0:00:04 – Hi everyone, welcome to the A16Z podcast.
0:00:07 In today’s episode, A16Z General Partner Katie Hahn
0:00:10 interviews Susan Rice, the former National Security Advisor
0:00:12 and U.S. Ambassador to the UN.
0:00:15 She’s the author of a memoir, “Tough Love.”
0:00:16 This is a candid talk
0:00:18 in which Ambassador Rice discusses leadership,
0:00:20 what it is, how to achieve it,
0:00:22 and how to focus under the extreme pressure
0:00:23 of global crisis.
0:00:26 She also talks about U.S. foreign relations
0:00:28 and what role the tech community can play.
0:00:29 This conversation took place
0:00:31 at our most recent innovation conference,
0:00:33 the A16Z Summit.
0:00:35 It was previously released on YouTube
0:00:36 if you’d like to check it out there.
0:00:40 (audience applauding)
0:00:43 – Susan, it’s so great to see you again here in LA.
0:00:45 And this time I get to share you with this audience,
0:00:47 which I’m really excited about.
0:00:49 You’ve had such an incredible life
0:00:51 and you’ve been in so many rooms and situations
0:00:54 that really very few of us, even in this rarefied room,
0:00:57 will ever really get to experience.
0:01:00 Aside from being Obama’s national security advisor
0:01:03 and the ambassador, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,
0:01:05 you were also the youngest assistant secretary
0:01:07 of state in the Clinton administration.
0:01:10 And you were a Rhodes Scholar.
0:01:12 You have your doctorate from Oxford.
0:01:14 And of course, all of these experiences
0:01:16 meant that you had a front row seat
0:01:19 to some pretty interesting situations,
0:01:22 things like the Snowden Leaks, North Korea,
0:01:25 negotiations with Iran,
0:01:28 the war against ISIS, the Ukraine.
0:01:31 And now you’re on the board of Netflix.
0:01:32 You write for the New York Times
0:01:35 and you’ve just published your memoir, “Tough Love.”
0:01:37 So Susan, in “Tough Love,”
0:01:40 you write that when you were in your younger years,
0:01:43 when you were 32, people said about you
0:01:46 that you were smart and dynamic and decisive.
0:01:48 But they also said you were,
0:01:52 and I quote, “Brash, demanding and impatient.”
0:01:55 And I’m wondering if these traits are unbalanced.
0:01:57 Do you think they were a bug or a feature
0:01:59 as you rose through the ranks of the government?
0:02:01 – Well, first of all, Katie,
0:02:02 thank you so much for doing this.
0:02:03 And good afternoon, everyone.
0:02:05 It’s great to be with you.
0:02:07 Thank you.
0:02:14 I would say that I had a mix of qualities at age 32
0:02:17 that were on the one hand feature and the other hand bug.
0:02:22 On the feature side, I do think I had strong preparation.
0:02:25 I was hungry, I was driving a team
0:02:28 to a very particular set of outcomes.
0:02:31 That was feature, but I was impatient.
0:02:36 I was brash, and I think that I learned the hard way
0:02:40 that I had to adjust some of those characteristics.
0:02:42 They were more on the bug side
0:02:47 and they were not well suited to the environment
0:02:47 in which I was in.
0:02:50 This was when I was a very young assistant secretary
0:02:52 of state for African affairs.
0:02:54 I’d started the job having worked
0:02:56 at the White House previously.
0:03:01 I was 32 years old and not only the youngest person
0:03:06 by far among the people who worked with me and under me,
0:03:09 but I was also the mother
0:03:12 of a three-month-old breastfeeding son.
0:03:15 And the combination of all of those things,
0:03:18 plus my characteristics in the State Department,
0:03:22 were, I think, off-putting to some.
0:03:27 And I had a wonderful set of advisors and mentors,
0:03:30 some of whom who took me to the woodshed
0:03:33 and delivered a dose of tough love at a stage
0:03:35 when it was very useful to me.
0:03:36 – Yeah, and in particular,
0:03:39 I know you write about several of those mentors in the book,
0:03:41 but is there one that really exemplifies
0:03:44 helping you overcome some of those,
0:03:45 as you said, those characteristics
0:03:48 that you’ve deemed were a bug?
0:03:53 – Well, the most impactful experience was in 1998.
0:03:57 I’d been in the job about a year.
0:04:00 And 1998, none of you will recall,
0:04:02 but I’ll remind you it was the year
0:04:04 when not only on the African continent,
0:04:08 we had wars break out between Ethiopia and Eritrea,
0:04:13 huge war in the Congo, wars in West Africa as well.
0:04:16 And over the summer in August,
0:04:19 Al Qaeda attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
0:04:24 and killed 12 Americans and over 200 Kenyans
0:04:27 and left thousands wounded and our embassies destroyed.
0:04:31 And so it was a really high pressure, high intensity time.
0:04:35 And my approach to dealing with all of this
0:04:38 was to keep focused on the mission,
0:04:41 to drive through the pain,
0:04:46 to just stay focused and push myself and the team
0:04:48 as hard and as fast as we can
0:04:50 to deal with all these simultaneous challenges.
0:04:55 But just before Christmas, a colleague,
0:04:56 a man named Howard Wolpe,
0:04:59 who was a former member of Congress from Michigan
0:05:01 and was working as a political appointee
0:05:03 in the State Department,
0:05:06 he took me out to lunch at a really crappy Chinese restaurant
0:05:08 near the State Department.
0:05:10 And I thought it was just gonna be a social occasion.
0:05:13 And after a few bites, he came straight out
0:05:17 and said, you know, Susan, you’re gonna fail in this job
0:05:19 if you don’t change course.
0:05:22 You’re smart, you’re committed, you know your brief,
0:05:23 you’re hard charging,
0:05:26 you’ve got the support of the Secretary of State
0:05:27 and the President,
0:05:32 but you are not being sufficiently deferential
0:05:35 to sufficiently appreciative of the expertise
0:05:38 of the senior people working with you.
0:05:40 And you’re not bringing the team along,
0:05:44 you’re not investing your team in the outcomes.
0:05:47 You’re just driving relentlessly towards an outcome
0:05:49 and you’re losing people.
0:05:53 And if you don’t change course, you’re gonna fail.
0:05:55 And I don’t wanna see you fail.
