Skip to Content

The University of Texas at Austin

Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs

Inaugural Alumni Speaker Series a Success

This spring, the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the LBJ School Alumni Association cosponsored a new lunchtime speaker series. The LBJ Alumni Speaker Series features distinguished alumni talking about their work and the lessons that they have learned. There have been three speakers so far.

Susan K. Rieff
Susan K. Rieff

The inaugural speaker was Susan K. Rieff, executive director of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. On February 19, Ms. Rieff discussed her work at the Wildflower Center since being named executive director in July 2004. She also spoke to the changes the center is undergoing after its September 2006 acquisition by the University of Texas at Austin and the relationship of the center to the LBJ School.

Before joining the Wildflower Center, Ms. Rieff served as policy director for Land Stewardship for the National Wildlife Federation, the nation's largest member-supported conservation group. She has also served as Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of the Interior, director of environmental policy for Texas Governor Ann Richards, assistant commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture, the first director of resource protection for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and a part-time visiting professor of environmental policy at the LBJ School.

David Firestein
David Firestein

On March 19, the series' second speaker was Mr. David Firestein, a Foreign Service officer at the U.S. Department of State who gave an interactive presentation discussing the political communication effect of contemporary country music in which he argues that country music radio reinforces a specific sense of social and political identity. In his presentation, Mr. Firestein played a number of country music hits, including the official theme songs of the 2000 and 2004 Bush/Cheney campaigns.

Mr. Firestein currently manages Asia-focused regional outreach programs for the State Department Bureau's Office of Public Diplomacy. He is the author of "The Honky Tonk Gap: Country Music, Red State Identity, and the Election of 2004" (2005), and he frequently speaks on contemporary country music and the American idea, addressing representatives of more than 60 nations on these topics in recent months.

Billy Hamilton
Billy Hamilton

This spring's final speaker in the series was Billy Hamilton, the former deputy comptroller of public accounts for the State of Texas Comptroller. On April 23, he discussed the current state and the future of Texas finances.

Mr. Hamilton worked on special assignment for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on the California Performance Review and served as a consultant to the World Bank on issues related to public debt management, tax policy and performance management in Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He will be teaching a course titled Government Management in a Skeptical Age at the LBJ School this fall.

The LBJ Alumni Speaker Series will resume in the fall. All events in the series are free and open to the public.

Related

Video - Susan Rieff: "Full Circle: From the LBJ School to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center"

Video - David Firestein: "The Honky Tonk Gap"

Video - Billy Hamilton: "Texas State Finances: Onward Through the Fog"