The second is that each of them found their own road to impact. I want to take this opportunity this morning to share some thoughts with you as you look to find your own way. To that impact. I have been at hhs for about three months now. It is the chance of a lifetime to lead and be a part of this department at such a unique moment in our history. In fact, i should mention, we have 2 1 2 years to go. There are openings and were hiring. I was honored to accept president obamas invitation to lead hhs, because there is so much potential to deliver impact that touches so many lives. I cant imagine another place where you could have quite the same opportunity to work at the intersection of policy, management, leadership, impact and some very big challenges. Since i joined this team a year ago, i found that the president obama emphasizes results, partnerships, accountability and sound management. This is the way ive always tried to work, and its how were going to work at hhs. We believe in building bridges, relationships and strong teams that have the talent and focus necessary to deliver results. We believe in managing well. We believe in transparency. And we believe in impact. Impact on behalf of the American People we serve. They are our bosses, these hard working americans who rely on the work of our department as they look to obtain the Building Blocks of healthy and productive lives. Whether you are talking about the Affordable Care act, Early Childhood education or the fight to stop ebola, i believe the best path to progress and impact are through this sort of leadership and management. Whats central to all this is not politics. Its progress. Setting aside the back and forth and instead choosing to move forward. Im a parent. And when i think about the moms and dads sitting around their Kitchen Tables trying to make Big Decisions for their children, they dont care whose idea something was. You dont have time for that when you are trying to figure out how to pay the electric bill or how to pay next years tuition or how to get the kids to get the homework done. You just want results. You expect folks in washington to look for the Common Ground necessary to deliver. This is the approach we bring to big challenges that we face at hhs. Each of us finds our own leadership and management philosophy in our own way. I learned fundamentally about the importance of relationships growing up in a place where my mom knew the one day i was tardy for school because i was late for the 9 00 a. M. Class she was teaching. The values i learned growing up np in a beautiful place in West Virginia anger how i manage, how i work and even what i work on. You might think about what values and experiences got you here to gw and are going to take you beyond. Hinton is the kind of place where relationships and trust matter. Its the sort of community where neighbors tend to look for the best in each other and everyone feels a personal stake in contributing to the common good. As have i gone on in my career to manage budgets, including the federal budget, i have often thought about how in our Small Community every dime counted. People worked so hard for the money they brought home. I watched the parents of many of my friends commute to difficult often back breaking work in mines. I saw my grandfather get up to open his restaurant at 6 00 a. M. He was a greek immigrant and taught my to be grateful for the gifts this country gave to our family. His restaurant was called den dennys but not that dennys. I learned about Customer Service and delivering results at kirks home of the hungry smile. If you were the person who got stuck dipping the hard serve ice cream after sunday church services, you just smiled and keep on dipping until every last cone was dipped. It was Pretty Simple to measure results. If you were asked to deliver two scoops of maple walnut and you gave someone a scoop of strawberry, you didnt deliver the maple walnut result that customer wanted. Service in the community was also an important to my mom and dad. I think thats why its so important to me today. Mom was the president of the church women. She was a member of the business and professional women. She was a member of the service club and she was on the state board of education. Dad was in the lions club, the elks club and was the education director. We had a rule had you to trick or treat for un i receive before you could trick or treat for candy. Fast forand i still draw upon these values and experiences. Whether its putting the customer first, valuing service or looking to find the best in others, even when you dont agree on everything, i have been fortunate to be a part of organizations that are very good at strategy. Ive also been parts of organizations that are very good at execution. I believe in leadingship and management that are good at both strategy and execution. Because this is the difference between great ideas that change lives and those that dont. My management philosophy is built on three principals. Impact, prioritization and relationships. Now, i have said the word impact a lot already. Its why i do what i do. When we tackle a problem at hhs, i make sure that we set out a clear definition of impact from the beginning. What do we hope to accomplish and who do we hope to accomplish it for . I think a lot about those moms and dads at the Kitchen Table and how the actions we take will impact them. They are our boss. So are young women like Savannah Goodland who had to wait tables on a broken ankle that she wrapped herself until they got length insurance. So are our neighbors beating adisc and so are children who are attending headstart. All these people are our bosses at hhs. Our boss is also the taxpayer, people like those miners work hard for their paycheck and deserve a government that works and is strategic and efficient