Book. I do invite you whatever suits you, if its a cocktail, if youre on east coast, maybe not on the west coast, whatever you would like but we hope youll participate in the conversation. Im going to stoppages saying what everybody in the audience knows about cecilia munoz, which is she would much rather talk about other people than herself. She would much rather promote and help other people to put yourself forward. Given the facts what we know about you and given the fact thats why so many of us love about you why did you write a book about yourself . So thank you, everybody, for being here. Its amazing, and it didnt set out to write a book, sort another book about myself. When i left the white house i did write i think frankly a lot of, certainly when they do, which is i found wonderful work at new america and they kept my head down and focus on that work. A number of people, women in particular, challenged me, annemarie, you were one of them, to think about whether i something to say that might be about you. I thought what do i really have to say that would make a difference to anybody . I put it out of my mind but i have pushed come at the forced into really think about it. Like, what do i have to say . Then i realized i do a lot of public speaking, i speak of policy issues, speak to student groups, all groups of interns all the time and i tell stories from the course of my career all the time at a tell the same stories because they are the things that resonate. Invariably someone comes up to me when im done and 100 of the time the person is a woman, most of the time that woman is a woman of color and she says to me, the things that you set up so glad you said because i thought i was the only one. And so i kind of put myself in the presence of those women and their been a lot of over the years and realize id do something to say an and estatel the time. The minute i give myself permission to believe that i have something to contribute that might be of use, i knew what was going to be in the book and he spoke to seven women, women of color who had stories to tell, and some of the stuff i had struggled with over 30 30 s is the same stuff everybody else struggles with. We often dont talk about it. We often think it shows signs of weakness rather than strength, and ive learned it was just wrong. In fact, we are leaders already, women and certainly women of color, and the world need this right now. This book is an offering of stories from my own experience, stories from the experience of the women who are generous enough to share their story, the strategy we use when we doubt ourselves, when we are aware people around us without us, when were afraid. The idea is to remind all of us weve got what it takes and the world is not only ready for what we bring but we are ready to bring it. Im going to invite for anyone who doesnt know, was listening to us as cecelia to the Vice President for public and issued to new america but she came to us after being ahead of the Domestic Policy Council in the Obama White House, which is the highest domestic policy position there is in the white house. Its not a cabinet position but you have your finger on the pulse of everything that is happening. Before that she had spent 20 years working on policy at la raza, and she would never let me to say this but she was one of what we always talk about as im embarrassing her because im certain there are people out there who think nobody with that kind of a glittering resume could ever have doubts, right . We all look at each other and say no, you are 100 secure. It is i who are worried. Im going to invite you the conversation and talk but what its like, cecilia interview you, your colleagues, friends but youre also women of color who have maybe talk about that. Cecilia would ask the questions. She talked about the things we do in conferencing for the underestimation or knowing people are doubting us and wondering if were only there for our ethnicity. I told the story of putting on makeup when its in my 20s and ive worked at Chicago Public schools. I know i look younger than actually am, and at the time i really was young. So i thought im going to wear makeup to make myself look mature. Cecelia die, she said what about heels . Yes, right. It was extremely i read the book and i love reading not only cecilias story but the other womens stories as well. She and i really connected on a deeper level than we already shared, women of color. And again the stories were so affirming as part of the process. There were some of the stories of the other women are outrages like my eyes literally got big at some of the obstacles and the doubts that they encountered. But again wasnt anything, yes, me too. So thats the story, cecilia, you might want to tell. Your marvelous about how to elbow your way in to your own mentors. Other people help you. You might want to tell that story. So this wasnt a figurative elbow. Theres a section of the book called sharp elbows and other tools, and the story is from when i first got washington i was all of 26 and got thrown into a circle of the people who are advocates on immigration policy, particularly who are pretty much all men. Most of them were tall men, and my immediate boss was a wonderful man, charles kawasaki. He stepped away from his role and kind of push me and, and there i was with the guys. I am 52, 26 actually would recounted to trips wearing a purpose which is not something i was raised to do to compensate for my size and by softspoken this, like i thought i can need to show these people i can be tough, so delivered, started swearing which is not a stretch i recommend necessarily but it is a tool. There was one point where we working on an immigration bill and may be in the congressional markup which is where a bill gets amended and changed, and it ended and the guys stood up and they formed a little huddle and it wasnt in the huddle. I was angry about adequate back and talk to charles and i was like i just never going to fit in with these guys picky said, look, your new, your short, youre a woman. Like you just have to elbow your weight in an literally future elbows and say come on, can you let me in the circle . Which i did but it only had a duet once. But thats sort of what it was like. Over and over again i find that im still frequently the only woman in the room, the only hispanic person in the room, feeling personal call in the room. I