NCLM Volume 71, Issue 1, 2021

continued from page 17 Time to Work Together: Legislator Q&A how to do that. I expect that, for me, approaching people and situations and the relationships that we’re forced into, coming into this with some humility, listening like I said before. And this is something I learned on council—coming from a place of knowing that I may not be right, I don’t have all the answers, and trying to build relationships with that, kind of with that frame- work, is something I personally try to do. I expect that to be useful. Time will tell. But also, when I was doing death penalty defense work, I spent a lot of time talking to the public about the death penalty, and I had a lot of cases in eastern North Carolina, which is different from Durham in a lot of respects, and talked to a lot of folks who had different perspectives on the death penalty than I did. And something that I know folks who are more experienced than I am do, and that I try to do myself, is approach a situation with humility first and foremost, listen to what they have to say, but try to relate to them. It’s a common idea; the more you can make something relevant to somebody’s life and something that they care about, the more apt they are to listen. A lot of my personal heroes approach it with that epistemology approach—what we know is not more important than how we know what we know—and so in listening to each others’ stories and trying to empathize with things we may not have a per- sonal tie to, we can talk about it and maybe that’ll affect how I approach this certain issue that I didn’t understand before. Do you have any personal heroes who affect how you model your approaches and service? VA : There are folks who I seek mentorship from and whose approach to public service and politics I do draw a lot from. My predecessor in this role, MaryAnn Black, was certainly one of them. And I know of colleagues who feel the same way. She was just always able to maintain a perspective on her role and just often the noise of politics that I appreciated. She was very just genuine and realistic and just didn’t get caught up in the noise, as I like to think about it. I always really respected that about her and appreciated how accessible she was because of that. My colleagues in my delegation are folks that I take a lot of cues off of. Mayor (Steve) Schewel in Durham is someone whose temperament and preparation and style is something that I really appreciate. I think he is, to me, someone who is always thorough, always direct, incredibly researched, and incredibly kind and diplomatic. I want to hope that I’ll recall a lot of what I saw and heard from him while we served together in Durham. Outside of politics, you have a life to yourself. It’s a part-time legislature but really a full-time job. How do you break away and find time to think and do things you enjoy? VA : Well, we have two small children. So, the time I have to do that is very slight. But when I do, I try to exercise and try to do that regularly, mostly in my garage, so that’s an important time for me. I run, not well or fast, but that is also time where I can kind of achieve some quiet that I need in my daily life, to recen- ter and focus and do something I can enjoy. Those are the tools I have now, with the limitations that are still part of our lives. And other than that, it’s the circus of having two small children (laughter). That’s important. That ability for someone to serve amid the fi- nancial or time challenges of life in general. What conversation did you have with yourself to say, ‘I know I can make this work, but I have to remember the things I need to pay attention to in my personal life’? VA : It was mostly a conversation with my wife. When I ran for city council in 2017, our daughter was a newborn ... and I think we learned a lot together, the hard way, about how all-consuming this work and campaigning for these types of jobs can be. Our com- munication is really strong, and so we just set some boundaries and talked about things that are non-negotiables and it’s always important for me to make sure we have buy-in from her and give her as much information about what the expectations are going to be up front as I can. ... Beyond that, just trying to be super vigilant about working together as best we can. And setting SOUTHERN CITY QUARTER 1 2021 18