A former Bush White House staffer, Heidi Nelson Cruz '94 has used her talents in both the public and private sectors. "Straddling the worlds of business and politics can be a challenge, but it's always exciting to be working to make a difference in people's lives," says Cruz.

She recently returned to business, accepting an offer with Merrill Lynch's Houston office as an energy investment banker. Her career, already including hearings on Capitol Hill, Cabinet meetings in the Situation Room, flights on Air Force One, and service with U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, has followed a unique path, balancing high-profile government positions with doing good and serving others.

This spring, as the commencement speaker at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tenn., Cruz urged the graduates in a direction that has marked her own career: "Don't forget to do good while you're doing well," she said. "Remember it is not what you have at the end that makes you successful, it is what you do to make the world a better place."

Raised in San Luis Obispo, Cruz grew up outdoors, mountain biking, windsurfing, and skiing. "My parents," she says, "as Seventh-day Adventists, highlighted the connection between a healthy mind, body, and spirit. They were very real about practicing what they believe."

Cruz's commitment to public service was inspired first-hand by her family's missionary trips to Africa and Europe and also by her eighth grade civics teacher's insistence that his class learn about current events. "I began to understand at an early age the significant differences that existed between cultures, and started learning about business and world affairs," she says. "I realized that politics is a great way to give back to your country."

Cruz's father and mother, both in the dental health profession, also encouraged their children to study capitalism, and Cruz and her brother, then ages 6 and 8, began making and selling bread to earn pocket money. The operation lasted for 10 years, eventually producing more than 200 loaves a week and grossing more than $15,000.

Honing this early social and global awareness and entrepreneurial acumen, Cruz was encouraged by Edward Haley, the W.M. Keck Foundation Chair of International Strategic Studies, and Jack Pitney, professor of government, to weave together her interests in economics, international relations, and public service. An internship with Rep. Jerry Lewis, then the Minority Whip, solidified her goals. She traveled to Houston as a California Youth Delegate to the 1992 Republican National Convention and, returning to campus, served as president of the Claremont McKenna College Republicans. "I became more politically active," she says, "and learned that leadership means taking a stand for what you believe in. You have to get out there and get involved."

Recognizing even as a young adult that algebra and supply and demand curves were tools for developing broader skills, Cruz's newfound political interests did not interfere with her academic rigor. "Heidi has an astonishing capacity to listen and to learn," Haley recalls, "and an absolutely unflinching willingness to work hard." Her senior thesis, on exchange rate policies in Eastern Europe's transition to a market-driven economy, was honored in 1994 by CMC's economics department as Best Senior Thesis in Economics and was included as a chapter in Exchange Rate Policies for Emerging Market Economies (Westview Press), by Richard Burdekin, the Jonathan B. Lovelace Professor of Economics, and Thomas Willett, the Horton Professor of Economics.

While study abroad in France further amplified Cruz's international awareness, Haley had a conversation with her parents that led to a remarkable educational experience. Cruz had applied for a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to study in Belgium, for which interviews were conducted during her time in France. Haley phoned her father, urging him to fly Cruz home for the interview process. "I told him that it was a $500 plane ticket against a $25,000 scholarship," Haley recalls. "But it wasn't much of a wager. I knew Heidi would win."

Cruz came home and won the scholarship, she says, thanks to very supportive parents and a believing professor. In Belgium, Cruz bettered her French and, at the University Libre de Bruxelles, focused on economic development in the states of Central and Eastern Europe, earning a master's degree in European affairs.

Cruz returned from Europe to New York to work for the historically renowned J.P. Morgan & Co. At Morgan's headquarters at 60 Wall, Cruz focused on highly structured cross-border financings between the United States and Latin America, privatizations, and mergers and acquisitions. After several years, like many young bankers with some experience under the belt, Cruz applied to business school, and headed to Harvard. There she returned to spending more time in politics.

Briefly before business school, Cruz served as assistant economic advisor to then-Senator John D. Ashcroft. Two years later, with a Harvard MBA, Cruz had an offer to work on the Bush campaign as a member of the President's policy team, and remembered Haley's advice from nearly a decade earlier. "If you can ever participate in a campaign, do it. That's where it all comes together," she recalls him saying.

