An Opportunity, Not a Burden

Your daughter's a young teenager, so it's good to have mom around. Was it ever burdensome, though, to feel like perhaps that you had to represent? Because I know that sometimes I hear this from other women. It's like they finally get to the job of their dreams. And there's this constant stress to like, well, you have to pull other women along. It's now your new job.

I don't see it as a burden. I saw it as an opportunity. I thought I really saw it as a chance to say, look, this is doable, this is doable for women. And I had an experience when I was young starting out where I had spoken with somebody on the phone about whether I should work on Latin American affairs. And the person I spoke with discouraged me from doing it and said, you know, you're not going to excel there. You shouldn't do it. It's going to be too hard.

Why?

He was implying that the culture was not going to be welcoming to me in the region and beyond. And that if I wanted to work on national security, maybe I should work on Europe, that would be easier.

Meaning it was more of a male dominated culture and you as a woman would not be particularly welcome.

That was the sense of it. And so I think I've carried that with me all along. I've always said to people, seek lots of advice, but you don't actually have to listen to it all. And so take it in and decide what advice works for you. And I think this was well-intentioned advice that I received. But at the end of the day, I just chose I chose a different route.