University of Denver Autumn 2024

ALUMNI STORIES

Compassion on K Street Named one of Politico’s most powerful people on race, culture and politics in 2023, Tom Rodgers (BA ’83, JD ’86, LLM ’88) has spent decades fighting injustice in Washington, D.C.

By Connor Mokrzycki (BA ’22)

Tom Rodgers is many things: strategist, advocate, lobbyist and whistleblower—to name a few. “I see something wrong, and I act on it. I see people in pain, and I act on it,” Rodgers says. In practice, he says. “I take ideas, votes and money, and I apply them to moral and ethical problems.” Rodgers, a member of the Blackfeet

Nation, has worked the bustling streets of Washington, D.C., for decades and founded his own firm, Carlyle Consulting, in 1994. In the late 1980s, after completing his law degree as well as a master of law in taxation at DU, Rodgers got his start as a clerk in U.S. tax court, before working as a staffer for former

56

UNIVERSITY OF DENVER MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2024