So that to that end we could not be more thrilled to host such a distinguished panel today to take us all inside the east wing. Its especially fitting, i think, to be hosted this allstar, allfemale panel on the topic of first ladies and their chiefs of staff as we close out womens History Month this march. Id like to take a minute to tank thank all of our partners that made this event possible. Starts drt starting with ambassador have dear and the copeland family fund to have georgetown womens center, the georgetown womens alliance. The school on public policy. Georgetown women in International Affairs and g. U. Women in leadership. A pretty good last time. Id like to turn it over to c. C. Bartelera, a freshman in the college whos going to formally introduce the panel. [applause] hello, everyone. Thank you for coming. My name the c. C. Up im a freshman and a member of the g. U. Politics team. The women we have this evening are great examples of the unique georgetown opportunities that g. U. Has been able to facilitate throughout their inaugural year. We want women with handson experiences in the field. With us tonight is a panel of ladies to give us a look inside the east wing of the white house. Mcbride is the executive in resident of the president ial and public studies. She previously served as assistant to george w. Bush and chief of staff to First Lady Laura Bush from 2005 to 2009, directing the staffs work on a wide variety of demestic and global initiatives in which mrs. Bush was involved. Her White House Service spans two decades and three administrations, including as director of white house personnel under Ronald Reagan and george w. Bush. Ms. Mcbride is a frequent speaker and commentator on the istory of president ial administrations. She is assistant and chief of staff to first Lady Michelle obama. She also serve is as the executive director for the counsel on women and girls. She is the recipient of many awards, including the Leadership Award from the womens Bar Association of illinois, the women of Achievement Award from the Antidefamation League and chicago lawyers person of the year. And many lan revere is the executive director of the Georgetown Institute for women, peace, and security. She served as the first u. S. Ambassador for global womens issues, a position to which she was dominated nominated by president obama in 2009. She coordinated issues relating to the economic and political advancement of women. She played a leadership role in the u. S. Development of the u. S. Womens action plan on peace and security and president obama appointed her to seven as the u. S. Representative of the u. N. Status of women. She served as the chief of staff the first lady and also hah was instrumental in the adoption of trafficking victims protection act of 2000. She is the coauthor of fast forward how women can achieve power and purpose. Model rating tonight is claire shipman, an author and speaker. Her latest book, the confident code coauthored with catty kay of bb was bb just chorus was a New York Times bestseller. Shes covered news for abc and cnn. Throughout the event tonight, please be sure to tag all your tweets snapchat and instagram gufirst ladies. Thank you and please enjoy. [applause] thank you all. Thank you for coming. Let me say, those bios are all so impressive but the bottom line, these are three really powerful women. Let me tell you, ive worked with all of them and this is an incredible panel we have here. We were talking a little bit before the event about some of the questions we might ask and the one i think that really im most curious about is chief of staff for the first lady. What for all of you, expectation versus reality . What did you think the job would be like and how did that match up with what really has happened or happened . Starting with molly ann . Ok, claire, but let me, before i delve into that, thank you for coming and agreeing to hare the conversation. Claire, i asked earlier how many trips she had made with us when she was is cnn bureau chief to the white house or the white house correspondent. He made trips to some 80 countries and i think claire was on a good many of them. I was a lot younger then. For tina and ameet anita, this is also special for me. We belong to a very small club, the chiefs of staff to first ladies. Thats a very small club, just like the first ladies is a very small club. I think were even smaller. Its very special for us all to be together. What did i anticipate and what did it turn out to be . I think given that i was working or Hillary Clinton, i really anticipated a real significant in issues in policy, in working all of the things she cared about. Certainly children and family significantly. Then very significantly moving into global womens issues, but i really did amendment that it ould be a heavy policy undertaking. What i think nobody can anticipate is what its like in the white house, and i see lisa brown here is now the general counsel here at georgetown and she was in the west wing as a secretary and all of the papers to the president went through her work and you have no idea on the outside everything that is involved on the inside. And then one of the hardest things, and i look forward to what anita and tina might say about it is how the first ladys Office Actually works with the west wing and what some of the pluses and minuses of that relationship are. But we were very integrated into the overall operations of the white house. We all worked for the president. That was very clear. Might be specifically engaged in the first ladys office but first and foremost, we worked for the president and our work and i dont know if youre going to go into this further, claire, and we may tease some of it out, was integrated into the overall operations of what the priorities of the white house were. Ill tell you, i envisioned a less than tense milieu than i had experienced working in the reagan and first bush administration, working in the west wing and the Old Executive Office building and i also had a different frame of reference cause nancy reagan was involved but her office was much smaller