From the Hill to the C-Suite

Eric Feldman, Sen. Peters’ chief of sta , heads to Airbnb in new role.

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Farmington 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 rental 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 millage for the school system narrowly lost the vote, only to be replaced by a new one several years later. Seeing the experience unfold taught Feldman about the importance of organizing 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.”

Eric Feldman ENGROSSED IN POLITICS

It inspired him to eventually switch his major at the University of Michigan from engineering to political science, 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

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