in spending their hard earned tax dollars. Thats one of the republicans that prioritization is so important to me. Because setting priorities and staying focused are how you get to efficiency and impact. Determining what options are available, what policy levers are there, what will they do . What you are good at and what your partners are good at. All these things are the things that make government work. In order to deliver which levers and initiatives are most effective, were data driven. Im a believer many met trix, benchmarks and an littics. If you are serious about looking out for the taxpayer, you need to know whether what you are doing is working. All these things have something in common. They need great people to make them happen. That starts with building teams with talent and focus necessary to deliver the impact that the American People expect and deserve. My very first days at the department, i have been working to retain the great talent that was already in place and to recruit more of the best and the brightest to join us. As far as our extenrnal relations, im a believer in relationships are build on trust. Transparency builds trust. Its something that we take very seriously. Even if the numbers arent quite where we want them to be, were going to tell you about it. Take, for example, our recent announcements about the numbers of consumers and the Health Insurance marketplaces who have citizenshipbased data matching issues. It may always make for the best and most attractive press release, but we believe that you build trust by sharing the news both good and bad. We also believe in the power of good ideas. We understand that nobody has a monopoly on them. Thats why active listening and being responsive are so important. Hearing ideas, input and feedback and putting them into action wherever possible. Ive told my staff we should work toward the goal of returning letters we receive from congress within 30 days. No matter who they are from. Many of the best ideas come from all different sectors of our sew sigh if i. I have been blessed with the opportunity to work across a number of different sectors doing everything from scooping ice cream to leading walmarts efforts to feed needy families. To leading the efforts at the office of management and budget. Along the way, i have learned to have respect for every sector of our society and to believe strongly that there are really more things that we have in common as americans than we have that are different. Thats why when we hear good ideas from the other side of the aisle, we want to listen. So when republican congressmen fred upton asked me to join him for a discussion on 21st century cured later this week, i said, sign me up. One of my first meetings was with the governors of both parties. I said to them, if you are finding our department isnt being responsive, i want to know about t. I also told them that i hoped to work with them regardless of party to bring more states into the fold on medicaid expansion. Recently, we were able to do that with pennsylvania that has a republican governor. Lund hundreds of thousands of people cannot get the heltth Care Coverage they deserve as a result. The fact of the matter is, there are always places where we can Work Together. Theres nothing ideological about curing cancer. There isnt a democrat or a republican way to solve ebola. There isnt a liberal or conservative approach to preventing suicide. We have the opportunities to Work Together across the aisle on issues ranges from medical research to Global Health security to Early Education for our children. The American People are sending a clear signal that they want us to Work Together on healthcare, too. When you start a job like mine, you end up taking a lot of time in the first few months to listen. I was once told that god gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. I can tell you that what i have been hearing over and over, whether its from friends that i talk to back in West Virginia, to Business Leaders, to elected leaders and to my must colleagues at hhs, enough already with the back and forth. We just want to move forward. What that mom and dad want to know is, what kind of coverage is available to me and my family. Can i afford it . Is it any good . What i hear from Business Leaders is that they are in the same place. They want to Work Together on solutions while making our care better and investing dollars wisely. They want a better Healthcare System and so do we. What i have told my team at hhs is that were not here to fight last years battles. We are here to deliver on afford built, access and quality. Surely, these are goals we can all agree on no matter where you happen to live, whether its West Virginia, washington or wyoming wyoming or washington state. By these metrics, the Affordable Care act is working. Healthcare is more affordable for families, businesses and for our economy as a whole. Coverage and services are more widely available for more people. Doctors and hospitals are delivering better care to their patients. As we have said all along, we can do more and we can do better. The Affordable Care act is not about making a point. Its about making progress. Its about leadership and management defining our goals, putting the right teams in place, setting right priorities and building relationships with anyone who wants in. Consumers, issuers, providers, elected officials, faith leaders, civic organizations. We want to work with people across our country and across our sectors on priorities we can all get behind. Helping more americans get covered and stay covered. Making healthcare more affordable for working families. Making sure that healthcare. Gov meets the standards the American People expect and demand. Expanding medicaid. Working with doctors and hospitals to deliver quality and Affordable Care. Working with Insurance Companies to offer more choices to more people in more regions of our country. So what you will be seeing from us in the days and months ahead is an open invitation for partnership and a call for good ideas no matter where they come from. We will be looking to build and strengthen relationships with anyone and everyone who shares our passion for helping americans obtain the Building Blocks of healthy and product if i have lives. We will insist that the actions we take are managed well with an eye on protecting the taxpayer and delivering impact for the boss. Lets move beyond the back and forth. Lets move forward together. Thank you. