“One of my issues that I’m most passionate about, and this is strange, I’m really passionate about derivatives,” Elliott said in a recent interview shortly after taking up shop with Crowell & Moring. She added that when she was thinking about leaving Capitol Hill and what would be the next professional step, she had a simple test. “I thought to myself, you’re at a cocktail party with people, having a perfectly polite conversation, what is it that would rile you up enough to actually turn that polite conversation into a political debate? And for me, it wasn’t Obamacare or politics broadly , but let me tell you, regulation of derivatives, for whatever reason, fires me up.”

Here’s someone you don’t meet every day: a person passionate about financial services (quote on the left) and modern art: ” I love the emotions that it provokes, and that’s why I love modern art, because people get so mad about it.”

Read more of this intelligent interview with Erica Elliott on Roll Call.