Was put it into language, how to talk about the one impression versus the image. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming out today. Before i introduced tonights guest i would like to point out we have a gentleman filming, sean from cspan. This will be broadcast on booktv. We ask you silence your cell phones. And also as it is being filmed, the key and a. If you have a question. I will be around with m to get a picture before you speak you have the mic in your hand and also a fantastic event sunday afternoon at 4 00, collegians and will be here, editor of a feminist is a collection called here we are, a collection for ages 12 and up. If you have this in your life it is a fabulous collection, essays from everyone. Come out and meet kelly, she will be here along with christine hoeferman, one of the most incredible young adult writers. I hope we see you again. Tonight, we are absolutely thrilled to welcome alyssa mostromonaco. [applause] alyssa mostromonacos book is who thought this was a good idea . and other questions you should have answers to when you work at the white house. Alyssa mostromonaco is chief operating officer at price media in williamsburg, previously she served as assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff for operations at the white house under president obama. Earlier in her career she was director of scheduling for john kerrys president ial campaign in 2004 and a currently serves for the john f. Kennedy center for the performing arts and is a contributing editor at marie claire. Alyssa mostromonaco is signing books after she speaks, we have them available for purchase at the front desk of our store. Make sure you grab one. Please join me in welcoming alyssa mostromonaco. [applause] it is clear i peeked very early. I thought i would read a little bit from the book and then you can do q and a if that works for everybody. My best friend for 30 years. I think they always hoped my sister and i they didnt care how successful a prominent and wealthy we would be. The extracurricular of choice or parental pressure for countless young girls no matter your generation, what i like in natural ability i made up for in enthusiasm. I rationalize i dance in the wings because of my height and assumed if i was sweating i was succeeding. My sister, a really great dancer. As i got older i realized because i could see an example of people suited to dance, unlike me, i was investing a lot of time and ours into something, i never had a solo. I was 16 when i told my mom i wanted to quit, quitting is something people are taught never to do. She didnt lose her mind or berate me about having extracurriculars, or do dancing for so long or keep going. She said it was okay if you do it responsibly, quitting something what is and benefiting you, dance classes, to change your life. Cruising highways and byways, i was first in the band in school, i took french, down the street every saturday night, back in the day. I would wrap the flowers in paper towels and newspapers, back to the city with tourists every sunday. This wasnt a boozey barn. It was an actual barn. My best friend tara. Visited me and brought me soup or donuts, i loved it. Bold cool. A Grocery Store in the center of town. Anyone who worked at kmart or walmart or their local Grocery Store may not believe me, some days you definitely want to hang with your friends instead but i was good at bagging groceries and it meant i could afford tickets to see fish or the grateful dead. I could buy crystal, very cool then and winter sons. I also learned a lot about who used coupons and who didnt. Who watched you scan only a few, and Everything Else i experienced growing up. A woman with a kid to figure out, humiliation for holding up the line. Help those in need humanely and respectfully. Maybe that sounds obvious to you but a lot of people would disagree. Food stamps, i focused in coordinating of the plan dealing with times and dates and personality but i sat in policy meetings to understand our priorities to use my judgment as my team decided, 100 different choices per day, how best to use present time. This is a followup to a conversation obama had with someone else. Often he gathers senior staff to talk over issues after meeting with a particular person. Because of the economic recession there were a lot of people on food stamps at the beginning of obamas presidency. The number dropped over his term but we didnt only have meetings about what was happening at that moment because if you were dealing with things as they were happening you were not preparing for something. This meeting in the roosevelt room, i wasnt sitting at the table, i was sitting along the wall, seating is surprisingly limited, chairs are huge and not many people sit around the conference table, and invitations to meetings are exclusive. Everyone in the room has a good reason for being there. From the beginning of my career in politics i had a policy about swimming in my own land and not overcommenting on things i wasnt an expert on. I cannot take the educated gang. Talking about limits on what food stamps cover, i could tell none of them knew a person who ever needed food stamps. I raised my hand, something i only did once and told them what it was like, and canned soup or milk to watch them realize what they couldnt get, to watch them realize how ridiculous it was, Something Like sunny delight, much cheaper than orange juice, there is nothing they could do. I usually you start losing the argument when you physically reveal how worked up you are, like the white house where theoretically what is based on fast and figures, and i got my point across. It wasnt a conversation intended to resolve or change anything at the moment. [applause] i was going to read, going to questions. Do you want me to read more. Here we go. High mountain. The best part about those jobs in high school which they gain some satisfaction from and at the time i was thinking i would rather be watching 90210 was they taught me an important way to rationalize when my life felt it was totally off course. If i am never good at anything else i am good at this. You might think it is depressing but i have given me a lot of comfort, no greater feeling of independence, then being able to provide