know, tyra, it is true of you and true of the other women i spoke to. Hopefully like an elbow isnt a strategy but we do need strategies and think it helps that we talk about it because its not easy to be the one person speaking for everybody, which in some ways is in a possibility. Tyra, you would had a story abe spoke to said they feel blackness all the time. High School Student actually, in ferguson, missouri, we went there as part of the administration to talk to students about what was happening there. She said i feel like blackness all the time. And i just, that stuck with me. Its been several years ago and i thought its true, it is true both as but also the challenges of under as many you and have doubting your having preconceptions about you. So you carry that weight and that weight comes with responsibility, and we have to own that. That is something that is unique to our experience. Just i i want to ask you actually to talk more about being underestimated because part of this book is about how we underestimate ourselves, right . How we think we are constantly worried, everybody else does what theyre doing but we dont. But theres also that feeling of what you talk about the ways you know that others are underestimating you. You have to point out the intersectionality here because when you talk about, i feel my blackness all the time come most of the time im aware of woman, not all, not always, and as ive gotten higher up, as i i walk o a new american beauty i dont feel like oh, my gosh im a woman in a mans world but i bui felt that often but ive never had but also the majority. Ive never had that doubled, i am a woman, a woman of color, and people dont seem at all or theyre making all sorts of assumptions. Part of what you talk about his role of women and definitely part of it is the particular role of women of color. Tyra, you might want to talk about what you do when you feel like people are underestimating you. When you can feel that sort of i think its george w. Bush called it the bigotry of low expectations. [inaudible] i love it. If people cant see it is as an underrepresented, underestimated. I do. I think theres something in the i know youre potentially we cant do for everyone but, for example, even wearing the shirt, to all faculty meeting where we were talking about our diversity and they wanted to just make that point without saying it, and wearing it, and i could tell, i saw and remember women of color in the room and the faces looked up. I could tell when the read my shirt. It was my way of saying this is what i think people think about me and this is what i think people think about us. Whether its africanamericans or latinas are women of color or women not in america which is 70 of the workforce there, but in general to say this is this lived experience and i see and want to create space for you to show up in the workplace. I do that in part through my clothing, i mentioned i were African Clothing and printed fabrics of color that you just dont realize [inaudible] but it want to see a face, my early years, i dont have the luxury now but there are women, there were not women wearing printed fabric but of what people to show up the way that they want to express themselves, obviously professional and all that but theres plenty of room that we dont exercise part of it, but the other thing i do in terms of the underestimation is the preparedness. I know, i remember sharing this, you know that you are constant and you are skilled but you want to make sure that you take any margin of error of having a bad day so we can do over prepare, you know, like sort say i will show you. And i been invited to spaces and places and conversations knowing that it probably is because i constructed adversity for this person and i should say he may have invited me for this reason but im going to show you how much more i can contribute to the conversation as part of it. In some ways i seem to over perform just to prove that what i know is an underestimation. Cecilia, why do you call your book more than ready . Its a wonderful title and night help from and to picking it up. It refers to multiple things. I think the world is more than ready for what we brain, and we are more than ready to bring it but also it refers to exactly what tyra said, all seven of the women i spoke to landed on the same strategy which is that when were concerned about, like not quite sure that weve got what it takes, then what we do is we over prepare. When we sense that other people may doubt we have what it takes, what we do is we over prepare, but we do the work we show up knowing our stuff, and that is we leaned back and that gives us the strength to compensate for whatever doubts we have whatever doubts we think of the people have. One of the stories i tell in the book has to do with a time when one of the chiefs of staff i served under told a couple of folks were writing books that when i was promoted to domestic policy director that that come he described as the last i dont think he said in so many words but the impression that the two people who wrote books that he said that to, the impression they got was that maybe i was less qualified, maybe because i saw this looks, approximately two years ago [inaudible] not because i thought he could do the job, because a student the job. I was doing the job that the president of the United States asked me to do that job and a david tepper five years. If thats what the one person, a prominent person felt, how do i know thats that would anybody in the room is thinking when im sitting here and how do i know if im having a bad day or i boned up on this set of step of the thing that look that day was this the stuff that it wasnt quite ready for . You know, i dont want that, their impression of that to be well, we need to surround this person with other people who can carry the water because we are not sure she can. Places like the white house come when folks censure not quite on your game, they will tell you but you dont get feedback and lush as for and maybe not even then. There were organized meetings without you. Its constantly going like people come is a meeting happening im not in the what does it mean . You can really do a number on yourself. And i learned, and and i learnd from talking to the people, not just me that this happened to, that the way you compensate is you make sure you get a really good job. You make sure you do your homework. You