So I graduated in the fall of 2008, and it was a horrible time to graduate with a finance degree-right at the peak of the recession. There was a small company in Austin that was developing some buildings. I did a summer project with them, and literally by the time September came around, it was over. They weren’t going to make it. Then of course it was October, and things fell. The whole world just changed, so I ended up going to work for a small regional bank in Houston that did a lot of commercial real estate deals. I was still kind of pursuing that as an avenue, so I thought, “Why not go to a bank that has a big department?” I thought maybe things would rebound and look better. As luck would have it, the bank I went to work for was being bought out, so we got laid off a year into it.  I’d been out of school for a year; I got laid off. This is good. This is how the real world works.

In February of 2010, I joined one of my undergrad mentors his consulting firm, and it was my first foray into understanding real world business problems. They did any number of things: setting the initial strategy; helping people find the right ideas, develop them, and set pricing and attract customers. It was great. It was fantastic. I was knee-deep trying to figure things out. Everyday was something new, something challenging. I was working very closely with clients, becoming the number one adviser on certain subjects. I loved it and had a great time. Toward the end of it, I thought getting an MBA might be the next step.

Consulting has this weird cloud focus to it. You say, “here’s the answer,” and your client has to go figure it out. There is no finite kind of end or measurable change, so I wanted to do something that had a finite beginning and end. I liked being in client services. I thought, What could I do, so that I’m still an advisor and dealing with more hard numbers? So investment banking and private equity became the two big things that I pushed toward. I thought that I would go get an MBA from a top-tier institution and get myself to a top-tier firm. I was going to go to Wall Street. A podunk kid from East Texas needs to go show them that he’s got it!

I applied to a handful of MBA programs and got into the University of Virginia. Then, I went to Goldman Sachs and worked for a year on Wall Street. It was fantastically terrible- both the best thing I ever did and the worst thing I ever did. From a life choice standpoint, it taught me more than I ever could have learned. You’re working with the best and brightest of the whole country; it’s cream of the crop.

Ultimately, I worked from 9 in the morning until 2 or 3 in the next morning. I always thought getting home the same day that I started was a good day. If I got home before midnight, that was a good day. My wife was a school teacher in the city while we were there, and there was more than one occasion where I came home at 4 or 5 in the morning, and she was getting up to go out to school. We’re high-fiving in the hallway, and I thought, “I’m going to go take a nap. I’ll see you when I see you.” I’d get two or three hours of sleep and roll back into the office. I just hammered through it. There’s a definitive amount of time that a person can work, and it’s different for everybody. However, after two or three days of that you’re burnt out. You get some caffeine, and you get it done. That’s the name of the game. The client won’t make a decision until you react, and you never know when the reaction is needed. You’re just on pins and needles waiting for the next big phone call to come in.

It’s a young man’s game, and it was tearing me apart. That’s the New York mentality though- you just go, go, go. I checked the box and had a good time, but that’s why I came back down to Houston. I did the same type of work, but I did it for smaller companies. It was fun to see, and I’m glad I did it. It gave me some perspective, and a year working for Goldman in New York is equivalent to three years working in Houston in the same capacity.

Rep. Hurd on what it meant and continues to mean to be a Terry Scholar:
The Terry Scholarship is the reason that I went to Texas A&M. It changed my life, and the Terrys’ focus on service and giving back to the community just further put that in my mind and in my being. There are a number of constituents that go- throughout the 29 counties I represent- to all the universities across Texas (And being at UTEP is pretty awesome!). I’m excited- I know the trips to [picnic] are probably cram-packed now with the number of Alumni members that have benefited from the Terry Scholarship…I’ve always wanted to get back to one.

On meeting Mr. Terry:
I do believe he actually participated in my interview. Over my entire time at Texas A&M, getting to interact with him was something. He was one of the kindest, nicest people I had ever met. Right after graduating, I was undercover, and it was hard for me to come back often to Texas. The few times I was able to get to Houston, I was able to visit with Mr. Terry and give him an update on what I was doing.

