CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – When asked why he decided to start Lead for America, Joe Nail, initially gave a simple answer: “To save the democracy.”

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Lead for America, or LFA, is a nonprofit organization that aims to recruit recent college graduates for two-year fellowships working in local governments in their hometowns. Founded in May of 2018, LFA is still a relatively new organization; their first class of fellows will begin their training institute this summer before going to work in the fall.

 

Nail is the organization’s founder and CEO. In this role, his work varies greatly day to day. He spends about half of his time traveling, typically for fundraising or partnership development purposes. Whether he is on the road or at LFA’s headquarters in Chapel Hill, his job has some consistency. Each day usually consists of waking up early to tackle emails, attending meetings and having phone calls before ending with a “troubleshoot meeting” every evening with other members of the organization to smooth over any issues they might be experiencing.

 

Nail had always been interested in public service. He grew up in Kansas with two examples of public servants in his parents: his father was in the military and his mother was a nurse.

 

However, his first real interaction with government happened during his sophomore year of high school when his father was deployed to Afghanistan, leaving the family alone. Nail also has an older sister, Katie, who has a severe intellectual disability.

 

“I quickly saw the ways in which public institutions have an incredible responsibility for serving the most vulnerable populations and also the ways in which they were falling short.” Nail says while describing his motivation to start LFA. From the “hyperlocal” level with his sister to the international level with his father’s deployment, Nail saw the impacts that policy and government could have on people’s lives.

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Additionally, between high school and starting college at UNC-Chapel Hill, Nail worked in government full-time during a fellowship to Germany.

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“This was right at the start of the Open Door policy,” Nail explains. “I worked at the local and federal level in government that 70 years prior had used its institutional ability and authority to not just discriminate against folks like my sister, but quite literally exterminate them as a prelude to the Holocaust.”

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This experience was not lost on him, and it is something that Nail says will always stay with him.

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After his fellowship in Germany, Nail came to UNC-CH to study Political Science as a Morehead-Cain scholar. However, while he was a student, he noticed something about his peers, particularly those interested in public service.

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“I had these galvanizing personal and professional experiences,” Nail describes. “And then I got to UNC and saw that so many of the people who had been most committed to public service and most committed to going to places like where I grew up in Kansas that really most needed the help, when push came to shove, were opting to do neither after graduation. Not necessarily because their motivations had changed, but simply because the pathways didn’t exist.”

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Nail realized that there was a gap between students and going back to their respective hometowns to give back once they had graduated. Even if they wanted to do so, many of their communities did not have the institutions in place for them to pursue these paths.

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Though some graduates may want to return to their hometowns, Nail also noticed that, for many, there was a stigma surrounding the concept.

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“I’m from a small town, and when people decide to come back after they finish school, there’s definitely an idea of failure present,” says Hailey Wall, a UNC-CH student and service-learning intern with LFA.

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Nail decided to start LFA in hopes that it can help redefine what it means to come back to your home community after graduating from college. Though LFA starts with a fellowship program, Nail wants people to know that it is so much more than that. His ultimate goal is creating a movement.

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“Rather than just me as the single person going back to Kansas to start a career in public service, I thought it would be far more useful for the world and hopefully for a lot of young people and for our country, more proudly, to build a pathway for thousands of folks to be able to do what I had hoped to do for myself.” Nail says.

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Because of ideas like this, the organization places a large value on the concept of community and the benefits that it can provide to a population.

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So, Nail finished his degree at UNC-CH in only five semesters and decided to take the plunge to start LFA. From the start, his work was difficult, and it quickly became apparent to him that he would not be able to do all the work the organization required alone. He started recruiting people soon after, even before the organization had the money to do so.

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Maya Pace is a member of LFA’s executive team and even holds the title of the organization’s Chief Community Officer. She has been working for LFA since January of 2019.

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“I grew up seeped in community and the power of that feeling,” Pace describes when asked about what drew her to LFA. “Then when I went to college, I noticed that being far away from that community, I was really struck by the sense of and power of accountability that I think community and close relationships bring.”

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While in school at Tufts University, Pace had the opportunity to study grassroots changemaking and movements at the community level. Her interest in this is what ultimately led her to leave a job in Washington, D.C. to work at LFA.

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Currently, LFA’s executive team includes six people, but the organization has a greater reach than that. They have partnerships with other similar organizations like New Politics Leadership Academy, and they have employed over 20 interns for this spring semester.

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Though the people are what make LFA what it is, Nail says that they also present one of the most challenging aspects of his job.

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“Everything that we do is working with and managing people and so to the extent that we succeed or not succeed to the degree that we would hope is totally about relationships.” Nail says. “Relationships require always being present, always being on your A-game and also making sure that you’re not dropping any balls in terms of reaching out to folks as you should.”

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At any point in time, Nail says that he has an ongoing list of around 500 people that he wants to maintain relationships with. “There’s a fundamental issue of how do you invest in these relationships at the right intervals?” Nail ponders. “And how do you also make sure that you’re finding the right people on the team and then investing in them so they can also take full responsibility in different areas of the organization?”

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Communicating with people and fostering these relationships can be time-consuming. Approximately ten minutes into his interview, Nail noted that he had already received four new emails during that time frame. His days consist of talking to people almost constantly, whether in meetings or on the phone, and he often wakes up around 5 a.m. to respond to emails at a time where no one else is awake to answer them.

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However, Nail notes that, while relationships can be a challenge, LFA would not be the organization that it is without them: “It’s really the relationships and communication that are the trickiest, but also what will fuel the organization,” he says.

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If there is one thing that Nail wants people outside the organization to know about LFA, it is that they believe that change does, and will, come from the ground up.

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“We can’t afford, as a country, to just expect that the grounded, courageous, moral leadership that we need is just all of a sudden going to pop up and have the resources and training that it needs,” Nail describes. “So, what we’re trying to do is remove that uncertainty and be very intentional about building a bench of civic and political leaders all over the country, especially in the communities where the narrative of success looks like leaving and not coming back.”