0:05:57 And so we then had a conversation
0:06:01 which was obviously pretty bracing for me,
0:06:06 but I realized that he was doing this as a huge favor.
0:06:08 He was doing this as somebody who cared.
0:06:09 He could have basically said, you know,
0:06:12 I don’t care if you fail, that’s not my problem.
0:06:15 But he took me under his wing and gave me that advice
0:06:17 which enabled me, I think,
0:06:22 to be a far more patient, more inclusive,
0:06:28 more collaborative leader and manager of teams
0:06:30 than I had otherwise been.
0:06:35 And that helped me soften some of those qualities
0:06:37 that we described as a bug.
0:06:39 And so that by the time I completed my tenure
0:06:41 at the end of the Clinton administration,
0:06:45 I think I really had learned and grown
0:06:46 in ways that were very valuable.
0:06:51 And I think I was able to leave behind a record of success
0:06:53 without which I’m not sure I would be,
0:06:55 have gone on to do the other things
0:06:57 that I ended up doing in the Obama administration.
0:06:59 – Well, one of the things that struck me
0:07:01 in reading the book is you were so fortunate
0:07:04 to have a number of mentors like that,
0:07:05 including your own parents.
0:07:06 And so I wanna take a step back
0:07:08 and talk about your origin story
0:07:10 because I’m sure a lot of people in this room
0:07:12 are familiar with a lot of your accomplishments,
0:07:15 but your parents were also really accomplished
0:07:16 in their own right.
0:07:19 I mean, your dad descended from slaves in South Carolina,
0:07:22 went on to become a member of the Tuskegee Airmen.
0:07:24 And then he went on also
0:07:27 to become an economics professor at Cornell,
0:07:30 eventually serving as governor of the Federal Reserve Bank
0:07:33 and in several senior roles at Treasury and the World Bank.
0:07:37 Your mom had a very different experience.
0:07:40 She was the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica
0:07:42 who settled in Maine,
0:07:44 which explains your main connection.
0:07:49 And she went on to Radcliffe, not only to Radcliffe,
0:07:52 but also to become the student body president
0:07:53 and then served on the boards
0:07:57 of 11 different major public companies.
0:07:59 Now, that seems, all of those things
0:08:02 seem like really impressive accomplishments
0:08:04 for any person at any time,
0:08:08 but really rare, especially for a woman of color
0:08:09 at that time.
0:08:13 And so I’m just curious, what lessons did you take
0:08:15 from these incredible parents you had?
0:08:19 – Well, I really was blessed with two extraordinary parents
0:08:23 who came, as Katie said, from extremely different backgrounds,
0:08:25 but they had several things in common.
0:08:27 They had a commitment to education,
0:08:31 they had a commitment to service,
0:08:36 and they had a sense that they had been blessed
0:08:38 with the gifts of their parents and grandparents,
0:08:41 and it was their responsibility to make the most of those,
0:08:44 and the expectation for me and my brother
0:08:45 was that we’d do the same.
0:08:51 And as you said, their background’s very different,
0:08:53 but on my father’s side,
0:08:59 he grew up in really the most raw form of Jim Crow,
0:09:05 and brutal segregation in South Carolina, born in 1920.
0:09:08 And then, as you said, served at Tuskegee
0:09:10 with the Tuskegee Airmen.
0:09:14 And his challenge, as somebody whose parents
0:09:18 and grandparents had both gone to college,
0:09:21 his grandfather, my great grandfather, was a slave
0:09:24 who ended up getting a college education
0:09:28 after fighting in the Civil War on the side
0:09:31 of the Union Army and founding a school in New Jersey
0:09:34 that educated generations of African Americans.
0:09:38 So there was a tradition on my father’s side
0:09:43 of having the extraordinary opportunity to attend university,
0:09:47 but in his experience, he was so freighted
0:09:52 with the oppression of bigotry and segregation,
0:09:54 and so resentful of having to serve
0:09:58 in the segregated military in World War II
0:10:03 and be expected to prove what to him was absolutely obvious,
0:10:06 which was that African Americans could fly
0:10:08 and fight as well as anybody.
0:10:10 So he’d left trying to figure out
0:10:15 how does an African American man in the 1940s,
0:10:19 who had already gotten a college education,
0:10:22 went on to get his PhD in economics at Berkeley,
0:10:27 believe in himself when society is pushing him down.
0:10:29 And my mom, from her perspective,
0:10:30 a very different set of challenges,
0:10:33 but again, the daughter of immigrants
0:10:34 who came to this country with nothing,
0:10:36 sent all their kids to college,
0:10:42 and the expectation for her was also to excel and succeed.
0:10:45 And what they taught me and my brother was, in essence,
0:10:50 that we couldn’t let other people define us for us.
0:10:53 We had to believe in ourselves and know our worth
0:10:56 and not let others discount us.
0:11:00 My father had an expression which was,
0:11:04 if my being black is going to be a problem,
0:11:08 it’s gonna be a problem for somebody else, not for me.
0:11:11 In other words, what he understood was that bigotry
0:11:15 is the function of somebody else’s insecurity.
0:11:17 And even though there’s structural and institutional
0:11:21 and legal impediments that he faced every step of the way,
0:11:24 he did realize that he got to choose
0:11:26 how he thought of himself.
0:11:31 And if he let the bigot’s definition of him become his own,
0:11:33 then the bigot would succeed and he would fail.
0:11:36 He would not believe in his own capacity.
0:11:41 And so what he and my mother taught me and my brother, John,
0:11:46 is that we were worthy, we were capable,
0:11:48 and we had to believe in ourselves.
0:11:52 And we would inevitably encounter racism or sexism
0:11:55 or ageism or whatever it might be.
0:11:57 But the way to deal with that is,
0:12:00 in essence, a psychological jujitsu,
0:12:05 to let that be somebody else’s concern, not yours.
0:12:09 And to try not to expend your precious mental energy
0:12:11 doubting yourself.
0:12:13 And that’s really hard to do,
0:12:15 whether you’re a male or a female,
0:12:17 a person of color or not.
0:12:20 – Yeah, wow, so powerful.
0:12:22 I’m wondering also, in addition to the lessons
0:12:24 that you were taking from your parents,
0:12:24 and you wrote about them,
0:12:26 I encourage everyone who hasn’t read the book
0:12:27 to go read for yourself,
0:12:30 because they’re really a set of extraordinary things
0:12:33 you took from both your mom and your dad
0:12:34 and their extended family.
