Meet Brian Pugh

Brian Pugh

As only the second director of the Stennis Center for Public Policy, the Meridian native works to get citizens active in public service

Thank you again for letting us sit down and talk with you. You volunteered and later worked for the center when you were a student at Mississippi State. What about that experience led you to want to come back here as executive director?

I volunteered for the center as an undergrad and worked here as a graduate student. I always thought that Rex Buffington, my predecessor, had the best job. It was just amazing being around a lot of people who had a passion for public service. It really didn’t seem like work. It seemed like it was just fun. 

One of the specific missions of the Stennis Center is to promote public service in America. I think a lot of young people especially think of public service as politics and running for elected office, but it’s so much more. I never waned to run for office, but I always knew I wanted to work in government, so I really enjoy just letting students know that there are other options. Most public servants are not elected officials. They’re working in state government, they’re working in local government or on the federal level. And it’s a diverse group of people too. Just here in Mississippi you have the Army Corps of Engineers. You have the Stennis Space Center down on the coast, which is NASA. They have rocket scientists and other really, really smart people. 

Can you explain a little bit more about the center’s mission? I think people in the area know that it’s here and know that it broadly deals with public policy, but maybe not more specifics.

Well, we don’t deal with policy. We deal with public service. That’s one of our primary missions. Most people mistake us for the Stennis Institute of Government, which is a part of Mississippi State University, but we’re not a part of Mississippi State. We are a federal legislative branch agency, and we promote public service, not only in Mississippi but throughout the country. When Congress created the Stennis Center in 1988, they were pretty intentional in that being a part of our mission. We have Democrats on our board and Republicans on our board, and that was the way it was made up. 

What are some of the programs that have pushed this mission of getting more people, and particularly young people, involved in public service?

The Stennis Center started working specifically with Mississippi State on the Novice Speech and Debate Program in I think 1996. The idea was if you target students that are interested in debate, they’re much more likely to want to go into public service. We work with the Presidential Scholars at Mississippi State University, which is part of the Honors College. Once every four years they’ll go to DC. They’ll go to a major city annually, and we usually sponsor some type of public service aspect of that trip. 

That’s what we do with young people. Other programming includes the training and development for Congressional Staff. The Stennis Fellows Program has been around since 1993-94. We work with senior level staffers. You have Democrats, Republicans, House members, Senate members, and we engage in dialogue. We have round table discussions where we bring experts in from all over the country to work with them. One of the amazing things about the program is when you’re seeing them interact with each other and discuss things, a lot of the times, you can’t even tell who’s a Democrat and who’s a Republican because they’re all so dedicated to making Congress better. 

You also have some programs promoting women in public office.

Ready to Run was one. We worked in collaboration with Millsaps College when we had it down in Jackson this year. It’s the one program that focuses more on politics and possibly running for office. That’s a little bit outside our mission, but this is the one time I can solicit money from the Mississippi parties. This year, the Mississippi Democratic Party and the Mississippi Republican Party both sponsored the event, and we took care of the remaining cost. We made it free to all the women who wanted to participate. 

Another women’s program is New Leadership, a collaboration with Mississippi University for Women. We get female college students from throughout the state that participate in a week-long session of training at MUW and we fund a Jackson trip. One of the things I really wanted to do this year with new leadership with The W is, in addition to having politicians, have more women in public service. 

Rex Buffington was executive director of the Stennis Center since it began. What are you planning to keep the same and what new programs do you want to implement?

One of the things that I mentioned to the staff about possibly changing is Southern Women of Public Service — change it to something like Women in Public Service, so we can reach D.C. women and women in other parts of the country and promote women in public service in general. It’s not just a Southern problem right now. We need more women all over the country. There’s a really good chance Ready to Run will go back to the Stennis Institute, because that program is specific to Mississippi and they actually had that program first. Everything else we plan to keep the same. 

One new thing that I’m looking to do is what I’m calling the Stennis Service Corp. I’m thinking of working with not only the city of Starkville but nonprofit organizations and finding ways to pair Mississippi State students and high school students from Lowndes County and Oktibbeha County to service opportunities. What better way to learn about public service than to go and do an internship or go and volunteer for some type of entity that provides some type of service? Since we’re here in Starkville, we can start locally and then expand on to Jackson and other states and then use the resources that we have in DC with our Congressional Fellows to expand there as well. It’s in its beginning stages, but we want to get that going hopefully next year. 

When we talk about the political climate in the United States today, we talk about polarization a lot. As you pointed out, your focus isn’t necessarily on people who are running, but how does that affect public service today?

I think that’s what you see a lot on TV, but I think there are members of Congress who still get along and who work together. At the Southern Women in Public Service conference in Ashville, North Carolina this year, we had Representative Martha Roby, a Republican from Alabama, serve on a panel with Terri Sewell who’s a Democrat from Alabama. They talked to the women there about their relationship working in Congress. They didn’t agree policy-wise, but they maintained their friendship and I think it was just remarkable that they got a chance to express their relationship to the audience. One of the things that they said was there are other Congressmen and senators that work together too, but that’s not the stuff that makes the news. I think it was one of the highlights of the conference and it was really good for participants to see that. If I didn’t see that myself, to be honest with you, I would probably find it quite hard to believe based on just what you see on TV all the time.

Interview by Isabelle Altman

Photo by Jennifer Mosbrucker