Name: How President Obama's Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett Landed Her Job
Uploaded: 2016-05-05
Duration: 13 min 39 s
Description: It all started with a city government job.

Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls at the White House. Welcome Valerie. [ APPLAUSE ] It is so good to have you Back. Thank you so much, Pattie. Good evening everybody. [ APPLAUSE ] And it's been a few years since Valerie has been with us, and so Valerie, interestingly enough in this sort of international room that we have here, Valerie was born in Iran. And her father who was a doctor ran a children's hospital there, and then you moved to London at a very young age, and then you moved to Chicago at what age? Six? Almost six, yes. Almost six. Dex, okay. Do you remember Iran at all ?>> Oh yeah, very well. I went back until I was 17. I" m not going to tell you how many years ago that was, but [ LAUGH ] A while ago. But we went back pretty often because after my father left the hospital, and is actually a general hospital, he ran the department of pathology and he probably went back every year and I went back every two or three years. Until I was 17. So I have very vivid memories of a wonderful time there when obviously the country had a very different relationship than it does when the United States now, sadly. And when you were 17 Valerie, what did you envision your life becoming? My gosh, I had no idea. Really, I always tell this story because I have Friends children now who are going away to go to college. And so at 17, when I was trying to figure out where to go to college, I met this really cute guy who was like 4 years older than I was. He went to Stanford and I thought, that's where I wanna go. [ LAUGH ] So, I didn't have a lot of a foresight until what Leah had Annie went to Stanford. And I did. I did. He was a great motivator for me to work hard. And he was gone by the time I got there. So that didn't work out. [ LAUGH ] But in any event, I had absolutely no idea. I think heading into college I wanted to be an anthropologist. I was huge fan of Jane Goodall. And, she actually was a professor a Stanford, the second reason I went there, second to the guy. And, I was thinking I would do that, I thought it would be really fun to just travel around the world and discover part of our history. Why did you go to law school instead? Yeah, that is a good question. Well, I think by the time I was about two- thirds, three- fourths of the way through college I had lost interest in spending my life at a dig. And I had kind of exhausted from the human biology that turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought going in. [ LAUGH ] And I had a very good friend who was actually two years older than Then I was and she said, she was in law school, and she said, it's a great thing to do when you have no idea what you wanna do. [ LAUGH ] And she was right. I learned a lot. I practiced law for ten years. I've never looked back since I stopped practicing law. But it was a really great experience. So, terrific. And I so believe in that, and when I speak about women and leadership, I preach that. Keep yourself open, don't plan your career. It worked out- Be flexible. Be flexible. Be flexible. Cuz you never know what's gonna come your way. And I had a ten- year plan, I should say. You had a ten- year plan? When I finished law school, I had a ten- year plan. My plan was to go to a law firm Fall madly in love, have a baby by the time I was 30, make partner, and live happily ever after. [ LAUGH ] That was my plan and I was sticking to it. I got married to almost the boy next door. His mother had grown up with my mother and my grandmother had grown up with his grandmother, what could go wrong, right? A lot went wrong. [ LAUGH ] But I did have my daughter right on time. She's perfect, that was the best thing I've ever done. But by the time I was six years out of law school, and I had a two year old baby, and I had this great office in the Sears Tower, at least it used to be called that in Chicago. Those of you from Chicago I think it's called the Abbott, or something like that now. Anyway, 79th floor, beautiful view of Lake Michigan, and I would sit in that office and just cry. And I would say, who's life is this, this couldn't possibly be my life, and I'm as miserable as I am. And when I had the confidence to kinda listen to that quiet voice inside of me, that we all tend to ignore And we listen to all those other loud voices telling us what to do and I finally said, I don't care if you're the first woman, first person in my family to be a lawyer. And everybody thought what I was doing was really exciting. It was not moving me one bit and that's when I decided to join city government in Chicago and that changed my life. So Valerie worked for two Chicago mayors, including Mayor Richard Daley and there's a very sort of big moment in American history when Valerie Jarrett hired a young woman named Named Michelle Obama. Michelle Robinson. Michelle Robinson. I'm sorry. Not even Michelle Obama at that point. [ CROSSTALK ] And you met her fiance? I did! And you befriended or you liked her fiance. Yeah, yeah. I met him because I offered her a job right off the bat. Because she was amazing. Old before her time, smart. Committed to public service, hated the law firm, we bonded immediately over hating the law firm part. And she said well let me think about it, wise, and a few days later I said well what do you think? And she said well my fiance doesn't think it's such a great idea. And I'm like, well who's your fiance and why is he getting in this? And she said look would you have dinner with us? Cuz I really want to come, but I want to talk it through and I want to make sure that it's a right fit. And he had some real reservations and what do you say? So I said yes and, am I glad I said yes to that dinner. That was really a good move. You never know. Little did I know. So let's fast forward to eight years ago, and President Barack Obama is elected President. He selects Valerie to be one of his most senior advisors, confidants, sounding boards. And was that an automatic, my gosh, I have to do this? I think you know the answer to that question. I do. But. [ LAUGH ] You thought, well, you thought about running for senate, though. Well, so, obviously, as he was elected president, that left a vacancy in the Senate. And so, I thought, I really was kind of trying to figure out, did I want to be in my own person and be in the Senate and. Really represent the state of Illinois, a state that I love so dearly, and ask to be appointed to fill