Casey Fitzpatrick is a Manager of Federal Government Relations with eBay, and is a recent addition to our team. We sat down with Casey to learn more about his previous experience on the Hill and what it's like to work with sellers so closely in our advocacy work.

Question: Could you tell our seller advocates a bit more about what you were doing prior to starting this role? 

Casey Fitzpatrick: Before this role, I had spent my entire career on Capitol Hill serving in the U.S. House of Representatives in various roles. Most recently I was serving as a chief of staff for a member of Congress who was on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and House Judiciary Committee.

Question: How do you think your time on the Hill has impacted how you see eBay’s policy issues? 

Casey Fitzpatrick: I think there is a misnomer that people on Capitol Hill are experts in what they are doing, but oftentimes they are not. They are experts in writing laws, but not on the subjects they are writing laws about, so it is their job to use the resources they have, such as our team at eBay Government Relations, to understand what the broader ramifications are going to be and the details of it. They’re learning the policies, who the players are, and how it affects people on the ground, like eBay sellers. So now I’m on the other side of the table: instead of writing those laws, I’m providing the stories, the ramifications, and the access to the people on the ground so that whoever is writing the laws makes a better choice in what they do. 

Question: I like that way of phrasing it–that it’s not just trying to get policymakers to see eBay’s point of view, but you’re informing them of the broader ecosystem surrounding the issue. 

Casey Fitzpatrick: Yes, that’s part of the reason I came to eBay, is because it has a good story. When you start off a meeting and you explain eBay doesn’t compete against sellers; eBay is there in a win-win situation; when a seller does well, eBay does well; and everyone is aligned. And that’s why we get along so well with our sellers and have such great partnerships; it makes my job easier. Because when I tell that story to Capitol Hill, it is like ‘you are helping people start businesses, do side hustles, whatever it is, and facilitating that impact in our districts, and if eBay does well on the way to doing that, great for everybody, it’s a win-win, let’s figure out how to do more of that stuff’ as opposed to so much of the stuff up here is adversarial and you have an opponent and it can get messy. eBay is not in that scenario often and it makes everybody’s life a little easier in terms of getting stuff done. 

Question: What’s it been like working with the sellers so closely in your advocacy work? 

Casey Fitzpatrick: I think the biggest leverage point we can use is that it gives us access to the people we need to influence and explain things to because we have somebody in their district who is, in effect, in their community who they represent. It makes them care more, as opposed to ‘I am meeting with some DC lobbyist, part of the Swamp,’ they are saying ‘I am meeting with a DC lobbyist who is working on behalf and partnering with somebody who lives down the street from me, or somebody who knows my kid and their kid played baseball with my kid, and this is the connection,’ so it makes our job easier because we have that open door to get in and talk to people and explain how things should work, and how best to make sure things work for the sellers.

But more importantly, I think it makes our decisions on what we do clearer because we can understand at an individual level what it means. Like when I have talked to somebody about Shop Safe and there is a three-strikes-and-you’re-deplatformed proposal, and I talk to sellers and they are scared about this, like ‘this would be devastating for me and my family and my entire way of life, I don’t know how I would survive that’, that puts an emphasis on what’s really important and what we really need to focus on. It helps clarify the mission and what the message is going to be to try to fulfill that mission.

Question: You’re a big hockey fan and you’ve mostly used eBay personally to sell your gear or buy hockey merch. What’s your favorite team? 

Casey Fitzpatrick: It used to be a different one, but I’ve since adopted the Washington Capitals as my team.

Question: What else should our sellers in the program know about you? 

Casey Fitzpatrick: While it is not a marketplace or a selling situation, my family–my mom in particular– runs a small business. I know what that means in terms of the complexity. She barely graduated from high school. She didn’t go to college. She had me very young, which is why she barely graduated from high school. To see her try to run a business and do it successfully, but also see the challenges of trying to navigate contracting and payments and legal and the all-encompassing aspect of running your own business and being your own boss, or just being part of a small business in general, and the several existential, near-death moments that come with every small business, has given me a real-world sense of what the challenges are when you do something like that. It’s a very different industry than selling on eBay but still the same in that it’s on your shoulders to figure it all out, and can be terrifying but also liberating at the same time.