#436 – Ivanka Trump: Politics, Family, Real Estate, Fashion, Music, and Life
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The following is a conversation with a vana trump business woman, real state developer, former senior adviser to the president of the united states. I've gone to know like a well over the past two years, we've become good friends, hinting IT off right away over our mutual love of reading, especially physical ical writings from marker list, josef cambell, alan walz, victo Frankl and so on.

SHE is a truly kind compassion and thought for human being. In the past, people have attacked her, in my view, to get indirectly at her dad, don trump, as part of a dirty game of politics and click pay journalism. These attacks obscured many projects and efforts, often by partisan SHE helped get done.

And they obscured red, the truth of who he is as a human being. Through all that, he never returned the attacks with anything but kindness, and always, well through the fire at all, would Grace for this and much more. SHE is an inspiration, and i'm honored red to be able to call her friend.

Oh, in the for those living in the united states. Happy upcoming fourth july. It's both an anniversary of this country's declaration of independence and an anniversary of my immigrating here to the us.

I am forever grateful for this amazing country, for this amazing life, for all of you who have given a chance to a silicate like me from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. I love you all.

And now a quick few second mention. Response or check them out in the description is the best way to support this podcast. We got closed for protecting a personal information shop five for e commerce next week for business management ates leave for nps and express V P, N.

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This episode is brought you by clock a platform. The less you generate a new email address and phone number every time you sign up for a new website, allowing your actual in mail and phone number to remain secret from sad website, it's kind of amazing. The wages give away that info to like every single website.

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This episode is also about you by next week. Speaking businesses is an all in one called business management. It's the machine within the machine that helps find the common language between the different margins of a business. It's, I guess, called an E R P system, enterprise resource planning.

The fact, I don't really know anything about E R P, the terminal gy of IT is a kind of inkling from the yunnan shadow of capitalism that um it's not enough to be a designer, an idea person, engineer have to know so many parts of a business to actually get IT to work and yeah guess next week helps you out with that. Managers, financial, H R ventres supply, e commerce, much more running business is really tough. This is one of the things have been really, really thinking a lot about.

I love being in an individual contributor, sort of engineer as part of a small team they build stuff, or creative person's part of a small team that build stuff and and like love the people you work with and just collaboration in storm, argue all of that and create together. And when you scare that business, man, so much pain starts to emerge. But the other side of the coin of that pain is a get to have impact.

You get to potentially make a lot of people, the world, feel good if you put a lot of love in the product in a feel that, well, that makes people feel good. So it's a trade often and something I think a lot about. I don't care about money.

I don't care money in that stuff. But IT is something I care a lot about to have a positive impact in this world on a small scale or a large scale, either one. All of IT is magical.

Anyway, over her thirty seven thousand companies have upgraded to next week by oracle, take advantage of net sweet flexible financing plan. And next weet conscia h legs, that's net sweet dog conscious h legs. This epo de also brought you by asleep, and it's part for ultra.

I just recently woke up. Yes, I just recently wake up. I'm not going to tell you what time IT is because you will start criticizing me. But sometimes I work late into the night because I love IT.

But when I get to the bed and ahead of me, because it's scheduled, this just gets cold and a warm blanket, and I could just disappear into the beautiful, beautiful, a bit of dreams. And I stay there for six, seven, eight, sometimes not, and get crazy. Sometimes a good night.

Sometimes I get ten hours everything at ten to sleep, as if what happened, that all went dark and I woke up. The light emerge from wind. Dozen was a good feeling.

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a drop.

You said that ever since you were Young, you wanted to be a builder that you loved the idea of designing beautiful city skylines, especially in the city I love in your seat skyline, so described the origins of that love of building you.

I think there's both an incredible confidence and a total insecurity that comes with youth. So I remember fifteen. I would look out over the city skyline from my bedroom window in new york and imagine where I could contribute an add value in a way that, you know, I look back on and completely laugh at you know how coffee and I was but I i've known since of my earliest memories is something I wanted to do.

And I think I fundamentally I love art. I love expressions of of beauty. So many different forms um with architecture there's the tangible and I think that marriage of a function and something that exists beyond yourself is very compelling.

I also grew up in a family where my mother was in the real state business, working alongside my father. My father was in the business, and I saw the joy that had brought to them. So I think I had these natural positive associations.

I used to send me, as a little girl, renderings of projects they were about to embark on with notes, asking if I would hurry up in finish school so I could come join them. So I had these positive associations, but IT came from something within myself. I think that as I got older and as I got involved in real state, I realized that I was so multiple cipla ary.

You have, of course, the design, but you also have engineering the breast tax of construction. There's time management. There's project planning, just the duration of time to complete. One of these iconic structures is enormous. You can contribute a decade of your life to one project. So while you have to think big picture, that means you really have to care deeply about the details because you you live with them so IT um that allowed me to flex a lot of areas of interest.

I love that confidence of youth.

It's funny because we're so insecure right in the most basic interactions but yet our ambitions are so unbridled in a way that kind of like being SHE blushes and adults. And I think it's fun. It's a fund to like tap into that energy.

Yeah we're everything is possible. I think some of the the greatest builders have ever met kind of always have that little flame of everything is possible, still burning. That is a silly notion for youth.

But it's not so silly. Know everybody tells you something is impossible. But if you continue believing that is possible and have that sort of naive notion that you could do IT, even if it's exception difficult, that naive notion turns into some of .

the greatest projects ever done.

a out the space building a new company or like everybody says, impossible, taken on a jagan's company and uh, disrupting them on revolutionizing how stuff is done or doing into huge building projects or like he said, so many people involved in making that happen.

We get conditioned out of that feeling. Yes, we start to become insecure and we start to rely on the input of validation of others. And IT takes us away from that sort of core drive and um and ambitions.

So it's it's fun to to reflect on that and also a smile, right? Because whether you can execute or not, time will tell. Yeah, that was that was very much my childhood.

Yeah, of course, it's important also have the humility of once you get humble and realized, there is actually a lot of work to build. I still them amazed just looking at big bowling, big bridges that human beings are able to get together and build those things. That's one of my hear things about architectures just like, wow, it's it's uh manifestation of the fact that humans can collaborate and do something like epic much bigger than themselves. And it's like a statue that represents that and IT be there for a long time.

