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Anything BUT Politics
A groundbreaking new podcast, Anything BUT Politics, is redefining how we view political figures by focusing on everything about them—except their political careers.
Anything BUT Politics
She jumped out of airplanes before jumping into politics.
Representative Erica Layon's path to the New Hampshire House weaves through California sunshine, MIT classrooms, the adrenaline-charged floors of options trading, and the open skies of skydiving before landing in the granite landscape of New Hampshire politics.
Growing up in a master-planned California community, Layon's intellectual curiosity led her to remarkable experiences even before college. Her high school offered an extraordinary opportunity—a year-long cadaver class where students dissected human bodies. This early hands-on experience with anatomy nearly launched her toward orthopedic surgery until she realized her limitations working without sleep. When MIT acceptance came, she couldn't refuse, though her academic journey would wind through biomedical engineering and architecture before settling on economics.
The high-stakes world of options trading taught Layon to maintain composure under pressure and make solid decisions with limited information—skills that translate perfectly to legislative work. Her professional training included 100 hours of supervised poker playing to analyze decision-making patterns, while her personal life took an unexpected turn after a chance meeting with her future husband in an airport. Their connection led to skydiving adventures, including a proposal where he attached an engagement ring to his parachute pin during a pre-jump safety check.
After nearly 300 jumps (and one broken femur), motherhood and career shifts as a medical device analyst shaped her next chapter. When COVID arrived, Layon recognized potential legislative pitfalls on the horizon. Despite having once made it a life goal that "nobody I didn't know would know my name," she filed to run for office on the last day possible. Now serving her third term while raising three boys and managing forest land, Leon brings her analyst's skill of "looking around corners" to committee work.
Hi everyone, I'm Tiffany Yeti.
Speaker 2:And I'm Tom Prasol.
Speaker 1:And we are so pleased to welcome you to another episode of Anything but Politics. Where we discuss and interview different political leaders about their lives and pretty much anything.
Speaker 2:But politics. And today our guest is in her third term in the New Hampshire House. I think she started out on the Education Committee and then she was vice chair in her second term on the Health and Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee and is currently the vice chair of the Executive Departments and Administrations Committee. So we want to welcome Representative Erica Leon.
Speaker 3:Thanks. It's great to be here with you guys today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on. Wow, I mean, that was a lot right there. Just you've done so much in a short period of time. But because this is anything but politics, we don't really want to talk about the politics side, but you've had kind of a roundabout way of coming to New Hampshire. So I guess I would just start with where are you from originally?
Speaker 3:So I was born in the San Fernando Valley. My parents moved out there after my dad's finger froze to the car in Michigan one winter.
Speaker 3:And they said that's it, we're going somewhere where ice only comes in a glass. So we were living out there. I grew up there. I grew up in a really amazing little community. It was one of the first master-planned communities where we had a park at the end of the street and then a school and a green belt and a pool with a community center, which was where we voted and did everything else in a parking lot where we got to play street hockey. And it was a wonderful, perfect childhood, you know, except for things like earthquakes, divorces, all that fun stuff.
Speaker 3:But in high school I actually got to do a cadaver class stuff. But in high school I actually got to do a cadaver class. We had an amazing teacher, nancy Bowman, and she had a class where we'd go. We'd pick up four cadavers from UCLA, we'd tour and see a bunch of different medical schools UCSD, loma Linda and we spent a full year dissecting them with six students on each cadaver. A human cadaver, a human cadaver Wow. We had to apply to get into the class. Amgen actually funded it so that you could have people who were learning more about life science. You know, it's one of those early STEM things that was happening in the schools and of the 25 of us in the class quite a few people went on to careers in medicine. I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon and I realized with that class I was no good when I stayed up all night. So I figured if I was an orthopedic surgeon people would die who didn't need to. So I changed my mind after that class.
Speaker 2:So what sparked the interest in taking a cadaver class, because that's not for everybody.
Speaker 1:No, I would be terrified.
Speaker 3:Oh, I didn't even like dissecting the minks in one of my classes, but it just was really interesting.
Speaker 2:Um, I really like like anatomy and biology and I like understanding how things work.
Speaker 3:Um, I think that's probably my biggest part of me, I mean between making arrowheads as a kid, um, just everything else that I've dug into and I said there's a challenge, there's something I can learn, it's really unique and I should try it. Um, so I did, and, and one of the girls ended up being a medical examiner. Um, actually one of the troop leaders. Um husbands in my growing up in Girl Scouts, her husband was a judge, and so we met the first DA who prosecuted a crime with hair DNA.
