to be your last placement. and to be with someone that you know that's in your community. And either you stay with them forever or you go back home. But when you dig into that in practice, so many family placements can't get through the licensing process that we put kids with strangers. We move kids 160 times. And then the easiest path tends to be putting them in a group home. And so I run a 16-state working group now that helps redesign and re-engineer licensing processes where I actually want to make deep systemic reform.

19:54And some things we found in our research, for example, are that the very first question that's asked in most states is a very intimidating one where you have to list everything on your criminal record. And I've met a 69-year-old grandmother who is crying and telling me she is so embarrassed that she can't even fill out that form because she knows that she'll be rejected for a shoplifting conviction from 40 years ago. And I'm telling her, like, that's definitely not disqualifying. Please fill out that form. But because that's the first barrier that she faces, she assumes she can't get through it.

20:25So tell me your reimagining. How would the process look if you had your way? It would be very brief. It would be a background check and a sinkhole check, as I describe it, where I make sure that your home is structurally sound. And as needed for individual children, there could be more of a safety plan there. But licensing standards have gone crazy. You won't get licensed if you don't use recycling. You won't get licensed if your dog who's pregnant doesn't have rabies vaccinations. and stories are just crushing because the people designing them are thinking from a liability perspective, but they're not seeing that it means that these kids are not living with their family members.

21:00I totally understand because when I adopted a daughter from China, I was going alone to pick her up in China. And so it meant that for 24 hours, I was going to be a foster parent because my ex-wife wasn't going to have met and signed the papers for my daughter. And as a consequence, we had to go through all of the licensing to be foster parents for one day. And it was intimidating. For instance, they came to the house and made sure we had appropriate fire extinguishers and other things, which I suppose is a sensible thing in general. But if I was allowed to raise my own children and no one thinks I need a fire extinguisher, it's strange that I need one to raise a foster child.

21:38The strangest is many states will allow you to be placed with your grandmother based on just a background check and a sinkhole check, but they won't give them any financial resources until they go through all the other requirements. And to me, that is the worst of all because it's really putting up so many insurmountable obstacles to give family members the financial resources that they need. Whereas if we put them with a stranger, we will suddenly materialize daycare funds and funds for fire extinguishers and all this sort of thing. And we really need to focus more on how we make licensing and resourcing family members as easy and frictionless as possible.

22:14Do you think we're too quick to remove children from the home or too slow? We are generally too, well, it's not so much that we're too quick, it's that we remove them for lots of unacceptable reasons. Even the federal government estimates that 60 % of kids are in foster care because they're poor. Poor children are disproportionately exposed to mandated reporters. So every time their parent takes them out of school to go get a housing voucher that they have to wait all day for in the office, that housing voucher representative is mandated to report that child is truant from school, even though the parent had no other mechanism to safely get their child home from school and get the voucher.