and barbara bush had a view of georges work being joshs work and her work being r work so when i was invited by mrs. Bush to have an interview with her to consider being chief of staff for the second term, i didnt expect the first words out of her mouth to be i want to go to afghanistan, and then i knew this would be a very different experience and opportunity than what i had envisioned. It turned out to be very policy oriented, into the work of the west wing. The first lady has an enormous platform to be an advocate into issues she cares about and is best done when integrated into the overall administrations goals because youre trying to support what the president is doing. So my expectation because i had gone into the job with two young children. A 3yearold and a 6yearold so i wasnt really anticipating having the schedule that it turned out to be. In four years we traveled to 68 countries together, a total of 77 for her for the eight years but it was busy and it was exciting and it was terrific but the expectations going in were it was something far more powerful than i thought it would be. Tina, what about you . My thing is you see the first lady and the white house from the exterioro. Friendship chicago, not from d. C. I never expected to be in the white house. Coming to work in the Obama Administration was my first experience. Its a huge platform, on every tv screen. You see the pressroom and you think its a really big room and a really big house. Clearly as the president comes balking down the red carpets to give a statement, it must be a really long hallway. Really not. You see it on ask the scandal and west wing. That i have these big offices. Really not. Everybodys office is really small in all seriousness, the physical size of the building is quite small and on top of that, the resources of the building in terms of the number of staff and in terms of other kinds of resources is quite limited. The bunt of the white house has gotten increasingly smaller over the years. Congress has not been generous to the white house yet keeping expectations for what you are supposed to project, and is especially true for first ladies. The image youre supposed to project in representing the country and being out there as an advocate with what are a very limited set of resources. We often say we dont have the policy arms we dont have big policy offices. We dont have bunts. We dont command the budget and yet how do you take the resources you have and this, as my boss often calls it, the shiny bright light that follows her around and make it to its best use. It was very surprising to find here it is, the most important building in the land. Its very small and doesnt have a lot of resources. Did it surprise you all in talking to be impact you can have have you been surprised . Has mrs. Obama been surprised . The role of a first lady in some ways, the impact is enormous and youre almost freer in many ways to have an impact and to navigate outside of the system a little bit. First of all, i think it took her by surprise. I think all of our bosses sort littlehe degree to every thing you do. You get that scrutiny on the campaign but when you walk into the white house, the level of scrutiny is so intense and yet, the opportunity, youre right is so great because everybody is watching what you do. That was the thing that certainly mrs. Obama grew into which is how do you make the best use of those moments. Theyll Start Talking about shoes, and then the issues and how to you take advantage of that. And we have had a whole other set of tools, for someone who doesnt have a lot of resources, the ability now through social media to have at very little cost put out a viral video and all of a sudden you can hit tens of millions of people and it doesnt cost you anything is pretty remarkable. That is something, we have an ability in the east wing to be a little freer. Get a rap video. The president did in his second term but not in the first term. You have the ability to be a little more relatable and in the social media moment. If i could clarify, i think its really interesting to think about this position because there is no job description. There is no salary. There is no appointment, there is no election and everybody in the United States, i swear, has an opinion of what the first lady should do and theyre all in critics with each other. So somehow coming into this situation, the woman who is there and so far its only been a woman in this position, comes there trying to navigate knowing shes only there by virtue of the election of her husband and she has to think through in terms of the administration its priorities, her experience, her background, her interests, where she can make the best contributions. But it is a very peculiar position if you think about it in terms of really no job description. Very tricky at times. Youre right, the scrutiny and the expectations is endless. And you are never going to please everybody. I see that, though i think it presents, in the way melanne described it. No description, no salary, all those things and tinas description, being in the white house and that and the all you all the time. Its a challenge but also an enormous opportunity because you get the opportunity as first lady to pick and choose the issues that you want to engage in. You pick the things that you have background and people relate to you. That doesnt mean the scrutiny and the questions wont be there about what are they doing up is there in that big white house . But there is an enormous opportunity. To tinas point about the social media and being able to use all the mediums that are available to you right now. Instant contain thousands rex of what you are doing, that has changed the role of first lady. Theres a greater expectation that americans have of what the people who are occupying this position are doing with it. Long gone for the are the day that is Mamie Eisenhower used to say i americans can never relate to that anymore no matter who is in the position of president ial spouse. The first lady is also has a little bit of teflon, right, in her ability to get the press, get the