Speaker 3:Oh wow, and it was living forensic files. You know, you get to hear about it, you get to see it and I wanted to learn more.
Speaker 2:But you know, I think that's that's really great and smart, that you know you were interested and you were given the opportunity to try that out before, like you know, applying to college and finding out, you know, $30,000 later. Similar story in high school. I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon as well. I broke my leg in four places playing baseball and got really into it and I would shadow an orthopedic surgeon in the operating room my senior year. So I got to see hip replacements. I could probably do a carpal tunnel release on you now if I needed to. But the one thing that stopped me from pursuing that further was I came to New Hampshire and realized I loved politics but we won't talk about that but also chemistry. I hated chemistry more than anything in the world and I was like I've been in the OR, I've never seen him use chemistry, but I think it was a way of weeding us out. But I think, having that opportunity, I think more places should really take advantage of stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Oh, it was fantastic. It was such an innovative part, and that's because it was a really high-income area, so everybody could choose to go to any of the other schools or any of the private schools in the area. Choose to go to any of the other schools or any of the private schools in the area. But they didn't, because they made sure that our schools were really, really good, because there was already that natural competition and that natural choice. So the only reason people went to private school was because they wanted to go to Catholic school. Otherwise, why would you choose anything but public in that district? Oh, that sounds like an amazing place to grow up. Yeah, so my mom chose it when we moved from the Valley out to West Lake for the schools, because she was a teacher and she knew how important it was.
Speaker 1:So you're in high school, you're you're dissecting a cadaver over the course of a year, which would probably give me nightmares like forever into infinity. But uh, so what was your next step when you graduated?
Speaker 3:Um, I applied to MIT and I got in, and you don don't turn that down. I actually did that because I applied there, because one of the girls I knew got in and I said, oh my goodness, I can't believe somebody from my school is going to MIT. So I figured I'd try to. So I actually wrote my essay on developing a prosthetic hand that would allow a concert violinist to return to his first performance with a hand that could sense and feel and be good enough for a violinist to perform. So I wanted to do biomedical engineering and then I took organic chemistry and I realized that organic chemistry and me do not mix.
Speaker 3:Exactly. So, and that's what what permanently moved me off of that path. I've also always been in love with architecture. My great-grandfather designed the Hay-Adams in DC.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Sheraton Carlton. Yes, he was the Sultan of Turkey's architect, and that's why in the Armenian Genocide, he and his wife and kids weren't killed, even though the rest of the family was because he was conscripted into the Turkish army and he was building the bridges and everything else. So I've always loved architecture, I've loved neighborhoods. So I started off, I did architecture. That's what I declared as my major and then I realized what architects do for the first 10 years. You have to do 17 years to become an architect and you basically make less than I was paying in tuition for at least 10 years and you're working on a lot of projects that aren't houses and aren't neighborhoods. And so I realized that maybe that wasn't the best economic decision and I was also enjoying my economics classes. So I switched to be an economics major.
Speaker 2:I was also enjoying my economics classes, so I switched to be an economics major. So, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, so real quick. Just to go back to your great-grandfather. So he was an architect for the Sultan of Turkey. He said yes, and then he got conscripted into the.
Speaker 3:Turkish army. Turkish army In World War I.
Speaker 2:And then, what brought him to the United States? Or did it not bring him? Did it bring his children?
Speaker 3:So after the war I think it was after the war that he designed a lot of what was in no, looking at the dates it wasn't, but he had designed a lot of Smyrna. And you know, I don't know the exact timeline of when they came, but they left and they sailed across in, I think, 1912, from Smyrna where the city had burned and everything except for one of his buildings that was made out of stone. That one stayed standing, but everything that was made out of wood burned. So he and the family came out. They had somebody in, I think, watertown, massachusetts, who was the one who could vouch for them. So they came. They came with nothing, um, except for his skills, and so then, um, then they just started working. He ended up getting hired by Henry Wardman, um, who built most of DC.
Speaker 1:Wow, what a story, what a great American story that's, that's incredible.
Speaker 2:And they came to. They came to Boston and then they came to DC.
Speaker 3:Well, okay, dc Okay.