0:12:36 I mean, you write a lot about some of the memories
0:12:39 you had growing up, the summers in Maine.
0:12:41 But I’m also curious in writing your book,
0:12:43 if there are themes that you kind of discovered
0:12:47 about yourself that help motivate you
0:12:50 to become the kind of successful person that you became.
0:12:54 – Well, writing the book was a real opportunity,
0:12:58 a gift of a chance to reflect
0:13:00 and to think back as to all of the things
0:13:01 that influenced me,
0:13:04 because frankly, I realized in writing this,
0:13:06 that essentially from high school,
0:13:09 until the day I left the Obama administration,
0:13:12 I’d been going at almost full speed nonstop.
0:13:17 And what I really realized
0:13:20 is that the most formative experiences
0:13:23 were the lessons I learned from my parents,
0:13:28 and the real challenge I had coming through
0:13:30 my parents’ divorce.
0:13:32 You’ve heard how great my parents were,
0:13:33 and they really were,
0:13:35 but they absolutely had no business
0:13:37 being married to each other.
0:13:39 And there’s– – And you wrote about that a lot,
0:13:41 and you talked about it. – I write a lot about it.
0:13:42 I write a lot about it,
0:13:45 because I realized that I can’t explain myself
0:13:46 without explaining that experience.
0:13:47 – Can you impact that a little,
0:13:49 because I think that’s just really so interesting
0:13:52 as you found yourself in some of these crisis situations
0:13:54 later, mostly professionally,
0:13:57 but also personally, explain that a little bit,
0:14:00 how you think that your parents’ own relations
0:14:02 with each other and then their eventual divorce
0:14:04 kind of contributed to that.
0:14:07 – Well, by the time I was about seven,
0:14:12 they were fighting constantly, and sometimes violently,
0:14:15 and it was really terrifying for me and my brother,
0:14:18 who was two years younger than me.
0:14:21 We’d be in bed at night trying to go to sleep,
0:14:24 and I’d wake up to them screaming and yelling,
0:14:29 and I was scared, frankly, that it could spin out of control.
0:14:32 And so I would creep downstairs and spy on them,
0:14:36 and try to figure out if this was gonna get out of control.
0:14:40 And if I feared it might, I’d intervene,
0:14:42 sometimes physically,
0:14:48 but more often actually trying to talk them down
0:14:51 and therefore listen to what they were arguing about,
0:14:53 what were the, who was making what point
0:14:57 and where reason lay at seven or eight.
0:14:59 – So you’re doing diplomacy then, really.
0:15:03 I mean, really a precursor to what came later,
0:15:04 I guess, professionally.
0:15:06 I had no idea, obviously, that any of that
0:15:07 would have any relevance,
0:15:12 but I did find myself trying to fire fight, in essence.
0:15:20 And then when I was 10, they actually separated
0:15:24 and then went through a very bitter and ugly divorce
0:15:26 and a very public custody battle.
0:15:29 And so really until I was 15,
0:15:33 this thing dragged out in one shape or another.
0:15:37 And I had to make a decision about
0:15:41 whether I was gonna let it crush me
0:15:44 or whether I was going to control what I could control
0:15:48 and not try to be weighted down by what I couldn’t.
0:15:49 I couldn’t control them
0:15:51 and how they were dealing with each other,
0:15:54 but I could control how I performed in school
0:15:57 and whether I tried to repair my friendships
0:15:58 which had suffered.
0:16:01 And whether I was gonna be an athlete
0:16:03 and a student leader and all this stuff.
0:16:05 And what I learned from all of that
0:16:08 is that I could take a hit and keep going.
0:16:13 And it gave me a degree of confidence in my own resiliency
0:16:17 that turns out, I think, in retrospect,
0:16:19 to have been probably the most important,
0:16:24 formative revelation that I had early on.
0:16:28 And rather than feeling like, you know,
0:16:29 this was the worst thing that ever could happen,
0:16:30 which, of course, it wasn’t,
0:16:34 but it was bad in my experience.
0:16:36 I realized, wow, this was really bad,
0:16:40 but I can still keep doing what I need to do.
0:16:44 And I think that strength was something
0:16:47 that I wouldn’t know I’d need down the road,
0:16:48 but was incredibly valuable.
0:16:50 – Well, we’ve talked before, you and I,
0:16:52 about how you have an ability,
0:16:54 I think you’d agree, to compartmentalize.
0:16:55 – Yeah.
0:16:59 – And that it served you well later professionally
0:17:00 in times of crisis.
0:17:02 – And by compartmentalize in this context,
0:17:06 what I mean is, and as I had to do
0:17:09 as national security advisor, for example,
0:17:12 when there’s all this stuff going on,
0:17:17 whether it’s your parents fighting or, you know,
0:17:21 working on the most difficult problems and crises
0:17:24 in the world when almost every major decision
0:17:26 has life and death implications,
0:17:31 I would found that I was able to do the work of the job
0:17:34 and be focused and committed to that work
0:17:39 without it affecting me in every day,
0:17:43 all day emotionally and being debilitating.
0:17:47 I feel, you know, if we’re working on a very difficult issue,
0:17:50 I felt that weight, I felt that pain,
0:17:55 but it didn’t become something that I could not cope with.
0:17:59 It didn’t cripple my ability to focus
0:18:01 and do the job functionally.
0:18:04 And I think, you know, you have to have some measure
0:18:06 of that wherever it comes from
0:18:08 to work on those kinds of issues
0:18:12 and not, you know, be crushed, for example,
0:18:15 by the weight of the humanitarian crisis in Syria.
0:18:17 – Well, and you’ve been in a number
0:18:19 of those crisis situations, obviously,
0:18:22 you just mentioned Syria, the humanitarian crisis.
0:18:24 And I’m just wondering, you’re gonna tie it to this room,
0:18:28 what best practices or philosophy
0:18:31 do you bring to bear, Susan, in moments of real crisis?
0:18:37 – Well, I think my way of approaching crisis is,
0:18:39 first of all, to get super calm.
0:18:41 The worst the situation is,
0:18:46 the more I kinda just chill out and not freak out.
0:18:51 – I mean, you wrote about the embassy bombings.