I think in some ways you look out at different city skylines and it's it's almost like a visual depiction of ambition realized, right? Like it's a teamed to somebody's dreamed, not somebody uh hope um on sambo of people's dreams and and visions um and triumph and in some cases failures um if the projects weren't properly executed. So so you look at these skylines and and and it's a testament that actually heard once architecture described as frozen music that that really resonated with me.

I ve about A C skyline as an unsafe of dreams realize yes.

I remember the first time I I went to um deby and I was watching them dredged out in and creating these man made islands and I remember somebody wants saying to me there an architect, an architect actually who collaborated with us on our tower in chicago he said that the only thing that limited what an architect could do in that area was gravity .

and imagination.

Gravity a tRicky .

to working again and that's where still engineers, one of my favorite, used to build the bridges in high school. For physical classes, you have to build bridges, and you compete on how much way they can Carry relative to their own way. Yes, you study how good IT is by finding its breaking point. And that was a deep appreciation for me on the minister scale of, on a large scale, what people are able to do with self engineering as gravity, a trick on to fight us.

IT definitely is in bridges. I mean, some of the iconic designs in in our country are incredible bridges.

So we think of skylines as on samples of dreams realized. You spend quite a bit time in new york. What what do you love about and what do you think about the in in your city skyline?

What's a good picture? We're looking here for you. I mean.

looking over the water, I think the waters an unbelievable feature of the york's skyline um as you see the island on approach and often time you'll see like in these images, you will see these towers reflecting off of the water surface. So I think there's something very um and unique about that. When I look at new york, I I see this unbelievable sort of tapestry of different types of architecture.

So you have the gothic form um as represented by buildings like the whole worth building, or you'll have arc deco as represented by buildings like g forty well creator, the Crystal building, a rocket fellow center and and then you'll have these unbelievable super modern examples or modern examples a liver house and secret house. So you have all of these different styles and I think to build a new york you're really building the best of the best. So nobody's giving new york there sort of second rate work. And especially when a lot of those buildings were built, there was this incredible competition happening between new york and chicago for kind of dominance of the sky and for who could create the greate skyline, that sort of race to the sky when skye scrapers were first being built starting in chicago and in the new york, surpassing that in terms of hide at least um with with the empire state building. So I love sort of contextualized the skylines as well and thinking back to um when different components that are so iconic or were added in in the context in which they came into being.

I got to ask you about this. This is a pretty cool page um that i've been following an x architecture and tradition and they celebrate traditional of schools of architecture and you matching gothic, the tapestry. This is an chicago, the tribune toward chicago. So what do you think about that sort of the the older and you mix together.

Do you like gothic? Think it's hard to look at something like the tribute to or not be completely in all, think this is an unbelievable building. Look at those butros.

And you've got cargoes hanging up of IT. And you know, this style was reminisce of the cathedrals of europe. Pe, which was very kind of invoke. And like of the nineteen, twenty years here, here in america, actually I mention the world world, Terry, before the whole worth tower was actually referred to as the cathedral of commerce um and because IT IT also was in that gothic style, so me so this was built maybe a decade before the tribune building.

But the tribune building, to me, is is almost not replicable IT personally really resonate with me, because one of the first projects I ever worked on was building trump s chicago, which was this beautiful, elegant, super modern or glass skyscraper right across the way. So was right across the river. So I would look out the windows um as I was under construction or or be standing quite literally on rebar of the building, looking out IT at the trip yung and and incredibly inspired and now the reflective class of the building reflects back not only the river but but also um the tribune building another buildings sunwich hian avenue you like .

to on the glass the reflected properties of the glass is part the architecture.

I think IT depends like they have super reflective class that sometimes doesn't work. It's distracting. And I think it's it's one component of um sort of a composition that comes together.

I think in this case, the glass on on term chicago very beautiful IT was a designed by Adrian Smith of skip ball owns in maria a major architecture firm who actually did um the bird in dubai, which is I think that like an inspiring example of of modern architecture, but classes tRicky it's you have to get the shade right. You know some glass has a lot of iron and and and its super Green and that's a choice. And sometimes you have more blue properties, blue sliver, like you see here, but it's part of the character. Do you know .

what is actually going to look like? What is done like? Is IT possible to imagine that he feels there so many variables?

I think so, I think if you a vivid imagination, if you sit with IT, and then if you also go beyond the rendering, right, you have to, you have to live with the materials. So you don't build a ninety two story building class curtain wall and not deeply examine the actual curtain wall before purchasing IT.

So you have to spend a lot of time with the actual materials, not just the beautiful sort of artistic renderings, which can be incredibly misleading. Um the goal is actually that the the end result is much, much more compelling um then then what the architecture artist rendered, but often time sets very much not the case. You know, sometimes also, you mention context.

Know sometimes also see rendering the world. I like what a part of the building right to the left of IT that's blocking eighty percent of its views of the poll. The you architects will remove things that are inconvenient, bill. So, so you have to, you have to be rooted .

in in reality.

Reality exactly.

And I love the notion of living with with the materials, in contrast to living in the imagined world of the drawings. So that both, both are probably important, because you have to dream. The thing into existence, but you have to be rooted and like what the thing is actually going to look like in the contacts of everything else.

One of the underlying principles of the page just mentioned, and I hear folks mentioned this a lot, is that modern architecture is kind of boring, that IT lack sol and beauty. And you just spoke with admiration for both modern and forecasts ic for older a architectures. So do you think there's truth that the modern architecture is boring?

I'm living in miami currently, so I see a lot of super uninspired class x on on the waterfront. But um but I think exceptional things shouldn't be the norm. You know there are typically rare.

So and I think in modern architecture you find an abundance of amazing examples of of super compelling and an innovative building designs. I mean, I mentions the birge Cliffe. IT is inspiring.

This is an unbelievably striking example of modern architecture. You look at some older examples, the city Opera house and so so I think there's unbelievable. I mean, it's like a middle .

in the sky yeah reaching out to the stars.