Speaker 2:And then uh, so you were. And then they came to DC Okay, DC, Okay. And then uh, so you were, your family was East coast, Then they went to Michigan, yes.
Speaker 3:Then California, yes, and what? What brought you back to New Hampshire, Um. So I was at MIT, Um, I one of a conversation, uh, with one of my sorority sisters. Boyfriends turned to his summer job and he was working for a trading company, trading options, and that sounded really interesting. So I applied for an internship with Susquehanna, which is an options trading firm, and it was really interesting, really exciting. They didn't have a spot for me, so I went and took a quality control thing at Rockwell and then I got a call halfway through my summer saying that a spot had opened up in San Francisco. Did I want to go for the rest of the summer? I said, oh yeah, Threw everything into my Camaro. Went up there and no, I didn't have the Camaro yet.
Speaker 3:Threw everything into my little car and spent the summer surfing couches and working on the options floor in San Francisco and that was amazing. It was one of the most intense, exciting, high pressure situations that I had ever been in up until then and I really loved it, especially because it started when the bell rang and it ended when it did. So we're just Pavlov's dogs, but it was great.
Speaker 1:And so what would you be doing, Like what was your responsibilities for that?
Speaker 3:So I was pretty much a clerk. So I was helping make sure that all the trades that they had done and posted. I was getting information to people, helping out by bringing things to the trading pits. But when I ended up taking that job afterwards the traders you're sitting there in a pit, you have all the options that are traded, maybe 35 companies, and you have all the different months, all the different strikes. So with 35 companies, you probably have 300 to 400 things in front of you that you need to make a market on. You need to say what you'd buy and sell it for each one of those four and how many. So you build it off of math models. So it's a good thing.
Speaker 3:My economics degree at MIT was five classes short of a math major. Had I known that when I switched, I wouldn't have switched to econ, but I survived. And so basically people are coming in and they're asking what your market is on something you know. I want to buy 100 Amgen July 20 puts and you'd say how much it is, and July Amgen would probably be a nickel. I'd sell them for a nickel, although I'd be kind of scared because why is somebody thinking that that thing's going to go from $280 now to $20? And you're just constantly doing that. And it was once you're a trader and once you're on the floor.
Speaker 3:There was a guy behind me who would just pick on me all morning. He'd make fun of me, he'd talk about oh all those nerds from MIT, basically to get me to make a mistake. You had a heckler, exactly, and in the afternoon afternoon in San Francisco, you know, because it's the same hours he'd start making mistakes. So I would get my account that I was trading for. I'd make a couple thousand dollars off of him a day in mistakes that he would made, where I'd just pick them off and it was great. It definitely gave me some experience for politics, because when somebody's going to heckle you and somebody's going to push on you and somebody's going to do that and try and force you to make an error, I've already done that. I've already been there. I'm not making money doing this, you know, but I know to keep my composure most of the time.
Speaker 1:That's a great learning lesson. Whatever happened to that guy? I'm not sure I doubt they stayed in touch.
Speaker 3:No we didn't stay in touch. That options floor closed. It's now some gym A gym no. Christmas cards? No, Christmas cards, no. But there is a Facebook group and it's kind of interesting seeing people I knew back in that life.
Speaker 2:So that sounds really high, stressful, high intensity, and I'm assuming you had to have some sort of training. And I actually read somewhere perhaps maybe your campaign website that you went through poker training to prepare for this.
Speaker 3:Yes, so that was part of the whole trainer trader training program. So I went after college, I was a clerk again, like I had been in the summer intern, and then we went for, I think, two or two and a half months. We moved to Ballot Kenwood, pennsylvania, and we stayed there and we did a lot of math, we did a lot of training and we had to play a hundred hours of supervised poker where they would ask why we made that bet, why we chose that amount of money and what led up to that. Because it was.
Speaker 3:It's basically decision making with incomplete information. It's the same thing that you're doing on the options floor when you're trading, because you you'll never know all the information. It's the same thing that you're doing on the options floor when you're trading, because you'll never know all the information. You'll only know as much as you can and you need to make good decisions even when there's still questions. And that actually translates I know it's anything but politics, but that translates to what we do legislatively and it kind of helps me understand that you're only going to understand part of it. You won't understand all of it, but you just do the best you can and then correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what an incredible education, because poker teaches you, I mean, so many different things, like how to read people, you know, are they bluffing or whatnot how to make predictions. I mean I've read that it gives women confidence. You know, obviously, math skills, which you know, but but that's incredible. What do you? What else do you think you might have gotten out of it? I mean, 100 hours, that's pretty intense.
