Q&A: Brandon Campbell, Network Science Initiative Fellow @ National Journal

Each year, Atlantic Media hires around 40 recent graduates for its fellowship program. Fellows are placed in editorial or business positions across Atlantic Media’s five brands: The Atlantic, National Journal, Government Executive, CityLab, and Quartz.

Tell us what you do.

At the Network Science Initiative, we do policy research on the most foundational level. We do network science; we find someone’s network. An organization comes to us and is interested in learning more about who someone is connected to. We find the best inroads to activate that network so they can work with them on something and learn what they’re interested in, and do their best to get involved with them for whatever reason.

What was your background going into this kind of work?

I went to Trinity College in Connecticut and majored in history & public policy and law. I was really interested in doing something that had research aspects to it, but was also related to policy. People don’t really think necessarily that what we’re doing at NSI is policy-related, but it is.

We look at specific industries –– we have clients ranging from healthcare, to energy, to government consulting, tech companies –– all these people are interested in looking at other people in think tanks or on the hill, or state legislators, and we help them look at how they’re connected and ways they can get involved or interact.

How did you find out about the fellowship?

I knew National Journal, I’d been reading it for a long time, and even after it stopped with the magazine I knew about it — so I saw a position on Atlantic Media’s website for an analyst position, which is what the full-time position on my team is. So I applied for it, and then I got an email the next day asking if I want to be an Atlantic Media fellow.

How do you find the kind of information you need?

It’s really, really deep research. When we’re working with politics, legislatures, and the Hill, we’ll start with financial disclosure documents, determining who’s donating to them. We start doing research of those names, and seeing how they connect, whether that’s through newspaper articles or LinkedIn, kind of doing targeted searches and developing a huge network map of looking at how they’re connected to organizations, whether they’re current or former, and how they could be used to develop contact for a client.

Are they having events with these organizations? Are they being endorsed by them? How supportive are these organizations? It’s very dependent on the client. NSI has standard network mapping and profiling of people, but we also do a lot of different things, so it’s really dependent on what the client needs.

What’s your dream job?

I’m really interested in policy and tech and media and politics –– a sort of conglomeration mix-up of those. Probably working with policy in those types of fields — in an academic environment, probably not –– but I think these are going to be such important emerging fields and industries, that will just become more and more important, so being educated on them and being able to use them, whether it be in a political environment or a policy environment, that would probably be cool, or writing about them.

What’s the best advice that someone’s ever given you?

I spent a lot of the fall talking to any Trinity alum who lived in DC, and pretty much they all were just like, just be present and be here. When you’re here you can call someone up and say I can be here for an interview tomorrow. Or you need me in an interview in 20 minutes? I can be there. Just showing them that you’re available and interested, particularly in DC, where jobs are available and they need someone to start the next day.

Do you have any advice for people looking for jobs in media or policy?

Consume news everyday. Particularly if there’s an organization or specific field you’re interested in. In my interview for NSI they were asking about what sort of policy fields I was interested in and they said, is there anything you found interesting in the news about this lately? Anybody can say they’re super interested in tech policy, or energy policy, but when you’re able to talk about it and your interest actually carries through, that makes a difference.