 I am, I'm excited to have you all here. Thank you for coming. This is very important, very important for us, very important for CSIS, very important for WISE. And I wanna welcome all of you for, and thank you for coming tonight. I especially wanna thank Nina Easton for being with us tonight to moderate a discussion with these two remarkable women who've joined us from the administration. It was a little touch and go whether we were going to be able to get them tonight. And that's because they're both central figures in the policy pulse of this administration. And so in Washington, you know, that can change, you know, quite abruptly. And but we were very fortunate that they were both able to come. We did lose Wendy Sherman, but that we understood and that this was, let's say, when you shoot for three of the biggest names in the government, we knew we were going to not get everybody, but we do wanna say special thanks to our colleagues for joining us. I, you know, my role here is strictly to introduce Joel in Shoemaker, but I can't resist. You know, I'm gonna say just a few words if you'll indulge me. You know, we're just, we've just hooked up with WISE. WISE is a 25 year old organization started off at the University of Maryland. And back when they were starting, this was a time when to be a woman in international security was a real challenge. There were not many women in the business. Matter of fact, I look out in the audience, I see some of the pioneers that were involved in this, but it was lonesome. There are a lot of the people here tonight that weren't even born when this was starting off, which is good because I'd hate to have you have to endure the kind of restraints we put on ourselves back then. Why we thought it was better to deny ourselves 50% of the gene pool to run this country. I'll never figure out, but that's kind of where it was back then. And so when WISE was first starting, you know, it was genuinely needed to provide mentoring and networking opportunities for women. It was a lonesome field and challenging. And frankly, there was a lot of, there were strong headwinds, you know, to many women that were entering this field. So it was very important. Now the question is what is WISE doing now? What do we need it for now? And I can only give you my personal view. I mean, obviously it's going to be up to you to decide this. And I've had many conversations with Joe Lynn about this, but I can only tell you some of my own personal views. I mean, we have an obsolete civilian personnel management system for this government. You know, it's kind of a world war two blue collar label grind your way up from the bottom, start as a GS7, spend your 30 years to work up the system. That's our system. Well, think about what that means for trying to hire talented women in this era. Women that have so many more opportunities in the private sector than they did 30 years ago. And to say, oh no, you can't leave if you want to proceed. You've got to stay in this job, grinding away without any change for 30 years. Well, I'm sorry. I mean, there's a different calculus that enters the lives for women. Michelle will tell you about this. She's several times, we've been the beneficiary because she came to CSIS for her family at one point in time. But yet, our government personnel rules really don't accommodate that. Unless you come back as a political appointee and that's a fairly thin veneer. You know, we're cheating ourselves because we have obsolete personnel rules. And I would also say part of, and this is, I'll probably offend some people when I say this, but we are on the wrong track in this country on public government ethics. Because in essence, we're saying, if you have had relevant experience, you are suspect. Right? If you know something, we probably don't want you in the government. You know, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. Well, so if you want to have a career path for women, and women do need to be able to get in and out of the field because they've got family obligations, and sometimes that goes into the private sector, aren't our ethics rules starting to get in the way? I don't know, they are. I mean, these are things we have to start thinking through. We've got a lot of work to do. So there's a big agenda in my mind, for wise. And it's part of the reason that we wanted to host them here. I mean, this is an opportunity for us. We hope it's an opportunity for wise, and we're gonna need everyone here. We're gonna need all of your help. Because there's a lot more, and honestly, more structural and deeper, harder work in front of us. So, and that's why I want to say special thanks to these very talented women that would kind of launch us off. This is our first real experience. We've had a couple of private things, but this is our first big public thing. And it couldn't be a better way to do it. And Jolin, let me turn to you. Why don't you get this started for real? Thank you. Everybody thanks for coming. Thank you so much, Dr. Hamry. I think it's just such an honor to be affiliated with CSIS. And of course, we have strong linkages historically with CSIS with Michelle and many other women who have been a key part of wise over the years, also being key parts of CSIS. It's also the beginning of our 25th anniversary. So it's a perfect time to have this kickoff event for our new chapter for wise, as I see it. I just wanted to say briefly that 2011, and I think so many of you in the audience know this, was a big transition year for wise. And so many people were really critical to that process. There are so many of you in the audience who really offered so much insight, advice, and support during the process. I wish I could thank all of you from up here, but it would take up all of our time, so I won't do that. But I just do want to send a special thanks to my colleague, Marie Lore. Where did you go, Marie Lore? Okay, who's like the right hand of this operation. And I couldn't do anything I do for wise without her help or team effort. So thank you very much for all you do. I'm just very pleased to see so many people who have such a long history with wise. In the audience as former board members, advisory council members, as supporters, and as friends, and members, so instrumental to the organization's growth. And of course I want to second Dr. Hamry's point about thanking both Michelle and Samantha for being here tonight with their very busy, both professional and personal lives. I'm also very thankful to those of you who are new to WISE here tonight, and we really look forward to involving you in our programs moving forward. I just want to say a couple things about the WISE mission. Our mission is to promote women's leadership opportunities in peace and security at all levels of their careers. A couple of important things about WISE. We are global, we are inclusive, and we are unique because our community brings together many sectors. We bring together many expertise areas, many geographic areas, and many perspectives, and I think that makes this an incredibly special organization. We have about 7,000 people in our network. They're individuals and they're organizations and institutions who share with