It's it's huge. And in the context of a city where there's a lot of height, yeah, so it's it's unbelievable. But I think one of the things that's probably exciting me the most about architecture rate now is the innovation that's happening within IT. You know there's example of robotic. There's three printing, and your friend and and who you introduced me to not too long ago, near oxygen, what she's doing at the intersection of biology and technology, and thinking about how to create more sustainable development practices, quite literally, trying to create materials that will biodegrade back into the earth. I think there's something really cool happening now with the rediscovery of ancient building techniques.

So you have self feeling concrete that was used by the romans and art in a practice of using volcanic ash and lime that's now being rediscovered and is more critical than ever as we think about how much of our infrastructure relies on concrete and how much of that is fAiling on the most basic levels. So I think actually it's a really, really exciting time um for innovation architecture. And I think there are some incredibly examples of of of modern design that are are really exciting.

But generally think rosel said, that comparison is the thief of joy. So it's hard either you look at the tribune building, you look at some these iconic structures, one of um the buildings that most proud to have worked on with the historical post office building in washington dc. You look at a building like that and IT feels like IT has no equal.

Also there is a syn logical ament where people tend to want to complain about the new and celebrate the old old.

They just people .

always concerned, sceptical and concerned about change. And it's true that there's a lot of stuff that's new, that's not good. It's not going to last. It's not going to stand the test of time, but some things will. And there just like a modern art, there's a modern music.

There's going to be artists that um stand up at the time, and we will later look back and celebrate them, those with a good tide. When you just step back, what do you love about architecture? Is that the beauty? Is that the function .

I most emotionally drawn, obviously the beauty, but I think is somebody who's built things. I really believe that the form has to follow the function, like there's nothing ugly than a space that is ill conceived that that you otherwise its, its, its decoration. And I think that after a sort of that initial reaction to seeing something that esthetically really pleasing to me, when I when I look at when I look at a building or or a project, I love sort of thinking about how he's being used.

So having been able to build so many things and um in my career and and worked on so many incredible projects, I mean, it's really, really rewarding after the to have somebody come up, tune and tell you that they got engaged in the lobby of your building or they got married in the ballroom and and share with you some of those experiences. So so to me, that equally is beautiful. The the use cases for for these unbelievable projects.

But but I think I think it's all of IT. I I love I love that you've got the construction and you've got the design and you've got that the interior design and you've got the financing elements, the marketing elements and it's all wrapped up in um in this one effort. So so to me, it's exciting to sort of flex in all those different ways.

Yeah like he says, his dreams realized, hard work realized. Mean, probably on the bridge side is why I love the function. In terms of function being primary, you just think of like the millions, oh, go of bridges.

go go down. You had.

Look at that. Yeah, this is devils bridge in germany.

Yeah I won't say like the most practical, but looking beautiful that is.

Yeah so this is probable. Well, we don't know. We need to interview some people whether the function hold up. But in terms of beauty, and then like like we were talking about using the water for the reflection and the shape to creates, I mean, there's an elegant shape of of a bridge.

See, it's interesting that they call a devils bridge because to me this is very surreal. And I think about the ring, the circle life.

there's nothing about this that makes me feel maybe they're just being ironic in .

the names functions .

really flow exactly maybe being but he .

never successful ly cross the bridge.

But I mean to me there's just I love the bridges because because of the function is the broken bridges, the golden gate bridge, because of my favorite and it's just inner city to be able to look out and see the skyline combined with the suspensions bridge and thinking of all the millions of cars that pass like the business that us humans getting together and going to work, build in cool stuff. And just the bridge kind of represents the turmoil and the business ness of a city as IT creates is cool.

And the connectivity as well.

yeah, the network of roads all come together. So there the bridge is the ultimate combination of function and and beauty yeah I remember when .

I was first learning about bridges, studying the cable stay versus the suspension bridge. I mean, you actually built many replicas. I'm sure you'll have a point of you on this. But there they really are um so beautiful and you mention the brooklin bridge. But growing up in new york, that was as much a part of the architectural story and tapestry of that skyline is any building that that seen .

what in genre, philosophy, philos design and building in architecture.

some of the most recent projects I I worked on priority government service were the old post office building, and almost simultaneously, trumper al in miami, that these worm, both two just massive undertakings, both redevelopment, which in a lot of cases, having worked on ground up construction. Redevelopment projects are in a lot of ways much more complicated because you have existing attributes, but also a lot of limitations. You have to work with them, especially when you're repurposing at you. So so this the old post office building on pencil lvi ia avenue.

So, so it's .

unbelievable. So this was a romanist revival building and built in the eighty nine years on america's main street to symbolize american granger. And at the time, there were post office being built in in the style across the country, but this being really the defining one.

Still, to this day, the tallest habitable structure. And washington, the tallest structure being the monument, the nation's only vertical park, which is that clock tower. But you've got these thick granite walls, those carved granet turns, just an unbelievable building. You ve got this massive atrium that that runs through the whole center of IT, that is, is topped with glass.

So so having the opportunity to despair had a project like that was was so exciting and actually was my first innovation project though I came to IT with a tremendous amount of energy, a bigger and and humility um about how to do IT properly ensuring I had all the rate people we had countless federal and local government agencies that would oversee every single decision we made. But in advance of even having the opportunity to do IT, there was an close to two year request for proposal like a process that was put out by the general services administration. So was this really arduous government procurement process that we were competing against so many different people for the opportunity um which a lot of people said IT was a gigantic waste of time. But I looked at that and I think so did a lot of the other bitters and say it's worth .

trying to put the suspicion forward. Just so what is there some interesting details about what IT takes to do renovation? Is there about some some of the chAllenges or opportunities you you want to maintain the beauty of the old year? And I like upgrade the functionality, I guess, and maybe modern ize some aspects of IT without destroying what made the building magico in the first place.

So I think the greatest asset was already there, the exterior of the building, which we meticulous ly restored, and any addition to had had to be done sort of very gently in terms of any sign nac traditions and um the interior spaces were completely dapitan IT would had been in a post office then we was used for a really run down food court and government office spaces IT was actually losing six million dollars a year um when when we got um the concession to to build IT and and when we want and and became one of I think a great example of public private partnerships working together.