Cruz drove to Austin, turning down an offer from the prestigious investment bank, Goldman Sachs. "I remembered Haley had always said a presidential campaign is a once in a lifetime. I believed in what George W. Bush stood for, and thought he could win. Even if he had not, it still would have been worth it."

Cruz met her future husband, Ted, on the campaign. As part of the policy team, Cruz prepared quantitative analyses of the campaign tax plan, participated in ongoing strategy discussions with senior economic policy advisors, and was principal author of W Stands for Women, a campaign book outlining policy issues affecting women. "There's a reason they call it a campaign," she says. "It's like battle. You are fighting for your candidate."

Following the election, Cruz was deployed to Miami to work on the Florida recount strategy, sharing responsibility for the quantitative analysis. The experience, she says, cemented her perception that politics is really about public service, producing results for people, no matter how glamorous or mundane the task at hand.

On the campaign she had worked closely with Bob Zoellick on debate preparation. In Florida, Zoellick led the recount operation, along with Secretary James Baker. Quickly, Cruz developed a reputation for being inquisitive, a quick study, and one who would do whatever it takes to get the job done, no matter how large or small the task. That willingness to roll up her sleeves wasn't forgotten, and when Zoellick was nominated to serve in President Bush's cabinet, as the U.S. Trade Representative, he asked Cruz to be the first to join his team.

As his special assistant, Cruz assisted Zoellick in overseeing global trade policy development and implementation, managing ongoing negotiations, and directing the interagency process within the administration. "We spent two years together," she says, "in meetings with foreign leaders, working on complex trade issues, and preparing for hearings on the Hill. He knew he could count on me, no matter what, to deliver results."

Later, as the Director of the Office of Latin America and the Caribbean and Senior Advisor to Undersecretary of the Treasury John B. Taylor, she was responsible for U.S. financial policy toward the region. With 10 professional economists on her staff, Cruz admits, she referred more than once to her economic training at CMC. Cruz also was the lead Treasury representative to the U.S. Partnership for Prosperity with Mexico, meeting regularly with President Vincente Fox's top economic officials and assessing investment, private equity, and venture capital conditions between the United States and Mexico.

"The Partnership for Prosperity is an effort to assist the poorer regions of Mexico that had not benefited from the economic gains of NAFTA," Cruz says, "harnessing private sector support to form business alliances, stimulate housing markets and venture capital investments, and reduce the cost of migrant remittances sent home to Mexico from immigrant workers in the United States."

Cruz then was tapped by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to serve as the Economic Director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council. In that capacity, Cruz advised Rice and President Bush on economic conditions and likely future developments in the Western Hemisphere, including directing the U.S. response to Argentina's debt crisis through numerous Cabinet meetings in the Situation Room.

Cruz coordinated U.S. policy for the President's January 2004 Americas Summit in Monterrey, Mexico, where, Cruz says, the United States successfully convinced the summit leadership to stimulate entrepreneurship, reduce bureaucracy and corruption, and improve education. "It was incredibly satisfying," she says, "to negotiate with all 34 countries in our Hemisphere and arrive at a common goal that, if carried out as intended, will benefit citizens throughout the countries of North and South America."

After commuting for almost two years between Washington, D.C., and Texas, where her husband, Ted, was appointed Solicitor General at the beginning of 2002, Cruz chose to return to Texas, leaving the Bush Administration after the President's first term. "Leaving public service is the hardest thing I've ever done," Cruz says. "But I believe some of the most effective skills are learned in the private sector, and for me particularly, in business. That's where I started, and I've got more to learn."

Cruz will undoubtedly serve again, but for now, its all business. Maintaining her commitment to service is a priority. She currently serves on the board of advisors to the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options, a nonprofit focused on increasing educational opportunities for Hispanics, and as a member of a task force launched by the Council on Foreign Relations, examining regional integration in North America. She and Ted are Pioneers, an elite class of fundraisers who each raised more than $100,000 for the Bush campaign.

"That's what politics really is," she says, "understanding people, serving them, and working to make their lives better. A great leader is really a servant."

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A member of the Bush campaign's economic policy team in 2000, Cruz dubbed herself the "H&R Block of the campaign," profiling at each local event a family that would save more under the Bush tax plan than Gore's.