us the mission and work towards the cause of women's full participation in peace and security. We provide a platform for elevating the perspectives, experiences, and voices of women, and most importantly for supporting the next generation of female leadership that is so crucial to peace and security. We've played an incredible role in supporting the rise of women in this field over the years, and we really do celebrate these incredible accomplishments that I think are truly embodied by the women here on this stage tonight. But we must acknowledge there is much work to be done. The challenges we face globally cannot be tackled without the full participation of this talent pool. Unfortunately, we're losing women's contributions at many stages along the way, either through leaky pipelines or decision-making processes and cultures that continue to exclude or sideline the voices of women. Therefore, we must all work, those of us here today who care about this issue collectively and diligently to close these gaps. It is my hope that you'll leave this event with a renewed dedication to this goal and assisting us in our mission, and I welcome all of your involvement and your expertise in all of our programs. I just wanted to make a quick housekeeping note. You each have cards on your seats, and we really welcome you to write down questions for the speakers tonight. What we're gonna do for efficiency's sake is collect those mid-program, and then we'll try to choose some of those that we can ask with time permitting. It is now my pleasure to welcome Nina Easton. Nina, as many of you know, is an accomplished and well-known journalist. She is Fortune's Washington columnist and senior editor, and serves as a panelist and commentator on many news shows as well. Had previously worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and is, of course, an author of an acclaimed political history as well. And we thank you very much, Nina, for taking the time out of your schedule as well and flying down from Boston to join us for this event. I'm gonna turn it over to Nina, who has graciously also offered to introduce our speakers and to facilitate our discussion tonight. Thank you all once again, and I look forward to the next era for whys at CSIS. Thank you. Thanks so much, Jillian. Obviously, our speakers really don't need any introduction, particularly with this crowd. We are so honored to have both of you. Samantha Power, as you all probably well know, is a journalist whose coverage of the Balkans conflict led to a Pulitzer Prize-winning book criticizing policymakers for not getting involved enough and trying to stop genocide. That's become, I think, a lifelong passion towards human rights. She's the founding executive director of the Car Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, where I have an office right now, isn't it, and a fellow chef? Jealous. And she's currently special assistant to President Obama for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. Her title is Much Longer, but we'll leave it at that. And obviously, as we'll go into it, quite critical and central to much of the policymaking of this administration. Michelle Flournoy often has been touted as the, I hope she doesn't cringe too much, the likely next female Secretary of Defense. She serves as the Pentagon's really the chief policymaker, the highest ranking woman, and helped shape the administration's Afghanistan strategy. She served in a range of top defense positions under the Clinton administration. And in 2007, co-founded the Center of New American Security. Center for, I'm sorry, I wrote that wrong, Center for a New American Security, which was a think tank credited. This is interesting with really breaking new ground on counterinsurgency strategy, which I found quite interesting. Our conversation is gonna range. We're gonna talk about women in policy, but I also kinda wanna show off these women and the policies that they're involved in right now and their leadership right now. I wanna start with Samantha. You were part of something that came out in December, little notice, the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. I had the honor of interviewing Secretary Clinton at the APEC Summit and she gave us a brief overview of it, but it came out in detail without a lot of notice. Could you give us a good overview of that? I can try. I think Michelle also, who was a huge champion of these issues, could speak to it. But basically what we have are a number of almost axioms about the way societies progress and don't progress. And one of the axioms, of course, is if women are left out of economic development, societies are more likely to stagnate. If women are left out of peace processes, those peace processes, it turns out, correlatively, are much less likely to succeed. And it turns out women who are part of those peace processes bring attention to the kind of sustainable issues, not merely ending conflict, but the kinds of reconciliation, health, welfare, sort of DDR, demobilization of soldiers. They just have attention, bring an attention to the long game. Women, of course, are often early warners of conflict to come. They're often, they see their sons, their husbands, et cetera, going off or could be alarm bells in conflict prevention situation. So all these things we know or we think we know, we need more empirical work and CSIS is a big part of the solution as is a new center at Georgetown that was just set up in conjunction with the release of the National Action Plan. But we in the government, and certainly our leadership, have made it very clear that we should have policies that act upon these axioms. And those of us who know women should be involved in peace processes, let's get them involved in peace process. If we know that political transitions are more likely to endure if women are in the parliament or in the governing ministries and our diplomacy toward Libya should reflect that. So we know all this, but prior to the president taking on this task and instructing the cabinet agencies and Secretary Clinton and Secretary Panetta and others and USAID administrator Raj Shah really embracing the bureaucratic implications of those axioms is in a way it's left to chance. And so what the National Action Plan does and the executive order that accompanied it from the president is it has all of the agencies involved in foreign policy stepping up and saying, here's how we're gonna change our training. Here's how we're gonna change our diplomacy. Here are, here's how we're gonna inject a regard for sexual and gender-based violence into the mandates that we put before the UN Security Council. And so what you'll see, and I brought a little prop here at the National Action Plan, the National Action Plan available on a website near you has a series of very, very concrete commitments and I would note, and this is again something Michelle can speak to far better than I can, but DOD is one of the best examples of how when you can get a set of presidential priorities, a set of strategic priorities into the DNA of the building, all kinds of things happen. It gets integrated into doctrine, into training. You will end up seeing in planning guidance