Getty In The Arena The Hillary Clinton I Know Will Do Wonders for Women For decades she has practiced what she preached in the workplace.

Neera Tanden is a former policy advisor to Hillary Clinton. She is currently president of the Center for American Progress.

For decades, Hillary Clinton has been a lot more than a public champion of child care, paid leave and equal pay. She’s lived these issues and led on them personally. I know, because I worked for her during much of that time. As a boss, she’s always made family flexibility a reality for her staff. Most importantly, while she’s advocated for policies like workplace flexibility for two decades, she’s practiced what she preaches.

That’s important to progressives like me, because we have long advocated for a government that looks like America. Why have we done that? Why do we think it’s so important? Because we know experience matters. I don’t just mean past job titles or policy expertise. People’s life experiences shape their views, their values and, ultimately, their decisions. So it’s no surprise that when we study women’s leadership, we know women leaders help women.


I worked for Hillary at three different times in my life: first, when I was young; later, when I was just starting a family; and then again when my kids were growing up. All during that time I faced the same question that worries so many working mothers: How could I do my job well and still be there for my kids?

I first worked for Hillary in my 20s and early 30s, when she was first lady; later, when I was pregnant with my first child, I was no longer on her staff, but I confided in her that I was worried whether I’d be able to keep up a career with a child. Hillary gave me a pep talk about the importance of co-parenting, prioritizing and not giving up before I tried. Later on, when she was in the Senate, she reached out to me about a job opening on her staff. I had one child then, 14 months old. Again I worried that I couldn’t do a pretty intense job for a pretty intense senator as a new mom. So I shared my fears once more with Hillary, and she assured me we would make it work. She promised me that I could leave at 6 p.m. to make it home for dinner; that I could accommodate my daughter’s needs for doctor visits or anything else that came up. And it worked. She kept her promise, and I tucked Ilina in every night. I’d keep working after she fell asleep. And when Hillary would call, she would always ask whether she was disturbing me, always happy to call back in the morning.

But the hardest decision for me was to come. In late 2006, Hillary started talking to me about the ideas that would fuel her presidential campaign. I had advised Hillary on policy when she was first lady, a Senate candidate and a senator, so it seemed natural that I'd be part of her presidential run. Natural to everyone but me, that is. By that time I had two young children, ages 1 and 4; advising a presidential campaign while caring for them seemed a gargantuan task.

I ached over the decision but ultimately said yes. And again, even as she mounted her presidential campaign, Hillary made certain I had the flexibility to do my work while still fulfilling my responsibilities as a mom. There were some gut-check moments: I was in charge of Hillary’s debate preparation on the campaign, and ahead of one of our earlier sessions, I learned that my daughter’s pre-K graduation was the same time as the prep I was supposed to be running. I decided I would put my deputy in charge, but I worried I was letting folks down. When I told our campaign manager, she and Hillary came up with a solution. Hillary flipped her schedule to travel earlier that day to ensure that I could do both. She never gave me less work or responsibility — just the ability to do it on a schedule that let me get home for dinner most nights. I was able to make it work because I had a boss who got it and also a husband that did more than his share as a co-parent.

I know I would not be where I am in my own career, as a mother of two, without a boss so committed to workplace flexibility early on (and a feminist husband). Hillary saw her staff not just as workers but as people juggling their jobs and their families. And she gave me the chance every woman in America should be given: to step up in my career when my kids were young, not step back.

No doubt, there are plenty of men who have been fierce and laudable advocates for women’s issues. But I know from my many years in Washington that when setting priorities and creating an agenda, it matters who sits around the table. We’ve accomplished so much for women over the last few decades, but we’re still far from where we should be. We’ve fallen short on ensuring equal pay and protecting reproductive rights. And we remain the world’s only developed nation that doesn’t guarantee the basic protection of paid family leave to its citizens. If we want to make meaningful progress, we need more than just promises and policy proposals.

Hillary has plainly done far more than just talk about these issues. She’s lived them as a working parent whose first law firm didn’t accommodate new mothers because they didn’t have them before she started work there. She’s lived them as a first lady who stood up in Beijing and declared to the world that “women’s rights are human rights.” And she’s lived them as a boss who made sure no one on her staff had to neglect their family to do their job.

In Washington, the values of folks around the table matter. Their experiences matter. What they do, not just what they say, matters. And the person at the head of the table matters a lot.