At age 20 I was living in New York and I was primarily a jazz musician, but I met this girl from London … she was a singer-songwriter of anti-folk music – it’s like Regina Spektor-type stuff. We met another guy, and we became a three-person anti-folk band. She played acoustic guitar, I played some electric guitar, did some percussion, and I did vocals as well, and the guy did percussion. Within a few months we secured a music festival in London, then got picked up by this Italian label for a tour in Italy. We had a gig every day for a month. That was a whole new thing for me – I had never done anything like that…

But it’s not very stable, being a musician, and it got to a point, in my mid-20s, that I just wanted to explore other things. So, I went back to school, to the University of North Texas and I found a love of public policy. I got involved in stuff on campus and in local campaigns and that’s when I was like ‘I really like this campaign life,’ so I started working more on campaigns. That led me to a policy job in Houston and then I worked for a commissioner in Houston… and now I’m here.

A policy life versus a musician’s life is definitely more mundane, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s also beauty in that. Having a balance – of the mundane and the exciting – is a good thing, and that’s what I’m striving for. I want to find a place that I want to build a home… working for a commissioner was pretty exciting. There was always a different policy issue he wanted us to tackle, and there’s a lot of camaraderie in that and problem-solving, so I think something maybe in that same vein.”

-Dani Sullivan, MPP ’23, reflecting on pre-academic life as a musician, what brought them to Duke, and what they want for the future. #HumansofDukeSanford #MPP