make sure youre prepared and then when you invariably have to have a question that you know the answer to because sometimes that happens, your own it up and you go and find out. I think thats very much part of the strategy that we adopt. Kathy kochan, i think shes participating, one of the women i spoke to, she called it being ultra prepared. Once the when i spoke to what also see in the chat can same thing. She was somebody thought of, social secretary for the first lady which is an incredible high pressured job. She was viewed as an unconventional choice for the job because the people get picked for that jobs are a kind of have like the emily posts pedigree, and what she had with smarts and skilled great tv. Shes amazing. But the press was watching her because she somebody who didnt fit the image of who is supposedly in the chop, and that happens to people of color, happens to women all the time. And the way we deal with it is we show up with some extra. Its interesting, i think every woman probably has had that experience of worrying or feeling like they are being either invisible or underestimated are just not heard so often. And a fair number of us probably also felt like there were meant around us who think we were affirmative action hire. Because were of women, all of us know on a panel or on a commission board, a gender board more than our qualifications. But i do think again, when i look at women of color, this has become almost reflexive as somebody who hires people, i immediately assume they get something extra because how else would they have made it this far . That timmy is slipping the script to look at people and thinking, i know how the cards were stacked against you, so when you got to the point to even be considered worthy of this, thats because you had the grit and determination in the preparation and the sheer smarts to make it. I often wish i could get people different lenses to understand what it takes to battle not only own selfdoubt but the pressure on you that is coming at you from society all the time. She talks about how she knows she got to princeton through affirmative action, but she described that as so the copy to the start of lent of the race i didnt even know i was running. You get to the starting leviton you know what you have to run the race. You have to show up, you have to be prepared and do it well. Nobody is going to let you take shortcuts. Thats what we have to do. Often it is against the headwinds of peoples low expectations. To that point, i love that metaphor because in our conversation i described that my confidence was knocked for years. The excesses i had after that i thought were more about locke than it was about my repaired this or my competency skills i brought. Still great things but any moment now my luck is going to run out. I realized i had the wrong niche. Its not about like its about opportunity. It means you do need to have opportunity to get to the starting line but its as much about either because of my competency, because i prepared as part of that. But when you get those knocks in your career it can be testing, or the stouts and not wanting to prove anyone right about doubts, you can get the narrative wrong in your head that doesnt like you to show up as fully with as much power as you bring to the table. Do you feel like you are also carrying other expectations on your shoulders . In other words, that you are, you were the very high position in the white house as a latina empty feel like youre also carrying the kind of hope and expectations and reputation of other people on your shoulders, all the latinas who come after you, all of the people of color . Is that a burden you feel . Yeah. I mean, some of the people i spoke to describe as his weight that you carry. The way i expense is, on the first, in this job i better not screwed up because it is going to be that much harder for whoever comes after me. I was the seniormost person latina person in the white house. Thats also my expertise, i know the community really well. I was at the National Council of la raza now, i guess the thing i know a lot about. I was carrying team latino which an Amazing Group of people, a lot of us, but we had to carry the water and theres this tension that i feel all the time, which is, and i never understood what i got the balance right or not, where sometimes your job is to push that. There are folks who dont necessarily know what you know and in order to do the job well, your piece of knowledge has to be part of the equation and you have to push it and insert it. But sometimes your job is to actually hold back a little bit because your job isnt to be an advocate 100 of the type in your job is to make sure the whole team serves the whole country well, and if you are only understood as well, shes a latina and she will lift up her staff, i crept to let her have her five minutes of talk and then we will go on into our thing. You both have to represent your you have to calibrate it right so people can hear you. Your certificate which is the te times with a just, theres a thing they just dont know and is going to be uncomfortable to know it and had to sit, which of the times you are pushing to our. Its like a constant calibratio calibration, but there is a a sense if you screw it up its going to make it, its would be harder for the next person who comes after you. But the other thing we tried to be, tried i do and this is an e that was set by the present himself but also people like Valerie Jarrett was really amazing about this, is to try to create a safe space for people to ask for feedback, to up their game and to do that calibration. This is one of the synergies, one of the things i outlined in the book is to find, i had a conversation just this weekend with another latina who is looking for advice and this is the advice i gave her, was to find people who are safe enough that you can go in and close the door and say, how did that go . Or that didnt go well, help me see where i got off course. Mallory was one of those places for me, theres not a lot of safe place at a job like that but she provided one of them and you could go in office and close the door and say how do i nothing understood in this point im trying to make, or i cant tell how others are receding me. She was both committed to recall expect committed to making sure we do the job and you get feedback even the target here. Thats what the strategies