In March 2014, Jarrett participated as a speaker on the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health webcast series “Voices in Leadership” in a discussion titled "Leadership in the White House," moderated by Dr. Atul Gawande.
JARRETT: That was a flawless introduction. You could have left off the years I graduated from school; other than that it was really good.
GAWANDE: Well this is fantastic, because of course what you're getting to tell us about and this whole series focuses on decision-making in leadership to help develop young people as leaders. You occupy a really interesting role as a leader, though. Here you are, someone who'd been a CEO, you've been a chairman, you've been…you've been a person who had kind of been in the hierarchy of line authority with lots of people reporting to you, and now in your current role as senior adviser you're not with that same kind of line authority. The New York Times said you're a “woman wielding a many-faceted portfolio of power” and they said it's partly your ubiquity, the guiding hand in everything from who sits on the Supreme Court to whom sits next to whom at state dinners, the White House staff memos peppered with VJ thinks or VJ says. And I wonder in your, this role, how has it changed your idea of what leadership means and what you try to do as a leader?
JARRETT: Well, I think in a sense you can lead from any position and as long as there are people who will listen to what you have to say and follow, then you're leading. And I think it has, it helped me certainly do my current position having been a boss and having known what my expectations were as either the CEO of my company or chair of a board, I knew what I was looking for from my team and so I think that helps me be a better staff person in my current position. But in addition to being the senior adviser, I also do run units within the White House – the Office of Public Engagement we now call it, and the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and I have a team there and lead that team. And so it's interesting because I both lead my team and then I also am senior staff to the president.
GAWANDE: When people like students imagine themselves playing leadership roles, it really is those kinds of classic “I'm going to be in charge” CEO position, whereas working as a staff and yet it's the staff of the most powerful person on the planet.
JARRETT: Well, when you put it that way, it's a little daunting.
GAWANDE: What was your trajectory – how did you develop as a leader? And then why would you take that particular role as opposed to the other kinds of roles that that the president might have been offering you?
JARRETT: Well, it's a good question. And when I was speaking with a group of students earlier, I mentioned that before making the decision to join the White House staff I had actually thought about asking for the president's position as a senator, U.S. senator, when he vacated it, and I was trying to figure out from my own, you know, what motivates me and what drives me and where I thought I might thrive better. And they're very different positions. And in the end, fortunately, I listened to the president, as I try to do, and he thought I would really enjoy being in the White House having the responsibilities that I have because of my prior experience. And so overseeing the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs – that's the mayors and the governors and the state legislators and all the elected officials outside of Congress. And since I had been in local government and I had worked at with the funders at state government, I actually felt like that was a portfolio where I was really comfortable. And then the other piece, the Office of Public Engagement, is really designed to give the American people a voice into the White House and engage with us on a range of issues to make sure we have the pulse on the people we're there to represent and to work on their behalf. And then the White House Council of Women and Girls is just terrific because it's composed of representatives from every agency in the federal government. Each secretary designates a point person and the job of the council is to make sure that in all of our programs and policies and legislation that we support that we're doing so, being sensitive to how that would improve the quality of life for women and girls. Well, what could be better than that, right? So I think having a portfolio that I cared passionately about, working for a president who I have known for decades and who I respect and whose values I share and whose vision for America I embrace made it a pretty easy choice.
GAWANDE: In both your senior advisor role and your public engagement role, the leadership can be subtle, and I'm interested in decision-making, in that kind of role. And so for example, I think of two interesting decisions: one was the decision to accept calling the ACA, the Affordable Coverage Act, “Obamacare” to embrace what it was being called by opponents, and I'm puzzled over how does a decision like that get made. Or the decision to put him on the internet comedy show “Between the Ferns.”