Speaker 2:You can count cards, I'm assuming right, no. I can't count cards. There's casinos right down the street we could go to. I wish I knew how to count cards. We should go down there.
Speaker 3:Actually. So at MIT there was a whole orientation part when you came in as a freshman and I had two guys who were my orientation guys. Ends up that those were two of the guys that were in that group that that book 21 was written about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a good. They were the card counters, yeah.
Speaker 3:And then the movie. Uh, one of the guys that I grew up with, whose dad was my doctor, was in the movie. So it was weird that I knew the guys who were actually the story. They'd pay, they'd post $6,000 bar bills on the fraternity house doors. We didn't understand it until later on. And then I knew Sam, who was in the movie. So it's just weird. It's a small world. People don't realize how small it really is it is a small world.
Speaker 2:That was a great movie. I had completely forgotten about it.
Speaker 3:I'm glad you reminded me so I can go back and watch it. I I think I can watch it with my kids. My son actually took a poker class, so he enjoys playing poker as well, and he's how old. He's 12. 12?. Yeah, the 11-year-old's starting to learn that too. But good math skills, yeah, I mean get them started young, right? Yes, and I felt terrible. First tournament.
Speaker 2:I was in with him.
Speaker 3:I'm the one who knocked him out of the tournament. But if I have the cards you need to play it I would have been teaching him the wrong lesson if I didn't go ahead and knock him out.
Speaker 1:No, you definitely have to. It's funny I was on a cruise with my daughter and she was 18. She could go in and play and she wanted to play blackjack and she was like killing it. She was like. I was like where did this come from? Not me Must be your father.
Speaker 2:Anyway, that's good though. So that's really interesting that you wouldn't let him win right, like you didn't just, you know, throw the game. I actually was watching a documentary about Derek Jeter and him and his dad would watch the Price is Right in the morning before he went to like first grade and his dad would smoke him on everything he's like. Looking back, I was like in first grade. I don't know what a microwave costs, you know, but his dad always told him like if you want to win, you got to work hard. So it's a good life lesson.
Speaker 1:That is a good lesson.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's one that my mom always did with me. She wouldn't let me win, so it was the rite of passage when I could beat her at different games and tried to keep that up too.
Speaker 2:My dad used to always just be like oh, this game's broken, that's why you beat me. It's your dad.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But so I was in San Francisco, I was trading options. It was great, except, you know, half of the guys that were running deals basically on the trading floor. Some of them were running drugs on the streets of Oakland once the day was done and we were out at 1.30. So the number of people that I got to know was very small and it was mostly traders and there were some amazing people there, but it was really limited and I didn't really like living in San Francisco. So when I had been in Philadelphia, I actually met a guy who lived in Manhattan and I'm like, ah, it was. And the day I broke, even at my company they offered me a position to transfer out to Boston to work with the people who invest for mutual funds and that sort of thing. And I took it. You know, I followed. I said you know what, if it's going to work out, boston, new York are close enough. It's at least closer than San Francisco and New York city.
Speaker 1:And Boston was kind of, in some ways, like your home away from home, right, yes, it's where I had lived.
Speaker 3:I lived, my sorority house was right in Kenmore Square and I got to enjoy all of that and I moved just down the street from there. I was right in Back Bay. The whole time enjoying living in the financial district Ended up so I was research sales. I was basically calling everybody with all of the research recommendations our analysts had, but then they'd ask questions sometimes. I didn't like handing it off when it got interesting. Going back to talking about the artificial hand and the cadavers, I ended up choosing to work with a team that was doing implantable medical devices so hip replacements, artificial hearts, heart valves, diabetes technology and that was phenomenal. It was so interesting and I got to dig into it and learn so much about all these different companies and I really loved doing that. We were looking at some of the neurostimulators that they have for Parkinson's or for pain and I got to learn every day and I got to share that information with people and not everybody gets that chance and it was just. I was so lucky to have that.
Speaker 1:I was so lucky to find that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so how long were you there doing that? So I was in, I moved to Boston in 03. And I was there about a year or so. It was good. I missed my mom, I missed my family, I missed the sun, and one of the times I was flying back and forth I actually ended up meeting a guy in the Phoenix airport. How does that happen? I was flying from LA to albuquerque for new years. I had had it was my first connecting flight in years and I had been bumped to another flight and I had an hour to go until him and I didn't want to be the next person. Are we really delayed an hour? So I was just hanging around by the gate and this guy comes running through the running through the airport and he just catches my eye, like one of those movies.