When asked why he chose public service as his way of giving back to his community, Rep. Hurd had this to say:
Well, it’s all connected. I decided to go to Texas A&M. I had the opportunity. I had the Terry Scholarship. My freshman year I’m walking across campus, and I see a sign that says “Take 2 Journalism Classes in Mexico City for $425.” I had $450 bucks in my bank account, so I decided to go to Mexico. I fell in love being in a new culture. I thought it was cool seeing things I only read about in books, so I decided to add International Studies as a minor. In my sophomore year, in my first International Studies class, we had a guest lecturer who was a former CIA tough guy, real old-school. He told the most amazing stories, and that began my interest in the CIA. When I graduated, and because of my leadership experience, I was very competitive for the very few people that the CIA takes right out of undergrad, so I joined and spent 9 and a half years as an undercover officer. I was the guy in the back alleys at four o’clock in the morning collecting intelligence for the homeland. It was a fantastic job. I had to also brief members of Congress while I was overseas, and I was pretty shocked by the caliber of our elected leaders. I had some friends- one also a former Terry Scholar- that had been involved in campaigns and ran races and said, “Hey you should run for Congress.” I thought that’d be a way to help the intelligence community and help serve my country in a different way, and that’s why I ended up running for Congress the first time. I lost a run-off election by seven hundred votes, and then I became a partner at a consulting firm and helped start a cybersecurity company. I was able to be successful in both of those endeavors through a lot of the things I learned being a leader in the MSC and also in student government. I then ran in 2014, and the rest is history.

The most memorable moment in Congress is probably the first time- early on after I had been sworn in- we were able to help a constituent significantly. She was a young lady,  76 years old, and her husband had passed away the year before. He was a veteran, and she was supposed to be getting veterans benefits owed to a spouse. She was having problems for months; it was going to possibly cause her to leave her residence, and we were able to fix the problem. It had a tectonic impact on her life, and it was us that helped with that. It was a pretty big deal, and so that was the first time that it made me realize the power of this office and how important it is to help my community.

On leadership:
Well, number one, you’ve got to begin with the end in mind- that’s something I learned. I was exposed to Franklin Covey and the Covey Leadership Principles, and number one is, “Begin with the end in mind- know what you’re trying to achieve.” Then, you have to articulate a very clear vision for the office, and everybody that works on the team needs to know what their specific role is when it comes to accomplishing that mission. And so, everybody on my staff- I have 23 people on my team- all 23 would be able to say our two goals. And number one is, “Be a leader on national security,” and number two, “Be the gold standard when it comes to constituent relations.” Everything we do is around achieving those two goals. Setting a very clear vision, giving immediate feedback, and leading by example are really important. I also make sure that my staff takes time to smell the roses. You can’t run at 80 miles an hour every day. When you have an opportunity to take downtime, send folks home early- make sure they’re taking time to celebrate their birthday with their families and things like that.

Bipartisan Road Trip: After flights were cancelled due to a snowstorm, Republican Representative, Will Hurd and Democratic Representative, Beto O’Rourke “drove across the aisle” on a bipartisan road trip from Texas to Washington D.C. and showed the world that camaraderie in the Congress is possible. Rep. Hurd shares his thoughts:
Well the road trip was a great experience. It was. The takeaway- there’s a lot more that unites us in this country than divides us, and we are able, when it comes to political discourse, to disagree without being disagreeable. That is what we saw as we drove from San Antonio to Washington, D.C. It was a seventeen-hundred mile trip, 36 hours- 31 of them in the car- and 29 hours live-streamed on Facebook Live. People from all over the spectrum were appreciative of a Republican and Democrat showing up and getting along. There wasn’t an issue that didn’t come up; there was every issue imaginable. We did talk about higher education and how you drive down cost to ensure that more people are going to be able to go to university.

To current and future Scholars:
Well if you’re going to go into politics, have a career first–the reason that I am able to be successful up here in Washington, D.C. Last Congress, I passed more bills that got signed into law than any other member of Congress because I am able to leverage my experience and time in the CIA; bringing a perspective to politics is important. If it comes to national security, I think the CIA was one of the best jobs- probably the best job- I will ever have. If you’re still at university, the best thing to do is learn a language, have good grades, get involved in extracurricular activities, and make sure you work abroad. Being able to work in another environment is one thing that folks in the CIA are looking for. It was an organization that gives real responsibly and real authority to people even at a young age, and being involved in some of the most important national security issues of the day was a really exciting way to give back to our country while being able to travel to some pretty exotic locations as well. It was a fantastic career, and I encourage anyone who is interested to seek that career. Like you said, to be able to continue to help the intelligence community now is awesome.

