had worked for over a decade in preventive diplomacy for the Commonwealth Secretariat, protecting people in Kenya and Somalia caught in tribal disputes by negotiating with warlords. Her name was Sabhita Raju. She had held my dream job and was now at SCL.
Another staff member had been the former director of operations for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and had been dedicated to saving lives for more than fifteen years. She was Ceris Bailes.
And the third had won awards from the United Nations for her work on the environment. Back home in her native Lithuania, she had worked for the liberal political party. Her name was Laura Hanning-Scarborough.
I liked all of them, and I was cheered to hear that they had strong backgrounds in humanitarian work and yet were employed at SCL. Clearly, there had been a good reason for each to choose it.
They seemed as interested in my work as I was in theirs. I shared with them my time in eastern South Africa, when I brought seventy-six volunteers out to Pienaar, a poverty-stricken township, to work for a charity called Tenteleni, tutoring children in math, science, and English. I also shared with them a lobbying project I had done at the European Parliament, when I had the privilege of briefing members on how to pressure European countries to include North Korea in their foreign policy priorities. And I expressed a deep interest in doing work in post-Ebola Africa, particularly Sierra Leone and Liberia.
They seemed excited about the possibility of my bringing these kinds of projects to SCL.
Shortly after the interview, Alexander called and made me an offer. I could work for the company as a consultant, just as I wished.
Wouldn’t it be great, he said, to have the logistics and expenses for my projects covered by the SCL Group? It employed smart, effective people; used cutting-edge technologies and methodologies; and had a supportive infrastructure—and, not to mention, it would offer me an opportunity to learn how to use data-driven communications in practical applications such as preventive diplomacy. I’d see up close and personal how it worked and where it needed improvement, and all that would enable me to write my dissertation and finish up my PhD.
And the job was niche work. I could use it as a springboard for fulfilling any number of dreams: becoming a diplomat, an international human rights activist, or even a political adviser like David Axelrod or Jim Messina.
It was tempting, but I still had reservations.
I had no desire to work for the Republicans. Cambridge Analytica had just signed the Ted Cruz campaign and Alexander had made it very clear that he was out to conquer the Republican Party in the United States.
Also, as much as I desperately needed the money, I didn’t want to commit to staying at Cambridge forever. I wanted to come on as a consultant at a good rate, but be able to move on when I wanted to.
Alexander must have read my mind. He told me my work at the company would only ever be under the SCL Group. No need to work on the American side, he said.
He offered me a part-time consultancy and what seemed at the time a decent wage, with the promise of more if I performed well.
“Let’s date before we get married, yuh?” he said. “So, what do you want to do?”
In my early grassroots work, I had been surrounded by others who looked like me and thought the way I did—young, progressive activists on a shoestring budget. I first encountered people unlike me when I began working in human rights. In that arena, I met members of Parliament, top thought leaders, and successful businesspeople across the globe. Some were wealthy, but all had power. I was face-to-face with those on “the other side,” and I was always ambivalent about how I felt about them and what it meant to engage with them.
I remember the moment I realized I had to find some way to marry my grassroots beliefs with an efficacy in the wider world. It was April 20, 2009. I was standing outside the United Nations building in Geneva. I was there with others to protest the appearance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then the president of Iran. He had been invited to give the opening keynote address at the Durban II World Conference Against Racism and Intolerance.
Ahmadinejad, a religious hardliner, had been in power for nearly four years, and in that time, he had breached civil liberties and violated human rights. Among other things, he had punished women appearing in public in what he called “improper hijab.” In his view, and under his rule, homosexuality simply didn’t “exist”; the HIV virus had been created by Westerners to disrupt developing nations like his; the State of Israel ought to be wiped off the map; and the Holocaust was a Zionist invention.
In short, he was a man I, and much of the educated world, had come to despise.
As I stood that day outside the UN building with members of an organization called UN Watch—as one man after another, ambassadors and princes, kings and businessmen, passed through its doors—I thought about these men: whether they agreed with him or not, they had the power and the clout to be in the room with Ahmadinejad, to hear him speak, and to engage with one another in dialogue about it.
I looked at the crowd of protesters of which I was a part. Many looked just like me—some were graduate students, young, in torn jeans and worn sneakers and rugged boots. I respected these people, I believed in what they did, and I believed in myself.
But that day, I put down my protest sign and slipped through the glass doors without anyone noticing I had entered. At the registration desk, I obtained a badge, the kind of pass students can get in order to use the library there: white with a blue stripe at the top, but almost identical to the badges diplomats wore on their lapels.
And wearing my finest hand-me-down power suit, adorned with that badge, I made my way to the auditorium without being questioned.
When Ahmadinejad began his anti-Israel rant, I watched as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other European leaders walked out. These were powerful people, and their act of protest made headlines that day. It put pressure on the United Nations to reconsider Iran’s position in the global conversation. My friends outside and their protest had gone nearly unnoticed. To make a bigger difference, it seemed, one had to be on the inside, no matter how much compromise that took, and you couldn’t be afraid to be in a room with people who disagreed with your beliefs or even offended you.
For most of my life, I’d been a staunch, intense, and even angry and oppositional activist, refusing to engage with those who disagreed with me or whom I judged to be in some way corrupt. I was more pragmatic now. I had come around to the realization that I could do a lot more good in the world if I stopped being mad at the other side. I began to learn this when Barack Obama, in the early days of his first term, announced that he would sit at the table with anyone willing to meet with him. There needn’t be any conditions, even for those considered “rogue leaders.” And the older I got, the more I understood why he’d said that.
I knew that working for Cambridge Analytica was going to cause a sea change in my life. At the time, I believed that what I was about to do would give me a chance to see up close how the other side worked, to have greater compassion for people, and the ability to work with those with whom I disagreed.
This was what was in my head when I said yes to Alexander Nix. Those were my hopes when I crossed over to investigate the other side.