JARRETT: Well, let's talk about the decision-making for both of them. I think – I can't remember which senator – one of the senators said when the Republicans first started saying Obamacare like it was a bad thing – affordable health care for everybody, I'm not sure why that's ever considered a bad thing – and the senator said "Well, Obama does care." And I thought, "Well, that kind of sounds right, so what's so bad about Obamacare?" And finally he just decided, why not embrace it? Because they were trying to take something that's very positive and turn it into a negative, and so what better way to kind of dilute that effort than to say, "Okay, let's call it Obamacare." And in fact just yesterday he was saying to a group, you know in five years they're never going to call it Obamacare anymore because it's going to be working really well and all these people are going to be insured and so they'll try to find another name for it. On the “Between Two Ferns,” I mean, well, so there in a nutshell it was this: it was fun, it was different. We're in the final days before this first enrollment period lapses, so March 31 to any of you who don't have health insurance or anyone who's watching on the web, March 31 is a date by which you have to sign up or you're not going to be able to get health insurance for the rest of this year, enrollment period will be over. And we were trying to drive traffic to our healthcare.gov website and so we were trying to figure out, well, what's a way. We've been doing all kinds of things: we've had celebrities tweeting on Valentine's Day and this week is mom knows best, so we have all of these moms of celebrities who are out there talking about the importance of making sure that young people get the coverage that they need because you all think you're invincible but you know what, life sometimes takes a bad turn and you don't want to be without health insurance if it does. And so, you know, Zach and the guys at Funny or Die said, "Well, do you think the president would ever consider doing this?" And we pitched it to the president he said, “Sure.” And he knew he was like on to something when he said he went up for dinner maybe a week or so ago – we taped it a couple of weeks ago – so the night he had taped it he went up to dinner and they go around the dinner table and everybody talks about his day and he said, "Well, you know, I was in this national security meeting” or “I was, you know, meeting with the prime minister of such and such country" and his daughters’ eyes glazed over, and then he said, “You know, well, then I taped this ‘Between Two Ferns’” and both Malia and Sasha were like, “You did? That's really cool, Dad!” So he thought, okay, maybe the maybe the younger generation actually will…we'll pitch this. But I think what you have to do is that you have to…it's everything's a calculated risk. And let's face it – when you're the president of the United States, all eyes are watching you and there are those eyes that are just hoping that you will stumble and fall, but you have to have enough confidence in your, in your decision-making and a kind of a core passionate belief in what you decide to do. You have to have a tough skin because everybody's going to you know have an opinion about it and you have to just be willing to take the criticism along with the compliments and you have to take the long view. And on this one what we wanted was to drive the traffic, and so between Monday and Tuesday the traffic on the website went up 40% – mission accomplished! And a lot of people laughed and that's always nice, too.
GAWANDE: Well, I'm really interested in this risk-taking part of decision-making, right, because this is where the rubber meets the road. And how have you found – because you've been now in the White House from the moment he came in as president – how have you found your personal willingness to take risks, how has that changed as it went on? Has it stayed pretty straight as it has, as you've been, you know, had some things not go well, does that change your willingness?
JARRETT: Well, that's an interesting question. I think that as in any job, the longer you're in it the more confident you become about what you're doing, the more you understand the landscape, the more you understand the art of what's possible. And oftentimes in a political climate what's possible changes, but you get you get more in tune with what those variables are that can affect the art of the possible, and so I think you probably give yourself a little bit more wiggle room. Hopefully when you make a mistake you learn from it and you try not to make the same mistake again, but that doesn't mean that you should become inhibited and not be willing to take risks. Because you have to take risks. Life is about taking risks. And you can't, you can't let the fear of failure paralyze you to the point where you're not willing to take those risks. And, you know, the worst thing that happens is that, you know, something goes wrong and then you try to learn from it and not do it again and make up for what went wrong. But I believe if you're not prepared to take risks – and not just in your work but in your life – then you're not going to have the trajectory that you want to have. And you know, if the president hadn't been willing to take a big risk he would have never run for president in the first place. Believe me, there were a lot of people who thought it was not even remotely likely that he could win, and he did. So take risks. Take risks but be careful. Think them through and be prepared to fail, because sometimes it doesn't work. I mean, he ran for Congress and that was a risk and it didn't work. It didn't work at all. But fortunately he's not in the U.S. Congress, he's in the White House. And so you got to be willing to lose, too.
GAWANDE: You imply in some way that at the beginning you might have been a little more gun shy than you got over time, as you felt that you had more experience and could learn from where you took risks and where you didn't. Can you give an example of feeling, a case where you felt like you were able to be an effective leader for the president and a case where you felt like we took a risk and I wish I hadn't or I wasn't as effective in playing that leadership role and how what the…I think it might tell us a little bit about playing this unique role. We could almost imagine his job easier than yours.
JARRETT: Well, so a part of my job is doing events like this, and I mean, I enjoy it but I have to tell you I was…you might find this hard to believe but I was a very shy young adult. I was, I really was. I didn't do any public speaking at all and I had to kind of force myself to do it. And this is back years ago when I worked for local government in Chicago and that was just a part of my job. And what you find is that anything you do over and over again, you learn your own coping techniques, and I finally realized that just ‘cuz I was nervous didn't mean I actually had to look nervous, you know, and that the more you feel, the more you pretend that you're not nervous, the less nervous you actually become. And then over a course of years, you start to actually enjoy it. And so I think early on I was hesitant about going on television, because again the stakes are so high and you know if you, if you say just the wrong thing and it could be like one word off, that's going to be all over the blogs the next day. And so I was hesitant to do that early on. I'm much more comfortable doing that now, and I think part of it is you…just the familiarity with the substance of the material gives you the confidence that you can go on out and do it. And you also just get to know yourself and you get to know, okay, well, if I do make a mistake it's will be a one-day thing hopefully and then it goes away, it fades. But you do have to…I mean it was really a while before I was very comfortable going on television. That's an example of just something where I had to get my arms around it.
GAWANDE: I can imagine one of the areas where you were taking risks every day is where you're going to push an issue forward and where you're not going to push an issue forward. And it's the small matters, like whether he'll do Funny or Die, and it's big ones, like, I know in the course of just yesterday you were dealing with the Feinstein CIA controversy, dealing with how do you make the ACA work, a White House summit around at-risk boys and I'm curious about when you deal with such a diversity of issues, how you have, how you calculate whether I'm going to push something forward since you can't possibly know the depth of everything about all of these issues, or maybe you can, maybe, I don't know. How do you decide I'm going to take this risk or not?