for yourself knowing if you really hate a job and you will probably hate jobs at various points through your life you can leave and be okay. When it came time to apply to college i had one of those moments, at the end of the day, it is good at bagging groceries. If i didnt get into harvard, i would end up where i was supposed to end up. Time period was 19921994, no email or internet, the Us News College guidebook. Tara and i spent hours, where i wanted to go. I underlined addresses in the summer before my senior year wrote away to request applications. A few schools to visit, georgetown, berkeley, santa cruz. Cornell, brown, georgetown, i did myself. I wrote the essays. Which no one proofread and did pretty well. My mom helps me fill out checks for application fees and disclaimers. If you havent seen saint elmos fire you wont understand my mindset at the time but i wanted to go to georgetown. The movie takes place a year after a group of friends graduate and try to find their way in the world. I hadnt thought much about getting into politics. He was very selfimportant 22yearold working on a congressional campaign, valley sheedy was too good for him. The characters were weird role models, drank a lot and drank a lot of coke, to make it out alive. I credit at all of this to georgetown. To access bret pack energy. I was top 10 in my class and by that i mean number 11. Who wouldnt want me . I got all my rejections on the same day. And the second pilgrimage, got a card sticker, i was convinced i could get in, the sticker in the bag. When my dad got the mail, with georgetown and all the others, it was a sign for retrospect. I chose between the university of vermont and university of wisconsin, coming from such a small town the i was too fish out of watery, found it to be in the freshman class of 1994. To register for housing, to make you feel your new life is about to start by never set foot on campus. Funny when you think about it. Sometimes i leap and look for better or worse. Sometimes things could have gone better. If i had a sense of myself in high school i lost it in college. How you spend it matters more. Getting the most out of the car, a Station Wagon lasted forever. I had no idea who i was. I grew up in a town where you didnt know who had money and who didnt, the wealthiest families were the equine veterinarians, the wagon years. I dont remember anyone wearing makeup. I worked close from the gap or marshall and my hairstyle rode the way from magic mushroom to eddie shadegg. With think about when his hair was shorter and the layers were more similar to rachel. It wasnt all bad. I was good friends with my roommate amy, in the listening sessions and amid 90s bug out could describe any number of situations when you encounter someone weird or smoke bad part or have experienced your first bout of insomnia because someone didnt sit next to you and in retrospect, my classes help me branch out, majored in french and became good at japanese which i signed up for on a whim. One semester, in world sociology, focused on poverty in vermont and later used what i learned to make small talk with oprah at an obama event in iowa. Around the beginning of sophomore year i began to realize my french major was not taking me the direction i wanted to go. Vermont is a political, people say what they think, to have discussions without fighting. Governor howard dean came to register, got to jump ona reviled republican car. It was Newt Gingrich. The contract with america, a terrible time, found myself gravitating toward the political stuff on or off campus. Winter i decided to apply for a summer internship with Bernie Sanders. Bernie, the revolution. When spring break rolled around i found out the budget for the French Department was being cut and might not be offered as a major any longer. I saw this as a sign so we applied to the university of wisconsin madison to transfer to the junior year and i was accepted. I got the Bernie Sanders internship, the burlington congressional office. Bernie sanders, john kerry, barack obama, just saying. In burlington, around the liquor store, i woke up to see a spider i had crushed in my sleep. It didnt matter, nothing had been more exciting, it was an election year, bernie was in the office a lot and met with constituents more than any politician i have known since. I answered phones and took down notes from voters, at nights i would call people in all parts of vermont trying to raise money. I wasnt supersuccessful but did a great job reminding people to register to vote and telling them about the bernie events he would be doing around the state. From time to time, he looked the same way he looks now. He would usually read the newspaper even though we always had the windows down, never airconditioning. Sometimes he asked about where i was from and explains what was going on in the world. I tried to impress him about the time my friends and i climbed on Newt Gingrich askar. Bernie was unmoved. s attitude is what else have you been doing . Before i met bernie i thought politics was about theater and showmanship and Nothing Happened or got fixed but instead of focusing on the largescale changes many people expect from politicians he showed me how to see the people whose problems could immediately impact and solve, dedicated to helping his constituents which is not necessarily true of other senators. Many politicians have staff made of climbers who one from and one senate to another to become a legislative director or chief of staff. Some politician Staff Members want to run for office themselves but a lot of time vision in washington is just about being powerful and you can be powerful without a seat in congress. Bernie was so committed to these issues that politics didnt feel gross. Before i left for madison i changed my major to political science. One day at the end of my internship two important things happen is the first, i had a call come in from a 608 area code in madison, wisconsin. Bernie was running late so i told the man in the line he might have to wait a few minutes. I always try to learn about people coming into the Office Especially people meeting or talking to bernie. I wanted to know what made them important enough to warrant time and attention. I researched everything