Julia Lathrop

If they were going to do anything, they did have one voice that they could speak with.

But if they were going to do anything, they really needed the volunteer labor, which I think really worked in the policy's favor in terms of just both getting people to understand what policy was and how it was available, but also in terms of just getting a ton of people invested in what the policy was and that it was their job to go And it helped that it came on the heels of World War I, where there was already some mass mobilization happening and the leadership of the Children's Bureau through Julia Lathrop really, you know, she was like a real savvy strategist in terms of using technology.

the talking points of the war and the draft in order to keep a spotlight on the plight of mothers and babies at the time.

Yeah.

And they're actually, comparatively, you're spending quite a bit more

And thinking about the role of leadership within those kinds of systems and how that can move, at least on the margin, what that looks like.

If you imagined Julia Lathrop in a time machine and she came out in 2026 and suddenly found herself in some kind of senior leadership role in the federal administrative state, what do you think she would do now? Within the constraints that exist there, what would be the thing that would make that visible and push on the edge of it in a way that advanced that conversation?

That's such an interesting question.