A Call to Service

The moment that led Vince Micone MPA ’91 into public service happened before he was even born.

Micone’s mother was raised in Nazi-occupied France, and her parents relied on a sympathetic German soldier to provide them with extra food to feed their family, even as they worked with the French Resistance to oppose the Nazis.

When the Allies reclaimed the country, the soldier was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp staffed by Micone’s father, whose own parents had fled to the United States from Italy during Benito Mussolini’s rise to power.

“When [the German soldier] was in the POW camp, my mom actually brought food to him to thank him for what he had done for my grandparents’ family,” Micone says. “And that’s how my parents met, through this conscripted German soldier, who even during those times was trying to do something good for those around him.”

The story, told to Micone countless times during his childhood, inspired him and contributed to his sense that he had a responsibility to help others. “It shows that even in the darkest, worst times, people can be good and do good things.

“On both sides of my family, there was always the message that we’re lucky to live in a country where there are so many freedoms guaranteed, and that we have a responsibility to contribute back because of that,” he says. “It’s always just been a part of our lives, and really an expectation and an honor.”

That ethic led Micone to an 18-year career in the federal government. After four years at the Bureau of Prisons, he moved to the Department of Justice, where he eventually managed the entire federal ­government’s employee-giving drive. From 2002 to 2008, he pushed the drive’s annual fundraising haul from $47 million to $61 million.

In October, Micone was hired as vice president for development at the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that encourages top talent to consider public service careers. In addition to leading the organization’s fundraising efforts, Micone serves as a full-throated evangelist for working for the federal government. “You really look across the board, and any profession that you could come out of USC with, there’s a job in the federal government for you,” he advertises.

Indeed, while Micone’s family story instilled in him a desire to serve, he credits USC with putting him on the road to his current career.

“USC helped put that idealism into action,” he says. “It’s sort of practical idealism.”

Micone says he’s aware that some young people don’t see in federal employment the higher calling that he does, but the mission of the Partnership for Public Service is to change the ­perceptions of upcoming generations of taxpayers.

He says he is already seeing attitudes toward public service shifting – the combined result of newer service programs such as AmeriCorps and Teach for America, the public’s reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks, and a new president who has excited the nation in part by declaring that he wishes to “make government cool again.”

“I think historically federal employees have gotten a bad rap,” Micone says. “You often hear people criticize the partisan atmosphere in Washington. Or you hear about a few bad apples in the federal ­government. It’s not anything new. But that’s also something that can change and will change and has to change if we’re to meet the challenges in the coming years that our country is facing.”

 – Calvin Hennick