JARRETT: Well, first of all we do actually know the depth of all the issues that we push forward. That's what we're there to do, so we try to master the substance and spend a lot of lead time. I mean, if you take something like My Brother's Keeper that the president announced last week where we're convening a group of…right now we have 10 foundations and hopefully that number will grow exponentially. They've already invested $150 million and committed or seeking to invest another $200 million, which will be leveraged by private sector resources to help boys and young men of color have a better trajectory, and right now by a lot of evidence they're falling behind, whether it's having inadequate early childhood education, whether it's being literate by third grade, whether it's being disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system, expelled from school, suspended from school—all of which are indicators of having tough life ahead and often times the feeding, the feeder into the criminal justice system. If we can break those cycles by intervening at these key points in these boys’ and young men's lives, we can give them the opportunity that everybody has who's willing to work hard and play by the rules. And that's an initiative that was really a year in the making, as we were working with the foundations and talking to not-for-profits who run these amazing programs around the country that are literally saving boys’ lives. And by the time we got to the point where we launched it, we really had done a lot of our due diligence. And so yesterday we announced we're having a White House summit on working families and we're doing it for all of you young people so that the 21st century workplace is more conducive to working families than say it was where when you came along and certainly when I first finished law school and dealing with everything from workplace flexibility to closing the pay gap. Women still only earn 77 cents on the dollar, women of color even less than that. What are we going to do to make sure that if you leave the workforce for a period of time you have an opportunity to get back in? The long-term unemployed are the hardest to find jobs. And we're working with the business community to see what we can do to help people get the skills that they need to be prepared for that workforce and then re-enter it and all of the, just, life balance, life-work balances that women traditionally but more and more men as they are taking on greater responsibility outside of the office are encountering. And that, too, is something that the White House Council on Women and Girls has been thinking about for the last five years and studying each of these areas to figure out what are the ones that we really want to hold up best practices and to take to scale so that we can change the work environment. So with anything that you see us announced, you can just imagine that there are thousands of hours of work that go into it and then we think strategically about how to roll it out in a way that it can be understood and embraced and supported by the American people. A lot of hard policy work goes on long before you see…
GAWANDE: Long before it gets there.
JARRETT: Well, long before it gets there. But then we also try to engage along the way so that we make sure that we're doing it in a way that reflects the priorities of the American people.
GAWANDE: So by the time you're pushing it forward, you've not only got your homework, you've made some decisions yourself about the risks to be taken and not by pushing it up.
JARRETT: And the ultimate decision maker, obviously, is the president and what he says to himself is, you know, is it consistent with his values? Is it consistent with his vision for America where, you know, everybody gets that fair shot? Are we doing, are we taking on initiatives that are going to keep America safe or grow our economy? Those are our two priorities, and so everything gets measured by those metrics.
GAWANDE: One of the hardest things about being a leader who is not the one in charge is figuring out how you deal with when you disagree with the one in charge.
JARRETT: Yes.
GAWANDE: And how do you how do you deal with that?
JARRETT: I try not to do it disagreeably. Well, this is… Part of the president's management style is to try to get the best ideas from his team and he welcomes disagreement. And maybe it comes from being a law professor where you hear all of these different positions. And then ultimately he makes, he's very comfortable making a decision. But he makes the room safe, if that makes sense to you. And I think it's an excellent management style, because you never know who has that kernel of idea that's going to turn into something really special. And so…and he is…it's a meritocracy, so you could be the junior-most person in the room and he will look around the room and he can just see on your face you have something to say and sometimes you don't and then he calls on you, but usually you do because he's a pretty good read of the room. And if you disagree with him you get such positive reinforcement because he turns his chair and he leans in and he looks at you and he says, "Tell me more." And then, and then he'll take an opposite position even if he might think that you're right just to see how you can push him to make the best possible decision. And I think that that's the point, is that if you're a leader the worst thing that could happen to you is that the people on your team are uncomfortable telling you what they really think. And my theory is I'm, you know, if I'm not going to tell him what I think then I might as well not be there because if he just wanted somebody who's gonna pare it back to what he thinks. And so he welcomes that and so it's easy to push with him. The management style is also I think important because when he ultimately makes a decision everybody gets on board and I trust that he is going to have heard me as well as heard all of the other opinions, and because he's the one who got elected he gets to make the decision. And that style generates confidence in the decision-making process and therefore it's much easier to go out and embrace his decision even if you weren't 100% on board if you felt like you were heard.
GAWANDE: You had leadership position in healthcare where you were the chairwoman of the University of Chicago Medical Center.
JARRETT: Yes.
GAWANDE: And I'm wondering now from what you've learned in leadership, what would you tell yourself about leading that role in healthcare or someone who's sitting in that role now – one of you guys may well be a leader of a hospital or a health system themselves, what would you do…
JARRETT: Interesting question.