But the I think the biggest chAllenge in having such a radical use conversion is just how you lay IT out. So the amount of time I would get on that excEllent twice a week, three times a week, to spend a trip down in washington, and we would walk every single inch of the building, laying out the floor plans, debating over the configuration of a room. There are almost three hundred rooms, and there were almost three hundred layout.

Ts, so nothing could be repeated. Where's when you have when you're building from scratch, you tend you know you have a box and you decide where you want to add, you know, potential elements and and you kind of can stack the floor plan all the way up. But when you're working within a building like this, every single room with different you see the setbacks or the setback then required you to move the plumbing.

So there was no um IT was really a labor of love and to do something like this. And and that's why I think renovation we had IT with the row as well. I was seven hundred rooms over and over six hundred and fifty acres of of property.

And so every single unit was was very different and complicated, not not as complicated and somewhere that the scale of IT was so massive but not as complicated as the old post office, but they require a level of of precision. And I think in real estate, you have a lot of people who design on plan um and a lot of people who are in the business of sort of acquiring and flipping. So it's more financial engineering than IT is building.

And they don't spend the time sort of sweating these details that make something great and make something functional. And you feel that in the end result, but I I mean blood, sweat, tears, years of my life for those projects. And I was worth, I enjoyed almost and enjoy IT almost every minute.

So to you, it's not about the flipping to you is about the art of the and the function of the thing.

the ukraine.

what's design on plan. I'm learning new .

things today when when proposals are put forth by an architect and really just the plan is accepted without. And in the case of a renovation, like if you're not walking those rooms, the number of times a beautifully laid out room was on a blue print.

And then I go to washington and i'd walk that floor and i'd realized that there was a column that ran right up through the middle, the space where the bed was supposed to be or the toilet was opposed to be here um or the shower. So there's a lot of things that are missed um when you do something conceptual without sort of rooting IT and um in the actual structure. And that's why I think even you know with ground up construction as well, people who aren't constantly on their job sites, constantly walking the projects, there's just a lot that's there's a lot that's mess.

I mean, there's a wisdom to the the idea that we talked about before. Leave with the materials and walking the construction side, walking the rooms. I mean, what you hear from people like Steve jobs, like you are, that's why you live in a factory floor.

That's why you constantly obsess about the details, the actual, not of the the plans, but the physical reality of the product. I mean, the insanity of Steve jobs and Jenny. I've working together and like making IT perfect, making the iphone, the early designs, prototypes, making that perfect. Like what IT actually feels like in the hand you have to be there, like as close to the middle is possible to truly understand.

and you have to love IT in order to do that, right?

IT shouldn't be about the how much is going to sell for all that kind of stuff. You have to love the art.

Because for the most party, and probably at ninety, maybe for ninety five percent of the end results, unless something is terribly gone away by by not caring with that level of almost like maniacal precision, but you'll notice that ten percent for the rest of your life, you know. So um I think I think that extra effort, that that passion, I think that's what separates good from .

great if we go back to that Young of ancha, the confidence of youth. And if you could talk about your mom, SHE had a big influence on you. You told me he was an adventure yeah I big scare and a business woman, what did you learn about life from .

your mother so much? Um he passed away two years ago now and SHE was a remarkable, remarkable woman he was a trailed pleaser in so many different ways as an athlete and growing up in communist truvada as um a fashion model, as a real state executive and and builder um just this all around trail placing business woman's I also learned from her you aside from from that element how to really enjoy life.

You know, I look back and some of my happiest memories of her are in the ocean, you know, just lying on her back, looking up at the sun, and just so so in the moment, or dancing, SHE loved to dances. So SHE SHE really taught me a lot about living life to its fullest. And and he had so much courage, so much conviction, so much energy and a complete comfort with who he was.

What do you think about that? I mean, olympic athlete, the trade op between like ambition and just wanting to do big things and pursuing that, giving your all to that and being I was to relaxed and just throw your own back and enjoy the every moment of life, would like that trade off? What would you think about that trade off?

I think because he was this unbelievable, formidable athletes, because of the discipline SHE had as a child, I think I made her value those moments more as an adult. I think SHE was a great baLance of the two that we all hope to find and he was able to find both incredibly serious and formia bomb I remember, is a little girl I used to literally trips behind her um at the laws hotel.

Which um SHE oversaw and actually kind of was her old post office. There was an unbelievable historic hotel and in york city and i'd follow her around construction meetings and on job sites. And um there he is dancing. That's funny. That's the .

picture you pull up you and me he .

had such a joy and SHE was so una abashed in her perspective and her opinions I mean no SHE made my father look reserved whatever he was feeling but he was just very expressive um and and a lot of fun to be around so sure as you mentioned .

uh grew up during the park spring and uh nineteen sixty eight and that had a big impact on human history. I mean my fAiling came from the soviet union and then you know the twenty eighth century. The story of the twentieth tury is a lot of eastern europe, uh, the soviet union tried a the ideas of of communism. And I turned out a lot of those ideas resulted into a lot of suffering. So what do you think the common .

y's ideology failed? I think fundamentally, as people, we desire freedom. We want agency. And my mom was like a lot of other people who grew up in in similar situations where SHE didn't like to talk about at that often. So one of my real regret is that I didn't push her harder, you know. So but I think back to the conversations we did have and and I try to imagine what it's leg SHE was at Charles s university and prog, which was really like a focal point of um of the reforms that were usher in during the park spring and the liberalization agenda that was happening the dance halls were opening, the student activists and and he was attending university there right at the same time so the the contrast to this feeling of freedom and progress and liberalization in the spring and then it's so quickly being crushed in the fall of that same year when the words all pack countries and and the soviet union rolled in to to put down and and ultimately roll back all those reforms. So for her to have lived through that, you know SHE didn't come to north amErica until he was twenty three or twenty four so that was her life as as as a Young girl SHE was on the gender national ski team for checking spoke a my my grandfather used to train her this to put the skies on her back and walk up the mountain um and check the lucky because there no there are no ski less SHE actually made me do that when I was just to let me know what her experience had been. If I complained that I was cold out, she's like what you didn't have to walk up the mountain, you you'd be plenty warm if you're Carried the skies up on your back up the last run.