in some theater of operations that we may not have had on our minds when we were developing this plan together. Suddenly it turned up that, well, we've gotta have a gender advisor to the combatant commander, or we've gotta make sure our soldiers out there as they train foreign militaries, bringing women and encouraging those foreign militaries to have units that comprise women as well as men, et cetera. So that's what the executive order does. It's a statement of US policy. It's a statement of prioritization and it's an effort to institutionalize the insights that many of the people here have been preaching for a long time, but to get them into the fabric of the way we do our business in the US government. And it raises the question though of how, particularly with cultural bias, and let's talk about Afghanistan. I mean, how could you see this moving forward in Afghanistan as one of the chief architects of the strategy there? It actually has already had an impact on the ground. For example, one of the challenges in a society like Afghanistan is the separation of the genders and that particularly if you have a predominantly male unit of soldiers, they're only interacting with the male half of the population and the female side of the population is really sort of off limits in an Afghan culture to most of our soldiers. So one of the things that this work inspired was the creation of female engagement teams where we actually train small teams of women to go in with a combat unit, female soldiers and Marines, and actually seek out the women in the village and talk with them. It's amazing what you learn. You're female Americans. Female American soldiers and Marines who go in and now focused on interacting with the women. It's amazing what you can learn culturally from an intelligence perspective, just a whole different perspective on what the needs of that area are, what's happening in that area, and the stresses and strains on the population, and so forth. So it's been a really invaluable tool. At the same time as we try to build capacity in the Afghan government, we've encouraged, for example, the development of female police officers, the development of female army officers, and so forth. Again, somewhat foreign concept for the Afghan security forces, but one that they too have seen the benefits of embracing this and being able to have members of their own security forces who can interact effectively with their female population. Another example of this is just sensitizing our folks on the ground to the need to bring women into community processes. I mean, traditionally Lloyd-Jerga's, Shora's, these community gatherings where issues are worked through, and in traditional Afghan society, those usually don't include women. One of the things that started to happen is that the recent Lloyd-Jerga, for example, did include female parliamentarians, it included female activists, and so forth, and so, and at first it's a sort of uncomfortable, awkward situation in a culture that's not used to that, but I think at the end of the three days of the last-Jerga, without question, it was, I think, universally accepted as a really positive development, and that the participation of women brought a lot to the table. So what kind of numbers are you seeing, police officers and military officers? It's still small numbers, but it's a start, and... And was there resistance or must have been... Well, it ranges, you know, the institutional resistance, I think, has diminished substantially. The real resistance is real, it's a foreign notion for the society. I make a point whenever I go to Afghanistan to seek out one of these units, and the last, I visited the police training center in Kabul this last time, and met with all of the women recruits, and some stories, you know, the stories varied from one woman who felt that had the full support of her family, as this is the most patriotic thing she could be doing for a new Afghanistan, to another woman who was completely disowned by her family because she was choosing to join the police force, as this is something that was so outside their realm of experience that they couldn't accept it. Can you talk more broadly about Afghanistan and how you see, I know this is a broad question, but how do you see things playing out there and the role of the Taliban in particular? I think we're at a really critical juncture. The strategy review that President Obama undertook, and then the really the recommitment of effort and focus and resources, both on the civilian and military side, have enabled us to really make a lot of progress on the security side and shift the momentum. For the first time in five years, the level of violence in Afghanistan is down. The momentum has shifted away from the Taliban. They have not been able to regain key areas in the South and they're sort of heartland, if you will, but it's so it's created some security space. We've begun a transition process with handing over different areas to the Afghans for security lead, but the real critical juncture we're at now is that we've created space for something else to happen and that something else really needs to be a political settlement within Afghan society and that's where Afghan-led discussions with the Taliban with other stakeholders in society is gonna be so critical to actually consolidating the security gains and charting a course for stability in the future. So you see the Taliban as being part of negotiations and moving forward and talking with them and incorporating them into the process. Yes, they're not a monolithic group. They're gonna be some who choose to come and be part of the process and be reintegrated into society and there'll be some who choose not to and will be dealt with through continued military pressure, but I think that that process is gonna be central to the outcome in Afghanistan. Samantha, I wanted to turn to you about the Arab Spring. I mean, you were at the center of, at least according to news reports, the president's decision to intervene in Libya for humanitarian reasons, which was controversial. People, there were those who didn't want us intervening at all. There were those who thought that was a bad reason to intervene, a bad precedent. But you've got Libya and you've got Egypt, among a number of countries there, Egypt in particular, women who were at the forefront of the revolution are now, as Hillary Clinton put it, they've been out in the streets where they were protesting. They've now been humiliated and beaten and repressed not to mention just completely shed out of the decision-making process there. What's your overall prognosis for women in the Arab Spring? And again, broad question, but what's your thinking on that and what role can the US really play? Well, first, just to take the opportunity because I don't get out much to correct the press reports. Turns out we have this amazing president, President Obama, who made these pretty amazing and in the case of Libya, extremely brave decisions that resulted in saving so many lives. And just, it was a sight to behold really, to see somebody step up. One of the things I documented in A Problem From Hell over many years, looking at many cases