Coalition-Building Across Communities: Coalition Building in the Halls of Congress (Saat Alety)

It’s a tale as old as time–one that rings true for so many South Asian American youth: when coming of age, Saat Alety felt the pressure to follow a path toward medical school. Yet Alety always felt a connection to politics. Growing up, he religiously watched CNN, read TIME Magazine, and discussed the news of the day. Although quite set on becoming a doctor, Alety took up an opportunity to intern for his local Representative, Congresswoman Judy Biggert. What was intended to be a summer-long hiatus before the start of medical school instead led to an extensive career in politics, from being a staffer on the Hill to leading Federal Affairs and Public Policy work for Allstate.

After spending that summer as a congressional intern, he took a gamble on working as a full-time staffer for U.S. Representative Judy Biggert (R-IL) at just 21 years old. Congresswoman Biggert served on the House Financial Services Committee, which was thrust into the spotlight in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. Alety was able to gain firsthand experience working on federal legislation related to regulating financial systems and insurance companies. Such experiences laid the foundation for what would later become Alety’s public policy specialization.

After nearly two years at the Congresswoman’s office, he left to join the Romney for President campaign as the Nevada Digital Director. It was through the campaign where Alety found his place at the intersection of communications and politics. In his seven months in the Silver State, Alety developed his interpersonal skills, ability to convey dense policy specifics, and coalition-building expertise, all of which would form the basis for his future role at Allstate. He later headed back to the nation’s capital to join the Financial Services Roundtable, now called the Bank Policy Institute. His experience at the trade association, which represents some of the largest financial institutions in the country, was formative and built upon his previous advocacy and policy work.

Alety returned back to the Hill in 2014, joining U.S. Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) as his Communications Director. Six months into his time at the Congressman’s office, Alety happened to fill in for the Legislative Director in a meeting with constituents from an in-district credit union. He credits this opportunity for getting him “hooked” on the legislative side of Congress; he would go on to pursue a particular focus on legislative strategy since this merged his dual backgrounds on policy communication and coalition building. After the election of President Donald Trump, Alety left the Congressman’s office for the Senate Chamber, joining as a Staff Director to U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), one of the few African Americans in the Senate and the Chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development. His two-year stint on the Committee coincided with what Alety describes as the “Super Bowl of Republican policy making,” with a GOP trifecta of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives hungry to pursue conservative reforms. Alety personally built up an impressive body of work while working as Senator Scott’s senior policy advisor on financial services issues. He led efforts that resulted in the enactment of legislation to grow consumer access to banking services, prevent synthetic identity theft, and modernize mortgage credit standards.

Upon leaving Senator Scott’s office, Alety decided once again to exit the Hill, this time to become Allstate’s Director of Federal Affairs and Public Policy. Hired for the position at age 29, Alety was the youngest head of a Fortune 100 Washington D.C. office ever. Though an exciting change of pace, he was quickly forced to adapt to the corporate world. While highly knowledgeable in the subject matters, Alety found navigating a Fortune 100 company to be a unique challenge. On this he states, “it’s quite different going from working with 15 people in Senator Scott’s office to representing a company with over 45,000 employees. That said, it has been a wonderful learning experience. Allstate is a fantastic organization that is highly regarded by policymakers at all levels of government.”

By definition, Alety’s professional work at Allstate consists of reaching across factional boundaries and forging unlikely alliances and consensus. He credits his previous experiences in presidential campaigns, trade associations, and the Hill with helping him hone this skill of building diverse coalitions. Whether developing policy or lobbying public servants directly, Alety must take into account the concerns of diametrically opposed stakeholders who each have their own competing desires. Distilling all of this into a digestible path forward is no small feat and requires self-awareness of one’s own position and how to meaningfully reconcile it with those stakeholders.

Alety makes careful observation that while he is still a minority in his field, he is standing on the shoulders of individuals who were quite possibly the only minority in his field. He notes that these were the forefathers of the South Asian American professional class that he now finds himself a part of. Yet he takes even more pride in something adjacent to that. Over the course of his lifetime, he feels that he has had a front row seat to the South Asian American community coming into its own–embracing politics and public service and “taking more ownership over the direction of this country.”

Alety views this development as being motivated in part by young people. He posits that the younger South Asian American generations are keen to “move forward with our country,” and that the South Asian American community is becoming a permanent force to be reckoned with.

To be clear, the work is not done yet and Alety is not resting on his laurels. He is a patron of College to Congress, an organization that provides Congressional work experience to those who come from underrepresented and low-income backgrounds. He also stresses the importance of truly leveling the playing field by considering both geographic diversity and educational diversity — emphasizing the need for lawmakers to hire from more than just a select number of elite schools.

As he looks forward, Alety will surely continue to champion his causes across his own industry and beyond. Furthermore, his wealth of lived experiences has left him with more than just stories to tell; he is uniquely positioned to act out the core WLP value of “paying it forward.”