focus, sometimes its for the shoes or the dress or the hair but then to be able to shift and it get people to focus on whether its lets move on literacy or women around the world. All of those, its enormous. Talk a little bit about Agenda Setting and how do you pick, right . So the authenticity is important. All of your bosses ultimately really settle on things that feel authentic but theres got to be a little bit more to it than that. It revolves around awe thentistty and i think all three of our first ladies do that where you really do have to do something that feels true to yourself and it comes out of something you really are passionate about and you care about and you can speak personally about. Then i think, we all our bosses, you know, you want to have value added to the elected position. You want to pick things like our which resonates with the education domain the president has been doing. You want to be value added to whats going on there and you want to it be something that you can make a difference with. As our latest niche ty, mrs. Obama, Girls Education internationally, there are a lot of people doing it so we spent a while, if we were going to into that space, what we could uniquely contribute. You want to do it in a way that will move the dial forward in some satisfaction fashion and is directly related to your efforts and is not taking away from something somebody else is already doing. Theres a chain here of the women and girls issue international live. With everybody. Its really been a mantle that ultimately its an issue that resonates right now and its one i guess that all of your bosses are passionate about. I think it also has to do with the fact that these are absolutely critical issues. We call them soft issues but theyre significant issues and if there isnt leadership targeted to those issues, its not likely theyll be addressed and then ultimately, the first ady may take the lead but they really threaten become very integrated into the overall policies of the president. So i think some of it is the recognition that somebodys really got to play a leadership role here. Absolutely. So we also want to talk because i know everybody out here is thinking how do i get a job like this job you have had . Youre all Good Students wondering. So talk a little bit about what the daytoday job is like for and you what life is like. And especially that integration, think melanne or anita mentioned the integration of east wing west wing. The politics between those two considering just as intense or tricky to navigate. Ill just mention two things that were shared with me as i started the job. One was with my predecessor, who melanne newspaper. Andy had been george bushs chief of staff when she was first lady of texas for the first term and she had made the decision if george w. Bush was going to win a second term, she was going back to texas. Her husband had never moved up here so she was ready to go back. The day she was leaving and walking out of the east wing and i walked her out the door. Even though i had worked in the building, the white house three strayings now, was comfortable with the surroundings. I knew my way around but i was nervous. She just turned to me and said just remember, even on your worst day, remember where you are and that will really help you. Because youre in this small space but it is really magnificent and you can move the needle because you have such an opportunity as the temporary custodian of the position. That i remember. Also, andy card, who was chief of staff for the president at the time gave me a very good piece of advice. It was a very short meeting. He said remember, you have one client and thats the first lady. Do whatever you need to do to make sure she has what she needs and that shes happy. Otherwise he would hear about it from the president anyway. Those two things really help told guide me my entire time in the white house as chief of staff. I think every member of the west wing staff noles who the esident speaks to last and with whom he speaks most often and that is the first lady. O her perceptions, her understandings, her crisscrossing the country, the world, all of those somehow get transmitted in some way and that does not go unnoticed, but i always felt that when the first lady was up, the west wing staff was very eager to have her engaged in any way possible. When she was down or controversial it was oh, youve got a problem on your hands so there are always these tensions and its always like where the were the other, even though the other is very much integrated in whats going on. One of the things i remember so well was when we were going to the beijing womens conference in china in 1995. This was a long time ago now as i think about it and the press in their inimitable style was asking what is she going to say, what is she going to say . And had asked the press office is the at the white house, the chief spokesperson what is she going to say . The word was shes really not going to make waves. Its not going to be newsworthy and just go and cover the trip, but i wouldnt expect anything out of the ordinary. And it happened very controversial getting up to the plane. Both the right wing was out to make the conference other than something that was intended to destroy the family and the Human Rights Community was outraged that it was taking place in china, a violation of human rights and yet it was an International Conference that happened to be taking place in china. Were navigating this and all eyes are on whether or not shes going to go and it wasnt clear up until the last minute that she was going but there was because there was an incident ith the human rights activists in china that were arrested. Nevertheless, the press gotten to plane anticipating that while the road to beijing was not without controversy, obviously this is not going to be a speech that makes waves. I remember going to the back of the plane and being pulled with what is she going to say . At that point hardly anybody had seen the speech. It was one of the most closely held operations. She was the perm rep to the u. N. At the time, Mad