Promotion to the ultimate behind-the-scenes agency job
"I've put my legal knowledge and experience to pretty good use. And it's kind of helped me, support me through my career," said Jennifer Schoen.
You won’t see her name in the newspapers. She won’t introduce sweeping policy. What she *will* do is ensure all the people who do the mission-related work of the Federal Deposit Insurance Company can do *their* work. Jennifer Schoen is the newly named director of the FDIC’s division of administration, and she joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss more.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin And you’re a long timer there, right? You know the inner workings of the FDIC pretty well. Sounds like.
Jennifer Schoen I do. I’ve been here at the FDIC for about 18 and a half years.
Tom Temin Yeah. All right.
Jennifer Schoen Spent time with the federal government as well.
Tom Temin And as a senior executive, then an attorney, you have a law degree. Do you feel like you’re toiling in obscurity as an operations or administrative director, which the public doesn’t see and actually most of the government doesn’t see?
Jennifer Schoen No, I definitely don’t feel that way. I’ll be honest with you. I kind of grew up in the FDIC in the contracting arena. So the legal field, the contracting arena has a really nice kind of synergy with each other. And so I’ve put my legal knowledge and experience, I think, to pretty good use. And it’s kind of helped me, support me through my career.
Tom Temin And the acquisitions for FDIC, I would presume are mostly real estate related professional services and information technology as opposed to stuff.
Jennifer Schoen Actually, we run the gamut here at the FDIC. At the Division of Administration, we have, I don’t know if you’re familiar with us, but we actually own several federal buildings here in Arlington, also in D.C. And as a result, we have everything related to the operations, maintenance, renovation, improvements of those facilities. So construction, we do buy supplies, we buy pens, we buy pencils. So, yeah, it runs the gamut of services all the way up to all sorts of goods.
Tom Temin Right. You’ve probably bought HVAC systems which are big metal boxes and the services to get them installed and calibrated.
Jennifer Schoen That is correct. That is correct.
Tom Temin All right. Well, in an administration these days, what are the big challenges to be a federal kind of inside administrator like that for an agency which is in the news a lot?
Jennifer Schoen Yeah, I think probably the challenges that we experience, which everybody else has experiences, is change, is constant change, whether it’s at the leadership level or it’s within your own staff and being able to manage through that sort of change and be be flexible and able to handle that succession planning as well when you have staff that is ready to retire and we do have a lot of longevity here at the FDIC. We’re replacing those people or trying to replace those people that are experienced in what they do. That succession planning is probably a larger challenge going forward.
Tom Temin And of course, beyond the board of directors themselves, there’s a staff that does so much work in all the different operating divisions of the FDIC. What is the current level of telework? And how has that affected administration?
Jennifer Schoen I don’t think, the telework piece of it hasn’t really affected the administration. Our staff within the division of administration run the gamut, like I said, of contracting. We have all of our facilities, folks. We have people in the regions. All of them are able to be successful, whether they’re in the office or not in the office, because we know the mission and we continue to support that mission.
Tom Temin And tell us more about your personal background. You’ve been there since 2006. What about before that? And tell us what you came in to do. It sounds like acquisition was the was the entry point.
Jennifer Schoen Yeah. It was the entry point of kind of kind of a strange career story. I grew up in New York, went to law school in New York, passed the bar in New York, practiced in New York, got married in New York, and my husband moved me down here with him to D.C. He was also in the federal government and had some more opportunities down here. I was not. I was in private practice at that time. Moved to Virginia and timing’s everything. I didn’t have that window of time to wave into the bar here in Virginia or D.C. or Maryland. So I kind of just stumbled around a little bit in all honesty, and landed in government contracting. I was actually a contractor for DARPA. I don’t know if you’re familiar with DARPA.
Tom Temin Yeah, we know them well.
Jennifer Schoen Amazing organization. And so I was a contractor there and stumbled into government contracting, and then was hired on as a gov, if you will, for DARPA. Amazing organization and really enjoyed my time there. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with where they were located, but it’s literally a block from the FDIC here at Virginia Square in Arlington. And so when there were opportunities here at FDIC, I kind of jumped ship, even though I did love it at DARPA, I jumped ship. And right around 2006, 2008 happened and I was hooked. I was hooked on the mission, hooked on everything that the FDIC did across the board. So, yeah, that got my foot in the door.