Speaker 3:Just totally cheesy. Maybe it's also because he was running with a briefcase in one hand and a backpack on the other Ended up being a parachute, not a backpack. And he went and asked and he was flying to Manchester when I was flying to Albuquerque and his best friend was working for Susquehanna, same company as me, and he was working for Amgen. And we struck up a conversation, grabbed a beer there at the airport, talked and then made plans yeah, sparks flew. Wow, Sparks flew.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Can I go back for a second, though? You said he was wearing a parachute yes, yes, in an airport, so why?
Speaker 3:Because it's life-saving equipment and you don't want to put it underneath the plane, where somebody might mess with it so generally if you fly with a parachute, you want to carry it on instead of checking it.
Speaker 3:It was interesting the one time when I was flying and I was in the emergency exit row and they kept asking me to take my bags from the overhead and put it under my seat, and then I said okay, let me get this straight. You were asking me to take my bags from the overhead and put it under my seat, and then I said okay, let me get this straight. You were asking me to take my parachute out of the overhead and put my parachute under the seat in front of me when I'm sitting right next to the emergency exit door. I don't think that's. I don't have any intention of using it, but I don't think that's a good idea.
Speaker 2:And then they realized what they were doing, so that's great. So he obviously was a skydiver.
Speaker 3:Yes, he was a skydiver.
Speaker 2:And so did you pick that up, that hobby as well.
Speaker 3:I did. I did so. He was living in Concord, I was living in Boston. We ended up getting together and having. You know, it was all history once we met and he went to a thing called Safety Day.
Speaker 3:So in skydiving, you know, if you make a mistake it could be fatal. So every March they put out an issue of parachutists and they talk about everybody who died in the previous year, and why? Because they do incident reports to try and understand what happened. Because is it a parachute malfunction? Is it error from the person who's jumping? Is it a pilot error? If it's an aircraft crash? Because you want to learn from other people, you don't want to make those same mistakes and you want to reduce the number of incidents. So I went with him to jump town in orange for safety day and it was crazy because Gary actually pulled out a gun and stuck it up in the air and he's like now I got your attention. Well, this is no more dangerous than your parachute if you're not maintaining it. And so he had me pack his parachute later on. It was great to see all of it. And then he went and jumped it. It was nuts.
Speaker 3:And one day, when the skies cleared, I looked out there I said you know, I'd like to go for a jump. So we went to Pepperell and I did my first tandem. It was all right. Why, I think just because I wasn't in control. Okay, as a tandem you're strapped to somebody else, you're just along for the ride. It's not the same feeling in the air and it seemed cool. But I just wasn't sure if I wanted to do it again. But he was a skydiver. He had said if you make me choose between skydiving and you, I'm going to choose skydiving, and I think that's fair. I don't think that anybody should make anybody make a choice between them and something that they care about. So we were up in Vermont, you know, up in a field where there's a grass runway, and I was watching everybody jump and they looked like they were having a really good time. So I said, oh, I want to do this. So I got the ground school, then got my first couple jumps in and it was a lot of fun, that sounds.
Speaker 1:So how many jumps have you done? I think 297.
Speaker 3:Wow, yes, so I actually traveled around to a bunch of different drop zones as I was getting my license, got my actual license at Paris Valley in California, had a chance to jump out the back of an airliner because they had them up and running for a while and I got to do the DB Cooper jump right out the back and back on Memorial Day weekend of 2009,.
Speaker 3:It was my first jump back after breaking my ankle. I was running out of landing and twisted my ankle in a hole and I got out. I did a hop and pop. It's when you get out of the plane early and low, just so that, instead of having the skydive when you're flying your body, you just fly your parachute. So I did that. Came in for a landing, got scared, misjudged and, because I didn't want to pay for a repack, decided at the last minute I wasn't going to land in the swoop pond and I was going to go for the sand, but I caught my knee on the edge of the swoop pond so I broke my femur. Oh yeah, so that wasn't any fun.
Speaker 1:But at least Sounds like no fun. No, it sounds like no fun.