GAWANDE: …differently and think about?
JARRETT: Yeah, well let me start by saying that my first job in high school was as a clinic coordinator at the University of Chicago Medical Center and my father was tenure professor at the medical center practically my whole life, and so I would walk over to his lab and I would, you know, play in the lab, and so I feel like I got to know the underbelly of the medical center long before I was chairman of the board. In fact, he used to joke, he would say when I became chairman, he goes "Does this mean you're my boss?" I said "Yes, it actually does mean I’m your boss. I do, I do I get to be your boss.” But so I think there is a lot to be said for getting to know the organization from the ground up and that I was a far better chair of the board having understood the challenges of the people who were really making that medical center work, like the clinic coordinators and the physicians. So that experience is important. I think, from the perspective, the vantage point that I have now seeing how our entire health care system works from the federal perspective, I think that if I were to go back I probably…I'm not sure how much I would do differently—I would just know more about how it all fits in together. I think that academic medical centers are the jewels in our country and the amount of innovation that goes on there that's transforming lives each and every day is something that when we came in the president was determined to support reinvesting in science and technology and basic research because he understood how important that is to our country. So it's a long way of saying I'm not sure going back I'm sure I've learned a lot along the way and understanding the big picture I'm sure would inform the decision-making and maybe I would understand a little bit better how to go about making a grant for a, for a federal grant because I see how the decisions are made. So maybe that's probably the best thing that I could offer them, is the insight on the grant-making process.
GAWANDE: In a way it's saying that the leader you were is still the leader you are, even in the…
JARRETT: Well, it's because I'm getting, as you pointed out…thank you very much, Sarah, thank you for that. I learn every day, believe me, I learn every day but I do think that you, at a certain age you get a style of leadership, a style of management, and you get comfortable with that style and I think that I have always embraced the president's style of listening to people. You do have to listen an enormous amount I think. Leadership is as much about listening as it is about doing.
GAWANDE: We get a chance to listen now.
JARRETT: Oh good. That was a nice segue. We didn't even practice that.
GAWANDE: We'll open up the questioning to you as students, and I think there's a microphone to go around and so if someone could pass the microphone up to the second row we have one student ready to ask a question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, my name is Melissa. I'm a second-year student in health policy and management here at the School of Public Health. Here at the school we hear a lot about evidence-based medicine and evidence-based policymaking and I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to how much policymaking in the White House is based on evidence, how much is based on gut, and particularly when it comes to very urgent matters or where you have to make a quick decision how do you deal with that.
JARRETT: Well, a lot of our policy work, as I mentioned from the two initiatives I discussed earlier, are a long time in the making and then we spend an enormous amount of time looking at the evidence and looking at the evidence on all sides of a, of an issue, and then ultimately you've got to go with what your gut tells you is the right thing to do. And sometimes that involves taking risks and where the evidence is unclear, going with what you think is in your heart is the right thing to do. But we try to make sure, because I mean, the policy that we make in the White House has vast implications and touches millions of lives. You want to get it right. And so a lot of time and effort goes into that. There are times where you have to make quick decisions. They may not even be policy decisions, but you have to make very quick decisions and then you hope that the body of information that you have had up to that point serves you well. And you, you weigh the factors. We spend a lot of time looking at the pros and cons of every decision that we make and trying to factor in, you know, who's going to benefit from this and who's not going to benefit from this. And oftentimes our policies are driven by making sure that we're opening up opportunity as opposed to closing opportunity. There's some just general guidelines that drive the president's values—making sure that the voices that are often not represented at the table we represent, and try to do policies that are going to improve the quality of their lives. Those who are at the upper end oftentimes might be the economic engine and so we want to make sure that what we're doing is growing the economy but not simply making the wealthy wealthier. And the president often says, in fact the last campaign was about whether you really want to focus on those who, the 99% who are out there struggling and trying to make ends meet or whether you believe in a top-down philosophy. So I think any leader has to figure out what are your basic tenants, what are your basic values, and then measure everything that you do against those values and that should be your gut check, that should be your gut check—is it consistent with your values?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, my name is Doniel. I'm a master of public health student in social and behavioral sciences. Actually, my question dovetails nicely with that last one but it's more from the outsider’s perspective. What are the characteristics of effective health advocates, specifically with respect to marrying policy and politics, that gets their issue onto the table and into the discussion with the president?