I feel like they made people tougher back then like my my ground and you mention is funny. They they go through some of the darker thinks that human being can go through and they don't talk about IT and they have a general positive outlook on life. Like I was deeply rooted in the knowledge of what life could be yeah I how bad I could get.

My grandma survived a hermon in ukraine, which is was the mass starvation brought on by the the collectivist policies of the sole regime. And then SHE survived the not the occupation of ukraine. Never talked about IT probably went through extremely dark, extremely difficult, and then just always had a positive while on life, and also made me do very difficult YSL activity like a to humble you like kids these days are all kind of energy which i'm deeply, deeply grateful for and on all fronts, including just having hardship and including this physical hardship playing at me. I think it's really important you .

wonder how much of of who they were was a reaction to their experience, you know, which you have naturally had that sort of forward looking, grateful, optimistic orientation, or was IT a reaction to tora. childhood? I think about that.

I look at this picture of my mom, and SHE was unabashedly herself. You know, SHE loved flamboyance and glam, and and in some ways, I think IT probably was a directory action to this very astar control childhood. You know, this was one expression of that.

I think her, you know, how SHE dressed and how SHE presented. I think her entrepreneurial spirit and love of capitalism and all things american was was another manifestation of IT and one that I grew up with. Remember the story he used to tell me about when he was fourteen and he was going to neighboring countries.

And you know, as athlete we were given additional freedoms that that you would otherwise be afforded and um and in the society is under under communist rule. So he was able to travel where most of her friends never IT would be able to leave china. Spokeo and SHE would come back from all of these trips.

And the first place where SHE do ski races in austria elsewhere, and the first thing he had to do is truck at the local police, and SHE sit down. And SHE had enough wisdom at fourteen to know that SHE couldn't appear to be lying by not being impressed by what he saw in the fact that you could get an orange in the winter, but you could not be too excited by IT that you become a flight risk. So give enough detail that your believable, but not so many that you're not trusted.

And imagine that is a fourteen year old, you know, that experience and and having to navigate the world that way. And SHE told me that eventually all those local police officers, they came to love her, because one of the things we do is smuggle bad stuff back from these countries and give IT to them to give their lives perfumes, stock things. And SHE figured out this system pretty quickly um but but it's it's a very different experience from what I was navigating and the pressures and chAllenges me as a fourteen year old was was dealing with so so I have so much respect and an admiration .

for her yeah hardship clarifies what important in life. You have talked about a man's search for meaning. That book having kind of an ultimate hardship clarifies that a finding join life is not about the environment, about your outlook on the environment. And there is beauty to be found in any situation. Yeah and also in a particular situation, the when everything is taken from you, the thing you start to think about is the people you love. So in the case of message for meaning, Victor franco thinking about his his wife and how much you love her, and that love was the flame, that the ones that kept him excited, the fun thing to think about what everything else is gone. So they simply forget that with the business of life, get all the fun stuff are talking about, like building in being a creative force in the world at the end of the day, what matters is just like the other humans in your life that people allow .

this a simple stuff victo Franklin is somebody I mean his start look and um just as physical hy in general is is um is still inspiring to me. But I think so many people, they say they want happiness, but they want conditional happiness. You know, when this in this a thing happens, are under these circumstances, and i'll be happy.

And I think what he show is that we can sort of cultivate these virtues with on ourselves, regardless of the situation we find ourselves in. And in some ways I think the the meaning of life is the search for meaning in life. It's the relationships we have and reform.

That experience we have is how we deal with the suffering that life inevitably presents to us. And and vict Frankl is an amazing job highlighting that under the most horrific circumstances. And I think it's just super inspiring to me.

He also shows that you can get so much from just like small joys, like getting a little more soup today and you did yesterday. I mean, it's like it's a little stuff. If you allow yourself to love the little stuff of life, it's all around you, it's all there.

So you'll need to like, had these ambitious goals and the comparison being a deep for joy, that stuff just like it's all around as the ability to eat. I when I was in the jungle and I got severely dehydrated because is no water. You run out of water real quick.

And I mean, the joy felt when I got to drink. Guy, I didn't care about anything else is speaking of things that matter in life. I I was started to fan asides about water, and that was breaking me joy.

You can tap into this and get I just .

tapping and just stay.

point your bathroom, turn on the same to watch the water.

就是 for sure。 I mean, people really is good to have stuff taken away for a time. That's why struggle is good to make you appreciate, to have a deep gratitude when you have IT and water.

And food is the big one, but water is the biggest one. I wouldn't recommend IT necessarily to get severely dehydrated. Ted, appreciate water. But maybe every time you take a supple water, you could have that .

kind of there's the a prayer in judaism you are supposed to every morning which is basically thanking god for your body working um it's it's something you know so basic but it's when IT doesn't that that we're grateful. So just reminding ourselves every day the basic things of of a functional body of of our health, of access to to water, which so many millions of people around the world do not have reliably, is very clarifying and super important.

Yeah, health is a gift. Water is a gift. Yeah, is there a memory with your mom had a defining effect on your life?

I have these of in yet in my mind, seeing her in action in different capacity. A lot of times um in the context of things that I would later go on to do myself. So now I would go every day, almost every day after school and I go to the plathe hotel and i'd follow her around as she's walk the hallways and just observe her.

And he was so impossibly glamorous, SHE was doing everything and foreign, half inches with the proofing. And so IT was almost, IT was almost like, it's almost like an inaccessible visual. But I think for me, when I saw her experience, the most joy tended to be by the sea, um almost always not not a pool.

And I think I get this from her. I puls IT there's fine. I love motion. I I love salt water. I love the weight makes me feel and and I think I got that from her. So we would we would just swim together all, all the time.

And and it's a lot of what I love about my em actually being being so close to the ocean. I found IT to be super cathartic. But a lot of my memories of my mom seeing her really like just in her bliss is is floating around and and and a body of salt water.

Is there also some aspect to her being example, somebody that could be so of beautiful and feminine at the same time, uh, powerful, a successful business woman they show that is possible to do that.

Yeah, I think he really was a trail place alright. It's not uncommon in in real state for there to be multiple generations of a of people, so on, on job sites.

