‘Be your own advocate,’ Jarrett advises

PROVIDENCE –– Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama’s longest-serving advisers and the chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, visited Brown University Wednesday, telling a capacity audience at Salomon Center that she might still be working in a cubicle facing an alley at Chicago City Hall had not a friend encouraged her to ask for a promotion from her boss.

“My thinking was that I shouldn’t have to ask because the boss should know my work and know when I should be promoted,” said Jarrett, before describing how that perspective changed when she walked into the her boss’s office in Chicago City Hall, asked for a promotion to deputy, and heard him say “OK.”

It was then that she realized, she said, people have to be their own advocates. “Don’t be a passive bystander in your own life.”

It was one of many nuggets the former Chicago lawyer and businesswoman-turned-White House adviser offered at the university’s Doherty-Granoff Forum on Women Leaders.

Jarrett, who also holds the title of assistant to the president for governmental affairs and public engagement, traces her friendship with Mr. Obama to when she offered a job in Chicago City Hall in 1991 to the then Michelle Robinson, and Robinson said she wanted her to meet her fiancé, Barack Obama.

After taking both of them under her wing, Jarrett followed Mr. Obama through his first unsuccessful run for Congress. She said that after losing “very badly,” Mr. Obama told her he was planning to run for U.S. Senate.

Don’t do it, Jarrett recalls telling him, it will ruin you if you lose. She said she’s glad he ignored her advice. “He said, ‘I’d rather run and lose than not try.’  ”

Wednesday afternoon’s forum didn’t allow for questions from participants, but ended instead with “conversation” between Jarrett and Marion Orr, director of Brown’s Taubman Center for Public Policy.

Asked by Orr if Mr. Obama has a policy to help the nation’s central cities, Jarrett replied the times are particularly challenging for cities because, unlike the federal government, cities are legally obligated to balance their budgets each year.

She said philanthropic organizations could step in with some help, and the federal government could play a part in “leveraging those dollars.”

But young people can help too, she said, offering ideas on how government can be streamlined.

“You are a key constituency,” she told the students. “We want your ideas.”

Jarrett was off to the airport immediately after the forum and was not available for questions from the media.