Tom Temin We’re speaking with Jennifer Schoen. She’s the new director of the Division of Administration at the FDIC. And that’s an interesting point because as an attorney, I guess you could have gotten a law bar certification in Virginia and probably made, knowing what you know about the government, six, seven, $800 an hour type of law job. But sounds like the federal mission took over.
Jennifer Schoen Yeah. So I did end up passing the Virginia bar. I did take it and I passed it. But, yeah, I was hooked. Being a public servant serves me in many great ways. It’s a work life balance, as well as an opportunity to feel like I am doing something in support of the federal government and the people, if you will, and kind of hokey. But that’s actually true. My kids sometimes make a little fun of me when I talk about being a public servant, but I really do love it.
Tom Temin Well, you can slap them on the wrist and get them a internship at DARPA then they’ll know better, I guess.
Jennifer Schoen That’s right. Well, it was to bring your kids to work day that I think I did it. Sitting in a conference room doing nothing.
Tom Temin It looks easy until you try it. And then getting back to 2008, the of course, the intense involvement of FDIC and Treasury. And it was a whole of government effort in some ways. And did that devolve down to acquisition and so forth? How did you feel that when you weren’t really on the policy front lines and dealing with Treasury, etc., and Congress.
Jennifer Schoen Yeah. You may have heard, but one of the things about the FDIC, which is 100% true, it is all hands on deck during a crisis. Everybody is needed and everybody plays a role, big and small. All of it is really key to making the success of of what we’re doing happen, if you will. So I do have to admit, when I got here in 2006, I had a little bit of what did I do? I left a really cool research and development organization DARPA. But when that mission literally hit us over the head and we were jumping to try to make sure that we were handling as much as we could, it was really cool. Acquisition has a huge role in what happens. And when there’s a banking crisis, we have a need for research support, whether it’s in the HR arena or it’s in receivership, support services, financial services, even just getting security guards, the banks that are being closed. Acquisition has a huge role in that. And the Division administration also plays a very large role in what happens when a bank fails.
Tom Temin What was it like during the Silicon Valley Bank failure? That was a really big visible one more recently.
Jennifer Schoen Sure, that was different to some extent, because that did hit fairly fast. And there were I will tell you, 2:00 in the morning meetings, we were all on the phone working through trying to make sure we knew what we needed to do to make that as successful as possible. And it was everybody around the table. Calls nonstop to make it a success that it was in light of the circumstances.
Tom Temin Yes. And when emergencies come up, sometimes over the years in government, we have had that discussion about does the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) allow for rapid emergency type of acquisitions? And it actually does. But a lot of people in acquisition don’t exercise that muscle very often. Sounds like you’ve done some bicep curls in rapid acquisition over the years.
Jennifer Schoen Yeah. So just to give you a little bit of information about how we do contracting at the FDIC, we don’t follow the FAR. Since we are not appropriate agency, we’re not required to follow FAR. We have our own acquisition policy and procedures and guidance. And so we do. And because of the things we’ve learned since 2008 and prior to that, we do have emergency contracting procedures that we do implement if we need them. And the situation of Silicon Valley, we did have to tap into those resources.
Tom Temin Yes. Like the FAA also is outside of the FAR and a few agencies like that. Yep. What about construction? Are you under GSA for construction or do you do your own contracts there too?
Jennifer Schoen We do our own contracts there as well. We have partnered at times with GSA in the past, but we do our own construction and renovations, all that type of contracting. We do.
Tom Temin On that question of whether you use systems that are throughout the government or your own, do you have relationships professionally with the FAR based people? Is there interaction between FAR agencies and non FAR agencies on just simply what might be a best practice regardless of what system you’re using?
Jennifer Schoen The general tenants of federal contracting are the same across all the agencies, just some of the regulations and the procedures that you follow can be different. So we absolutely tap into opportunities. To your point, especially in the construction arena, why make stuff up when you can look to see what others are doing and find out what worked best for them and what didn’t work? And so, yeah, we definitely tap into other groups, even groups such as NCMA, right, where you can learn and get together and find out about things that everybody else is doing across that arena.
Tom Temin Sure. So competition is still in there.
Jennifer Schoen Competition is still in there. Competition is very important. It’s very important.
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Tom Temin
Tom Temin is host of the Federal Drive and has been providing insight on federal technology and management issues for more than 30 years.
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