Valerie Jarrett on When Women Lead

the longest serving senior advisor to President Barack Obama. She joined Seneca Women at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to discuss her journey to the White House, lessons she learned as a leader, and effective ways to fight for progress. Enjoy this conversation with Valerie Milan and stick around after the discussion for our top takeaways. Valerie was the longest serving senior advisor to President Obama. Among her multiple roles, one that I worked with her closely on was the

Council on Women and Girls, and a lot did get accomplished. Today, she is the senior adviser to the Obama Foundation and the chair of When We All Vote. She is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book Finding My Voice, A Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward. And each of you has a copy of that book in your gift bag today. Thank you so, Valerie. We're coming up, as you heard, and as you well know, to the hundredth anniversary of women's suffrage in the United

States and the twenty anniversary on the Beijing Conference. What is your sense that this anniversary moment, are we doing better and especially in terms of women's leadership, Well, we are doing better, but we still have a very, very long way to go. By almost every possible metric, women and girls are still lagging. One important that one though, where we are making progress, and it's a it's a

key one is education. We're graduating from college at a higher rate than then now and we're half the population. But we all know as soon as we enter the workforce there are barriers, both structural and cultural. Barriers have come to work and so the question becomes, what are we going to do to remove those barriers? And one of the many lessons I learned my eight years in Washington is it people who are in power actually like power, and they're not inclined to want to give it up.

And the only way you can try to do that is to have a coalition of the willing and not talk about these issues any longer as a nice to do or the right thing to do, but frankly as a business imperative for businesses in the United States that want to be globally competitive, and of course the same thing applies to everyone else. You can live anywhere, work anywhere, and be productive. And the only way we're going to compete is to both attract and retain the most talented people.

And right now there are obstacles to us doing that. But I guess one message in this kind of comforts full circle to coming up on the hundredth anniversary is that change takes time, and it takes a relentless amount of hard work. It takes broadening the universe of people that we include in this struggle far beyond those who are directly impacted, but to get those who are indirectly impacted to appreciate that affects their lives too. And I would close this question perhaps by saying to one year.

For my birthday, President Obama gave me a copy of the Petition for Universal Suffrage, which was assigned in eighteen sixty six, and alongside of it was the resolution introduced to Congress UH to give women the right to vote, which was introduced in May of nineteen, nineteen fifty three years And so if you think about the women who are out there are demonstrating and being imprisoned and hunger strikes and having their husband's pretty ticked off at them

at the beginning of that journey, many of them didn't see the finish line. And I think part of what we have to help people understand is is it this takes time and relentless effort, and we need those thunderbolts. And I think, for example, the Me Too movement was a thunderbolt dealing with culture, and the question is how do we keep putting our foot on the pedal to keep that progress changing? And you're exactly right, we need to accelerate that progress, which is what we're all about

here as we gather. So, how did you see this progress in your own life, because clearly you've been on a trajectory. Yeah, in a sense of a trailblazer in a lot of ways. I will say, one thing I figured out after six years is to work in a culture where I could thrive. And I was fortunate because I had choices. And they're far too many women and girls who do not have choices and therefore it's up

to the rest of us to advocate for them. But once I figured out, and sorry if I'm offending anybody at a big law firm, But once I figured out the big law firm was actually not from me uh and began to work in an environment where I could be my whole self and I didn't have to pretend. When I was in a law firm and I was nine months pregnant, I was trying to pretend I wasn't pregnant while I gained ninety pounds. I was pregnant. So you obviously didn't succeed in I did not succeed. Everybody

knew it. But I thought if I talked about it, and after my daughter was born, if I talked about her, that people would not take me so seriously. And I think that is that's wrong, but yet that is still the case in far too many places of employment. And I actually believe that when you make yourself vulnerable and you say what you need, if you are in a

position to do so, then it's a teaching moment. And I think too often we expect people to read our minds and recognize that when you're nine months pregnant can go to the bathroom a lot, right, but nobody wants to talk about it. Or in my book I talk about menopause. You know what, guys, it's the reality of our lives and we shouldn't be shining away from expressing what's different artus and what our needs are. And it's

not just women, it's working families, right, working families. My son in law is much more engaged with my grandson, my brand new grandson's life than my husband was in mine or my dad, who was a great dad, was in mine. And so I think part of it is understanding that in this new environment, fortunately, men and women should be treating be treated on par and equal if we're going to compete. So one of my big policy positions that I've been talking about lately is paid leave.