On going abroad:
It is really important to broaden your perspective on the rest of the world, and we as Americans need to do a better job at having a broader understanding of what happens outside of our country.

It was overwhelming. Transformative. Life changing. I met Mr. Terry the second year they asked me to do interviews, and I was able to take a photo with him. I didn’t have a relationship with my dad. My parents got divorced when I was really young. When I was in middle school, my mom got really sick and had to take disability and retire from teaching. Also, my grandfather passed away when I was really young. I think, in ways large in small, Mr. Terry just felt like this huge father figure in my life, even though I hadn’t really met him. I think his generosity, his spirit, his outlook, and his standard of giving back to others and building a community were things that deeply resonated with me. The opportunity to tell him “Thank You” personally meant a great deal more than I could have anticipated because Mr. Terry passed away not too long after that.

I have many fond memories, but if I had to pick just one, it would be the opportunity to give the senior speech at UH Banquet. It definitely was not something that I expected. I talked about something that I- many of us- deal with. When this great blessing is offered, many of us ask, “Why was I chosen? Why was I given this opportunity over someone else?” When I got to campus and met people who were interviewed and didn’t get the scholarship, I spent a lot of time wondering how it ended up being me. I talked a little about it in my speech- how all of us were selected for a reason, and we didn’t really need to contemplate why. We just needed to be grateful and seize the opportunity.

In thinking through that speech, I reflected on a lot of my own struggles and thoughts about what it meant to be a Terry Scholar. I think it was a co-processing moment. I was supposed to be delivering a message to them, but what really ended up happening was they helped me deliver a message to myself. I think it was a message that I tried to work through in all of those Self Evaluation Letters. This memory stands out to me because both people from the Foundation and my peers came up to me after I spoke and shared that it was resonant in some way. I treasure being asked to capture the spirit of the moment and doing so in a way that touched other people in the room. It also helped that Mr. Campbell approved of my speech.

That said, I also remember the first response to my Self Evaluation Letter. I exposed myself and talked about my struggles. If I remember correctly, Mr. Campbell responded, “You should join Toastmasters and work on public speaking.” Ultimately having the opportunity to give a speech at the end of my four years was a full-circle moment. I often reflect on the idea that my college experience would not have been what it was without the Terry Foundation. My best friends from college were Terrys. I think it was the reason I stayed at the University of Houston. It gave me a family in a way that is not the trite, hackneyed, “Oh we’re a family!” It’s a true community of people who are committed to a shared vision that was inspired and articulated by Mr. and Mrs. Terry. 

I earned two degrees- a Bachelor’s in Political Science with a minor in Literature and a Bachelor’s in History with a minor in Philosophy. The plan when I started at UH was either medical school or law school, because I had been deeply into the sciences in high school. My sophomore year, I took a class with a professor in political theory, and that just changed everything. I ended up taking a course with her every semester until I graduated. I wrote my thesis with her. I did undergraduate research with her. I was pretty dead set on getting a PhD in political theory, and I wanted to go to a top ten program.

During this time, I had a chance encounter with the Dean of the Honors College.
He had just gotten off the phone with the Provost, who informed him that no one from UH had submitted an application to represent the university on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. It was the day of the deadline. I think Dean Monroe literally walked out of his office, saw me in the computer lab, and thought, “Oh! Krystafer might make a good candidate.” He asked me,“Do you have time to submit a five hundred word statement and an updated resume for this opportunity?”

I said, “Sure, that sounds great,” and I will never forget what Dean Monroe said.

He told me, “You shouldn’t worry about actually getting accepted. It would be great if you were, but these positions usually go to UT or TAMU students because they’re closest to Austin. Those are the flagship universities.”

I submitted my application and forgot about it, until I got a letter saying that I had been nominated by the governor to serve on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. That was a two-year gubernatorial appointment that took me to the end of undergrad. I was getting experience in higher ed governance, and I went to meetings in Austin four times a year. The way it was framed to me, which I think was sort of horrible: “You’re the sole voice for over a million undergraduates in the state of Texas.”

