Scott Toland left Iola 18 years ago ready to take on the world.
His goals were ambitious from the start.
Go to college, perhaps follow his father’s footsteps to law school, then work in some capacity in government, perhaps even in the political world.
“I’d have never imagined anything like this,” Toland said this week. “It’s definitely a one-of-a-kind experience.”
Toland’s career has taken him as a law clerk fresh out of college for a Texas Supreme Court justice, then a few years later to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the last three years in the West Wing of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Nowadays, Toland, 36, remains in Washington, D.C., where he serves as senior advisor and deputy general counsel for the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank.
He, like the rest of the western world, is keenly watching how the 2024 presidential election unfolds.
If Trump wins a second term, “I’d be honored to work for him again, if I could,” Toland told the Register in a telephone interview. “I really enjoyed my experience. I really learned about how it all worked, how you could make a difference.”
Toland flew multiple times on the famed Air Force One, worked one-on-one with President Trump, almost daily at times, and exited the West Wing with a lifetime of memories — and a historic ink pen. (More on that later.)
TOLAND, son of Karen and the late John Toland of Iola, was an honor student and standout athlete at Iola High.
He graduated as a valedictorian in the Class of 2006, and narrowly missed out on bringing home a state tennis championship his senior year. He finished fourth, right behind IHS teammate Eric Sparks in third, that year at state.
His athletic career, at least in organized sports, ended around then. He played tennis and basketball while at the University of Kansas, and even tried (unsuccessfully) to secure a roster spot as a walk-on for KU’s powerhouse basketball team. (The Jayhawks won the national title his sophomore year.)
Toland graduated from KU in 2010 with degrees in journalism and political science. From there, he earned his master’s degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs from the University of Texas in Austin 2012. In 2015, Toland graduated from the University of Texas School of Law.
Fresh out of law school, Toland was hired as a law clerk for Don R. Willett, a justice on the Texas Supreme Court. He remained with Willett over the next couple of years until Willett was nominated for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Little did Toland realize, but his world was about to change, too.
