Strategist Julie Cantalou recently transitioned to the world of politics. What are her ambitions as a politician, and how can ETH Zurich contribute to policymaking?

Julie Cantalou has many family ties to ETH Zurich, in addition to working in the Office of the President as a strategist. Since then, her passion for politics has led her to become involved in it full-time with the Swiss Green Liberal Party. Julie believes that ETH Zurich has a key role to play at the nexus of science and policy. The issues she hopes to have impact on personally are the energy transition, education and the economy, and these are sure to play out in the upcoming elections.

Meet Julie Cantalou, a former colleague from the Office of the President at ETH Zurich who has made the transition to the world of politics. She is the Co-Secretary General of the Swiss Green Liberal Party.

In this episode, you’ll get to know the Swiss political system, learn about ETH’s role in policymaking, and find out what are the key issues Julie is campaigning for in the elections in Zurich on 12 February 2023.

This is her story.

Download transcript of this episode.

[00:00:18] Susan Kish: In this episode, I'm talking with Julie Cantalou, who formally worked in the ETH President's office and has remained a friend of ETH Zurich and is now involved in politics and is the Co-secretary General of the Green Liberal Party. Julie, both your parents studied at the ETH and the EPFL, those great Swiss institutions. But they studied architecture. So how did you end up in political science?

[00:01:36] Susan Kish: You're the, as I understand it, the Co-Secretary General of the Green Liberal Party. What does a Co-Secretary General do?

[00:01:58] But we also have a staff of 12 people who work for us. An d we run the daily operations of the party, we run the campaigns, we run all these kinds of things. And then the other key role we have is in communicating the policies and stances of the party and the third key role I would say we have is to advise the president and the board on strategic issues. Be spin doctors of the party. Let's put it that way.

[00:02:31] Julie Cantalou: Yeah, no, that's also part of it. I didn't mention it because it's not my favorite part, to be very honest with you. But yeah, the Swiss system again is very different from many other European political systems because in Switzerland we have no public funding for parties.

[00:02:53] Julie Cantalou: No.

[00:02:54] Julie Cantalou: The parliamentary groups, they receive some funding to do the parliamentary work, but political parties as such do not receive public funding. Unlike many other European countries. I think the other country I know where it's the case is the UK.

[00:03:19] Susan Kish: So where do you raise your funds from? Is it from individuals, corporations?

[00:03:25] Susan Kish: Foundations?

[00:03:31] Susan Kish: PACs?

[00:03:33] Susan Kish: Oh, that's interesting.

[00:03:57] Susan Kish: Oh. When you get those big packets of background information, these 24 page PDFs with charts and graphs, I remember those.

[00:04:05] Susan Kish: I do. Because you felt you actually had to read the darn thing, right?

[00:04:29] Susan Kish: Got it. If I understand correctly, you studied in Spain and Madrid and Barcelona. You studied in Brussels, you studied the UK. I am sure, given your interest, you also looked at those political systems in those various countries while you were there. What really struck you in terms of the differences in these different European approaches towards democracy?

[00:05:08] they're not called like that, but we also have two chambers but then other elements get added to it. The most famous one is probably direct democracy. The fact that we can vote, we have popular votes on nearly anything and everything, and then certainly the fact that we have what in German is called Milizsystem.

[00:05:47] Susan Kish: Ah, so they really don't have a choice unless they're incredibly wealthy. But to work and do this on the side.

[00:06:12] Susan Kish: And do you view that as a strength or as a vulnerability?

[00:06:36] They know what people really care about and what the challenges of people are, right, and they're linked to society and close to people's worries. The convenience clearly is that as the national level it is due to the increasing pace and complexity of policy making and law making it is nearly impossible to uphold a job next to a political career, it's very difficult.

[00:07:06] Julie Cantalou: Yes.

[00:07:11] Julie Cantalou: And you have to be in commissions. Like most of the law making is made in commissions and there are many conversations going on.