I was the student representative on the Undergraduate Education Committee, which governs community colleges, four-year colleges, and medical centers and health science centers that have undergraduate degrees. It was a real opportunity to get insight into what a state agency or state bureaucracy does and what higher education governance looks like from the inside. That was a really interesting experience.

Ultimately, I got cold feet about the doctoral program- the thought of a five to eight year commitment was really overwhelming to me. At the same time, I found out about an opportunity with the Texas Legislature- a Hobby Fellowship. I was accepted and moved to Austin.

The experience in the Texas Legislature, my term on the Coordinating Board, and my parents being career educators led me to apply for Teach for America. I moved to Rhode Island. I was conditionally accepted to Brown University, but I knew I wanted to teach before I went. I taught fourth grade at a large elementary school in Providence. During my second and third year at that school, I also attended Brown part-time. I would teach, and then I would get in my car and drive to Brown- doing most of my school work on the weekends. It was a lot, but in the end I think it was a really good decision. It’s a cohort model, and generally you’d only have that cohort for one year, and it’s a small cohort- 20 people. As a part-time student, I got the benefit of essentially having two cohorts- double the network. I think my experience in the program was richer than people who went straight out of undergrad or people who were transitioning careers.

In the middle of my third year teaching in Providence, the Providence Public School District reached out to me and asked me about filling a vacant seat they had in the Office of Research, Planning, and Accountability. It was primarily a data analytics role with a little bit of policy work on the side. Although I loved my colleagues and students, that seemed like an opportunity to work with all of the schools in the district about using data better in their schools. I took the job, and I was there for about a year before receiving a call from the chief who would become my boss at State Department of Education. I did a consulting project in grad school, and he remembered my work and encouraged me to apply.

I was hired as a Transformation Specialist. The title is a a hold over from No Child Left Behind, but essentially, at the core, I work with superintendents, principals, and instruction leadership teams in 32 federally identified low-performing schools. My best days are days when I’m able to be in schools in classrooms; I started out as a classroom teacher. School improvement, which is how we categorize the work that I do, is people-driven work. You have to get to know people. You have to get to know context. You have to make them believe you’re there to help them. It’s not easy or fast work. I think you can encounter people who work in this space and believe that if you just change the systems, or you change the structures, or you use the federally identified turnaround models, that you’ll be able to turn the school around. However, most of what we’ve learned is that it actually is slow, methodical, long term, change work.

It’s been a steep and crazy trajectory. Three years in the classroom, a year in the district, and October 2017 made it a year at the state level.

There’s the story that everyone shares about Mr. and Mrs. Terry driving back from UT after they had been shown what their donations had built. I think, as the story goes, they asked, “Why are we investing in bricks and mortar when we could be investing in people?” For those Alumni who do people-oriented work, human-oriented work, there’s an even deeper resonance with the idea that if Mr. and Mrs. Terry wanted to invest in people, we too, should invest in people.

Without the Terry Scholarship, I wouldn’t have been able to go to college- at all. I grew up in a rural town, didn’t have very much money; the Terry Scholarship gave me the opportunity to get a college education, so for that, I’m eternally grateful. The biggest thing for me is also the Terry Family. There’s a lot of bonding and kinship that comes along with being a Terry Scholar. A lot of my really good friends were Terry’s, and I’ll always remember the big picnic at the end of the year. That was always the defining moment of your semester because it’s right before finals, and it was a chance to go be a part of that larger family and see what’s going on with the Foundation and other schools. That to me is one of the really defining moments of my experience as a Terry Scholar.

Another thing was seeing Mr. and Mrs. Terry while they were still with us. Mr. Terry was actually in my interview when I was a high school senior, so there was a lot of emotion and gratitude that came with that. Again, just financial support, and how the Foundation would always look out for the Scholars. That’s what really stands out and continues to stand out. Both of them [Mr. and Mrs. Terry] were on my interview panel back in 2006. I was nervous. I was 18 years old. It’s really that family that came along with being a Terry Scholar. It’s kind of cool and a very unique thing to get a Terry Scholarship. It’s one of those few opportunities out there that pay for all of your college. Once you’ve met a Terry, you’ve met family for life.