First of all, we're the only developed country in the world. We are the only developed country in the world that doesn't have one. But why do we have when we do have it? Why is there a difference between what women and men have. Don't we want our men to

be equal partners? And why are women taking off let's say three and four months or six months, which they should, But why are we not thinking about men in the same vein and if we really want to level playing field, those are the kinds of conversations I think we should be having, and that is good progress. Talking about what your son in law is doing that you didn't see, you know, in earlier generations. Uh. And I find that men are realizing more and more when they are in

those settings with their newborn. Uh. They they are realizing benefits they never they never felt before or understood. But they would be in a work environment where policy are the possible people have to live it or the policy means that the benefits are all there if we would just realize that. You know, at the first Equal Rights Convention Women's Rights Convention back in I think it was, um,

the women were pretty scandalous in some ways. One was the fact that they were speaking out when women were not supposed to speak publicly. So again some change. Um. But I you know, one of the things you have written about and spoken about is the need for women to use their voice and to speak out when they are in positions where it can have impact. Why is that so important because we don't often realize that that

could make such a difference. Well, I think part of it is we're afraid to speak out, I know, and this is one way I hope it has changed that. When I was younger, young working mom, I was afraid that if I talked about my daughter, people wouldn't take

me as seriously. And what I grew to understand as I became a manager is that when my team told me what was going on in their lives, it was it would enable me to bring out the best in them and it developed a level of vulnerability and relationship that actually made them more productive in me a better manager.

And so I think when you go into it realizing that if you open up and talk about what's going on, rather than expecting people to read your minds, there's a moment that they can actually learn something, and it is on us to teach. We can't just expect them to clare clair voyalant. We know what we need. And I think it's also helpful when we get academics to do

research and begin to show that. For example, there's mounting research that shows that employers who focus on issues like equal pay and raising the minimum wage and workplace flexibility, paid leave, paid sick days, affordable childcare, a culture free from sexual harassment, that they have a more productive workforce, a more efficient workforce, a loyal er workforce, and the private sector more profitable, and the better we can make

the business case for it. I think then it is enlightened self interest and people are willing to not as much like give you their power, but certainly share and appreciate the fundamental proposition that diversity is a strength. And if you go into it assuming diversity is a strength and that you will make better decisions as a CEO or a manager. If you're not simply being in an echo chamber with people with your own life experiences, then you realize it's in your enlightened self interest to work

at achieving the diversity that you need in your workplace. Well, I think you said that so well. Um, in fact, it's an evidence space case today and there's plenty of data to uphold what you just said. Uh, and that is it's a win win, it's a win for business, and it's a win for a better world. So thank you for saying that. Now, when you were in the White House, you did many wonderful things. Uh. They were

tough times as always. Uh, it is having also been in the White House for eight years and a different administration. But it's not an easy job. And I thought one of the great things you did for the women and to teach a lesson to the guys, was amplification. What precipitated that and what did it result in. I'm glad you asked me that, because I think there was a Washington Post story about this. It probably gave us credit from being more deliberate than we were. But I think

the way we did it was the best way. So I began to notice a few months in, and I'll take a step back to remind you when President Obama was elected, our economy was in a free fall. The banks were a big bank around the verge of collapse. Millions of people were losing their homes and their jobs, and we had two wars going on. There was a lot going on, let's just say that, and so tension

was high. We were all new, none of us had worked together in that setting before, and we were, as we used to say, driving off seven forty seven at the same time as we were trying to put gas in the UH if you can imagine that. So I began to notice early on, not so much in meetings with President Obama, but in our senior staff meetings that

the women's voices were shrinking, and it troubled me. And I knew how important it was to the President that he had this robust group of advisors with different expertises and life experiences, um weighing in on critical matters. And so I mentioned it to him and he said, well, that's not acceptable, and he's like, what's going on? I said, all the same things that always go on at a workplace where you have men and women, and uh, he said, but that's not the culture I want in this White House.