JARRETT: Well, I think one of the most effective techniques is, is having substance behind you and knowing the evidence, knowing the law, and understanding how what you're proposing is going to improve the quality of life. And so let's take something like the Affordable Care Act, a small piece of policy that we got done. There were lots of ways that we could have done that. There were people, there were advocates who—and this is a good example of where policy meets politics—we had advocates who strongly believed in the public option. They thought anything short of a single-payer system was a mistake. There's no way that was ever going to pass Congress, and so pretty early on that became clear and the president started focusing on well, what's the art of the possible? What can we get done? And at the early points in the process, really actually up till the time the legislation passed, we were hoping for Republican support because we thought it would be important if it could be bipartisan, and we made a lot of changes to it to try to generate that Republican support, which in the end did not materialize. But the issue of the public option was one where one might agree as a matter of policy that that makes really good sense and that you might deliver, as many other countries do, a good health care system that way, but if it's not possible then you what you don't want to do is let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And over and over again I have seen examples of where in history where politicians have held out for that perfect and missed 70% or 80%. And with all of our major social policies, they evolve over time, they get amended. I mean the only reason why we can't make some changes to it now is because the Republicans keep insisting on trying to repeal it. I think they're up to now 50 repeals of it, attempted repeals of it. And so you always try to make it better in time, but you have to you have to get started somewhere and you have to be willing to take 70%, as long as it doesn't violate any of your core values. And so for the president, pre-existing conditions was a line in the sand. He was not going to support legislation unless we were sure that everyone with a pre-existing condition could have health insurance. And he’d just in the course of his life heard story after story after story of parents with a sick child who has asthma and they can't get the insurance, and it's just a nightmare. And so that was a very important policy and if we couldn't have gotten that then he probably wouldn't have gone forward. The public option he was willing to go forward without and so you, you have to really combine what you think you can actually get done versus the art of the possible with, with major opposition which isn't going to allow it to go forward. And then the other point I would make on this is that you have to decide what you're willing to fight for and when. And so the president knew when he was elected he came in with maximum political capital and his view is if you have that capital you can take a risk and you can try to do something you really believe in even if it's going to be really hard and you're going to use, you may lose some of that capital, it's worth it. And for him it was worth it and I think the history will reflect as the quality of health care in our country greatly improves as a result of the Affordable Care Act that he was right, that that was the right calculus.
GAWANDE: Another question over here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, I'm Sarah Gordon again.
JARRETT: Welcome back.
STUDENT: So as I shared with everybody, you have held so many prominent positions both in the public and private sector and in the White House and as a representative woman in leadership. I'm curious to know your thoughts on what it's been like to be a woman in those leadership roles and what kind of advice you'd share with young women who are aspiring to, aspiring to leadership roles?
JARRETT: I'm going to write a book on this but I'll give you like the CliffsNotes version of the book, because… Now this is where I was just, you know, I always think back on when I finished law school. I tell the story that's like I had this plan, I was going to finish law school. I was going to join a law firm. I was going to make partner in six years. I was going to get married. I was going to have a baby by the time I was 30. I had this 10-year plan all, you know, laid out for myself. And like six years into the plan I was at a law firm, I got married, I had a beautiful baby, and I was I was pretty miserable. I was miserable in my marriage, I was miserable at work. And so one of the messages that I give to everybody but particularly young women is, you know, find what your passion is. Find out what works for you. Take risks. I think, I think—and this is a generalization—but I think sometimes women are more risk adverse than they should be. And you know, it's okay if everybody doesn't like you. You want them to respect you, but it's all right if not every single human being is your best friend. That's just fine. And I also found early on—and I think that you women who are younger than, than me are far wiser—is that I tried, I thought that the people, the women who had fought for women's rights and demonstrated and you know really, really were champions before me did so in order for me to have the ability to compete with men and do all the things that women traditionally did. And so I would go to work and I’d come home and I'd cook these wonderful meals and I would think I should take care of my daughter and I was, I was trying to be superwoman. And you know what—we're not superwomen. You're just human. And don't set that standard for yourself so high that you were going to disappoint yourself time and time again. And I might have a thousand balls up in the air and I'm like going around trying to make sure nothing fell and the balls start to fall. You're going to drop some if you got a thousand up there and it's okay to ask for help. And you know, I could not. I was a single mom from the time my daughter was very young and I couldn't have done it without my parents, and so I asked them for their help and fortunately they were able to give it to me. But build a circle of support around yourself so that you don't feel like you're drowning. And oftentimes, particularly women just feel like they're drowning. And that's part of what has driven us for, to have this, this summit that the president wants to have, is he's watched, he watched his grandmother hit a glass ceiling working at a banks and she was far more qualified than the people she trained who leapfrogged over her. He saw what it was like when the first lady was trying to balance having two young children and having a big job at the medical center. And he's got these two young girls and he wants them to be able to compete on an even playing field. And so he's really motivated by that. But you also have to, you have to just accept the fact that it's going to be really hard and you're going to make mistakes. You're going to fail. Laugh at yourself. Get yourself back up. I often tell stories about this is a one story about my local hometown newspaper that wrote an unflattering story about a group of women who had worked in the administration, all of us, and it was in the Sunday paper and this particular newspaper does like, you know, tabloid-type Sunday paper with big pictures and they had pictures of all of us and it was just really…each story was worse than the one before. My best friend picked up the paper called me and I thought she was calling to commiserate. She said, “I saw the paper—great picture.” So my point is if your best friend doesn't actually read the article, you know, don't take yourself so seriously that it paralyzes you. And get help. And also the other thing—I could go on this for a long time, got lots of advice for women, things that I didn't do—is that you're gonna…my theory is you can have it all, not at the same time. And that life is not a sprint. There's an arc to your career and that if you make certain decisions early in your career, don't consider those sacrifices. Embrace them and say "Okay, maybe I'm going to stay home for a couple of years and be with my child and have that amazing experience." Don't be resentful of your friends who are working these high-powered jobs and making a lot of money or doing what their passion is. If you're with your child. Or if you decide my job's going to require me to travel all over the world and so I'm not going to have children—well, that's not a sacrifice. You got a really cool job traveling all over the world. And so I really I think that in the attempt to have it all, we end up thinking we're making sacrifices. It's your life so, you know, embrace it. Embrace all of it. And know that you may not have it all on day one. The first job you take is not the last job you're going to have, and over the arc of your career things balance out. Is that helpful? Good, good. Read my book. Got my first seller, buyer.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, hello, my name is Herman Orgo. This year it has been my pleasure to serve my classmates as president of the student government…
JARRETT: Congratulations!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: …in the centennial of the school.
