Catherine Bertini has negotiated with tough people around the world -- North Koreans, Taliban, hard-line men from the old Iron Curtain.

She is a Central New Yorker, who roamed the world but came home to Cortland and to teach at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She worked for U.S. presidents, ran the U.N.'s World Food Programme and served as undersecretary general to Kofi Annan.

Asked to list her toughest challenges, she replied:

- Negotiating minimal monitoring standards to be able to send enough food to North Korea to end famine. We did.

- Convince the Taliban to allow girls in school. We did not.

- Convince the Taliban to create bakeries for widows and run by women. We did.

- Modernize WFP. We succeeded.

What advice do you have for a new leader?

Listen, then lead. Set an example. Stand on principle. Do what you think is the right thing.

What is your advice for anyone trying to tackle something hard to do, in business or in our community?

Stay focused. Be patient. Be creative. Build a constituency.

Who influenced you in developing your leadership abilities?

Mostly my father

How?

He had me read great books -- I think they were called the Great Books of Western Man. I learned a lot about philosophers, about activists and about others, whether it was Machiavelli, or Burke or whatever.

When we moved to Cortland (from Syracuse when Bertini was in sixth grade), he got involved in city and county government -- he was elected to the city council.

He was always involved -- he was chair of the county Republican Party for a while. He played active community leadership roles. He taught me a lot, not only about what he did and how he did it, but also encouraged me to do things myself.

There's no question I learned a lot from my father about taking risks, calculated risks.

Give me an example.

I was nominated by the U.S. government to be head of the World Food Programme. There were two other candidates, from Denmark and Italy. Americans had never had it.

As a candidate, I went to a meeting of agriculture ministers in Rome, where the food agencies are. I had the power of my country, behind me, but I had no international experience.

When people met me, they wouldn't necessarily say, "Oh yeah, great." I mean this was 1991. I was the same height I am now, 5-2, and 41. Only one person younger had been head of a U.N. agency. Only two had been female and none in agriculture.

So I thought what I need to do is to accept an invitation to speak to the African ambassadors, who were all male, but one.

It was high risk, high gain, because if we didn't click, then they would just go out and say forget her. If it worked, it could be terrific, not only for getting enough support for the job, but to be able to do the job later. And it worked.

It sounds like people underestimated you.

Well, yeah.

In 1991 with a group of mostly male leaders from around the world, it was a total given. Everybody did. There's this woman in the job; she's young; she hasn't been international; what does she know.

But Kofi Annan told me -- when I worked for him in New York at the U.N. -- he once said to me, out of the blue, "Catherine, don't ever worry if people underestimate you, because then it's much easier to surprise them."

Tell me how about your career and how you ended up at the U.N.

I went to SUNY Albany -- they now call it University at Albany. Albany had a good political science department, and I could work for my dad's friend, Tarky Lombardi, who was a state senator. So I was a legislative aide in the spring semester of each year for Sen. Lombardi. He was my Albany "father."

I worked as a volunteer at the Republican State Committee and then on the '70 Rockefeller campaign, when I was a senior.

In February 1971, they offered me a job in his office. Talk about underestimating. I resigned from Tarky's office. I go to the job, which was called confidential assistant to Gov. Rockefeller. I got there, and they said, "We just lost two of our secretaries, do you know how to type?" Oh yeah, sure, I know how to type, anything for Gov. Rockefeller. So I became an even better typist.

Then Chuck Lanigan, who was the state party chairman, asked me to be the youth director for the Republican State Committee. That was a totally fabulous job. I traveled all over the state, organizing teen-age Republicans and college Republicans.

After Watergate, Mary Louise Smith, chairman of the Republican National Committee, asked me to be the youth director of the Republican National Committee. It was controversial because some of the conservatives were annoyed that they took a Rockefeller person.

Then I came back up here and ran George Wortley's campaign for Congress. It was the '76 campaign against Hanley, which he lost, but he got 46 percent of the vote and everybody said, "Maybe you could have won."

When Hanley retired (1980), George ran.

By then I was in Chicago. Out of the blue I got a job offer at Container Corporation of America from somebody I'd worked for with Rockefeller. I lived in Chicago for 10 years. I got involved in a lot of different things in Chicago -- I ran for Congress, was in a lot of community groups, a homeless shelter. But then I said, "OK now, I've been doing this for a while, and I really always wanted to be in government."

Gov. Cuomo was the governor here, and I didn't think I had any standing with him. I asked Illinois Gov. James Thompson, and he offered me a job running his campaign, but I didn't want to do campaigns anymore.

I wrote to Mitch Daniels at the Reagan White House and said I'd like to join the Reagan White House. I got a job running the welfare programs at HHS. At the end of the Reagan Administration, I ran the AFDC program. Then we did welfare reform and got accolades.

I knew President Bush, and he nominated me to be assistant secretary of Agriculture. Clayton Yeutter was secretary of agriculture and I was in charge of the domestic food programs.

We did a lot of reforms, but it was there -- a long answer to your question -- that Clayton said to me, "In a year a half, the World Food Programme job is going to be open. The Australians have had it for 10 years. I need to convince Jim Baker, then secretary of state, that we should try for the job. If he agrees, I have to give him candidates and you're my first choice. Are you interested?"

That launched you into negotiations with powerful people. What would you tell someone preparing for difficult negotiations?

Every man puts his pants on the same way. Sometimes you have to accept their anger and get past it. Understanding their needs is key.

First of all, you have to understand what the other party really needs. What's his or her objective?

In North Korea, they needed massive amounts of food. People were starving. That was one critical point: What does the other person need? And what do you need? What is an absolute?

Let me restate this: In a negotiation you need to know where the other person is coming from.

Right. It's the same as selling a product really. When I was at Container Corporation of America in public affairs, I was sent to a course run by Xerox on selling skills. I said, "Why do I have to go to this? I'm not selling boxes." They said, "No, you're selling ideas."

Some of the advice I would give to young people is to take a course in negotiation. Take a course in sales. If you're not in college, you could still go to a seminar and learn.

You need to know what their needs are before you try to sell. If you just go in telling them what you think is good about it, it's not necessarily going to work.

"CNY Conversations" feature Q&A interviews with local citizens about leadership, success, and innovation. The conversations are condensed and edited. To suggest a leader for a CNY Conversation, contact Stan Linhorst at StanLinhorst@gmail.com.

Last week: Margery Lange Keskin on keeping your head up when it's a sink-or-swim moment.