Hello everybody. This is Ravi Gupta with a special episode of The Lost Debate.

We have on somebody I respect so much and I've known for many, many years, the CEO of the

City Fund, Marlon Marshall, and at the City Fund, he's investing in local communities to help

improve the public education systems. And beyond that, and where I first met Marshall is he's been a veteran of Democratic politics

for a long time.

He founded the political strategy firm 270 strategies, which I've collaborated with a ton.

He was in the Obama White House as special assistance of the president and principal deputy

director of the office of public engagement.

He was deputy

national field director for Obama's reelection campaign and the state's director for Hillary for

America. He's one of those political journeymen out there. And I was so excited that he took on

this role at Citifund because the kids of America need somebody with the kind of skills that Marlon has.

And he's a perfect guess for us because, you know, longtime listeners will know we love to talk

about the intersection of politics and education and particularly what the Democratic Party

should be doing on education and, you know, throwing some tomatoes from the sidelines

that what the Republicans are doing, which I'm sure he can help us with too. For all of that and more, I want to welcome on my friend Marlon Marshall, welcome with the podcast. Wow, good to be with you, man. I never thought when we met 10, 15 years ago we were doing a podcast together, but I guess that's the way the world works. I don't want to even guess where we met each other. Honestly, I was just thinking about it. There's a lot of options. Yeah, not for the podcast, exactly. Belated congratulations on the role. I know you've now been easing into it for quite a bit now. I think it must be going on a year probably soon, a couple months from now, or am I misjudging? Almost a year. it was about 10 months so yeah we're we're coming up on a year probably soon a couple months from now or am i misjudgment almost a year

10 months so yeah we're we're coming up on a year that's that's amazing congratulations it's an

amazing organization and i want to just take a step back and and say like from your perspective

as somebody who came out of democratic politics what made you decide to go all in on public education at this

moment? It's a great question, Robbie. So when I got involved in politics many years ago,

my first like full-time campaign was the 2004 John Kerry campaign, but did some did some stuff

locally in Kansas before that when I went to University of Kansas, Rock Chalk,

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