JARRETT: That’s pretty big deal.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, and in the centennial of the school and this has been great. Thank you very much for sharing with us all your experience and leadership, and I would like to go back 2008 when President Obama was elected.
JARRETT: Yes.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I remember. I was living in Pittsburgh and we were hearing all the campaign promises and when he was elected, President Bush start to pass the same information that he received every day for the nation and from the rest of the world, and how was the impact of this information in President Obama and in yourself?
JARRETT: That's a really smart question. Well, there's nothing like getting those national security briefings to give you the appreciation of the magnitude of the responsibility. Some pretty serious stuff in there. And so one thing I will, I will say that's very interesting about our country and I, and you know it, but when you live it you appreciate it in a very different way, and that is the orderliness of our government and the transitions. And my goodness, I mean, we obviously were very critical of the prior administration for a host of reasons. But President Bush and his team could not have been more helpful during the transition and could not have wished us more well, because they cared about the country. And so these folks who you have been kind of doing battle with in the course of a campaign, who embrace you. And I remember the first time that I was invited to the White House during the transition by my counterpart, the person who had my position under President Bush or close enough to it, and I remember, you know, walking up the path of the White House and it was right at the holiday season and the Christmas tree was out front and just as I walked past where the press is in what we call Pebble Beach, one of the cameramen yelled out and he said, "Welcome to the White House!” I burst into tears. I just burst into tears. I couldn't believe I was walking into the White House where I was going to work. And President Bush's senior adviser brought me in. He showed me everything that he was doing. He told me all about what his experience had been like. He could not have been more helpful. And everyone in the White House feels that way about the people who helped us in the transition. And I think that's government at its best, where you can have a debate, you can argue, you can say dreadful things about one another, but when it's time for that transition because the stakes are so high and because what's in that briefing is so scary, you know you've got to do the appropriate transition. So it was daunting and challenging, but we had an enormous amount of help and for that I'm very appreciative of President Bush and his team.
GAWANDE: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, my name is Kirsten. I'm a PhD student in health policy. And related to the last question—I mean you just gave a really powerful example of government working, and given your background in local politics and that really being your experience before coming into the national scene, it would be interesting to know your perspective on how Washington can work better and more along the spirit of collaboration and teamwork to make important and necessary decisions to move our country forward.
JARRETT: Well, I will tell you, I thought local government in Chicago was pretty rough and tumble, and certainly in Springfield, Illinois, too, but I always felt that people were trying to do what was right for their constituents. And we might have disagreed about the method, but usually the disagreements were less substantive at the ground level. The policies are, you know, grow the economy, make the schools better, make sure the parks are clean, pick up the garbage, cut the trees. Everybody kind of wanted the same thing. You might compete over resources as to where they're going to go, but everybody wanted, you know, have a home, live in a safe neighborhood, have a place to shop, make sure that your kids have a good school—basic things, that's what you wanted. I think what was disappointing about Washington, and I mentioned to the group earlier that I still remember election night—it was a beautiful warm night in Chicago and the president gave a great speech and I was kind of in a zone when he was speaking but I listened really closely to Senator McCain's speech. It was beautiful speech. It was patriotic, it talked about bringing us all together, and it lasted, you know, that spirit didn't last like more than that night. And so to have been for the last five years trying to find that compromise ground and trying to tackle issues like… Infrastructure has always been a bipartisan issue before, we should be able to agree on infrastructure, it's going to make us globally competitive, it's going to create jobs. I mean, and I can go down the line on issues that have traditionally been able to get bipartisan support and for which we have not been able to get it. And it's very hard when Congress, the House for example is on a two-year cycle so every two years they're running for office and what might be in your short-term political interest to get reelected in your district, and the way the district lines have been gerrymandered now they're skewed, that is not necessarily what's in the nation's best interest and so you're stuck between, well, do I do what's going to get me reelected or do I do what's for the greater good? And unfortunately our experience is that they have done what's going to get them reelected. And that's made it very hard to take on big challenges and get things done. And it's, it's really disappointing. And we're not going to stop. We still, for example, are determined to get comprehensive immigration reform done. For that we need legislation. But what the president said also in this year's State of the Union is we're going to go and work with Congress where we can but where we can't we're going to have a year of action and we're going to get some things done. And it's going to be everything from My Brother's Keeper where we're working with foundations. It's going to be making college more affordable, making sure that you're not ladened with student loans, making sure that disadvantaged young people have the opportunity to go to college so that they can do what you all are all doing. It's going to be looking for ways of connecting our technology to all of our schools so that schools are wireless and children who may not have the internet at home can have it at school so that they again can compete on a level playing field. We're going to do a whole host of initiatives that are going to require partnerships outside of government to leverage or executive actions that the president can take on his own. And it feels so much better. I cannot tell you how much more exciting this year is knowing that we're going to just get a lot of stuff done, and, and do it in a way where it really is reflecting again the values of the president and the values of the vast majority of the American people.