0:18:54 – Yeah, the embassy bombings were an example.
0:18:58 So, trying to stay calm, trying to gather the information,
0:19:01 trying to focus on outcomes that we could control
0:19:08 and not allow the overwhelming nature of the crisis
0:19:14 to impede our ability to act rationally and effectively.
0:19:19 So, in 1998, when the embassies were bombed
0:19:24 in Kenya and Tanzania, my focus was on what can we do
0:19:28 in the moment to be impactful and effective?
0:19:31 We had to get search and rescue teams out
0:19:34 in the shortest order to try to save people
0:19:36 who were buried in the rubble.
0:19:40 We had to get the FBI and the other investigative elements
0:19:42 on the ground to gather the evidence
0:19:45 so that we could find the perpetrators.
0:19:48 We had to support the families of the victims
0:19:50 with information and with comfort.
0:19:54 We had to do all these things in the moment
0:19:58 and so my emphasis was on what can we practically do
0:20:03 immediately without falling apart and despairing
0:20:06 and how also at the same time,
0:20:07 and this is what I learned the hard way,
0:20:11 became better at as I got more experiences,
0:20:16 recognize that the people you are working with
0:20:20 process these crises differently than you may
0:20:23 and may need a different kind of support and approach.
0:20:27 And so being a compassionate leader that recognizes
0:20:29 that you need to provide space for people
0:20:32 to work through their pain and cope with it
0:20:36 while trying to keep them on the focus to be effective.
0:20:40 That was where I was lacking at age 32
0:20:44 and I hope by say 52, I’d gotten a little bit better at.
0:20:45 – Yeah.
0:20:47 Well, you know, look, you’ve clearly been
0:20:51 in some really high pressure situations.
0:20:54 And at the time you mentioned the embassy bombings,
0:20:57 you know, you had Jake, your son,
0:21:00 who was practically a newborn at that point, right?
0:21:01 – He was a newborn.
0:21:01 – He was a newborn, right?
0:21:03 Well, so clearly you’ve been in these
0:21:07 high pressure situations, but then you add marriage,
0:21:09 you add kids and somehow you’re managing
0:21:11 a really complicated life, Susan,
0:21:13 and you’ve managed a really complicated life
0:21:16 with a great deal of elegance as an outsider.
0:21:17 – Thank you.
0:21:18 – Looking in.
0:21:20 And I’m wondering just as I think
0:21:21 about all you’ve accomplished,
0:21:23 and you have two kids we’ll talk about in a minute,
0:21:26 and I think Ian is here in the audience, your husband.
0:21:28 – My wonderful husband.
0:21:30 – But what are, how are you hacking this?
0:21:31 How have you done this?
0:21:33 And what practical tips do you have
0:21:34 for people in the audience?
0:21:36 Because I’d sure love to hear them
0:21:38 and I’m sure others would.
0:21:41 How do you manage this really robust professional career
0:21:45 and yet also a robust personal life?
0:21:48 – Well, I don’t think anybody does it perfectly
0:21:50 or to their own satisfaction.
0:21:53 What I learned along the way is that there’s certain things,
0:21:55 again, that you can control.
0:21:58 And those are the ones you should focus on.
0:22:03 So I really tried to take care of myself,
0:22:06 to sleep as much as I reasonably could,
0:22:10 to exercise as much as I reasonably could.
0:22:14 And to prioritize time with family and friends
0:22:16 because that was rejuvenative time.
0:22:21 And gave me sort of the strength and the perspective
0:22:25 to deal with the things I couldn’t control.
0:22:27 Those were all critically important.
0:22:30 And then I couldn’t have done it, frankly,
0:22:34 without an extremely supportive and hands-on partner
0:22:39 who was very much engaged in his own high pressure career
0:22:43 as an executive producer at ABC News.
0:22:47 But was hugely helpful with the kids,
0:22:50 with my parents who were ailing at the time,
0:22:51 and in supporting me.
0:22:56 So I was blessed with all of those systems of support.
0:23:02 But I think the main things that most of us
0:23:06 can try to prioritize are taking care of our physical
0:23:10 and mental health through basic things like sleeping
0:23:13 and exercising, hopefully eating reasonably well.
0:23:18 And cherishing that time with the people you love
0:23:22 as what you need to keep giving you fuel.
0:23:24 – That’s great practical advice.
0:23:26 I mean, speaking of kids, you have two.
0:23:27 – We have two.
0:23:30 – Daughter Maris, who’s junior in high school.
0:23:31 – Yes.
0:23:34 – And then Jake, who’s a senior at Stanford.
0:23:35 – Yes.
0:23:36 – And everyone says this about their kids, Susan.
0:23:40 Oh, there might, anyone who has more than one child
0:23:42 says, oh, they’re so different from each other.
0:23:46 But you kind of take things to a new extreme with your kids.
0:23:47 Because–
0:23:48 – They took us to an extreme.
0:23:49 – They took you to an extreme.
0:23:51 I mean, for those who aren’t familiar,
0:23:55 I mean, your son Jake, here you are having served
0:23:59 in the Clinton administration, in the Obama administration.
0:24:02 And your son Jake is the president of,
0:24:04 was president of the Stanford College Republicans?
0:24:05 – Yes.
0:24:08 – And then you have your daughter,
0:24:10 and I wish we had a picture of them,
0:24:11 but anyone can grab the book,
0:24:14 and there’s pictures of them in the book.
0:24:18 Maris, you describe us to the left of you and Ian.
0:24:19 – Yes.
0:24:20 – And yet the two of them are very close,
0:24:22 and also close in age.
0:24:24 And how did that happen?
0:24:26 And tell us a little bit more about that.
0:24:29 – Uh.
0:24:32 (audience laughing)
0:24:34 – I know you were trying to raise independent thinkers.
0:24:38 – You know, we wonder sometimes what we fed them,
0:24:43 and we really did try to teach them
0:24:46 that they should think for themselves
0:24:49 and have the courage of their convictions.
0:24:53 And we tried to impress upon them our respect
0:24:57 for their independence and individualism.
0:24:59 And unfortunately, that’s what we got.
0:25:00 (audience laughing)
0:25:03 And we love them both.
0:25:05 I mean, they’re both wonderful,
0:25:07 bright, thoughtful, committed kids.