from time immemorial really, was just that by the time we realized that the benefits of acting outweighed the costs, because there are always costs and there are always genuine risks and by acting the range of things you can do in different circumstances. But by the time we had that realization, it was too late. And I think President Obama, this spring, whether it was with regard to Egypt and the leadership and drawing on the relationship that had been built over many generations with the Egyptian government, but also over several years with President Mubarak to try to get ahead of events there or with regard to Libya with Benghazi hanging in the balance and so much at stake for him to lead the world in the way that he did and move beyond a no-fly zone to something that would really protect civilians on the ground. I mean, it really was remarkable. And like you say, it's not necessarily politically rewarding to do that, but I had the opportunity to travel with Ambassador Rice to Libya not long ago and just to see the level of just the effusive regard for this president, this country, the American people and the sense that America's on Libya's side through what will be a very, very difficult road ahead. We have a great head start because, and I point again to Michelle and the Defense Department's remarkable leadership in this very, very complex operation, but the dividend now lies ahead and of course the overall success of the policy that was made in the spring will be judged over time, both in terms of the answer to the question you posed about women, but more broadly about the durability of this democratic transition. In terms of women, I mean, I met again when I was there in Libya with a group of women leaders and you definitely already had the sense of nervousness that things were slipping away, that look where there we were in Benghazi Square, we were out there risking our lives. Women were supporting men in Tripoli as they rose up and very much a part of that kind of remarkable operation and coordinated operation that ended up bringing about the fall of Tripoli. And they're saying, where is our place? By virtue of their advocacy, they secured two ministries. I think they had hoped for more in this kind of transitional cabinet. They were very focused on the election law and I think right now we have word that the election law allots 10% of the seats in the parliament for women, and but there's some debate and I think we just came from a meeting on this today about whether the 10% is a floor or a ceiling and of course our position is an instructive ambiguity that it's a floor and only the beginning of the dialogue but it's not our position. It's a peek into the challenges you face. Yeah, well, so it'll be women advocates who in the same way that they lobbied for some, again, prededicated, predesignated allotment will now argue for a more maximal interpretation of the law and there's a lot of interaction. I mean, you can already see the fruits of a society or of a transition in a society that not long ago, I mean really not long ago, you got the death penalty for setting up an NGO. I mean that was how repressive it was. So the fact that people have activated in this way doesn't guarantee outcomes that are consistent with the values that we're here to talk about tonight but it's a precondition for that and I think you see the leadership of the TNC and the transitional authorities really feeling like they have to cater to this community. It doesn't mean they're catering sufficiently or in the way that satisfies the demands of the women but there's a definite sense that there's a constituency out there and so that's already a kind of democratic ethos taking hold that sense that you have to be responsive that you're accountable in some fashion. With regard to Egypt, I can't say it better than Secretary Clinton who I think just gave such a poignant sort of issued a poignant appeal for the better angels to emerge there and for these issues to be taken to be elevated and to be taken very, very seriously. But I would say again if you look at women's participation in the recent elections, participation as a whole was kind of jaw-dropping relative to the logistic challenges that a society that hadn't done a free or fair election before I think that there were a modest number of irregularities obviously were very concerned about the treatment of women in the streets but again just as the Libby example underscores I think is devastating as the treatment of women has been in some regards the counter movement, the counter protest, the fact that those women came out and took to the streets and protested in that fashion again making their voices heard saying it wasn't just a change in the titular leadership of the society that we're talking about, we're talking about a change in business as usual and so of course it's gonna take time but I think it's the fact where we would have to start to be worried is if you started to see people disengaging and just sort of saying it's lost. Whereas in fact what you're seeing is people more and more activated every day and reacting to the problems that are almost inevitably accompanying the transition. Just one quick follow up to that, does our what is it $1.3 billion in military aid give us leverage on things like how women are treated, women's rights or is it really you have to use the bully pulpit more? Well I think we use all the tools in our disposal and I think one of the amazing features of the US response the Arab Spring and I've only been in the executive branch for three years so I don't have a vast well of government sort of analogous tales to draw upon but in the Arab Spring the degree to which the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department if they're going on economic missions which is so important. Everybody's singing from the same song book and so whether it's General Dempsey in his consultations the role of women is very very prominent in his engagement and so the leverage that we have by virtue of that relationship is something that is accompanied by an attention to this set of issues, same with the NGO issue which affects women and men alike, the crackdown on NGOs and the suspicion particularly of the American NGOs who have run into trouble but also Egyptian NGOs who get less attention. Again, seeing all of the tools in the relationship all of the history and the bonds that have been built up by virtue not only of the military assistance but the training and again just the understanding of synergies that have existed over generations those are an advantage in our diplomacy. Those are tools I think that help us get a hearing in places we may not otherwise. Did you have one? No, I would just add I think because of some of these long-term security relationships with a place like Egypt for example since the Camp David Accords. We have very strong military to military relationships very clear and open channels of communication at the highest level but they also have an experience dealing with us as a democracy and they understand that these issues, the treatment of women, the treatment of NGOs are very important issues in our democracy and so when issues like