By Journalist Sydney White (SE)
Today we got to witness both official members in the Oklahoma government: Director of Communications Abegail Cave and Policy Institute executive director Shilo Kantz. The O.I.L. joint session has officially kicked off with a bang and gives us a privilege to meet these bright individuals!
Meet Abegail Cave:
Abegail Cave gives us the unique insight of the behind the scenes work of what a communications director does. Any tweets and social media texts we associate with the governor are actually done by the communication team, who carefully produce thoughtful, respectful and sometimes controversial content.
She is the main translator from what goes on in big government to the ears of our Oklahoma citizens. Her goals include being able to adequately address hot button topics in a meaningful and respective way. She dealt with heavy topics such as the pandemic and BLM. She also organized a press conference for the eclipse and FAFSA. She, on top of all that, regularly communicated with our 38 recognized tribes in order to be the missing mouthpiece between the state government and our tribal leaders that make us work well together.
In order to act as “ The bridge builder” as she called it, Caves has organized a dignity press between Governor Stitt (R) and Tim Shriver (D) in order to organize healthy, important civil discourse so that important voices get heard in a respectful manner.
Meet Shilo Kantz:
Policy Institute director Shilo Kantz is part of a non-partisan research team that meets with unheard voices to hear their problems, and come up with better legislative content to improve the lives for the less fortunate. Kantz uses her platform to amplify the voices of marginalized groups such as our heavy indigenous roots (such as her heritage tribe, the Cherokee nation).
“The willingness to fail” was her most used slogan in order to encourage attempting to help Oklahoma citizens over not doing anything to play it safe. “We are hungry to fail,” Kantz says, eager to implement her ideas and add to her many successes.
She and the policy institute research team had studied and found stats for various criminal justice cases, bringing information on medical records to encourage the affordable care act, and collecting petitions to raise the minimum wage to what their research shows, won’t drastically affect pricing but compensate for inflation.
The wide spectrum of different careers:
Both Abegail Cave and Shilo Kantz had shown up together to encourage O.I.L. competitors to visit the vast sea of potential jobs that make an impactful difference in the lives around us. Both speakers bring people together rather than tear people apart. With few years in between our college experience and starting our careers, there are exponential possibilities among our always hectic government.