0:25:09 And they’re not just different politically.
0:25:11 I mean, they’re different temperamentally.
0:25:13 They could not be more different.
0:25:16 And sometimes you wonder, like, how’s that possible?
0:25:19 Same household, same parents, same diet.
0:25:22 – I mean, you took Jake with you campaigning.
0:25:26 – Yeah, he used to be, he campaigned for me with me
0:25:31 in 2008 for Obama in the snows of New Hampshire.
0:25:35 And this was before he had this metamorphosis.
0:25:38 – Very hosting speaking engagements at Stanford.
0:25:39 – Yes.
0:25:45 And he’s just, you know, he’s gone his own way politically,
0:25:48 but not emotionally.
0:25:52 He’s still very much my baby,
0:25:57 and very much an integral part of our family.
0:26:01 And so we have some robust debates,
0:26:04 and sometimes at the dinner table, food will fly.
0:26:06 (audience laughing)
0:26:09 Mostly between the kids, I’d like to believe,
0:26:12 but Ian is here, so I’m not gonna state that categorically.
0:26:13 – Yeah, that’s great.
0:26:17 – He knows better, but it’s all good.
0:26:22 And I’ve learned a lot from having somebody so close to us
0:26:27 who reflects and represents a very different perspective.
0:26:30 And one that I think is really important
0:26:33 for me to understand, but for all of us to understand,
0:26:36 regardless of whether you’re on the right or the left,
0:26:38 understanding, we’re in the middle more,
0:26:40 like some of us wanna be,
0:26:44 respecting opinions with which we differ,
0:26:49 and being willing to engage them thoughtfully.
0:26:51 – Yeah, well, it’s so great to see
0:26:53 that you were able to raise such independent thinkers,
0:26:56 in addition to doing everything else
0:26:58 that you and Ian had going on.
0:27:01 So hats off for that.
0:27:03 And then also, you know, I was struck by,
0:27:05 actually it’s such a coincidence
0:27:07 that Shonda Rhimes is going to speak next,
0:27:10 because Shonda Rhimes was one of the people
0:27:12 who read your book first,
0:27:15 and she said that reading your book was like a masterclass
0:27:17 in how to be a powerful woman.
0:27:19 I think reading your book was like a masterclass
0:27:21 in how to be a powerful person.
0:27:24 And many of us think that being a powerful woman
0:27:26 equals being a career woman.
0:27:29 But you know, Susan, you told a different story
0:27:30 in your book.
0:27:32 You talked not about just being a career woman.
0:27:35 In fact, I think half of that book
0:27:39 is about how to be a loving wife, a devoted mother,
0:27:41 and also caring for your parents,
0:27:43 both of them, when they were aging.
0:27:45 And I know they’ve now both since passed.
0:27:48 At the same time, you’re making these incredibly hard decisions
0:27:51 and in the public eye, met with a great deal of scrutiny.
0:27:53 You wrote about a great deal of scrutiny
0:27:55 when your mom was watching you.
0:27:59 You said obsessively on CNN during the Benghazi story.
0:28:00 – Not watching me, but watching the news.
0:28:01 – Watching the news.
0:28:02 – Freaking out about me.
0:28:03 – Right.
0:28:06 And so amidst all that, you know,
0:28:08 I wanna know, Susan, like what do you think
0:28:12 takes to be a powerful woman or a powerful person?
0:28:13 What are the traits?
0:28:17 – I would say in the first instance,
0:28:19 it requires confidence.
0:28:23 It requires believing in your own self-worth.
0:28:26 And that’s the huge gift I got from my parents.
0:28:31 I think it requires integrity and strength
0:28:33 and compassion, quite frankly.
0:28:38 I think being powerful means not being hard.
0:28:44 It means being, to the greatest extent possible,
0:28:49 somebody who can lead and inspire and motivate others.
0:28:54 And one of the things I learned as I grew
0:28:58 from that young Brash assistant secretary
0:29:03 was that the secret to having effective teams
0:29:06 is that every member of the team feels valued
0:29:11 and feels like they care and that they count.
0:29:13 That you care about them and that they count.
0:29:18 And so to me, that’s the secret sauce.
0:29:23 It’s leading in a fashion that values the individuals
0:29:27 and the human beings on the team.
0:29:32 And the model, quite frankly, that President Obama set
0:29:37 and that I and I think others tried to manifest
0:29:42 was to give all of our colleagues the confidence
0:29:45 to know that if and when they had to put
0:29:48 their personal lives first because somebody was sick
0:29:53 or their kid needed them for something important,
0:29:56 that the team would fill in behind them
0:29:59 and that we would manage collectively in their absence.
0:30:02 Not none of us was indispensable,
0:30:04 not when I was national security advisor, never.
0:30:07 I had partners and deputies who could fill in
0:30:11 and at the lowest levels, that was the way we tried
0:30:12 to run our teams.
0:30:15 If you had to go to do what was vitally important
0:30:19 to you as a human being, then that was what was most important.
0:30:22 Not least because you weren’t gonna be effective anyway,
0:30:24 if you were stressing out about this,
0:30:27 but also because it’s a way of saying we care about you
0:30:31 and we value you as a human being and we got your back
0:30:34 and we as a team can fill in behind you.
0:30:40 And that I think is empowering to one’s team
0:30:44 and one’s people, but it’s also in many ways
0:30:47 the source of one’s own strength as a leader.
0:30:50 – Speaking of being a leader and leadership,
0:30:53 you have another, I mean, I’m curious what you think about
0:30:56 then all of the traits you’re mentioning make me think,
0:30:58 well, I would really like to work for that person.
0:31:00 I really like them.
0:31:03 And one of the favorite quotes that I have of yours,
0:31:04 as you said, and I quote,
0:31:08 “People who are so intent on being liked
0:31:10 “may not have the fortitude to do the right thing
0:31:11 “or the tough thing.”
0:31:15 And so what advice would you give to leaders?
0:31:18 A lot of leaders, including some in this room,
0:31:19 really wanna be liked.
0:31:22 – Well, I think, look, it’s always better
0:31:25 to be liked than not be liked.
0:31:26 Let’s be clear.
0:31:30 But what I discovered at some stage was,
0:31:32 at least for me, if I had to choose,
0:31:34 if I couldn’t have both,
0:31:38 I’d rather be respected than liked.