[00:07:23] Susan Kish: They don't have staff?

[00:07:42] Susan Kish: So having seen all these different political systems, did you ever question coming back or was it always inevitable for you to come back to Switzerland?

[00:08:00] I actually had a political event that really shocked me quite a bit. It was Brexit. I was living in the UK during Brexit and that was a bit of a wake up call. Oh, this is not the type of political environment I want to work and live in. And then I had been abroad for over 11 years and then came a moment where we were like, okay, let's go home.

[00:08:31] Susan Kish: I did notice that.

[00:08:35] Susan Kish: Yeah. It's tough with Switzerland, so Perfect.

[00:08:50] Susan Kish: Yep.

[00:09:08] Susan Kish: Interesting. I wonder if there's a policy that could address that, in the educational system or...

[00:09:21] Ersamus is the Student Exchange Program, Switzerland used to be. I was, I went on Ersamus. I'm a typical representative of this, what we call Erasmus generation. This generation of people who benefited from this program and went abroad. I went to Madrid for example. And now Switzerland doesn't participate in it anymore because it's a European educational program and because of our tense relationship between Switzerland and the EU, we have been excluded from participation at the moment.

[00:10:14] Susan Kish: And it is a part of education as you put it.

[00:10:26] Susan Kish: That would be a great policy. When you came back to Switzerland, you started working at the ETH.

[00:10:41] Julie Cantalou: Yeah, strategic development.

[00:10:47] Julie Cantalou: It was very cool. I loved it. Yeah , the team I was working at and the president's office was a task to support the board, the Schulleitung, so the board of ETH, specifically the president, in developing the ETH short, middle, and long-term strategy. And that goes from teaching to research, to outreach - everything.

[00:11:23] And and so to, find the common ground and develop a common direction in which ETH goes while respecting all this diversity, that was the real challenge behind that work. And also because ETH is a public university, it's publicly funded to a large extent. ETH has to submit four year strategic plans to the government. So that was also something very concrete that we had to develop. Yeah.

[00:12:09] Does the ETH have a role in educational policy? How do those worlds intersect?

[00:12:28] So policy for science is the area where you do research and educational policies. Create the best possible framework and playing level playing field for, higher education to be the best it can be.

[00:12:46] Susan Kish: Okay.

[00:13:10] It's obviously not the role of science to make decisions , it's the role of science to inform, which is very different. The decision makers are always the policy makers. Or the people in Switzerland in the end, right?

[00:13:30] Julie Cantalou: Yep.

[00:13:34] Julie Cantalou: No. I'm really passionate about politics and I, because I was abroad for such a long time, I was always politically active. I was a member of political parties in the countries I was living in. I was interested following closely, sometimes campaigning, stuff like that.

[00:14:07] I remember it was quite a challenge to manage a campaign and at the same time do good work at ETH. But I remember ETH was great in that sense. They allowed me to reduce, I think for a few months my work time so I could run the campaign.

[00:14:26] Julie Cantalou: I think I did okay. In Switzerland We have a proportional system. You have, uh as many people on the list as you have seats in parliament for the Canton of Zurich because the constituency is the Canton of Zurich. And so that at the time was 35 and I was somewhere on the second half of the List.

[00:15:01] Susan Kish: That was gonna be my question. Yeah. What did you learn from this? I've always been thinking that it's It's like racing. You have to be able to lose and get yourself back up and go right back and do it again, but learn each time.

[00:16:02] Susan Kish: The truth comes out. So in your current election , what are the two or three issues that you really wanna have impact on?

[00:16:34] It's the engine it's a bit of an engine of an economic, but also societal cultural engine for Switzerland and and it's a very diverse Canton. You have rural areas, you have the biggest city in Switzerland, which is Zurich at the heart of it, and this is, it's an important election also for Switzerland.

[00:17:12] And, but at the same time, we don't want to give up renewables. On the contrary, we want to speed up the energy transition so that we can be more independen. more secure and greener. That's basically it. So that's one really key topic people care a lot about.

