Tom McSorley

Counsel
SpaceX

Washington '06

Career Path
Career PathHarvard University, American University, Georgetown University Career SectorLaw

  • Teach For America: D.C. Region Corps

    After graduating from Harvard, Tom served as a special education teacher, where his high school students grew almost two years in reading each year he taught.

  • Georgetown Law Center

    Tom graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown Law, where he was a member of the moot court team and editor on the American Criminal Law Review.

  • Law Clerk, U.S. District Court Maryland

    After graduating from Georgetown, Tom obtained a coveted clerkship in federal court for the Honorable Catherine C. Blake.

  • Associate, Arnold & Porter

    Tom was a lawyer in the national security group, focused on compliance issues and counseling. He also worked on pro bono cases involving prisoners’ rights and systemic employment discrimination.

  • Counsel, SpaceX

    He now serves as Counsel and an Export Compliance Officer at SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk to revolutionize space technology, with the goal of enabling people to live on other planets.

Q & A

What led you to apply to Teach For America?

I was sure I was going to go to law school. But I had gotten advice from virtually everyone not to go straight through because you’ll always regret missing a chance to expand your horizons. I couldn’t see any other opportunity that matched TFA’s offer to actually dive right into making change and, frankly, taking on a ton of responsibility, so I applied.

When you think about yourself before and after the corps, what changed?

I learned quickly that my biggest mistake was thinking the classroom was about me. As I started to think of myself more as a facilitator in my students’ journey to improve their literacy, I felt much more confident in the direction my classroom was headed. That’s not to say there aren’t bumps in the road when you’re facilitating teenagers, though.

What lessons did you learn?

I think the biggest lesson was a fundamental shift in how I viewed being “effective.” In your academic career, achievement is mostly about receiving tasks, executing them, and being rewarded for completion. In the corps, you can’t just do the job, you have to see the bigger picture, as in the goals you’re striving towards for your students.

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