I IT was not unusual for me to run into somebody whose grandfather had worked with my grandfather and brooklin or queens or whose father had um worked with my mother and and they're always tell me these stories about her rolling in and you'd hear the heels first and and a lot of times it's really really like Augustly really it's two days after Christmas like we thought we'd get a reprieve um but he was he was very exacting um know that I have this visual in my mind of her you walking on rebar on the balls of her feet and these foreign ships I assuming SHE actually Carried flats with her but but I don't know that's not the visual I have but he was I love the fact that she's so in bodied femininity and um and glamour and and was so comfortable being tough and ambitious and determined and um and this unbelievable business woman and entrepreneur at at a time when he was very much alone even for me. An in the development world. And so many of the different businesses that i've been in there really aren't women outside of of sales of marketing.

You don't see as many women in the development space, in the construction space, even in the architecture and and design space, maybe outside of interior design. So, and he was, you know, decades ahead of me. So I was, I love hearing these stories. I love, I love hearing somebody who's my peer tell me about their grandfather and their father, and they are experience with with one of my parents. It's amazing.

And SHE did IT on fogt heels and .

SHE did IT SHE used to say there's nothing that I can't do Better in health. That would be, that would be exactly. And when I complain about wearing something you know was like the early nineties, everything was also like uncomfortable these fabric materials and I was I would like go back and forth between being super girl and a total tomboy um but but he did not dressed me up and in these things and i'd be complaining about that and save on coign for beauty which I happened to totally disagree with because I think there's nothing worse than being uncomfortable so I haven't accepted or internalize all of this this wisdom like to speak but um but but I was just study you know he had SHE had a very specific point of view this and .

full good lines paint for beauty is is body because I mean.

just even in fashion, if someone is uncomfortable, to me there's nothing that looks worse than when you see somebody like tottering around IT like their heels they're kind of walking oddly um and you know doesn't they're not everybody in their confidence in that regards I like kind of the opposite I start with what I want to be comfortable um and that helped me be confident and um and .

in command a foundation fashion for you comfort and on top of that you build and I like dad.

There's that level of comfort but but but I think you have to for me I want to feel confident and you don't feel confident when you're like pulling at a garm meter um you know hobbling on heels that don't fit you properly. And SHE was never doing those things either. So I don't know how he was doing stuff like that. It's like a forty pound of me address and I know this because I have IT ah and I worked recently and I mean, I gotto work out walking to the elevator yeah like this is a heavy dress and you know, IT was worth IT IT was great yeah, she's making a look easy, but he makes that look very, very easy.

So do you, mr.

I'm so much it's unbelievable how dislocating the loss of of a perennis and her mother lives with me still my grandmother who helped raise us. So that's very special and I can ask her some of the questions that I would sorry I wanted dance me your mom that 我操 你。

IT was beautiful to see. I got a chance to spend time with your family to see so many generations together, table so much history.

She's ninety seven, and until SHE was around ninety four, SHE lived completely on her own. No help, know anything, no support. And and now SHE requires really sort of twenty four hour care, and I I feel super grateful and i'm able to give her that because that's what he did for me. It's amazing for me to have my children be able to call up and and know her stories, know her recipes, check dumplings and and gush and kids that leads all the other things he used to make me in my childhood. D but but SHE really he was a major SHE was a major force in my life.

My grandmother SHE, um you know my mom was working, so know my grandmother was the person and was always home every die when I came back from school and um I remember I used to shower and I would almost be like common I I feel like in my memorial and there is no washing machine I ve seen on the planet that can actually do this. But in my memory I go to shower, you know and I drop something on the bed and i'd come back into the room after my shower and I was like folded pressed IT was all my grama IT just like we're running after me. I'm taking care of me. And so it's nice to be able to do that for her.

Yeah, I got from .

her reading my grandmother SHE would SHE devoured books like the forward box SHE loved the more sensational ones SHE so like some of these like romance novels that would pick them up the covers. But he could tell you, he could look at like any royal in age across the europe and tel you all the mysteries.

all the drama.

He loved IT, but her face was always buried in a book. And my grandfather that he was the athlete um he was um he swam professionally for or you know on the national team for check a savan. He helped train my mom, as I was saying before, in skiing. So he was a great athlete and SHE was at home and SHE would read and cook in. Um and so that's that's something I I remember a lot from my childhood and SHE would always say like I got I got reading from her.

I me like speaking of drama. I had a my english teacher in high school recommend a book for me by D. H. Lawrence is supposed to be a classic. She's like, this is a classic you should read, is called lady shadow is lover.

And so i've read a lot of classics, but that one is straight up like a romance, not about a way we like this cheating with a gardener. I remember reading this like what I can retrospect. I understand why the classic, because I was so scandalised to talk about sex in a book one hundred years ago.

whatever, in retrospect, CT to.

you know why SHE recommended IT. I have, no I think just setting a signal. Hey, you need to get out more or something. I don't know.

Maybe maybe you're speaking to inspire actually.

Um anyway, I let me I love that kind of stuff too, but I love, I love all the classics and they they get there is a lot of drama, human nature. Drama is part of IT. So what about your dad growing up? What did you learn about life from your father?

I think my father's sense of humor is sometimes under appreciated. Uh, so he had an amazing and has an amazing sense of humor. He loved music. I I think my my mom loved music as well. But you know, my father always used to say that another life you would have been a broadway musical producer, which is hilarious to think about loves. He loves music .

that about right?

He does now, he djs at moroccan people get a sense of, you know, he loves and loyd weber and all of IT poverty. Elin, john, I mean, these were the same songs on repeat my whole childhood. S, I know the players .

proto loves .

sartre loves that of this. A lot of a lot of the grades. So I think I ve got a little bit of my love from music from him, but my mom share at that as well.

I think one of the things you know in and looking back that I think I inherit for my father, as well as this sort of interest or understanding of the importance of asking questions, and specifically questions of the right people. And I saw this a lot on on job sites. So I remember a with all post office building, there was this massive glass topped atrium, so heating and cooling the structure was like a hero.

