By Nicole Morell, Director of Communications
The Taubman Center for State and Local Government recently welcomed two new Visiting Fellows, Fagan Harris and Brandon Tatum. Both previously served as Chiefs of Staff to sitting governors—Harris to Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) and Tatum to Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt (R)—bringing deep experience in state level governance and public service to the Taubman Center.
The Taubman Center Visiting Fellowship provides state and local leaders with the opportunity to share their expertise and insights with Harvard Kennedy School faculty, staff, and students to augment experiential learning and applied research. Visiting Fellows support students with mentorship and career connections, provide thought leadership on key state and local governance and policy issues, and convene current state and local government practitioners for peer learning and solution sharing.
This is the third time that the Taubman Center has concurrently welcomed two former gubernatorial chiefs of staff from different parties as Visiting Fellows. This bipartisan, state-level representation of the fellows selected is an intentional approach to demonstrate the increasingly important role and impact that states and their leaders can make when working collaboratively to drive solutions to the most pressing challenges facing state and local governments throughout the United States.
“Hosting leaders with firsthand experience navigating the shifting dynamics of state and local governance provides an avenue to connect the Taubman Center community, and students specifically, with the practical realities of how to effectively shape and implement public policy and services,” says Professor Jeffrey Liebman, Director of the Taubman Center. “Having public servants here who model how to do this by working across party lines to develop the best ideas and solutions is core to how we support the current and next generation of state and local leaders.”
In addition to their roles as governors' chiefs of staff, Harris and Tatum bring deep expertise and experience from their
impressive careers that include work in public service, education, and the private and nonprofit sector. Tatum was recently appointed Chief Executive Officer of the National Governors Association (NGA) after serving as interim CEO since November 2025. Harris is currently President and CEO of the Abell Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to uplifting his native city of Baltimore, MD.
We recently sat down with Harris and Tatum to learn more about what interests them about state and local government, what they’re looking forward to in the fellowship, and what it means to them to be at the Kennedy School.
Why was it important for you to do this fellowship and to be here at HKS?
Harris: I was just so honored to be asked. It’s an incredible opportunity to spend time at Harvard with some of the finest minds and most promising leaders, particularly at the Kennedy School, where people really care about public service.
On another level, the fellowship also offers the chance to reflect, research, engage with ideas, and think through how to push our work forward in a way that's more strategic and informed by what's coming, as expressed by the leaders who will deliver it. Coming off of the chief of staff job, where it was literally 24/7 for years, this fellowship is the right strategic interruption to think more deeply about how and why we're doing what we're doing and where the path ahead takes us.
Tatum: I really enjoyed my time as a former chief of staff when, in that role, I had the opportunity to come to Harvard to learn and engage with professors and peers through the Taubman Center and NGA’s community of practice for governors’ chiefs of staff. Through the fellowship, I saw this as a moment to give back to Harvard for what they did for us as chiefs. It’s also an important moment for the next generation, as politics are shifting and with the dynamics we're seeing play out, we need leaders coming up through the ranks. And education has always been a foundation of my career, so this seems like a great opportunity to lean into that.
What are you most looking forward to during your fellowship at HKS?
Harris: I love spending time with the students, their idealism, and their passion. Their drive is inspiring and nourishing. I think if you spend a lot of time in politics, you can become a little cynical, and it can be easy to forget why you got into it in the first place. Your thinking can become way too tactical and expedient, and not enough about the transformation our political system can deliver when the right people work together in the right ways with the right goal. So spending time with the students can really center you on that latter part. I’m also looking forward to some time with my own thoughts that people smarter than me can sharpen and challenge.
Tatum: I'm really excited about building relationships with the students and faculty. I'm also excited about trying to lean into some important research around political divisions and conflict and how we can best navigate that.
What topics at the state and local level interest you most, either historically or at this moment in time?
Harris: I think the most important subject is how we renew democracy. We need to look at this as work we have been doing since day one. Sometimes we can catastrophize the present moment, but we’ve always had some really challenging periods here in America. And, inevitably, what gets us back on track are people who know that, name the problem, and work very intentionally to make things different. I think the question becomes how we renew and how we stay young as a country grounded in our ideals. How do you “reverse the clock” so that we get another good and promising run as the oldest multiracial, multi-religious, multicultural democracy on the planet? That's the big stuff, and that’s super important.
Tatum: Now, federalism and states' rights are really of interest to me, thinking about how our founders built the country, and how they built separation of powers between the three branches, as well as between federal and state governments.
From a policy perspective, I've always enjoyed education and workforce policy. Things like: How do we best educate kids? How do we do that in an innovative and exciting way? And then, how does that lead to good jobs? And how do we connect students with those jobs? Those are all topics that I’m focused on.
Lastly, I want to focus on respect in politics. We are living in a toxic political moment where political violence is rising. I want to explore how we can bring people together, lower the temperature, and demonstrate that Republicans and Democrats can still work together during this time. We need to learn how to disagree better with one another while respecting the inherent dignity every person carries.
Harris and Tatum join Robert Gordon as the current cohort of Taubman Center Visiting Fellows.