foreign assistance requests, security assistance requests go to the Congress these things do get connected and I think the Egyptians in particular who have a very long relationship with us and have gone through many, many legislative cycles to be beneficiaries of American aid really do understand this and so we have the channels and they have the experience to understand that these things really are related to one another as we think about the relationship we're charting going forward and I think that the leadership has been very receptive to some of the messages that have been sent recently and they are taking some steps to try to correct some of the missteps that have been taken like the treatment of the NGOs. Yeah, let's turn the conversation since we have limited time on the role of women. Foreign policy recently said what we all know that women are woefully underrepresented in national security ranks at the very highest level which begs the question, why does it matter? I mean, obviously it matters to the women sitting in this room and their career paths but why does it matter on outcomes and I wanted to pose the question to both of you are women including women in the highest level decision making on national security issues whether here or elsewhere does that lead to a more peaceful society in your view? Do you really think women make a difference there? You go first. Well, I think I'd say a couple of things. I'd say a couple of things. First of all, you know, back to John Hammary's point, you know, you want to fully avail yourself of the talent pool if you will and when women are underrepresented you by definition are not accessing the full range of talent. And so just from getting the best quality people, the highest standards of excellence, the best people who are able to contribute to policy, to contribute to problem solving and all that, you want to have women included in the pool as fully as men by definition. You know, I think the question of outcomes, you know, I think there's a lot of literature that suggests that the answer is that you do get a different outcome what I'll just speak to from my experience. I think that there, you know, you can, it's the way in which people approach their positions, approach leadership, approach problem solving is very individually, it's very specific to the individual. But what I can say is in the Pentagon, for example, you know, as we've gone from, you know, when I first went there in 1993, we had, we invited, had a lunch for all the senior women in the building and we were at one table. And then for the next six weeks, it was like, what were they talking about? Yeah, the great conspiracy theory. Now, I mean, I would fill the, I would overflow out of the executive dining room in the Pentagon, which is a big room. There are a lot of women leaders. That said, there are a lot of women leaders kind of coming up and at the middle ranks and there's still very few at the top. There's still ceilings to be broken. When I, we go into a leadership conference with the secretary and the chiefs and the service secretaries and the chairman and the co-com, the combatant commands, more often than not, there's one woman at the table, maybe two. It's myself and a colleague and out of this, this whole room, that's gonna change over time. The thing that's been different is you've had a lot of women leadership at that middle level, for example, of our QDR. I was very proud. The first QD, set of a quadrionnal defense review briefings. First person stood up to brief the strategy. It was a woman, Kathleen Hicks. Next person stood up to brief home line defense. It was a woman, Christine Wormitt. Next person stood up and so on. There were four or five women leaders in the QDR process that I actually do think affected how the process was run. It was more open, it was more collaborative, it was more inclusive just by style, by virtue of their leadership. Whether that's attributed to their gender or to these individuals, I'm not a social scientist who can make a conclusive observation, but I think that there was definitely a different approach that was influenced by the leadership of this handful of key women. Which raises a personal question. Let's get personal with you. You're leaving and one of the things that you cited was your three children. How much is the work, life, work, family balance an issue for women getting and staying at the top? Well, I have a wonderful older mentor who once said to me, Michelle, you can have it all, you just can't always have it all at the same time. And I think these jobs, and Samantha can speak to this, are incredibly demanding. They're 24-7 nonstop. I think for our family, the issue is that my husband's also serving. He's the deputy secretary at Veterans Affairs. So you have two parents of kids nine, 12, and 14 who were once six, nine, and 11 when they started. You know, who basically had parents who were very, very committed and engaged in supporting this president. And at some point just from a family perspective, something has to give. You know, the good news is what I've discovered over my career is that there are many seasons and many chapters. There are many ways to do public service. Doesn't all have to be in government. It can be in government on, and I hope I'm not done in that respect. I hope I do have future opportunities to formally serve in government, but there are many ways to contribute and to serve in a public service sort of way from outside government. And I'm fully committed to that path and whether it's in a think tank or in mentoring programs or whatever, I'll be finding my way in the future to continue on that path in some way. But with a little more time to see my future. I was gonna say, there at a critical age. Samantha, I didn't forget you on that question. You didn't wanna answer it first. Oh, women. I don't wanna answer any questions. I've learned that. Do you think women, our inclusion of women is more likely to lead to more peaceful outcomes? And it's particularly somebody who's covered, you know, genocide, atrocities, and there are women in some of those decision-making roles. What's your overall perspective on that? I'm very, not coincidentally, very much with Michelle in terms of just the individuated nature of the human condition and just believing. I mean, I remember as a kind of kid in my early 20s in Bosnia, one of the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs. There was this woman, Biliana Plavchich, and she was famous for kissing the warlord archon on the cheeks, and everybody took her, sort of plucked her out of contact. You see, you see women leaders too perpetuate ethnic cleansing, you know, as if it was itself sort of a whopping case sample. I mean, I think Michelle's point and John's point, right, which is we don't even begin to know. We don't have the case sampling. I mean, we've got these isolated examples, and you know, for every Biliana Plavchich, you've got an Ellen Johnson Surleaf, and you've got what the Nobel Committee did this year sort of affirming the role of women. So there's the intrinsic sort of good and necessity of people who represent half the population and who are just by virtue of being