Tasia Jackson: Chief of staff, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)

Tasia Jackson knows a thing or two about the political rise of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). That’s because she’s had a front-row seat through it all.

The Brooklyn native joined Jeffries’s office when he was just a first-term state Assembly member representing the borough in Albany in the late aughts, and has remained on the team as Jeffries jumped to Congress in 2013, ascended to chair of the Democratic Caucus in 2019 and rose again last year to become the House Democratic leader.

She was drawn to politics by a driving interest in public service in the mold of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress. And she’s stuck with Jeffries, she said, because of his effectiveness as a legislator with a similar focus on social justice. She singled out a bill he was able to pass in his first term in Albany that barred law enforcement from keeping a database of everyone officers stop-and-frisked.

“It was life-changing for a lot of innocent people who were being unfairly criminalized,” Jackson said. “And I think it was after that that I decided to stay on and then relocate to Washington, D.C., to see how we can continue to make a difference and support people on the federal level legislatively.”

As Jeffries ascended, so did Jackson. The 38-year-old was named chief of staff in Jeffries’s personal office in 2017, and was elevated again last year to take over that same position in his leadership office, as well. In that capacity, she oversees an office of more than 50 staffers — a juggling act that makes for “no typical day.”

“It’s a bit of air traffic control sometimes,” she said.

Still, Jackson says she relishes the responsibility — and is inspired by colleagues willing to work long hours to adopt complex legislation, from responding to COVID-19 to preventing a government shutdown.

“There’s a lot of attention paid to, perhaps, some of the chaos,” she said. “But it’s the work that’s happening behind the scenes among the public servants, I think has just been really interesting to watch unfold.”