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, my name is Tiffany Kenison. I'm a master of public health student in the Department of Health Policy and Management. And my question is more related… I feel like sometimes you're talking about President Obama getting a lot of criticism and I think it's very easy to do in part because sometimes you hear leaders say certain things but then you feel like some of the decisions that get made and the nitty-gritty details don't reflect that kind of, you know, grandiose comments or very exciting comments that will be made, and one of the things that… As an example, you know, one of the things that President Obama has said that he's really interested in an AIDS-free generation, which is really exciting because now we all know that the evidence is out there that we can actually accomplish that. But I know in the budget there was, there are some concerns about PEPFAR being funded, you know, at higher levels because in order for us knowing the science we need a boost in funding now so that things don't spiral out of control. So how are these decisions kind of made when, when it's a such a small portion of the budget that to us in the ground it feels like a very not as important decision as, let's say, the ACA, which is, you know, kind of garnering so much heat?
JARRETT: Well, this is the thing—the president did make a commitment that we're going to have an AIDS-free generation and we are on our way to that. I mean just in Washington, D.C. alone, the city I know pretty well, they have gotten it down to no, there are zero contractions of AIDS between moms and their children—zero. It just doesn't happen anymore. Well, that's that would have been unheard of 10 years ago in D.C. Our commitment to PEPFAR in the budget reflects the commitment, which is the funding that we committed to do a few years ago. It's a multi-year commitment and we are on track to honor that commitment. Of course people would have liked a higher dollar amount but given the constraints that we're under we couldn't increase the funding for it. And this is the challenge of the budget. And I mean it's a source of great frustration to a lot of folks who are counting on those dollars which seem relatively small in comparison, but believe me behind every dollar there is an advocate. Every single dollar of the federal government there's an advocate. And because we have trimmed the budget down so much in order to get a budget passed in this divided bipartisan government, we've had to cut a lot of things that we care a great deal about. We had to cut, we had to reduce the food stamp budget to get the farm bill done. And it is, it is not inconsistent in my opinion to have a vision for the world as you want it to be but work within the realities of the art of the possible. You have to do both and you have to, you have to not be satisfied with the art of the possible and constantly be pushing the envelope. But it's back to the point I made earlier about the public option—you can't just say, well, you know I'm not going to do it if I have to settle for a half a loaf. But on that specific issue we are absolutely honoring the commitment that the president made a few years ago for PEPFAR. It's a very important issue. This is another area where President Bush deserves an enormous amount of credit, but we're going to follow through on what he started.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Miranda Danalof ManusI. I'm here on staff at the Harvard School of Public Health. I'm wondering if you could comment a little bit on the first lady and her leadership style. It's such an unusual role and she's made some unusual choices, and I'd love also to know how did she decide to go on Jimmy Fallon and do mom dancing.
JARRETT: It's, it's that same spirit that led the president to Between Two Ferns. It was, I mean the, well, the first lady… First of all, she has a luxury of picking her issues and that's a big difference in the president, who gets to pick some issues but he also has a lot of incoming that he has to deal with. And so the analysis that she and her team go through is this: is it something that she cares passionately about where she has had some firsthand experience. Is it something where she actually believes that she can move the needle? And is it something that she's going to want to continue to work on throughout her life? Because when her husband's term is up, she's not, she doesn't want to just abruptly stop doing what she's doing. And so if you look at some of her initiatives…Let's Move. Let's Move came to her when her daughters were young and she was feeding them all kinds of stuff and didn't appreciate the nutritional value that was in what she was giving them, and her pediatrician said, "Let me tell you what's in this food." And then she changed what they were eating and she thought, "Well, make, maybe moms don't know what's in their food and let's at least give them the information so they can make an informed decision." She's always loved athletics. Her brother was a great athlete and she was an athlete and so she said exercise has to be a part of it, it can't just be diet. So that was from her own experience. And then she said and let's just make it fun and let's get people interested in the name Let's Move. It's not lecturing, it's not, you know, it's it's a great name. Her commitment to military families came when she and Dr. Biden in the course of the presidential campaign traveled around the country and they met these military spouses and the stories that they told and the struggles that they had made her say, "We have to as we honor our military when they come home and find them jobs. We have to make sure that their families are taken care of, too." That's something she just, she just cares so deeply about and has made a big difference. There are hundreds and thousands of veterans and their spouses working today because the first lady just said, "Shouldn't you think about hiring a veteran?" That's all she had to do is just say, "Don't we at least owe them a job after they've made this sacrifice for our country?" The work she's doing right now around education—passionately believes in it. You know she grew up in public school education. She talks about how she would have never considered going to Princeton, applying to Princeton, if her brother hadn't been there on a basketball scholarship. And so helping disadvantaged children open their eyes to the possibilities, that they're plenty talented enough to pursue but just need somebody to encourage them to do them. So everything that she's done meets that criteria and I think that all of them are areas of interest that will continue long after she's no longer the first lady, because I think something tells me she's going to be popular for life. She's a great inspiration. She has a mentorship program that we do with young girls in the White House and she manages, she is the first lady, but she manages to like hug and embrace everybody, where in an instant she puts them at ease because she understands how intimidating the White House and her position could be. And I think that makes her a role model for all, not just girls, but I think boys, too.