mothers and connected with education and health and so forth in different ways by virtue of taking care of their families and so forth, you know, often in the home. I mean, that is a special sort of set of insights, but I think it's gonna take us some time of really integrating women into these leadership roles to have a kind of empirical base from which we can draw, you know, conclusions. I will say that, you know, I worked on my own, I mean, much more in a line of work like yours, you know, writing and kind of doing, and there are all kinds of issues people ask about women in journalism and women in academia, and there are versions of this conversation that occur everywhere. It is different being in a large institution. I mean, there, you know, the impact of having Michelle, you know, at the table, at the deputies, you know, for women like me, you know, is very profound and very inspirational in the same way that for all of us, it's incredibly inspirational to see Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Rice and Secretary Napolitano duking it out at principals meetings with one another and with, you know, and it means the nature of the deliberative process. It's, you know, I can't even think of an issue that's had a gender alignment, at least that I've seen. So I don't think you can draw easy, easy correlations in terms of where people would end up, but, you know, again, for all of the challenges that Michelle has described, which I think we're chipping away at and again, mentoring begets mentoring, hopefully. You know, some of the societies, you know, that we're talking about, whether in the Arab Spring or, you know, in Sub-Saharan Africa, you know, conflict-ridden societies, I mean, we're not just talking about the challenges that we face here with a pool of incredibly educated, capable women and, you know, are they hidden in glass ceilings or do they have to leave the workforce to care families? Are they welcome when they come back? We're talking about utter exclusion, you know, and so there, what we know empirically and just as a matter of, you know, common sense is that, you know, we can achieve, you know, dramatic improvements with, you know, just added weight, the weight of U.S. diplomacy, the weight of U.S. leadership, but also just a few individuals in those societies which is where the leadership ultimately has to come from can make such a profound difference in a short period of time, and the difference that the Yemeni Nobel Prize winner has made to women, you know, to bringing women out to the streets. I think it's profound in having a ripple effect across the Arab world. So telling those stories and highlighting those leadership profiles I think is critical. Yeah, because there's a question here about to what extent do people in the U.S. government actually know about the National Action Plan and certainly people in the public don't know about it. But I think, and so I was gonna have you address that, but the same way that Secretary Clinton I think a terrific economic argument about integrating women into economies, you actually have studies out now that say if you integrate women in, it actually adds to your GDP. So she can go around and say to foreign leaders, if you include women, there's a self-interest in it. So how do you make the self-interested case around the world for this A and B? How do you, how do you get people talking about this and not just like putting it on the shelf and moving on? Yeah, well we folded into the plan and Rob Bershinsky is here who is a detail, Michelle was kind enough to loan him to the NSC. He's our woman in chief, Rob, in coordinating these amazing people across the government's efforts with regard to the National Action Plan. But Rob and I would have these tortured exchanges. I'd get this research that he'd say, well where's the data? I mean basically looking to be able to make the pragmatic case not only externally but also within our own government, right? You want to be able to, if there's any non-convert out there, you want to be able to sway them. And Rob would send me what, to my former academic eyes, looked a little more like anecdote than empirical work, not Rob's fault. But it just isn't, we have some of what we need and what we did was we put all of what we, the sort of greatest hits of the empirical work are in the plan as a compliment to the actions that the different agencies are taking. But I mentioned earlier that Georgetown has created the center, which I think they hope to make a hub for this kind of work going forward. And the funding from foundations has to follow. This is the longing because over time, I think what I described as axioms in this country and in our policy process and in this administration, I think they are axioms at the leadership levels for sure, but they're not axioms in the world. And I think you need the data, but you also need to not walk away from just the intrinsic point that John and Michelle made, which is just, even if you didn't have data, even if it didn't correlate, they don't get to be excluded. So you start there and then again, I think we've got good anecdote and we're building toward good empirical work. Michelle, how would you make the case? You know, again, I think right now we are going on an anecdote and experience and particularly in places, first in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, in places like Libya, where we see the difference in terms of particularly societies emerging from conflict. You see the difference that the participation makes and you may not be able to document it and prove that it's statistically relevant, but folks on the ground see the difference and so they follow it as a best practice, but I agree with Samantha that part of what we have to do is build the body of work to actually demonstrate that this is the case, that it's not just... We have a question here and maybe you could address this just looking around at the women you've hired and so on, what are the examples of skills or traits unique to women that facilitate success in this field? Unique to women. You know, again, it's hard to generalize, but one of the books I read in college that I still remember is about, was written by Carol Gilligan, who's a famous psychologist who researched the development processes of young girls and young boys. And her thesis, which I think a lot of research has borne out, is that boys tend to develop by placing themselves and this is very oversimplified, so for those of you who are professionals in this field, really forgive me, but the general, the layman's sort of interpretation is that boys develop and the name of the game is sort of placing themselves in a hierarchy, whereas for girls, the name of the game becomes developing and placing yourself in a network. And as much of that may be stereotypical or oversimplified, there is a kernel of truth in there that I do think the women leaders that I see operating the Pentagon more often than not have an instinctive leadership style towards networking collaboration. And they're extremely, they tend to be very good, not again, not every individual, but they are more often than not very good at the collaborative stakeholder, getting