On left we had the mechanical engineers, their thoughts on how we could do IT efficiently and um and so that the temperature never varied and IT was enormous ly expensive uh as an as an undertaking. And I remember one of his first time on on the site because you know here to really impowered me um with this project and he trusted me to to execute and also you know rope a men when I needed IT. But one of the first time he visits, we're walking the hallway and we're talking about how expensive this cooling system would be and heating system would be.

And he started to stopping, and he's asking duct workers, as as we walk, what they think of the system that the mechanical engineers designed. First few fine, you know, not great answers. The third guy goes, so if you want me to be honest with you, it's absinthe over designed.

In the circumstance of a one thousand year storm, you will have the exact perfect temperature if there is a massive blizzard or if it's unbearably hot. But ninety nine point nine percent of the time you'll never need IT. And and so I think it's just enormous waste.

funny. And so we kept asking that eyes questions, and we ended up overhauling the design pretty well into the process of the whole system, saving a lot of money, creating a great system that super functional. And so I learned a lot.

And that's just one example of countless that one really takes out of my head because I my oh my god, we're responding. The half we were actively under construction. So um but I would see him do that on a lot of different issues.

He he would ask people on the work level what their thoughts were ideas, concepts, designs and um there is almost like a zc craic sort of first principles type of way. He he questioned people trying to get down to sort of trying to reduce complex things to something really fundamental and and and simple. So I I try to do that myself to to the best I can. And I think it's something I very much learned from him.

Yeah, seen great engineers, great leaders do just that. You see, you want do that. What which is basically ask questions are to push simplification ah can we do this simpler? And like why the basic questions, like why I were doing IT this way, can this be done simpler and not taking as an answer that this is how we always done IT sort of not along yourself think IT doesn't matter. That's how I was done IT what is the right way to do IT and what is and usually the simply IT is the more correct way yeah has to do with cost, has to do with simplicity of uh of production, manufacturing. But usually simple is best.

And it's often times not the architect, the engineers, you know elon's case, probably the line worker who sees things more clearly. So I think making sure it's not just that you're asking good questions. You're asking the right people the same good questions.

That's why like uh, a lot of the other companies are really flat in terms of a organization design where although the any anybody on the factory floor can talk directly to you on there's no there's there's not this manager, erik class, this hierarchy, where is travel up and down in the higher chy which large companies of constructively hier chive managers were no one manager.

If you ask the question of like what have you done this week, the answers like it's really hard to come up with. Usually gonna be a range of paperwork. Yeah so you like nobody knows what they actually do.

So when is flat, you can actually get as quickly as possible. When problems are arise, you you can solve those problems as quickly as possible. And also you have a direct rapid iterative process where you're making things simpler, making them more efficient and costly, improving.

So yeah is is interesting what went large. And you see this in government, a lot of people get together. A hierarchy is developed, and that somehow, sometimes it's good, but very often just slows things down.

And you see great companies, great, great companies, apple, google, matter. They have to fight against that bureaucracy that builds the slow east of large organizations have. And to still be a big organization, act like a start up is the big chAllenge.

It's super difficult to deconstruct that as well once it's in place, right? It's it's circumventing layers and asking questions, pRobing questions of people on the ground level um is a huge chAllenge to the authority of the hierarchy um and there's tremendous amount of resistance to IT. So it's how do you grow something in in the case of a company in terms of a culture that can scale um but doesn't lose its connection to um to sort of real meaningful feedback. It's it's not not easy.

I've had a lot of conversations with the jim Kelly was this legendary engineer and leader and he he has talked about like you often have to kind of a be a little bit of an asho in the room, not in the mean way but they get uncomfortable yeah I glad these questions they are uncomfortable.

They break the kind of general policeman and civilian that people have a communication when you get a meeting nobody wants to be like, um, can we do IT way different? Everyone wants to. Just like, this lunch is coming up.

You know, I I have this trip plan on the weekend with the family. Everyone just wants comfort. Uh, when humans get together, they kind of gravitate or is comfort. Nobody wants that one person that comes in and says, hey, can we like do this way Better, way different and everything we've got comfortable throw IT out.

Not only do they not want that, but the one person who comes in and does that put a massive target on their back yeah and it's ultimately seen as as a threat. I mean, nobody I really gets fired for maintaining the status quo even if things go poorly. It's the way I was always done.

Yeah, humans are fascinating. But in order to actually do great big projects, yeah to reach for the stars, you have to have those people you have you have to constantly disrupt and have those uncomfortable conversations .

and really have that first principles type of orientation, especially in those large bureaucratic contacts.

So amongst many other things, you created a fashion brand. What was that about? What was the origin of that?

I always loved fashion as a form of self expression, as a means to to communicate either a truth or an illusion depending on what kind of mood you're in. But um this like sort of second body, if you will. So I loved fashion and look, I mean, my mother was a big part of the reason I did, but I never thought I would go into fashion. In fact, I was graduating from and IT was the day of my graduation and and a while winter calls me up and um and offered me a job at vogue which is a dream in so many ways but I was still focused.

I wanted to go to real state and I want to build buildings and um and I and I told her that so I really thought that that was going to be the path I was taking and very organically fashion you know I was part of my life, but I came a came into my life in a more professional capacity um by talking with my first of of many different partners that I had in the fashion space about he he actually had showed me a building um to buy his family had some real state holdings and and I passed on on the real state deal but we forced a friendship and we started talking about how in the space that he was in find jewelery there was this lack of product and brands that were positioned for self purchasing females. So everything was about, you know, the man buying the Christmas gift, the man buying the engagement ring. The stores felt like that they were all tailor towards the male static.

The marketing felt like that. And and what about the woman who had a salary and was really excited to buy herself a great pair of hearings or um or had just received a great bonus and I was going to use IT to to treat herself. So we thought there was avoided in the marketplace um and that was the first category.

I launch the ca tram ferry and we just caught lightning in a bottle. I was really quickly after that I met my partner who had founded nine one shoes, really capable partner. And we launched um a shoe collection which which took off and I did enormously well, and then a clothing collection and handbags and sunglasses and fragrance. So so we caught a moment and um and we found a positioning for this for the self purchasing multi dimensional woman. And we made dressing for work aspirational at the time we launched.

