There's no time to waste. Every day, there needs to be movement on something.
I love bringing people together. I think that the environment is so important in terms of what kind of relationships you might be able to create, how people get to know each other.
I think the Social Office is really the office where East meets West. For those that don't know, the East side is typically the First Lady's side of the house. The West side is typically the President's side of the house.
Washington is like playing the Super Bowl, only there are no timeouts, no potty breaks, and the arena is filled with the media. In government, you have to learn to put yourself second in a big way. But I am a business person at heart. I like to be in charge.
My job is to make certain that I've done what I was asked and my department has done what we were asked to do by the president and the first lady and the State Department. I believe that we accomplished that.
We can't just rest on the fact that this is beautiful Chicago. I want to triple down on that experience and make it... life-altering.
We have not really advertised Chicago internationally.
In many respects, we really are trying to not run the Social Office like a business, but we do have a strategy. We do have a mission. We are trying to standardize certain things so that our time is not spent on, you know, picking flowers or linens, that we've got standards.