this talk to ask you to think about an
opportunity that you have not taken or a
you have it so why haven’t you started
working towards that have you been
thinking that right now just isn’t the
right time and if you have been thinking
that are you thinking that tomorrow or
maybe next year will be the time that
you’re going to get started since I
can’t go around the room and ask all of
these people they are own answers to
this question I’ll give you an example
from my life when I was coming out here
to Shanghai it was arguably a really bad
time to be doing it I had just given
birth to my second baby in three years
and my husband could not work here in
China the idea of coming out here and
being basically a single mom just really
didn’t appeal to me but the job oh my
gosh the job was a chance of a lifetime
I could lead early on in my career I had
a chance to have an influence on one of
the most important international
relationships in the world and so we
decided that I just could not pass it up
my husband found a job as close as he
could get and my kids well I got a lot
of help with taking care of my kids so
that’s what I want to talk to you about
today I want to make sure that people
think about the fact that there is never
a perfect time generally when people say
something isn’t right that the time
isn’t right what they’re talking about
is that they have barriers but when you
say oh the time just isn’t right it
makes it a lot easier to ignore those
things that you want to do
so confession time how many of you have
used excuses like well you know I’d love
to do that but I have small kids or I’d
love to do that but I’m really busy
right now or my mom tells me that this
isn’t a good time to do this I know that
I have and so I want to make sure that I
tell you some stories today that
hopefully will make you go out there and
decide that you really want to do these
things and when you face those barriers
I want you to use your courage and your
perseverance and your creativity to
overcome any barriers you come across
I’ve come across the stories that I’m
going to tell you during a 17-year
career as a diplomat this is me 17 years
ago wearing black and white again that
that wasn’t actually a plan and so I
have this really great really cool job I
get to move around the world I get to
see these places that you read about in
the news so I’ve been to Kabul and I’ve
been to Baghdad and I’ve worked in the
White House and it’s really been an
amazing experience and one of the things
I do for my job is I go out and I talk
about American values and American
policies with all sorts of people so I
get to meet students and I get to meet
refugees and I get to meet business
people and government people and you
know what the most successful people
I’ve ever met all have a story about
overcoming a barrier that you could say
was in perfect timing take motherhood
for example there are a lot of people
who are going to tell you that being a
mother means that you can’t take
whatever opportunity in your life I want
to tell you about somebody who has taken
motherhood who is a single mother in
fact and who has an incredibly
high-powered job this woman not only
managed to figure out how she was going
to spend time with her daughter
she also worked out a way to pay it
forward to the people who work for her
so she decided that every Sunday she
would not work she would spend that time
with her daughter and when people came
to her concerned about taking jobs in
her organization because they thought
they wouldn’t be able to be there for
her kids she worked out a way to help
them not only do the job but also to
spend time with their kids when their
kids had important things going on in
their lives I think this last point is
very important you’ll notice I didn’t
say she worked out a way to find
work/life balance there are a lot of
things that you will have to sacrifice
on the road to goals but my point today
is that I want you to decide what you
really want and have the courage to go
out and get them this woman who by the
way is Valerie Jarrett the special
advisor to the President of the United
States had the courage to tell the
President of the United States look I
need sunday off I just I need to spend
it with my daughter if she can do that
then I think all of us in this room can
find the courage to ask for what we need
to make it to our goals now you may be
thinking now well when that’s all very
well and good look you’re a mid career
diplomat Valerie Jarrett is a very
powerful woman but what about me I don’t
have power I’m early on in my career I
want to tell you that this is possible
for everybody I want to tell you a story
about a woman I met when I was serving
in Alexandria Egypt she was an amazing
woman she was a high school student who
had great grades who had great English
and even more important was a really
great person and who gave back to her
community through volunteering this
woman made it into Harvard University it
was something that most of her friends
couldn’t even dream of and you might
think that was where the story ended but
she living in
via Egypt where frankly families were
not really sure that they wanted to send
their especially their girls to the
United States because they were afraid
they would be morally corrupted there
this was such a trend that many American
universities were starting up campuses
in Dubai so that parents from the Middle
East could send their girls to a place
where at least they knew the society had
the same values as the parents did but
Harvard doesn’t have a campus in Dubai
and this woman knew that she really
couldn’t afford to wait for attitudes
towards going to the United States to
change so she had to change her parents
minds she had to change the community’s
minds and she managed to do that and she
went to Harvard again you might think
that was the end of the story but when
she got to Boston just as her parents
had predicted she was miserable she ran
into a lot of women who were dressed
sort of like me and in the Middle East
if you’re dressed like this this would
be like wearing my bikini up on stage
which thankfully for all of us I chose
not to do she also had trouble because
she had all of these brilliant
classmates who were talking about topics
she had never heard of before because
she had lived a very very sort of a
sheltered life up until then and
probably the worst part was that it was
difficult for her to find things to eat
because she was Muslim and she needed to
find halal food but she persevered she
made her way to the second term she
found friends who helped her navigate
her way through this experience and in
the end she graduated with honors from
Harvard now I don’t know what she’s
going to do with her life because her
graduation is pretty recent but I know
she’s going to go out there
and she’s going to bring people together
because that’s the sort of person she is
and when I have a time when I think I’ve
run into a terrible day or a terrible
month or a terrible year I think about
her and I realize that I can persevere
and get through this difficult period
there are women in the world who you
could argue their entire lives are a
difficult period take for instance the
women I worked with in Afghanistan these
women were refugees so not only were
they dealing with the fact that their
society saw them as second-class
citizens they were also very poor and
they were returning back to a country
that they hadn’t lived in for years
sometimes even decades against this
backdrop we started offering programs
for women to teach them how to make a
little bit of money so that they could
raise their status in the household in
addition we also taught them other
skills now these women could have stayed
home they could have continued to walk
two kilometres to get dirty water and
let their husbands speak for them and
spent their lives living the status quo
but they didn’t they came to these
programs and some of them found making a
little bit of money was enough and some
of them were very excited about the
other things we were teaching bear in
mind that Afghanistan is one of those
places where one in ten children will
die before the age of ten of diseases
that are preventable by very simple
methods one of the things we did in one
of our programs was to teach women how
to strain and boil water one of the
women went home to tell her husband very
excitedly about what she’d learned that
day and her husband said what what are
you talking about you’re listening to
these foreigners you’re wasting your
time what are you doing and so this
woman could have decided okay well you
know my husband doesn’t want me to do
this
but she didn’t want to wait until one of
her kids got sick to tell him see I told
you so she wanted to change their lives
right then so what she did was she went
down to the river and she got a glass of
the water there it looked kind of like
this it was brown it had things floating
in it and she presented her husband with
a glass with the river water and a glass
with treated water and she asked him
which of these would you like to drink
he told me from that day forward he
never again criticized her for doing the
straining and the boiling and as a
result her family’s life got better and
her family’s health got better now I
think this kind of creative framing of a
problem is something we could probably
all learn something from but it is one
of those things that is also very very
extreme I understand that most of us in
this room do not have to walk many many
hours to get water and we don’t get
dirty water when we go there but I bring
up the point because I want us to
remember when we face our incredibly
complicated lives that there is always
somebody out there in more dire straits
doing something amazing overcoming
barriers with creativity like this woman
did what I want you to come away from
today with is that I want you to think
about what you thought about at the
beginning of this I want you to stop
waiting on the perfect someday to go out
and achieve your goals or to take an
opportunity I want you to look at the
barriers that you face and use your
creativity and your courage and your
perseverance to overcome those barriers
I want you to think about these women
and go and chase after your dreams
because I believe if we all start to
overcome the barriers around time that
we can go out and change the world thank [Applause]