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, the secretary will now answer a few questions by George Washington university students. Would you please welcome to our stage, seth gold, class of 2016, from the Milken Institute school of Public Health. Good morning, madam secretary. On behalf of the student body, i would like to congratulate you on your new role of secretary of health and Human Services and thank you for being here this morning. I would like to kick off our q and a with a personal question. You mentioned you are a mom. Do you have any tips on how to achieve the ideal Work Life Balance . I think ideal is something im not sure any of us hit. In terms of an approach to this, one of the things that i think is important harkins back to something i said in the speech about prioritization. The prioritization that one does in the work so that you understand the key things that you are focused on. That prioritization for the work, i think, is one of the things that helps put the work in the order that this t should be and contain it in the way. Theres the other part which is making sure that people know that your family is a priority. And being clear about that articulation of these are the parameters and this is how i work. The other thing that i would add is that im very fortunate to have a great partner in my Work Life Balance in my husband and my children in terms of how they support that effort. The last thing i would just add is, i talked a little bit about people in my remarks and how one wants to build great teams. Because, actually, i have held four jobs in the last four years, you might think i cant hold a job. That means i have started and built teams a number of times, actually, in the near term. One of the things that i have found is that actually valuing this, this question of respect for family and respect for those things is an incredibly important part of recruiting high quality people. Often some of the people best that you want are people who care about these issues as well. So it is something that i am seeing as i continue to do recruiting, that keeping that as a priority for me and articulating it and manage teams in that way is something that helps with recruiting. Wonderful. This question was submitted by stewart portman, a graduate student. Its a little long. As a graduate student working towards an mph in health policy, i am learning to blend policy development and political fees built to best address the concerns of the population. In the current environment, much has been said by partisan divides and the inability to find Common Ground. I reject that as the status quo. Here is the question. How does improving communication between yourself and congress, something you discussed during your confirmation hearings, work to better the relationship between you and hhs and legislators . Do you believe that improved communication about policy goals can correct many of the misunderstandings in todays Health Environment . Thank you, stewart. I think i spoke a little bit to this issue and the importance of relationship as i talked a little bit about one of the biggest priorities that i believe, that as a manager i need to have. The issue of relationship, i think is important for a number of reasons. I will admit, when i was younger, the idea that i would put relationship as one of the core goals was something that would be foreign. It was a means, not an end. So an litically, i wanted ends in goals. This is one thats important enough that i believe is incredibly important. The issue of are having relationships is about how you share and move information. Can we all start with the same fact base . Often we are not doing that. We may have different ways of interpreting the facts. If you are on the same fact base and if you have a relationship enough that you can have are a conversation, that you actually know where the two of you disagree, thats how one brings one together. That relationship is also about trust. Often its about negotiating. Some say deals. If you think about what ms. Murray and mr. Ryan did it had to do with building a relationship of trust. They were carrying on both side s. Having the relationship and trust is important to finding places are where one side is not going to get everything and the other side is not getting everything. We can find a path that gets us to move forward. Wonderful. The next question comes from angela rick. She asks, your background and previous experience are different from those of hhs secretaries before you. How did this make you approach the job different . What do you see as your biggest challenge. I am a bit different from previous most recent previous secretaries. Probably a little more similar to secretary shalayla from a number of years ago in terms of my background not being an elected official. I have spoken to that in terms of the things i spoke about today in terms of the priorities and how i think about managing, running, leading the department. Also one of the oh things thats important and this gets to challenges. One of the first things i did was to call all of the other former secretaries. So i can make sure i cou