GAWANDE: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good afternoon. Burton Prosser, management and policy. So just within the past 48 hours a seat in Florida was lost to a candidate who did nothing but denounce the Affordable Care Act, and my question is given that the Affordable Care Act was passed years ago, it's been through the Supreme Court, did the administration anticipate either this severity or this duration of opposition to the act?
JARRETT: It would hard to, it would be hard to anticipate that they would be behaving the way they are behaving, if you mean the Republicans who were, I mean, spending an enormous amount of money. And this is what campaigns come down to often, is how much money these outside groups, these super funds, are willing to spend to distort something which is basically providing affordable health care to all Americans. So it is stunning to us, but I don't think you can read too much into any one election and I think over time and we're seeing it already… I mean the fact that as of February, 4.22 million Americans had signed up for insurance, many who had never had insurance before, is a sign that we're moving in the right direction and all Americans, whether they have insurance, if they have insurance, are benefiting from a stronger, stronger provisions than they had before. So pre-existing conditions, for example, insurance companies can't discriminate against you, or young adults who can stay on their parent’s insurance until they're 26, or senior citizens getting help with prescription drugs, or women getting preventive care, whether it's screenings for cancer or contraception, without a co-pay. All of these benefits are going to [?] to the American people, and so it is just a matter of time before the conversation gets outside of the Washington political chamber and into your home and into your heart. And every day I hear from people who have signed up and whose lives have been changed and saved. And so I think we have confidence that in time it will become accepted and embraced and people will, it will not become the political issue that that the Republicans have chosen to make it today.
GAWANDE: I think we're down to our last few minutes and I wanted to leave a little bit of time for you to maybe tie together what you feel like you wanted to make sure people knew out of all of the things we talked about here today about leadership.
JARRETT: Well, let me say this: it's not for the faint at heart. You have to have a tough skin. And whether you're in the private or the public sector, people are going to be counting on you and part of being a leader is having responsibility for beyond yourself. And you're, you're only on this planet for a relatively short period of time. And those of you who are in this room, you have you have the luxury of an outstanding education. Take advantage of what you can while you're here on campus. Soak up every last bit. Everybody who I know who's my age would do anything to be able to be in your shoes again and have the chance to just learn, so take advantage of that. But then go do something with it—do something. And you can—you will, not can—you will change the world for the better if that's what you make up your mind that you're going to do. And you're so lucky to be just embarking on your career, most of, most of you young ones who are here today. And the sky is the limit. Don't be afraid to change course. Don't be afraid to change plans. Please don't cling to the plan that you formulated when you leave here, because you've got to be flexible, because you just never know what opportunities are going to knock, and they never knock at the most opportune moment, so they never do, they just never do. It's usually the least opportune moment. But have the courage to take and see an opportunity and go for it and know that you have a safety net that you gather from having this outstanding credential that you'll have when you leave here that will provide you the resilience that you need. And you know, have some balance in your life. Take some time to, you know, make friends. The friends that you make when you're in school, if you stick with them—my goodness! You might start a business together. They may treat your families if they become physicians. They might help you out in life. They may just be there when you've had a bad day and you can call on them. And the relationships you form when you are young are really the ones that are the rock bed of your entire life, so hold on to those relationships—make time, make time for each other. Oh, two minutes. I'm just getting started. My goodness! Well, this has been such a pleasure for me. You make me think and when I and it's good, because you want people to push you and there's nothing like a crowd of young smart people to make you go back and I'll give a lot of what we talked about today some thought and I think that's a good thing.
GAWANDE: Well, I thank you enormously for coming up, for giving time to our students and all of the students well beyond who are watching, watching this. The chance for young people to understand what the experience of leadership is like and the experience of decision-making is rare and for someone in your position to take the time to do it means a lot.
JARRETT: My pleasure. Thank you all.
Harvard University. “Leadership in the White House | Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama.” YouTube video, 54:51. March 28, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz6KnZZWuaM