“I can’t think of anything more important than this!”
Meet More in Common's New Director Jay Mangone
Meet Jason (Jay) Mangone: firefighter, former Marine, leader in the movement for a year of national service for all Americans, former CEO of a private equity-backed home repairs business, and co-author of a book with General Stanley McChrystal – Jay brings a wide range of experience to his new role, starting May 1, as director of More in Common US.
Kate Carney, More in Common US’s chief of staff, interviews Jay to find out about his background and vision for More in Common.
Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
You could go in so many different directions with your career at your stage in life. Why this, why now?
What draws me to More in Common is that I want to do work that has a chance at making the world a better place for my kids and their kids. And very candidly, I think political polarization is one of those issues that I'll just be proud to be working on.
I was also very impressed by More in Common’s organizational integrity, which just has me deeply excited to be a part of this organization.
What excites you most about serving as More in Common’s new director?
More in Common’s team, the organization, and its founders have earned the right for the organization to ask themselves: “What's next? What's the next phase of our evolution as an organization?” That is very rare. And I think it's going to be really, really fun to be part of figuring that out.
In a polarized society like ours, cynicism, as opposed to optimism, becomes the currency of leadership. It's much easier to tell a story of despair than a story of hope. Because a story of hope, when you're being honest about the problems that we face, also requires you to have a vision of what you want to build next. That’s much more difficult when cynicism is just a much more straightforward path to power. But this is our country’s challenge: to make that shift. I can’t think of anything more important than this!
Not to mention I’m very much looking forward to working with the team.
What has been a “More in Common moment” in your life?
The truth is, I have them every day. It happens when I'm in church, or when I'm at one of my kids’ baseball games, or when I'm at the firehouse, or when I'm visiting my kids’ school, or when my wife goes to work. There are a lot of places where people put their differences aside to focus on something that they have in common.
Not everyone I’m sitting next to in church is a Democrat or a Republican. Not all the parents on my kids’ baseball teams are Democrats or Republicans. I think that the connection between each of those environments is there's some context that is more important to you than whatever your most deeply held political beliefs are.
Where did you grow up and what was it like living there?
I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and also lived in central Ohio for a little bit through the end of middle school and high school. But I consider essentially Jersey and the Princeton area my home.
My town is deeply important to me. And my journey with the town has been ongoing. My grandparents were very blue collar, and to put it very bluntly, I now live in one of the homes that my grandmother would have been cleaning and cooking for...a classic immigrant story.
My experience of the town is completely refracted through the lens of my church and my family. I was gone for about 20 years, and came back in and went through a journey of realizing how important this place and that setting of family is to me.
You were in the Marines. Are there lessons that you learned serving in uniform that still feel relevant to how Americans overcome their deep divisions?
When serving in uniform, you’re thrown into a context at a very young age where it’s obvious that you’re collectively working on something more important than anything else. It's why I'm such a big believer in the idea of national service. The thrust of working together across divides on something bigger than yourself can also happen in everyday life. That lesson is just made more obvious when you're all wearing the same uniform.
What do you wish Americans better understood about their country?
I wish people had a better contextual understanding that the tension that we feel is often the outcome of how ambitious our country really is. And that’s okay.
We're not a country founded around a common ancestry or common heredity, but a nation founded around a commitment to human dignity and a common set of ideals. In the preamble of the Constitution, it says that the reason we're putting together this constitution is to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
Like we're not doing this thing just to achieve steady GDP growth by 2030--there are so many bigger ideas here.
And our national ambitions are asymptotic. An asymptote in math describes two lines that get infinitely closer together without touching. That is our project. And when you make an enduring commitment to what President Lincoln called “the unfinished work,” you're never actually going to get there. And it's really, really hard work.
What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
When I was in the Marine Corps, I had one of my battalion commanders tell me in a room full of people, “Jason, not good enough.”
I was leading my second unit of around 60-70 guys. We were out in the middle of winter on a training exercise. And as the platoon commander, the guy in charge of your unit, you're responsible for putting together what's called a Range Safety Brief--basically a presentation that explains how we're going to make sure that no one gets hurt.
But as this is going on, all of my guys are out in the field when it's like literally four degrees outside. And I made a choice, which was, rather than go back to the barracks and work on my brief, I thought it was more important for me to be out here with my guys. So, I didn’t spend the time writing up the brief as well as I should have.
While I had a benevolent desire to be out there with my unit, part of it was also driven by vanity in wanting to be thought of as a guy who's out there with my team. And the truth is, in that moment, what the team needed from me was to be spending time in an office, ensuring that I had a really, really solid plan to keep them safe. And the cost of that, honestly would have been some of my guys thinking “Oh, like, Lieutenant, he's just back in the office warm and toasty.”
In leadership there are often only tradeoffs. There's never a wholly perfect decision. So, whenever I’m faced with a moment where it's very clear that incentives are pushing me in different directions as a leader, I come back to that moment in that briefing room.
That moment when my battalion commander dressed me down in front of all of my superior officers, and said, “Jason, not good enough.” It’s a reminder to put my vanity aside and think about what the team actually needs from me.
What is something many people may not know about you?
I make really, really good animal noises for kids, like really, really good. The elephant one is their favorite.
What's your favorite way to spend the day off?
Cooking for family.
There's nothing better than cooking all day on a Sunday, inviting everyone over, hopefully a game’s on in the background and just having a bunch of family around. Awesome!
Thank you for reading and being part of our journey as an organization. We look forward to sharing with you all that is to come in this new chapter as we continue our “enduring commitment to what President Lincoln called the ‘unfinished work.’”