Speaker 3:No, no fun. But my friends had me, you know, in traction in the shade, ready to go within two minutes before anybody else came down from that load, so I ended up getting that fixed. That's another interesting story. I had seven jumps after that when I was back up in the air after it was healed, and then I was pregnant with my first kid.
Speaker 2:And I said you know what, with that track record, I don't have any business jumping out of airplanes anymore. So I've never jumped out of an airplane and I really don't have any intention, just because I'm afraid of heights. But I assume that it's like stunningly beautiful to see the landscape right While you're falling. So where, where's the? Where's the best place you've ever jumped? Or like your favorite jump you've ever done anywhere interesting?
Speaker 3:So I love Skydive New England. That's where we used to jump all the time. We had a summer house by the lake which was really just a decrepit old trailer that was by the swoop pond. But lots of good people, lots of good times. We've jumped in Mesquite Nevada, which was really cool with the landscape there in Mesquite Nevada, which was really cool with the landscape there.
Speaker 3:I think probably the coolest one was jumping out of the back of that airliner in Paris Valley. But a lot of times it's like all the different jumps are different. I mean, if you get out and you're doing formation work, it's like being a marching band in the sky. Otherwise it's like playing tag with your friends. But there's nothing like getting out of a plane at 14,000 feet just before sunset, opening up your parachute right there and then flying down with your friends. And at one point we were all flying a lot of eels which were fabric. That was five feet tall, 70 feet long and people would attach it with rubber bands that would break away if it caught into anything. And just watching people fly with those and just spiral down to land was just amazing.
Speaker 1:I thought that was incredible. Now you had mentioned perhaps because you talked about once you had kids you decided maybe you should stop. But I want to back up a little bit. So you got engaged somewhere. Did it have anything to do with jumping?
Speaker 3:Yes. So we, you know, we did things backwards. We bought the house before we got married. His Catholic parents loved that.
Speaker 3:But we were there, we were jumping one day and he asked you asked for a pin check. So you make sure, because you, when you pull out the parachute, you're you're basically pulling a pin out which allows it to deploy. And so he had this ring on the pin of his uh, of his parachute. So I said, oh, we're going to do a safety check. And 60 of my closest friends were gathered around to watch me check the pin on his parachute. And of course, I was just oblivious that day, so I didn't think there was anything weird about that and having two people running video while I was checking his pin. But you know, there it was, there was the ring on there and it was just such an amazing, special, special thing, because whenever we weren't working and it was summer, if it was warm, we were skydiving and it was just really special, although I did not go on the jump right after that, I was a little too giddy and emotional. So you said yes.
Speaker 2:I said yes, wanted to make sure the ring was on there snug before you start flying through the air.
Speaker 3:Exactly, that was another part I was worried about because, uh yes, he got me a nice ring and I did not want to drop that across the countryside.
Speaker 1:And you were surprised, like really like legitimately surprised by it. Didn't see it coming.
Speaker 3:I didn't see it coming. I definitely didn't expect him to do it that way. You know, I was hoping to get married. I was hoping he would propose, but you never know the timeline. But that was a complete surprise. I still have the video somewhere.
Speaker 2:So while you're jumping when you get engaged, you're still working as a medical device analyst, right, yes, yes, and then you have. This is too much, I'm just going to be a mom.
Speaker 3:So I had the first kid and my company got acquired by a big company and I did not want to get kept on just because I was pregnant. So fortunately I got laid off with everybody else. So I was able to not work when I was having my first kid. But when he was a few months old I got a call from the senior analyst I had worked with. He said hey, I found another company to work for, so went ahead, started working again because I still really enjoyed it, ended up being at a smaller company. When I got pregnant with my second kid I didn't have my health insurance through them. I didn't even bother telling him I was pregnant. My boss knew, my senior analyst knew, because we worked as a team, but the company company didn't.
Speaker 3:I had my second kid on a Saturday night and I was working Monday morning because it was earning season kind of like the budget season here is crazy for everybody in finance. From March until April or so it was, it was the year end and then it was first quarter. So we were to the wall and working 80 hours, 80 hours a week at least when I had a newborn. But I also knew how to do it. That was my life, and so I kept on going. But then, when he decided to retire, I wasn't about to step up into the role where you had to travel a week, a month, um, or more, and my husband also had travel for his job. So I just decided you know what? I'm going to stay home and raise my kids, yeah that's a lot.
Speaker 1:Yes, good for you. So when did so? Now you're home and you're raising the kids, and when did the political bug kind of bite you?