i could so when i got on the phone and he had to wait i saw my chance. This was an important labor attorney, the Nfl Players Association and progressive leader in amazon and i told him i was transferring to madison. He replied i should see him before arriving on campus. I worked for him for two years i lived there and he passed away three weeks ago and he ran for governor several times. I was glad i wrote about him. The other important things that happened that day, invited me to be an intern the following summer. I dont know if anyone in the office will ever understand what that meant to me. I felt like wonder woman. I was ready to strike out. I saved all that money working fred garney. Outside madison a couple times a weekend all i got for my 21st birthday, my summer in dc, going to law school, drove to the metro park. 5 outfits to rotate each week, tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches and packed pretzels for a snack every day, walked into bernies office ready to jam but this was a different vibe. These interns were competitive and i would rather bang in a drum circle all day than have to compete. I had a minor crisis of confidence, then remembered i knew more about vermont than any of these guys. I was very busy every day walking briskly and professionally over the halls of Congress Getting signatures on bills or amendments, running everything and anything, sorry. Running anything and everything to other offices to draft letters to constituents, legally blonde had come out by that i would have fancied myself a version of elwood meets norma rae, the union organizer. When my internship ended and i was out of money i was convinced i would be back the following summer after graduation to start my career as a humble and committed government employee. I didnt get to interact with bernie that much but it didnt matter. Working for him had given me a clear picture of who i was and what i wanted to do. [applause] time for questions. I can tell you a story about how the title came to be, you are shaking your head. President obama does not like to be cold ever. He is from hawaii. It was a very end of the 2008 election and we were in pennsylvania and so was john mccain. John mccain canceled all of his events, i went in to see david to keep our events like john mccain canceling his event. I was the one who was going to tell the man who hates the cold. So i did and i emailed reggie love, a personal aide and robert gibbs who you might remember became White House Press secretary, i said we are going to keep that in pennsylvania so they wrote back and said boss wants to know whose office was a good idea. That wasnt the first time that happened or the last time by any stretch but i said it is fine, it will be great and my deputy, danielle, who is like my soulmate, we got to the office early and we were sitting there watching it on tv. It wasnt just snowing but skiing sideways and hitting him in the face. Daniel said look, the worst possible, worst scenario. We watched and i did an npr interview and they played me back actual event. This is an awesome event. At the end of the event, he is full of sleep and goes to walk off slave and put his hand out and reggie love put the phone in his hand and my phone rang 10 seconds later. I picked it up and put my head on the desk and said to him, pick it up, hello, you are awesome and amazing, john mccain canceled all of his events, where are you . I am at my desk. Must be nice, and he hung up. That was it. But then, many months later as my friend danielle from the white house was in the back, damien winter who took the photo, when it came out that day, we were in texas, with kenny thompson, who was there, and you won a pulitzer and he was like i won the pulitzer. That is where the title of the book came from because you always have to know who thought it was a good idea. Questions . Do it. How involved are you now in the political arena . I work at a private company so i am not as political as i would be otherwise. But i march. Dont tell people i work for. I tried to support womenowned businesses and people who support the aclu and planned parenthood almost entirely. For the first, presale of this book went to the womens march and next week, this is my cowriter, we do a day next week where it all goes to planned parenthood. [applause] in some ways you cant march every day but what is happening now is garbage so we have to keep doing stuff. What is the takeaway from the experience being in the Obama White House . What have you learned . What have i learned . What i have learned is you can be successful without being abusive, you can actually being a team in the same direction is the best way to be and i am better with a group than i am alone. If we were sitting in a conference table waiting for obama to run a meeting about a policy issue, what was his style of running a meeting . What would it like in terms of how to orchestrate the meeting . I would say that he would there were times he would come in and sit down and normally in the white house he would get the paper the night before and know what the meeting was about and he would come down and he would have a really he loved to go around the table and ask everybody what they thought. Even if it wasnt their specific area of expertise. He believed as much as anybody who said in the oval office that the econ expert is not the only one who is good with economics so the example with the food stamps, when i told the story about my experience he didnt he turned around and said alyssa mostromonaco knows as much as anybody because she was actually there so i would say he was very open. He is open, like that is what i would say, very open. Very openminded. He is caring. I have a career advice question. Primarily finance, i was doing a little scheduling. If you have any advice . It is not that hard a question. That is what i want to do, what makes you want to do that . Slightly more political than finances but you have to be superanalretentive. I was not supernormal, ask my mom. I was superannoying. I would say get into it in a slow way, it is a lot, 24 7, not just someone who runs for president but anyone because you are dealing with someone elses life. If you are okay with someone elses like being your life