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Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I couldn't agree more with the words of my colleague from Ohio, Senator Sherrod Brown.

It is unbelievable how long it took to do basic justice for our veterans serving us in some of the most difficult conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan to get their illnesses treated without them having to basically solicit legal help to connect that illness to their work.

The fact that these 23 illnesses are now automatically covered for a veteran who served near a toxin is just a terrific step forward.

And I am so pleased that we are making encouraging progress on veterans' housing. For our veterans to come back and be in the situation of facing the stress of return, the stress of reentering the workforce, and not have basic housing is unacceptable, and it is one of the ways we show that we are, in fact, a grateful nation for their service. Tribute to Jennifer ``J.P.'' Piorkowski

Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the floor tonight to say thank you to one of my team members who has been part of my Senate team for 14 years and is now headed over to work with the Peace Corps, and I want to say a little bit about the critical role that she played in my office and on my team.

When I first came here for orientation in 2009, I heard wise words, and that was that perhaps the most important person on your team is not your chief of staff, it is not your legislative director, it is not the head of your communications. It is your scheduler, the person who monitors and controls your time, because time is what you can't make any more of, and everyone will want a piece of it. The key person on your team--the hub of your team--is your scheduler.

The scheduler has to figure out how to fit in meetings with organizations, both from your home State and from national organizations, into already busy days, and has to figure out which policy conversations need to take place and how many are urgent today and how many can wait until tomorrow or next week, and which networking meetings with other legislators are essential to get onto the calendar.

The scheduler is also essential to our family lives. We have to have a scheduler who understands that our spouses are a key partner in serving in a legislative body, who have to understand that our time spent with our children is a critical part of our responsibilities as a parent. The scheduler has to ensure that the family has its appropriate presence in a Senator's life.

So you need someone who can take all of these competing demands and make sure that attention is paid to them and there is a balanced strategy to address them. Otherwise, serving in the Senate can become an absolutely miserable experience for all involved.

Well, 14 years later, I can say that this piece of advice that I received at orientation was the best piece of advice I heard, the best piece of advice that can be there for an incoming Member.

Over time, the person who schedules your hours, your meetings, makes all those judgments in consultation with you becomes not just a member of the team but a friend, a confidant, a member of your extended family.

And my wife Mary and I, along with our two children, have been blessed to have Jennifer Piorkowski as a member of the Merkley family, and I am so pleased she is able to be with us here tonight.

In fact, Jennifer, who goes by J.P., was part of Team Merkley before there was a Team Merkley.

In 1998, J.P., who had a passing interest in international affairs, called me out of the blue to ask for an informational interview when I was head of World Oregon. So we got together, and I was immediately impressed by that conversation. So I immediately recruited her for a project that we had funded to archive 50 years' worth of World Oregon's records.

It takes somebody with a real organizational mind and energy to accomplish that kind of task, and once we saw her at work on our team, I knew I would have to do everything I could to keep her with us, and she ended up staying with us in many different roles--from bookkeeper to office manager to programming speakers on international issues.

But we couldn't keep her forever because the international world called to her. The Peace Corps called to her, and she started a new chapter in her life of service when she joined the Peace Corps and headed to Albania as part of the first group of volunteers to reenter the country after civil unrest broke out in 1997.

During her 2 years in Albania, she worked with civil society organizations and with children living on the streets and survivors of human trafficking. She worked on enrichment programs to help at-risk Roma girls, a minority population in the country. She secured $65,000 to increase participation of disabled citizens in municipal decision making.

Her time in-country was so transformative that after her Peace Corps stint ended, she remained in Albania for another year, working as deputy head of mission for a transnational project to combat child trafficking in Kosovo, Greece, and Albania. In that role, among a whole host of great accomplishments, J.P. struck a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with the Albanian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Education, which led to the opening of child protection units--child protection units that are still in place and operating to this day.

I can only imagine how many young children have led better lives because J.P. helped open those centers.

So Mary and I arrived here in 2009 and started on this adventure of serving in the Senate, and we pondered: Who can fill this key role, this essential role of scheduling? Who would be the bridge between our office life and our family life? Who would be the extraordinary individual who would serve as a hub for the entire team?

And then we suddenly realized that J.P. was back from Albania and that she was right here in Washington, DC, continuing her terrific work on human trafficking at the Labor Department. It is pretty important work, and we were not sure we could pry her away, steal her away, from that to be on our Senate team, but, fortunately, we held our breath and she said yes, and we are so lucky to have had her with us this last 14 years.

It was J.P. who initiated my ``Good Morning, Oregon'' meetings. Every Thursday while we are in session, we open the doors of our conference room to welcome Oregonians who happen to be here in DC for a discussion and a good cup of Stumptown Coffee.

It was J.P. who initiated our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to address unconscious bias, to work to ensure greater inclusivity, to better integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of our team's work, internally and externally.

It was J.P. who organized our annual staff retreats, both in Oregon and in DC, with unique exercises, including this last year's Scrollathon that made us all ponder our key mission and shared commitment to public service.

And when COVID upended life as we knew it, she stepped in, took charge, and innovated new human resource strategies and helped our team pretty seamlessly transition to the scary world of Zoom and Skype and Teams and other countless tools to ensure we could continue to function on behalf of the people of Oregon.

It was J.P. who strived, year after year, to set the atmosphere of competence and graciousness and supportive connectedness as team members navigated the challenges of both our work life and our home life. She loved nurturing team members as they sought to grow and thrive in their careers.

And I think you would be very hard-pressed to find a member of my team over the past 14 years who did not, at some point, go to J.P. for insight or sage advice.

Over time, J.P. grew in her career, taking on ever-newer and expanded parts of our team work. She was no longer doing the day-to-day scheduling, but was our deputy chief of staff, keeping our whole operation running smoothly.

Now, life often travels in circles. J.P. was an integral part of my team at World Oregon; and after serving in the Peace Corps and returning from Albania, she again became an integral part of my team here in Washington, DC.

And now, J.P.'s life is completing a circle. Seventeen years after her Peace Corps work in Albania, she is returning to help the Peace Corps thrive in the position of Executive Secretariat in the Office of the Director. And I could not think of a better person to help organize that team leading the Peace Corps. Their mission is to help build a better world for all, and my dear friend, my family member, J.P., is just the right person to undertake that mission.

J.P., I cannot begin to thank you enough for all you have done in each chapter of service throughout your life: your service at World Oregon, your service in the Peace Corps, your service following up in that extra year in Albania, your work at the U.S. Labor Department combating human trafficking and, of course, here in the Senate as a founding member of our team. Thank you for all of that terrific work. And we know that the work you are going to continue to do to contribute to making the Peace Corps an incredibly effective organization will be a significant way to help build a better world. Thank you.

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