Leaving a Dream Job

So in the summer of 2019, you resigned from your post as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Why did you decide to do that?

So a really tough decision. I will say these kinds of.... Leaving a job like this, kind of once in a lifetime job, not an easy decision, particularly when you have just built a team and you feel a commitment to them and to the organization. I think for me, what it came down to was I had given myself, I had gone in in 2017, and I had given myself sort of a two year mental window for this position. And it's partly because serving in these kinds of jobs is an extraordinary privilege for the person doing it. But many times the cost is borne by the family of the person serving. And so I had promised myself that I was going to reevaluate after two years. And I got to the two year mark in June of 2019, and I had a bit of an Aha! moment, which I actually shared with the bureau before I left, which was I came home from a trip and my daughter was all excited and she said, Mom, guess what, I'm getting braces. And I said, Wow, that's great. Not unusual at her age, she was 12 at the time, to get braces. But what I realized when I thought about it was that I didn't know that she'd been to the orthodontist. I didn't even know we had an orthodontist. And I realized that I've been living in the house for two years, not seeing them very often.

You were missing out on your own family life.

Even when I was present, I wasn't present. And that was sort of the moment when I realized I was in the middle of this sort of two year evaluation. And I sort of realized I can't, there are no do overs with your family. And this age, you know, the early teenage years, I realized I can't continue this. This has to change.

That must have been a very hard decision, because you're right, the job you were in is a unicorn job. That opportunity rarely comes around to anybody and you have that job.

It was really tough. And I did, though, make a point of telling the bureau why I was leaving and saying, look, I view it sort of as on ramps and off ramps. Many times in my career, I've been sort of on the off ramp where I've been doing jobs, where I had more control of my schedule, where I could work part time, spend a lot of time at home with my daughter. I knew that this was an on ramp sort of job. It was going to be two years of just crazy travel and hours. And so I think we have this debate as women about whether we can have it all. And I think I come down believing the answer is yes, but maybe not all at the same time.