Favorite Memories. Well there’s two. One was more esoteric, higher level. One was the fact that I knew I was going to be able to go to college. When I got that Terry letter, that for me was one of the biggest moments of my life. I knew I was going to be able to be the first person in my family to get a college education. That to me was the defining moment of my senior year of high school and top defining moments of my life. I would not have been able to go to college without it. That’s one of those memories- getting the scholarship. I think the other defining moment probably was my senior Terry Picnic. All these people that I’ve been friends with for four or five years are now getting ready to graduate and knowing our college journey is ending, but that family aspect is going to be there forever. I still talk to my Terry friends all the time.

 The Goal

I’m kind of like a big nerd. This was one of my goals since I was probably four or five. I actually remember talking about it in my Terry interview- about the reason why I went to A&M, the reason why I chose aerospace engineering, so that I eventually could work down here in Houston at NASA. I grew up in rural, small-town Texas, and I just always wanted to work in the space industry in human space flight. I was very fortunate.

 

The Internship

I would go to school for a semester or two semesters then I’d go work at NASA for a semester- on and off. The Terry Scholarship allowed me to do that. They held the scholarship while I was working which obviously ended up working out well for myself. While in undergrad, I primarily worked with space suit design and search and rescue, a lot like I do now. I worked in mission control in the summer of 2009. I did a lot of lunar/ moon geology tool development. I did a lot of different things, a wide variety of projects, but most of it was all focused on space suits and search and rescue. It kind of laid the foundation and the groundwork for what I do now.

The Realized Dream

My first day at NASA was my first day on the job. I hadn’t been to any of the stuff beforehand. I did a program in high school, the High School Aerospace Scholars, which was like a mini internship, and that’s what really solidified my wanting to work at NASA. I think it was part of the reason why I was able to be so competitive for a Terry Scholarship, but that was eleven years ago. As part of my job, I get to go to all of the NASA centers a lot. I go to Florida, Washington, D.C., California about once or twice a year. It’s a large government agency, so there’s centers all over the country. There’s about ten or eleven NASA centers that all support different aspects of the NASA mission.

The reason I went into engineering is because I have type 1 diabetes which means I can’t be an astronaut. If I could, oh my gosh, I’d be the first one to sign up. I mean you get to go fly to space and explore, and you can’t ask for much more than that. If I could, I would, but I’ve been very fortunate in that our group does a lot of the astronaut training. I’ve been to water survival school; I’ve worn a space suit; I’ve done all the cool parts. I have a cool job. I really like my job because I get to do really cool stuff all the time. I feel like a little kid. It’s like playing with Legos but older as an adult.

NASA has a way of attracting some of the best and brightest folks from all over the country, and this class is really no exception. In all honesty, it’s probably one of the most qualified and excellent classes I’ve seen in a long time. We work a lot with the class that came in before them in 2015, and again, that group is wicked smart, high-achievers, and some of the nicest people you could work with. One of the cool parts about my job is that we work directly with the astronauts on a day-to-day basis which is rare and is very interesting. The newest group– these are the folks that are going to be walking on the moon and going to Mars, so we’re very fortunate to have them as part of our team.

I design all of the equipment they use when they’re in the water if there’s ever an emergency. I worked on life raft development, beacon development, life preservers, all the different tools they use to get rescued and to stay alive when they’re in the water, so that’s really my subject-matter expertise. It’s one of those things again- I’m like a big nerd. I always thought it was really cool. I watched Top Gun, and thought “Oh cool! They’re in life rafts, and they’re in the ocean.” I just kind of pursued it. I knew there was a need to be doing this kind of work because whenever we land, whether it’s a SpaceX, a Boeing, or the NASA capsules, it’s going to be in the water, so I worked with my management to really shape and focus my professional work on that aspect. The astronauts are going to need state of the art technology, so they can be found anywhere in the world. I’ve also worked a lot with different government agencies to develop the technology, not just for astronauts, but for military and for civilians like you and me. It’s very rewarding. What we’re doing is actually feeding back into the community as a whole.

I think sometimes the media forgets the human element. I know as a responder and a search and rescue professional, that’s our biggest thing is it’s all about helping people. It’s not about doing something cool. It’s really about- you know when you look at the military it’s always about that 18 year old that’s lost, that 18 year old that’s getting ready to rescue someone overseas. It’s really about just being there to help.