[00:17:42] Susan Kish: Wow.

[00:17:53] And the fact that the labor market is dry, let's put it that way, also drives up the salaries and therefore inflation. To continue innovating and reviving the labor market so that we, and maybe have more people entering the labor market so that we can really continue on this really good path we are on.

[00:18:18] Susan Kish: Okay, so we've got the energy issue, we've got the economic issue. What's number three?

[00:18:48] We have we have a chronic lack of teaching personnel in Zurich. I'm talking primary and secondary school and yeah, and then also our education system could do better in terms of, giving opportunities for pupils that come from less privileged families, or families that haven't...

[00:19:11] Julie Cantalou: Yeah. Exactly. Switzerland isn't doing that well on these indicators and you are much more likely to go to universities if your parents have gone to university. But the difference is really high compared to other European countries. So how can we have an education system that is more geared towards creating opportunities for everyone.

[00:19:38] That's interesting.

[00:19:47] Julie Cantalou: Oh, yes.

[00:19:50] Julie Cantalou: Yeah, I know what they're talking about. Yeah. It's my grand uncle's picture. The brother of my grandmother. Yeah.

[00:19:56] Julie Cantalou: He was the first president of the ETH. So the ETH Council. Yeah. When that was created, I don't know the exact year, he became the first president and yeah. He was an amazing guy. A great guy. I have amazing memories of skiing with him when I was a kid.

[00:20:19] Susan Kish: Oh, so he was not an architect?

[00:20:41] And then I read at the bottom the name of my granduncle and I was like, oh yeah, amazing. And then, so it was so funny, I asked my parents and then my mom said, yeah, I remember he would, because he was the president when my parents were studying at it, and she said that the one, yeah, he used once or twice he came by the rooms where they were working at the studio rooms. Because at the time the studio rooms of the architects were still in the main building.

[00:21:09] Julie Cantalou: That's really a while ago. In the seventies. Yeah. And so he came by and said hello yeah, I didn't know that, but it was funny.

[00:21:23] Susan Kish: It sounds that way. Listen, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I have a couple questions that we always like to ask in the close.

[00:21:39] Julie Cantalou: Somewhere along the Limmat. I think I lived in Brussels for many years and I loved it, but there was one thing I missed so much. There was no water in the city, which for a Swiss person is unthinkable. No water in the city. What ?

[00:21:58] Julie Cantalou: And I love it. It gives so much space and in the summers, especially now that summers get hotter and hotter, it gives coolness to the city and, it opens up space.

[00:22:17] Julie Cantalou: Yeah. I have a memory. It's both positive and also, I, I don't want to say sad, but there's some melancholy in it because the day when ETH had to shut down because of the covid crisis, I remember that day very clearly.

[00:22:36] Julie Cantalou: Yeah. And we received an email over the weekend and it told us not to go to the office and stay at home and how they would set up research and education and everything and work and I went to the office, I asked for permission to go to the office to pick up my stuff and my, my computer and the screen. And the keyboard. There was no one, and it was

[00:22:59] Julie Cantalou: Yeah, it was spooky. And it really hit me. Oh my God. We and the city was empty. I met no one and took my things and went home, and I think, ETH did a absolutely fantastic job. I was very impressed still am, how well they did, how quickly they switched things, how supportive they were of the staff.

[00:23:25] Julie Cantalou: A pilot, and a doctor.

[00:23:48] Susan Kish: Very cool. Listen, thank you so much. Really appreciated this great conversation.

[00:24:01] Susan Kish: That's all right. The sun has come up now. We're good.

[00:24:42] Susan Kish: I am Susan Kish, host of the We are ETH series, telling the story of the alumni and friends of the ETH Zurich the.Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. ETH regularly ranks amongst the top universities in the world with cutting edge research, science and people. The people who were there, the people who are there, and the people who will be there.