participation, buying, drawing people into a process to feel ownership and so forth. The latest example that I just watched was the development of this new defense strategy where you have, I think, unprecedented amount of buying from the senior leadership because of the very collaborative leadership style of the people who led it, to whom happened to be senior women. Doesn't mean that it couldn't be, you couldn't get the same result with some wonderful talented male leaders as well, but I do tend to see that as an approach that more often than not the best of the female leaders in the Pentagon have. Do you have advice for women in this room? You've been in a very male dominated part of the male dominated national security structure. Do you have any advice for the women, young women in this room on how to operate in that environment? I guess I would say don't mind it. Be yourself. If someone asks you the really well-intentioned but dumb question like, how did a nice girl like you end up in this place? I'd just sort of shrug and say, gosh, you know, poor guy and, you know, smile and give a funny answer, but just sort of don't mind it and do your best and show your, be excellent at what you do. And more often than not, that will turn to your advantage to say, you know, and, you know, wow, you know, that person is really exceptional. And they may end up noticing you more because you do stound out as the only woman in the room, but the name of the game is to not let the otherness of the environment, which will sometimes strike you like, here I am again as the only woman in the room, just to not mind it and to just focus on the quality of your contribution and the quality of your work and that will speak for itself and that will create opportunities on its own. And Smith, you have a slightly different experience as somebody who rose to prominence outside the government structures. What's been your experience going inside and any, again, any advice to young women in this room? Well, I definitely agree with Michelle that I think that the more self-conscious one is about numbers or, you know, even like having a chip of some kind or fearing the worst or that wouldn't help very much. I think it just would kind of raise the overall level of anxiety. I think what helps, and this I would say to women and young women and men alike, is just knowing something about something. I mean, I think that the people who thrive in government are people who master their domain. They don't have to master every domain, but what you're there, I happen to love baseball and I'm struck and again, government is still quite fresh to me and so I still have these epiphanies where I'm like, oh, but just the degree to which to get anything done in government, it's occasionally there's very rarely, there's a home run that can be hit where the run gets scored simply by somebody doing something fantastic. That would be perhaps like a peace negotiator scoring a peace deal and bringing an end to a conflict or something exceedingly rare. Much more often, it turns on one person hitting a single and the next person moving the runner over and the next person. It requires, I mean, it's not just that collaboration makes for better product without collaboration and that kind of teamwork and that spirit, but everybody having a very precise domain and skill and chop as they say in government. There is no product or there is no output in the world and I think, again, for men and women alike, I think a focus, this is hard in government, but a focus on output, on impact in the world as against inputs. Sometimes we, at the end of the year, we go over what we've, in my tiny little office, smaller than Michelle's domain, but we go over what we've done for the year and there is a distinction between what we've done or gotten the government to do, which is really important and arguably a precondition to potential outcomes, but the real measure of the work that we do in public service is the difference that is made in the world and I think keeping an eye on that is very challenging and I guess the last thing I'd say is just on the work-family balance. I had a baby when I got to the White House, not that minute, but my water broke in a very heated discussion on an issue that showed go nameless. No, it didn't, the problem is I didn't know anything about, I had watched the movies and so I thought it was gonna gush, but it turned out like water breaking comes in many different forms. See, water really did break. Yeah, absolutely, in a very heated, I thought you were just saying, in a heated policy discussion with a very prominent, member of the administration. But he didn't know and I didn't know so we were no worse for wear. But I kept working, of course, and I was like, God, it's not that hot in here, like why am I sweating like this? Anyway, Rob will tell me too much information as we, where's Rob? Anyway, so, but to say that that's an example of the, and so when you're supposed to go quickly after your water break, but I was working and typing. How far away were you from your due date? I was over it two and a half weeks early. Yeah, so I think it was the tension of the discussion that precipitated the birth of my child. Anyway, who's no worse for wear, it turns out, but when I got to the hospital, they're like, you should have come right when your water broke and I said, but I didn't know exactly how water breaks because it had never broken before. And anyway, and was, of course, in the hospital on my blackberry, finishing everything up and all the ways. And then when I went back to work, having taken a leave, the breastfeeding blackberry, you can even do dual blackberry. I mean, it's, there's an awful lot you can do in the way of multitasking, but- Is there a pumping station in the- There's all kinds of pumping in the- There are many. In the White House as well. And that's the other thing about the women's network is the number of horrifying he walked in on me while I was pumping stories that I heard upon coming back, meant that I was like, literally like in a safe, top secret safe, so nobody. But anyway, so there are these challenges. But the challenges, and this is where I've such, both respect for Michelle for the sacrifices she made in being in the government for the ages of the children that she described, the sacrifices only get greater as your kid grows up. And so now I have this unbelievable, nearly three-year-olds who I just can't bear it apart with in the morning and run home at night to see. And that, so I think it only gets more and more pronounced. So thinking about the timing of how to go in and out. And it's not as if non-governmental life for people who work as hard as I'm sure everyone in this room and who are as committed to what they do is somehow a cakewalk in terms of the work-life balance. But there is something about government now having tasted a lot of different careers that is unrelenting. There's something unrelenting and I know I feel, when I wake up in the middle of the night and I see the red light on the blackberry and I just feel like it's going to be bad. And it's gonna be my problem. It's not gonna be anybody, whereas as a columnist