0:31:41 And that was because I realized that sometimes,
0:31:44 and this is sort of reflected in the quote you read,
0:31:49 sometimes by being overly concerned about being nice,
0:31:52 particularly women who sometimes that manifests
0:31:54 as being deferential or asking for permission
0:31:58 or affirmation, it’s not effective.
0:32:01 And it is diminishing of your capacity
0:32:05 to perform to your optimal level.
0:32:07 And I realized that just by being me,
0:32:09 by believing in myself,
0:32:11 by being an African-American woman
0:32:13 who really wasn’t asking for permission
0:32:17 or affirmation in the circles in which I ran,
0:32:19 some people weren’t gonna like that.
0:32:21 – You said that you intimidated a lot of people
0:32:23 most notably.
0:32:25 – Some men, but I mean, I didn’t set out to do that,
0:32:29 but I think, and I still don’t set out to do that,
0:32:30 I’m just trying to be myself,
0:32:33 but I’m not gonna be somebody I’m not
0:32:35 to make somebody else more comfortable.
0:32:36 – Well, I love that you’ve embraced
0:32:37 those characteristics of yourself.
0:32:41 – And that leads you to being not always liked.
0:32:44 And if you’re so obsessed with being liked,
0:32:48 I think it can lead you to be somebody you’re not.
0:32:51 And as I said, better to be liked,
0:32:54 I much prefer that,
0:32:59 but not at the expense of being who I am.
0:33:00 – Well, we’re gonna get to a,
0:33:04 I wanna tell a story which I thought was fake news.
0:33:06 And then I asked you about it and you said it was true.
0:33:07 – It’s not fake news, it’s in the book.
0:33:08 I don’t know where to go.
0:33:12 – Well, I read it and I thought, oh, this is true.
0:33:15 There’s a situation where at one time,
0:33:17 you had to give the middle finger
0:33:19 to Ambassador Richard Holbrook
0:33:22 in front of a room full of ambassadors and diplomats.
0:33:23 Can you tell us about that?
0:33:27 – So we’re rewinding the tape again to this time.
0:33:28 – To the brash days.
0:33:31 – No, but this was not brash.
0:33:36 This was implementing a philosophy
0:33:41 that my father had beat into me from a very early age,
0:33:45 which was don’t take crap off of anybody.
0:33:47 If somebody is bullying you or dismissing you
0:33:51 or discounting you, don’t let them get away with it.
0:33:54 Now, I’d like to think that at 55,
0:33:56 I might have found the words
0:33:58 that would have been more appropriate,
0:34:00 but words failed me in that moment
0:34:04 and I ended up realizing that my hands had not failed me.
0:34:11 But the back story is that I’m Assistant Secretary
0:34:12 of State for African Affairs.
0:34:15 I’m probably now 33 or 34.
0:34:18 Ambassador Holbrook had been nominated
0:34:20 to be the UN Ambassador,
0:34:22 but not confirmed as confirmation
0:34:24 had been held up for many months.
0:34:27 And one day, I’m up on Capitol Hill
0:34:29 meeting with members of Congress
0:34:31 and my secretary calls.
0:34:34 I remember those cell phones that were the size of bricks.
0:34:37 That was what we were dealing with back in those days.
0:34:40 And she says, Ambassador Holbrook is in your office
0:34:43 and he wants to meet with you now.
0:34:45 And I said, well, I’m sure you explained
0:34:47 I’m on Capitol Hill meeting with members of Congress.
0:34:49 I can’t just come back to meet with him now.
0:34:51 Why don’t you schedule an appointment
0:34:53 and we’ll figure it out.
0:34:55 And she said, he’s not leaving.
0:35:01 And I said, well, okay, then I’ll see him when I get back,
0:35:02 but that’s gonna be a while
0:35:04 and make sure you don’t take anything while I’m there.
0:35:07 (audience laughs)
0:35:09 So I come back about an hour and a half later
0:35:12 and sure enough, he’s sitting in my office.
0:35:15 Very comfortable on my couch.
0:35:17 And I sit down and I introduced myself
0:35:18 ’cause we’d never met.
0:35:22 And I say, what’s so urgent
0:35:27 that you had to be camped out here in my office?
0:35:30 And the first words out of his mouth were,
0:35:35 I dislike you already because you beat my record
0:35:38 as the youngest regional assistant secretary of state.
0:35:42 And our relationship went downhill from there.
0:35:43 (audience laughs)
0:35:48 And I realized, I was dealing with very talented,
0:35:53 diplomat on the one hand, but a classic bully on the other.
0:35:58 So now, maybe a year later, he’s UN ambassador.
0:36:00 He’s established in the job.
0:36:03 And he decides in the month that the United States
0:36:05 is chairing the Security Council
0:36:07 that he’s gonna make it the month of Africa.
0:36:09 Africa already consumes a large share
0:36:11 of the Security Council agenda.
0:36:15 And that meant that we had to interact quite a bit.
0:36:18 And he decided he was gonna have a summit meeting
0:36:22 with the African heads of state from Central Africa.
0:36:25 And he therefore summoned these heads of state.
0:36:27 And of course, he was only an ambassador.
0:36:28 So he had to have the secretary of state
0:36:31 at least be the person to chair the meeting.
0:36:35 And he summoned back the ambassadors who reported to me
0:36:37 who were the ambassadors
0:36:39 in each of these Central African countries.
0:36:42 And he calls a meeting on a Sunday afternoon
0:36:43 in his office in New York.
0:36:48 And in the meeting are my maybe six or seven
0:36:50 of the ambassadors who report to me,
0:36:53 all of whom are 20 to 30 years my senior.
0:36:58 All men, all white.
0:37:02 And a handful of my staffers and Holbrook
0:37:04 and a few of his team.
0:37:07 And there’s a robust argument that we’re all engaged in
0:37:10 about a real important policy issue.
0:37:12 And at one stage after I’d listened to the debate,
0:37:17 I weighed in with my own opinion, which differed from his.
0:37:20 And he leans over this table where we’re all seated
0:37:22 in a very cramped room.
0:37:24 He’s a big guy with a hulking body.
0:37:29 And he looks at me and he says, “Ah, I too remember
0:37:33 when I was a young assistant secretary.”
0:37:35 (laughing)
0:37:36 And I was like–
0:37:37 – And that’s where words failed you.
