The scope of John Salamone’s job as the Chief of Human Resources for the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) at the U.S. House of Representatives is as vast as it is vital: 700 people support 12,000 staffers on Capitol Hill and elsewhere around the country, including the 435 elected representatives themselves.
Salamone’s team provides strategic and operational programs for CAO employees, including recruiting, hiring, performance management, diversity, privacy, personnel security, employee relations, and workforce planning. But his team also provides direct services to Member offices and committees through the Wounded Warrior Fellowship Program, Employee Assistance, and the newly created Wellness Program for the House.
Salamone came to the position after several years in various capacities on the Hill, in the Executive Branch, and in private industry. But, he said, a turning point in his career arrived after earning his Master’s in Public Administration degree in 1998 at the Schar School of Policy and Government.
At the Schar School, then called the School of Public Policy, Salamone landed a prestigious Presidential Management Internship (PMI, now the Presidential Management Fellowship, PMF). Those accepted into the highly selective PMI leadership development program serve two years as paid civil servants in the Executive Branch. The fellowship, he said, afforded him a new range and depth of program and management experience.
After completing the PMI program, Salamone stayed at the Office of Personnel Management for another year and returned to the Senate to serve as a professional staffer on the Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee for Senator George Voinovich. During that time, he intensified his relationship with Schar School professor Paul L. Posner, then the director of the public administration program and leader of the University’s Centers on the Public Service.
“Paul Posner was instrumental in my career,” he said, adding it was Posner who helped him win acceptance as a Fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration in 2014. Posner passed away in 2017.
The PMI program coupled with the experience as a Senate subcommittee staffer were catalysts for Salamone’s career. “Without my [Schar School] degree I would not have been able to get into the PMI program, and without the PMI program I would not have been able to come back to the Hill, and then return to OPM as the Executive Director of the Chief Human Capital Officers Council to work on broad government-wide human capital programmatic changes for the executive branch,” he said.
To show his appreciation for the Schar School and Posner, Salamone has endowed the Paul Posner MPA Student Fund, a scholarship intended to assist qualified students. He is also active in the Schar School Alumni Mentoring Program, hosted by the Schar School Alumni Chapter.
Salamone was inspired to work in the field of public service by his father, an educator of more than 50 years. “But I really got the bug working as an intern in a Senate office,” he said. Salamone said conducting constituent casework for Senator Alfonse D’Amato's district office in Rochester, NY “made me realize I could help somebody; I could be helping a grandmother get their Social Security disability check or assist a family with an overseas adoption. I caught the bug pretty early.”
The internship turned into a job with the senator, but higher education—on top of his sociology undergraduate degree—was required to reach his career goals. “The MPA program was broad enough for me,” he said. “I knew I had an interest in management and I knew I had an interest in policy, but for me it was more about making organizations work more effectively.”
And what about a PhD from the Schar School? Salamone laughs, but considers it.
“I don’t know if I want to do that to myself,” he finally concluded. “Maybe at some point, but I think I have enough on my plate right now.”