APRIL 8 • 2021 | 37
F
armington Hills native
Eric Feldman has had a
long and storied career
in politics.
As chief of staff for
Congressman and, later, Sen.
Gary Peters, Eric Feldman
spent 12 years overseeing
operations in Washington,
D.C., and Michigan. “It was a
really incredible opportunity,”
Feldman, 40, says.
Now based out of Chevy
Chase, Md., he’s taking his
career one step further in a
new role with online rent-
al marketplace Airbnb. He
serves as the company’s head
of Federal and International
Affairs. There, Feldman will
help develop and implement
Airbnb’s U.S. federal regulatory,
legislative and public policy
initiatives.
It’s a new direction for the
legislative and federal affairs
expert, who developed a love
for politics early on while
attending Farmington public
schools. “I got interested in
politics at a fairly young age,”
he recalls. “My first political
memory is the 1990 election,
when I was 10.”
During that election, a mill-
age for the school system nar-
rowly lost the vote, only to be
replaced by a new one several
years later. Seeing the experi-
ence unfold taught Feldman
about the importance of orga-
nizing and not taking elections
for granted, he says.
“Because that millage passed
several years subsequently, my
sister and I didn’t get those
further investments in our high
school,” Feldman recalls. “I saw
the real consequences of public
policy decisions.”
ENGROSSED IN POLITICS
It inspired him to eventu-
ally switch his major at the
University of Michigan from
engineering to political sci-
ence, as his passion for politics
continued to grow. “I got so
engrossed in politics that I
wanted to pursue something
that I was really passionate
about,” Feldman explains. He
strived to focus on American
politics and began to get
involved in planning events on
campus.
While interning in
Washington for former U.S.
Sen. Carl Levin in the summer
of 2000, Feldman inadvertently
crossed paths with his future
boss — Gary Peters — but
he didn’t know it at the time.
Before joining Peters’ team,
Feldman officially moved to
D.C. in 2002 to take on his
Eric Feldman, Sen. Peters’ chief of staff,
heads to Airbnb in new role.
From the Hill
to the C-Suite
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Eric Feldman
continued on page 39
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