0:37:38 – That’s where words failed me.
0:37:44 And so I did exhibit my dismay with a gesture,
0:37:49 which was displayed long enough for him to see it.
0:37:54 And everybody else to see it and like freak out.
0:37:57 Some with real relish and others with horror.
0:38:00 And he just kept talking.
0:38:03 And that meeting continued.
0:38:05 It became a bit urban legend,
0:38:08 but the end of the story is I realized
0:38:11 that I had better discreetly step out of the meeting
0:38:13 and call back to Washington.
0:38:15 – To your boss, then, Madeline Albright.
0:38:17 – To the secretary of state whom I called in,
0:38:19 I said, “Madame Secretary, I’m calling to report
0:38:21 that I’ve just given the finger
0:38:24 to a member of President Clinton’s cabinet.”
0:38:25 (laughing)
0:38:28 She said, “Oh, tell me more.”
0:38:30 (laughing)
0:38:31 So I explained.
0:38:33 And at the end she said words to the effect
0:38:35 of “You go, girl.”
0:38:38 (laughing and applauding)
0:38:45 – Well, so fast forward from the brash,
0:38:48 the brash woman that you once were, Susan.
0:38:50 And I wanna go right into kind of one of the issues
0:38:53 that consumed a lot of your time
0:38:56 when you were working for President Obama was China.
0:38:58 And now it seems like China’s taking
0:38:59 even more of a center stage.
0:39:01 Of course, a lot of people in this audience
0:39:03 were talking a lot about tech and China
0:39:07 and government and tech, or maybe not government and tech.
0:39:10 And I wanna ask if you agree or disagree
0:39:13 with a statement that I pulled.
0:39:14 Actually, I won’t tell you who said this.
0:39:16 I wanna see if you agree or disagree.
0:39:19 That China poses one of the most severe
0:39:22 intelligence collection threats to the United States
0:39:24 and to U.S. businesses today.
0:39:28 – Yes, agree, very strenuously.
0:39:29 – And they’re doing it not with traditional
0:39:34 spy craft anymore, but with putting actually agents
0:39:37 in private companies and in graduate programs
0:39:39 and universities in the U.S.
0:39:43 Like, how should industry leaders in this room
0:39:45 think about that and grapple with that?
0:39:48 – Well, China is not only using human assets,
0:39:53 as you just described, plants or moles.
0:39:55 But they’re also using cyber tools, as we know,
0:40:00 to steal intellectual property and exfiltrate data.
0:40:04 I think that the most important thing
0:40:07 that I would just share as a former National Security Advisor
0:40:11 is this threat is deadly serious
0:40:14 and it’s not getting any better.
0:40:17 And China’s objective, quite plainly,
0:40:21 is to compete and ultimately surpass us
0:40:26 economically, geostrategically, technologically.
0:40:29 And in fact, they’re explicitly stating it
0:40:30 as their objective.
0:40:33 And what they are doing to accomplish that
0:40:37 is basically using any means at their potential disposal.
0:40:41 And what we need to do as a nation,
0:40:44 and I think it applies as much to the government
0:40:46 as it does to the private sector,
0:40:47 is to be witting of this threat
0:40:51 and work really hard to prevent it.
0:40:56 Recognizing that the most dangerous individuals
0:41:00 are often the ones inside,
0:41:02 as we in the United States government
0:41:06 had learned the hard way many times with Snowden and others.
0:41:10 That you really do need to take as seriously
0:41:15 as you possibly can the hardening of your cyber security.
0:41:21 That you also need to recognize that in your effort
0:41:26 and work to get a foothold or expand your business in China,
0:41:29 that as they ask you to do things
0:41:32 that cause you to share information
0:41:37 or provide the kinds of access or information that they seek,
0:41:44 they’re doing it at our expense, geostrategically.
0:41:47 And I think quite honestly,
0:41:50 we really need a revolution of patriotism
0:41:56 in business as well as in the tech sector,
0:42:01 but as well as across the greater American public
0:42:05 to recognize that we are unfortunately
0:42:10 in a kind of Cold War type challenge.
0:42:16 That’s not to say we have to treat China as an adversary.
0:42:18 I actually don’t argue that,
0:42:23 but we have to recognize that we are in a real competition
0:42:28 that requires us to behave as if we’re in a competition,
0:42:32 not as if everything is, you know, go along to get along.
0:42:35 – And you coined that term today, didn’t you?
0:42:37 The revolution of patriotism.
0:42:39 And I asked if you’d ever said that before
0:42:41 and you thought that the revolution of patriotism
0:42:43 needs to happen in the tech community.
0:42:45 – It needs to happen, including in the tech community.
0:42:47 But not exclusively. – And how do we get that started?
0:42:49 – And by the reason why we were talking
0:42:54 about the tech community, just so people are understanding,
0:42:59 given that we are in a era
0:43:03 of arguably existential competition,
0:43:09 we need to be matching to the extent we can,
0:43:12 consistent with our democracy and our values,
0:43:15 the strength of the Chinese model.
0:43:16 The Chinese, as you all know,
0:43:20 are using all elements of their capacity,
0:43:25 government, the private sector, academia,
0:43:29 in complete unison to advance their capacities,
0:43:32 whether in biotech or AI or you name it.
0:43:35 We’re not.
0:43:39 We now have lost that historical triumvirate
0:43:43 between the academy, the private sector and government
0:43:48 that enabled us to compete against the Soviet Union.
0:43:52 And there are all kinds of reasons why that’s broken down,
0:43:57 but it’s the animosity between elements in the tech world
0:44:04 towards government and arguably vice versa,
0:44:08 that is in part preventing our capacity
0:44:11 to concert our efforts consistent with our values
0:44:14 and free enterprise and all of that stuff,
0:44:17 that we need to be competitive.
0:44:20 We’ve need to find ways to put that triumvirate
0:44:22 in some form or fashion back together,
0:44:27 not at the expense of our values,
0:44:31 but in service of our strength and our competitiveness
0:44:33 and ultimately our way of life.
0:44:34 – Well, so there are a lot of leaders
0:44:36 from the tech community in this room,
0:44:37 and I’m just curious,
0:44:39 how do you think we can get some of that collaboration
0:44:42 going again practically?