Speaker 3:So I've always. So I wanted to homeschool the kids, since before we even had the kids, but obviously depending on whether it fit their personalities. So I testify on some of the homes. Well, I didn't testify in homeschools until that I'd come up and testify on gun bills, anything else that came to my attention. There was a state of emergency, one where you would have been able to confiscate anything that was excess, like extra. If you had two cans of water, they could take one, the way it was written's, right after a blizzard. So I came up and said you know, we can't do this because we can't ask people to be prepared if we literally have a law written says that we can take your extra bike or your extra sweater. Um, so that blizzard was fortunate and people kept asking me to run and asking me to run and I'd testify, I'd be involved.
Speaker 3:But I didn't really have an interest in doing it, especially because growing up in California around all these celebrities, one of my big life goals was that nobody I didn't know would know my name. That, literally, was one of my driving factors and that may have even played into the fact that I didn't want the senior analyst role, because I didn't want to be that name, he'd get interviewed on CNBC and I didn't really want to be there with my name if I didn't want the senior analyst role. Because I didn't want to be that name, he'd get interviewed on CNBC and I didn't really want to be there with my name if I didn't know anybody. So during COVID, during that filing period, I started realizing that as an analyst, my job was to look around corners, see opportunities and bear traps, and I was worried that there were a lot of bear traps around the corner with COVID because people were going to react to it in different ways. We'd probably get a lot of bad legislation from it, because that's how people tend to react to crises.
Speaker 3:I realized I wasn't sure how I was going to deal with child care. I had my third child just before COVID hit. How I was going to have child care for three young kids. I said, well, it'll be more predictable if I'm in office. So I decided it would be okay if more people knew my name and I filed to run on the last day of the filing period just as a complete surprise candidate. And, as I do, I threw myself into the whole process and here I am volunteering for far too much. So I'm also vice chair of the administrative rules committee, jalcar. Okay, so I do a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're on the Alzheimer's and dementia subcommittee and you've got a lot on your plate.
Speaker 3:I do, I do. But if I can make a difference, I want to.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, and three kids too.
Speaker 3:So I mean it's not like you're you're just retired and have a lot of time on your hands. You're a busy woman. Mistakes that I saw happening in California, just some of the stuff that I've seen happen, happened 30 years earlier there and I'd rather sort of get in front of it and keep New Hampshire amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well. I think, New Hampshire is pretty amazing.
Speaker 3:But you know, and I'm so glad it's my adopted state. I love it and I'm not leaving.
Speaker 2:No, it's great and you know obviously you're super busy here, right, with all of the committees you're on, but luckily our session runs primarily from, you know, say, November-ish through the end of June. So what are you doing, like in the summers? Like you know, I know last summer you had a big excursion.
Speaker 3:You went on, but traveling is that Not so much traveling this summer, last summer. So my husband's family is also from California and just with family things and all of that, we've been out there a lot over the last few years. Last summer we drove to San Diego by way of North Dakota. So we figured it was the third time we were driving cross country. We weren't just going to do the straight across shot because it was getting boring. It was the third time we were driving cross country. We weren't just going to do the straight across shot because it was getting boring.
Speaker 3:And my husband's family, when they came to the US from Lebanon, settled up in the far northern corner of North Dakota. So we drove out that way, saw it it was amazing Got to see Fort Union and that's when it really sunk in my head that the glass beads that the Indians traded were actually from Italy and I know, I heard that when I was a kid. But when it took us four days to get there where they were traded, where they came into the U? S from New Hampshire driving a car on modern highways, I really understood just what a big deal that was.
Speaker 3:Yeah so it's nice to be able to have those experiences and share that with the kids. And then we drove down and stopped in Yosemite, because I used to go to Yosemite all the time with my family and my mom and brother came up and we got to get in little tubes and little boats and float down the Merced just like I always did as a kid, and it was great to do that with. You know, from my four-year-old to my mom, who's a couple years older than me, because we both started late and it was such a great experience.
Speaker 3:But this summer sticking close to home getting ready. We're a little late getting some of the plants in, but I have 175 paste tomatoes in, so I got a lot of canning ahead of me this summer.
Speaker 2:Oh my word.
Speaker 3:That's crazy. That's so many yes.
Speaker 2:Got a good sauce recipe.