And I realized that people come to each job with the experiences that they had before to bear and they couldn't read his mind and say it's going to be different here. And there were a lot of loud voices. Let's face it, um. And so he said, we let's have everybody over dinner. So he invited the senior women, about twelve of us over for dinner, and he asked each one of them to go around and explain what

the issue was. And I had gone to each of them ahead of time, and I said, you better speak up, because if you go in there as you are wanting to do people are wanting to do. Yes, Mr President, everything is just fine. Then I will look stupid, and I don't really care to look stupid. So fortunately they were quite forthcoming, and he listened so closely. And it was the same day as if Ford could um massacre, and so terrible to have this kind of a crisis

on our own military basin. President had been in the situation room all day and some of the women thought, well, he probably won't come, and I said, no, he'll come because this as important to him. So what I remember most is it at the end he said, look, this is a white house. I know it's tense. I know we have a lot going on, but you're here for a reason. You're here because I need your voices. So don't go in there and fight for yourself and let

your own pride and ego hold you back. If you don't, if you get re buffed, fight for your ideas, because I'll make a better decision with the benefit of those ideas. Right. How empowering was that you tell a group of women that they need to go in there and fight because that's what the leader of the free world has asked you to do. It was amazing. So at the end of the dinner, he goes, look, culture takes a minute.

I'm gonna work on this, but I want you to come back to me if you don't think we're making progress, because we're gonna get this right. And so then I started inviting the women to dinner, and we had our own dinners without him, and at the end of the each dinner, I would say, um, do we need to have another dinner with the president? They go, no, no, we're We're good. And the reason we were good is

that we got to know each other. We told our stories, our children, our parents, our life dreams, where we've been before, and we developed a relationship with one another. When you go into a meeting and you see somebody around the table who you just had dinner with the like the night before, and they know you, you are much more confident about speaking up right. And people thought we orchestrated this to like wellify each other's voices, but it actually

happened quite organically because we cared about each other. And if somebody's hanging out there on a sentence and nobody's listening, and you care about that person, you'll say to the room and wait a minute, what about what Melancha said, and I think, so there is safety in numbers, but there's also safety and relationships. And it can't just be the woman though that was really important. It has to

be the men too. At the end of the first term, somebody said to President Obama, how do you compare how you started out to the end of your first term? And he said, at the beginning, I had the absolute best players on the field, because that's what we needed. He said, at the end of the first term, I had the best team. Wow. It's a great statement, right,

and that takes a while to build. And I think what we have to do is be intentional about building it and not expect it just happened because you think it excellent. You know, I have so many questions and we have no time. Um, but you have the book, so you will find a lot of wisdom in that book. And I think this, UM, last statement that you made about using one's voice and UM, really saying what you need and you see needs to be done, is really

very very good advice. Thank you for your leadership, Allan, Thank you everyone who's here. You're a coalition of the winning and we appreciate it. Thank you. I love that a coalition of the winning. Stay tuned for our takeaways after this break. If you enjoyed that conversation, make sure to check out Valerie's book, Finding My Voice, My Journey to the West Wing, and The Path Forward. Now. There are a lot of important takeaways from that discussion that

can be applied to any workplace or project. First, get to know your network. Valerie advises that it's a lot easier to manage and work with people that you know and trust. A trusted network can build an individual's confidence and create a strong and product of team. Second, change takes time and partnerships are critical. Sometimes you just need to think outside of the box on how to include unexpected allies. Lastly, aim to work in a culture where

you can thrive and be your most authentic self. Successful careers are rarely linear and sometimes you just need to change course to find the right environment for you. Just think about a Valerie had never resigned from that first

legal position. You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio with support from founding partner p And Listen to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please support this podcast

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