or something, I could make it Michelle's problem. Which is much more fun. And write on your own time and so forth. So I just, I think it's, you can't have it all and you have to have it at different times. And I think, but child rearing is not a monolith. Work is not a monolith, there are different ways to think about how to sequence and how to stagger things. But definitely there is no, we're all kind of all in people and it's hard to feel as if you can't be all in in one direction or the other. So something has to give. Something is. Is it totally unrealistic though for the White House or, you know, upper echelons of state or defense to afford more flexibility in that, you know, you end up, my work day I find is just so merged with my life as a mother as well. I mean, I don't, you just, but it doesn't mean you're in the office from boom to boom but I don't know that that is ever a realistic possibility for you guys. I think it's very difficult in the White House given the demands of supporting the president and so forth. But I think in the agencies, you know, it really depends on the culture that's set in the organization. When I had my first child and came back and remarkably got promoted immediately after maternity leave it was the undersecretary of the time Walt Slocum bent over backwards to make a more flexible approach work for someone who was a deputy assistant secretary and Duel had it as a principal deputy. And that was because of his enlightened leadership and, you know, we made it work for a while because he knew that making that work was critical to keeping me. One of the things I've done following in his footsteps is really put an emphasis on within the parameters that Samantha described which is an, you know, very big job for a lot of people trying to create more flexibility. So for example, we've put a big push on alternative work schedule in my organization and almost every office has adopted it so that there is cross coverage of portfolios and, you know, when there is a law people feel like they can take some time get, you know, a little bit of recharging their batteries with their family and there's somebody's there to cover them and so forth. It's a work in progress but it's amazing not only the difference it makes in morale but when you invest in your people and their sort of quality of experience at work you actually get huge jumps in performance and all of the business literature says that. So it's a real, it's worth making the investment. It takes management, you know, relentless management attention to try to make it work but guess what? It's not just about making it more workable for the women. It's making it more workable for everyone and the number of young men who are now taking paternity leave in the organization has gone way up. I mean so it is, I think it's gotta be a leadership focused and it's gotta be backed up at the highest levels and one of the things I've had the blessing to have is now two secretaries in a row that have been very supportive of this agenda and trying to make a very demanding workplace a little bit more family friendly. I've watched President George H. W. Bush, President Clinton, President W. Bush and this president come in saying we're gonna be different. We're gonna be family friendly and watching everybody I know just kind of disappear into the tunnel and their families wonder where they went. I mean is there any alternative? I mean I think there are a couple things or maybe three things. One, Michelle has just described what's called it's an old fashioned word leadership. Actually putting in place using the position that she has as such an influential position in the administration to institute a set of practices that are gonna ease the burdens and the acute trade offs that I think people feel and that's incredibly important. I think there's a second dimension which is psychological and it's just liberating ourselves. I could leave the office in the day and I mean meetings permitting but I don't. You think people are gonna be looking at you? No, I don't even know if it's that. I mean I think it's whether it's some sense of what good girls do or what sense of what people. It's not so much about how other people would look at me. It's my own sort of I guess attachment to the work sense of responsibility, sense of ethic. It's an old fashioned ethic and it's an anachronistic ethic perhaps but I think you could have even as the kinds of leadership that Michelle has described and there still has to be women themselves have to liberate themselves and just do what they need to do in order to balance. But the third dimension is, let's not kid ourselves about what balance can look like. I mean there have been a kid like during the Arab Spring we were all, I don't even know if we ever lived in the situation room and that was just very hard to be away from your kids. It just kept going and it was great. It was one country after the other but you think that a country would have sort of subside and then the next thing you knew and I had won the height of the Libya crisis. It wasn't a deputies level meeting but it was a meeting that was setting up. The deputies was a very important meeting and I attempted to do the phone call from home with my then two year old and the entire call as I remember it anyway was, mommy stop talking, mommy stop talking, mommy not Obama time, Declan time. Not Obama time, Declan time over and over again and I just couldn't in here I was trying again, it was a mess and he was right, I was home so it wasn't Obama time, it was Declan time and there isn't much enough Declan time and so he had a point so we could free ourselves psychologically, we could have great leadership and there's still just the fact that you gotta be with who you're with, you gotta be with your work and your commitments and or your family and your commitments. Well it's also been somebody who's been familiar with putting the mute button on for the three year old. I was leading the call, I was leading the call, that was the challenge problem but I just wanted to thank you both for sharing some insights on policy but sharing your lives with this audience, it's really appreciated, I think you've been a great source of inspiration, thank you. Thanks for doing this. Thank you, Michelle, Samantha, Nina, we really appreciate you giving your time and your perspectives and your experiences this evening and this is I think really the unique space that WISE occupies is really allowing for this kind of discussion that merges obviously we want to shine a spotlight on all the wonderful female expertise we have on international security but at the same time provide this forum for talking about many issues that our younger women and our women coming up the ranks actually are asking about and wondering and often are struggling with and feeling isolated about so I really appreciate your candor and your participation. We are, we have a lovely reception for those of you who are able to stay and we would love to continue the discussion and of course visit with all of you that we haven't seen in so long so thank you very much and we hope to host many future events and discussions here at CSIS. Thanks.