Speaker 3:Pretty good sauce recipe, Actually an amazing marinara sauce that I found in a Betty Crocker cookbook when I was in high school, when I would make manicotti while watching surgery videos in that cadaver class.
Speaker 2:Oh my.
Speaker 3:Because I'm weirdo and I'm going to try and figure out a curry ketchup recipe because I love that stuff. We tried that when we were in Germany and it's so good on French fries. But I don't like paying $10 for a little can that has high-fructose corn syrup coming over from Germany.
Speaker 2:Not if you can make it yourself. Yeah, I'm going to try and make it myself.
Speaker 1:So how do you weed all those?
Speaker 3:Child labor, child labor. So we have a good amount of land to protect. We bought a dairy back in 06. But just before.
Speaker 3:COVID. We bought another property across town that had more go outside, but that's when I found out my husband and I both wanted to be forest rangers when we were kids, and we're lucky enough to have woods to manage. So you know, we maintain that we're taking care of invasive species and removing those, keeping the trees planted, spending time with the kids out there and just enjoying this amazing state and this amazing place that we're so lucky to be in. Oh, that's incredible. And three boys, three boys, okay.
Speaker 2:Yes. So what's your favorite thing? You know you've mentioned how much you love New Hampshire I think we all do and you've mentioned you know the woods and you know the skydiving and all that.
Speaker 3:But what's your favorite thing about New Hampshire?
Speaker 2:I love the people yeah.
Speaker 3:The people here are really special. You have a lot of really interesting, really exciting, really dedicated people that you just turn around and bump into. It's not just the people that we're lucky enough to serve in the Statehouse, but so many people here have an amazing story, have done so many things and they're open and you know it's a little closed off to start but there's so much more open to building relationships and meeting you when you're actually out there and doing things. You know, every time we've moved somewhere we've ended up having the best neighbors because we're out there and we're talking with people. Yeah, and everywhere I go and I get involved, well, this is the best.
Speaker 2:This because there's such amazing people anywhere you turn in New.
Speaker 1:Hampshire yeah, that's great. Yeah, I love New Hampshire. I think we're all transplants actually.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All three of us. So I guess getting closer to the end. But closing thoughts would you ever skydive again now that you have kids?
Speaker 3:When they're old enough to do their own thing, and if my body stops creaking quite so much, I would love to. I need to get in the wind tunnel for sure, because that's a lot of fun to fly in there. Have you been down to that one in Nashua? Yes, yes, that one's amazing. Yeah, rob and Lori have such a great place there. That's where we used to jump, used to fly a lot with our friends when we were all skydiving more actively. Have you taken the kids to the wind tunnel? They haven't flown in the wind tunnel yet. My middle son's birthday was supposed to be there during COVID, just before it happened, because his birthday was right in it, and now that we are finally not worrying about the diaper issue with the youngest one, we will get them in that tunnel.
Speaker 1:Oh, that sounds great. Yes, and I guess, five years from now, where do you see yourself?
Speaker 3:I have no idea. I didn't expect to be here five years ago, so obviously still in New Hampshire, I'm still working to improve the land around me and trying to serve people in the state the best I can in whatever role that is, but I love being in the house. It's such a wild and crazy place with all 400 of us that it's a really special experience. But you never know what the future holds and I'm not busy making any plans for anything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it is special and I think you touched on it a little bit and I think so we can certainly close with this. But when you mentioned New Hampshire, everyone's open and everyone has different backgrounds and experiences, and our legislature is no different. You know, it's certainly a cross cut of the entire state and so I think you know it's great that you're able to bring your experience as an analyst, as an economist, to the state house for discussion purposes and those committees. So I think that's great and that's what's great about our legislature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. There's so many different skills I mean even from cadaver dissecting to poker class I mean it's incredible. I mean what an amazing journey that you've had. I would have never guessed it. So it's one of the things I love about the podcast is we get to uncover all these hidden gems in New Hampshire.
Speaker 3:It's fantastic Just talking about it. I hadn't even realized put all of these different pieces together myself, because it's just my history and what I've done, but you know it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2:Anything but politics.
Speaker 1:Such a pleasure. We hope you had a good time and, you know, hope to see you again and thank you to our audience for continuing to listen and to download. We're definitely reaching new people and we really appreciate your support, so thank you very much.
Speaker 2:And we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm Tiffany Eddy.
Speaker 2:And I'm Tom Prezal.
Speaker 1:Take care until next time.