Carlos Paz: Chief of staff, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.)

Carlos Paz was a 20-something community organizer in his hometown of Houston when he took “a little detour” overseas that would shape his thinking and help steer him to Capitol Hill.

The project, called Operation Change, took Paz to more than a dozen countries in 18 months — places as diverse as Haiti, Tanzania, India and Papua New Guinea — as part of a film team documenting local development efforts. It would run as a 10-episode series on the Oprah Winfrey Network — and bolster his view of politics as a powerful way to improve lives in a frequently hostile world.

“It was incredible — changed my life to be able to see the world, to be able to see how you can scale change on a global level,” he said. 

Paz took that experience back to Houston, where he found himself managing a local campaign. He was a novice. His candidate was a novice. They scored an upset win. 

“I remember thinking that we didn’t really have a chance, and we got into the runoff and ended up winning by 7 points,” he said. “We had the best time.”

Fully infected by the political bug, Paz found his way to Washington and landed in the office of his hometown congressman, former Rep. Gene Green (Texas), a prominent member of the centrist Blue Dog Democrats. It would be a launching pad to bigger responsibilities and higher offices — a trajectory that took him from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; to the office of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.); back to the House, where he became chief of staff to former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.); to the leadership office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), where he was a senior adviser to the powerhouse former Speaker.

“I’ve had a rare vantage point across chambers and across ideologies,” he said, “so I’ve had to build trust fast, and I’ve had to learn how decisions are made and how decisions are sequenced.”

Paz, 39, is now the chief of staff for Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), a rising star in the House Democratic Caucus.

Paz said he was drawn to the job as a way to return to what he does best: organizing people in pursuit of common goals.

“I missed the mentorship aspect of leading a team,” he said. “And Jimmy was a boss that, when I interviewed with him, let me know that he wanted to have a chief of staff who would be a senior adviser for him and could take his ideas and turn them into reality. 

“We all play to our strengths here,” he continued. “And he reminded me this week, he said, ‘I come up with the ideas; Carlos makes them happen.’ And I love that we can be on that wavelength.”