his vacancy or did I wanna come into the White House. And, for those of you who know how persuasive the president can be, he's nothing compared to the first lady. And so she said I don't even know what you're talking about. Why on earth would you wanna be in the senate when you could be in the white house with us and she gave me some really good advice and so I'm glad I did. Malory how has the journey of these last eight years differed from what you expected? That's an interesting question. I think I had no idea what to expect. I'd suppose the biggest Variance. And in a totally serious note, my biggest disappointment is that I had thought, I actually knew one of the President's strengths was his ability to find common ground with people with whom he disagreed on a whole range of issues. And I had watched him from the very beginning of his political career when he was a state senator, and Springfield, Illinois. And he had this ability to go and talk to the senior most Republican. And there is some real serious Republicans in Illinois, let me tell you. [ LAUGH ] That didn't really have much respect or tolerance for Chicago. And he could figure out a way to find a common ground. And I think what has been and continues to be to this very moment My biggest disappointment about Washington is the ease with which people put their short- term political interest ahead of what's good for the country. And you would think when he came into office and we were losing 750, 000 jobs a month and the employment rate was going up to 10 % and we had Two wars and we healthcare crisis and our public school system is in disarray and colleges is way too affordable and energy crisis. You would think that that would galvanize everybody to come together and work for a common purpose, and instead the leader of the Republican Party in the senate says his number one objective Is not to solve all those problems but to ensure that the president's not reelected. And I just thought really? That's your number one objective? And then in earnest since that moment he's been trying really hard to figure out how to say no, even to things that have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support. Sylvia and I just returned from Flint, Michigan with President Obama and the crisis there is obviously the contamination of their water, which is an infrastructure problem. Well, for the last seven years, the President has been trying to say, look let's invest in our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our airports, our technology. If we wanna be globally competitive and we wanna be healthy and safe We have to do that and it has been impossible to get anything big and bold done on a bipartisan basis and so that surprised me. Chicago is rough and tumble politics, let me tell you, it is a contact sport but people are really actually motivated by the same goal as They love the city. The Republican and Democratic business community come together. Our civic community is totally engaged whether it's museums or libraries or parks or whatever, people serve on all of our civic boards notwithstanding how busy they are. And so I thought at a time of crisis We come together a little bit better than we have. Two more quick questions. What could a possible Trump presidency mean for business? Well, because I work in the White House and because there is this very important statute called the Hatch Act, I'm actually not allowed to talk about politics. But what I can say to you is, is that over the last seven years we're really proud of the fact that our unemployment rate went from 10 % down to 5. We've had over six years of every single month without a miss, private sector job growth. We're seeing our energy independence grow, which is not only good for our Our well being here in the United States but it also means that we're producing and exporting an important good. I mean, we're doing so much better than we were when the President took office and I think that's because of really a lot of the policies that he put in place. I gave you a simple one When he came in, and there were those that said, just forget about the automobile industry. It's gonna go down the tubes, Detroit's gonna go down the tubes, all of the cities that depend on the automobile industry are gonna go down the tubes. And he said, no, actually, I actually believe in the industry and I believe in the workers, and I'm gonna invest in them. And that investment Has saved and created millions of jobs and GM, Chrysler, Ford, 1, 2, and 3 in the world. We are doing really well right now. And so, I think that the strategies of let's figure out how to grow the base, create environment where companies want to invest and grow, where you have certainty, and that was tough to do in the middle of a financial meltdown, to try to provide some certainty Get some rules of the road in place, so we don't have to worry about that kind of gambling, basically, going on with a small number of banks, that had vast sweeping repercussions throughout our society. And so I think his strategies have worked, and so all I can tell you is this works, I can't talk about anything else. I know you won't tell me what you are going to next. Cuz I have absolutely no idea. But how, at least, are you thinking about what you might do next? Yeah, you know, when you say that, it makes me nervous because- [ LAUGH ] I'm beginning to think, increasingly, I should be thinking about what I'm going to do next cuz everywhere I go, right Sylvia, Lisa, people will start asking us, Advin What are you gonna do next? It's like so far away. Eight months in our life is like dog years away. And every time I start to think, cuz somebody like Patty says, what are you gonna do next, I just have no idea. What we accomplished today was amazing. And I would have hated to have been distracted from our mission of helping the people of Flint know that we care about them and we're Absolutely determined to fix what is a complicated and messy problem that didn't just begin with the water crisis, but it began with decades of disinvestment. That's enough to keep you pretty busy. The one thing I do know I'm gonna do is get some sleep. Yes. [ LAUGH ] But to just add, Ariana Huffington, who many of you may know, has just written yet another book about sleep. And I was with her over the weekend, and she's always lecturing. She gave me her book and said read this book. I said, I will as soon as I get some sleep. Right. Good strategy. Valerie, thank you for your service. Thank you, thank you all. Thanks very much. Yes. [ MUSIC ]

It all started with a city government job.