0:44:45 – Well, I don’t have all the answers to that,
0:44:48 but I do think it needs to,
0:44:53 it could be catalyzed by a sustained exchange
0:44:57 that was institutionalized
0:45:00 between the private sector and government.
0:45:03 And we’ve got really smart, talented people in government.
0:45:06 We’ve got even more smart, talented people
0:45:08 in the private sector.
0:45:10 And I think there’s,
0:45:13 particularly among some in the employee base
0:45:14 in the tech sector,
0:45:17 a real suspicion of or hostility towards government
0:45:21 and a perception that if you’re working on something
0:45:24 that serves the US government
0:45:27 and particularly might advantage us
0:45:29 technologically or militarily,
0:45:31 that somehow there’s something wrong with that.
0:45:34 And that’s what I mean about a revolution in patriotism.
0:45:36 We need to understand that actually,
0:45:39 you know, we’re on the same team here.
0:45:41 And by the way,
0:45:43 to the extent that many companies
0:45:46 are making compromises and accommodations
0:45:49 to open the Chinese market
0:45:51 and expand their foothold in the Chinese market,
0:45:54 doing things that quite frankly in my judgment,
0:45:57 advantage China in this competition,
0:45:59 but then won’t be comfortable
0:46:00 cooperating with the US government.
0:46:03 I think we’ve got things kind of upside down.
0:46:07 And so a partnership whereby,
0:46:09 you know, for three, five years,
0:46:13 you know, best in the brightest in both government
0:46:16 and industry, you know,
0:46:19 basically change places, trade places for a little while
0:46:22 and learn to understand and respect the motives
0:46:24 and the perspectives and the skills
0:46:27 and the weaknesses of each,
0:46:28 would be at least a starting point
0:46:33 for trying to establish bridges
0:46:38 and recognize that we are,
0:46:41 just as we are in many other ways,
0:46:44 you know, we have more that unites us than divides us.
0:46:46 – Well, and I suppose you’re bringing,
0:46:47 you’re on the board of Netflix.
0:46:50 What kind of voice are you bringing to that boardroom
0:46:53 and what some of the skills and experiences
0:46:55 from your own past that you’re bringing to bear?
0:46:57 Are you having these conversations?
0:47:00 – Well, I think that the main thing that I bring
0:47:02 is a deep knowledge and understanding
0:47:05 about many, many different parts of the world
0:47:06 and the international landscape
0:47:09 to a company like Netflix that is increasingly
0:47:13 growing globally and views its, you know,
0:47:16 his path forward as being very much
0:47:18 in the international realm.
0:47:20 I have an understanding of, you know,
0:47:23 of crisis management and how government works
0:47:27 and how to make teams optimize their capacity
0:47:31 to address crises under pressure,
0:47:32 all of those sorts of things.
0:47:35 And also an understanding of the security terrain,
0:47:38 physical and cyber and otherwise.
0:47:40 And a recognition that, you know,
0:47:43 some of the things we’ve just talked about,
0:47:47 which may not be necessarily front of mind
0:47:52 far from Washington are actually some of the things
0:47:55 that companies need to be increasingly mindful of.
0:47:56 – We’ve covered so much.
0:47:58 We’ve covered, you know, you’ve written a book,
0:48:00 you serve on boards, you speak.
0:48:04 You’re about to be an empty nester a year and a half.
0:48:07 And I want to just wrap up by asking you, what’s next?
0:48:08 What lies ahead?
0:48:09 – We couldn’t just end this.
0:48:12 – Well, tell me, tell the audience what you told me
0:48:14 when I asked you this question before once.
0:48:16 – I’ll, without the profanity?
0:48:18 – Yeah, please. – Okay, no.
0:48:21 I don’t know.
0:48:23 You know, I love my freedom,
0:48:26 which I now have having left government.
0:48:28 And I’ve enjoyed very much the process of writing the book.
0:48:30 And now going on book tour,
0:48:33 and I love writing my columns with the New York Times.
0:48:34 And I love serving on Netflix board.
0:48:37 And I’m interested in continuing
0:48:41 to participate in board service.
0:48:45 But the fundamental question that I have to wrestle with
0:48:48 is do I want to throw myself again,
0:48:51 full time into any one intensive endeavor,
0:48:55 whether that’s, you know, in the public sector,
0:48:57 in the private sector, in the nonprofit world,
0:49:00 or do I want to continue to have a combination of things,
0:49:02 which some people call a portfolio,
0:49:05 that allows me to maximize my freedom.
0:49:07 And I love maximizing my freedom,
0:49:10 but I do think I might wake up one day
0:49:14 and be so grabbed by something that I’m passionate about,
0:49:16 that I’m willing to jump back in
0:49:18 and throw myself entirely into it.
0:49:19 – When you told me today,
0:49:21 you’re not running for Senate in 2020,
0:49:24 but you told me that you weren’t ruling out for all time.
0:49:27 – I’m not running for the Senate from Maine in 2020,
0:49:30 which is something I’ve thought about for a period of time.
0:49:37 And that’s mainly because we have this junior in high school
0:49:41 who deserves to have her parents present
0:49:45 and not be yanked out of one high school into another.
0:49:50 But I haven’t given up the thought that I might serve again,
0:49:52 whether in an elected capacity,
0:49:53 and I don’t know at what level,
0:49:56 or in an appointed capacity,
0:50:00 but I’m also not planning on it and aiming for it.
0:50:02 I feel very privileged to be able to say
0:50:05 that I got to serve this country
0:50:10 under two presidents that I had enormous respect for,
0:50:14 and that’s the greatest privilege.
0:50:19 And if that’s the last of my service,
0:50:20 I’ll feel good about it,
0:50:25 and I’ll be happy to try to take my talents elsewhere.
0:50:29 Well, so to speak.
0:50:31 – Well, Susan, it’s such a privilege to sit down with you,
0:50:33 and I want to say thank you
0:50:36 for your service to our country. – No, thank you, no, thank you.
0:50:37 – On behalf of everyone in the room,
0:50:39 and also for joining us here today,
0:50:41 it’s been so great to get to chat with you
0:50:42 and have this conversation. – Thank you, all.
0:50:43 – So thank you so much. – Appreciate you.
0:50:44 – Thank you so much.
0:50:45 – It’s great to be here too.
0:50:45 – Thank you.
0:50:48 (applause)