If you wanted to buy something for an office context like the brands that existed were at the opposite of exciting like nobody was you taking pictures of like what they were wearing to work and um and and posting in on lines with some these classic legacy brands really IT felt very much like I was designed by a team of men for what a woman would want want to wear to the office. So we started creating this clothing that was feminine, that was beautiful, that was versus that would take a woman from uh the bedroom to an after school soccer game to um date night with a boyfriend to a to walk in the park with her husband, like all the the different ways women live their lives and creating a wardrobe for that woman who works at every aspect of their life, not just sort of the silos, professional part and and IT was IT was really compelling. We started creating great brand content and we had incredible contributors like adam grant, who was who was blogging for us at the time and and creating aspirational tional content for for working women.

There is actually kind of a funny story, but I now had probably close to eleven different product categories, and we were growing like wolfie. And I started to think about what would be a compelling way to sort of create interesting content for the people who are buying these these different categories. And and we came up with a website call women who work. And I went to a marketing agency, you know, one of the fancy firms in new york, and I said, you know, we want to create a brand campaign around this multiple mental woman who works and um and what do you think like can you help us and they come back and they say, you know, we don't like the word work. We think IT should be women who .

do and I just .

start laughing like women you do and the fact that they couldn't conceive of IT being sort of exciting and aspirational and interesting to sort of lean into to working at at all aspects of our lives was just fascinating to me but showed that was part of the problem.

And and I think that's why ultimately, I mean, when the business grew to be hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, we were distributed at all the best retailers across the country from you know human markets, the um to blooming deals and beyond. And and I think we had really resonated with people in an amazing way, and probably not the similar to how I have this incredible experience. Every time somebody comes up to be in tells me that um that they were married in a space that I had painstakingly designed.

I have that experience now with with my fashion company, the number of women who will come up tell me that they they loved my shoes or they loved the handbags. And i've had women shown me their engagement rings. They ve got engaged with us. And it's really, really rewarding. It's really beautiful.

Yeah, when I was saying now with you, my amy is a number of women, they came up to you say you love the the clothing, love the .

shoes later.

What does to take to make a shoe where somebody will come up to years later and just be just full of love with this thing you've created? What's what's that mean? Like what does he take to do that?

Well, I still wear the shoes. So I mean.

that's a good starting point, right? Is a creative thing that .

you want to wear. I feel like the the product. I think first and foremost, A S you have to have the right partner.

So shoe building a shoe, if you talk to a great shoe designer, it's like, it's architecture, like making a heal that's four inches that feels good to walk in for eight hours a day. That is an engineering feet. And I found great partners and everything that I did, my my shoe partner had found in nine west.

So he really knew what went into making a shoe wearing able and comfortable. And then you overlay that with great design and and we also created this really comfortable, beautifully designed, super feminine um product offering that was also affordably Priced. So I think that was like the travel of those of those three things that that made the, I think, made to stand up for so many people.

Can you speak to, I don't know, if possible, articulate, but can you speak to the process you go through for my idea, to the final thing, like what you go through to bring an idea to life?

So not being a designer in this is tune realistic as well? I was never the architect, so I didn't necessarily have the pan in in fashion. The semi kind of like a conductor I was I knew what I liked, didn't didn't like.

And I think that's really important. And that became honed for me over time. So I would have to sit a lot longer with something earlier on, then later, when I had more refined, my esthetic point of view.

And so I think first, all you have to have a pretty strong sense of of what resonate with you. And and then as in the case of of my fashion business, as I grew and became quite a large business and so many different categories, everything had to work together so that individual partners reach category. But if we were selling at me in markets, we couldn't have a pair of shoes that didn't relate to address, that didn't relate to a pair of sunglasses and handbags all on the same floor.

So know in the beginning, I was much more collaborative as time past. I I really sort of took the point on deciding, and this is the esthetic for the season, these are the colors we're going to use. These are fabrics and then working with our partners on the execution of that.

But I I needed to create an overly that allowed for cohesion as the collection grew. And that was actually really fun for me because I was a little different. You know, I was typically initially responding two things that we're put in front of me. And towards the end I was IT was my partners who are responding to the things that myself in my team but it's still it's you know I would always I always want to bring the best talent. And so I was I was hiring great designers and print makers and um and copywriters and so I had this you know almost like that conductor analogy at this incredible group of in this case, women assembled to who had very strong points of view um themselves and he created in a great team so yeah I .

mean great team is really very central, is essential thing behind successful story. But there is a thing of taste. This is really interesting. It's hard to kind of articulate what IT takes. But basically knowing a vers b what looks good or without A B comparison to say, like if we did, if we change this part, that would make a Better that sort of design or taste that's hard to make explicit what that is. But the great designers like have that taste like this is gonna look good and it's not actually, again, see if jobs thing is not the opinion.

Like you can a pull, people ask what looks Better if you got you have to have the vision of that yeah and as you said, you also to develop eventually the confidence that your taste is is good such that you can accurate, you talking direct teams. You can argue that, no, no, no, this is right. Even when there are several people that say this doesn't make any sense. If you have the vision of the confidence, this will look good. That's how you come up with great designs because it's a mixture, great takes that do develop our time in the confidence .

and not a really hard thing, especially I think one of the things I love most about all of these creative pursuits is that ability to to work with the best people. Right now i'm working with my husband. We have the fourteen hundred acre island in the mediterannean we're built in bringing in the best start attacks in the best brands.

And but to have a point of view and to chAllenge people who are such artists respectfully, but not to be afraid to to ask questions that takes a lot of confidence to do that um and and IT hearts. So these are actually just internal early rendering. So we're in the process of doing the master planning.

Now this is beautiful.

And yes, this is early vision. Yeah, it's going to be extraordinary lamon's gonna Operate the hotel for us and they're going to be village and. We have carbone who's going to be doing the food and beverage. And but it's it's amazing to bring together all of this talent and for me to be able to play around and flex the the real estate muscles again. And haps some fun with IT.

Is the design, the art, how hard is IT to bring something like that to life? Because that's like delicate al out of this world?

Well, especially on an island, it's chAllenging, meaning the logistics that even getting the building materials Green island there. No joke, but but we will execute on IT. So and IT may not be this. This is sort of, as I said, early conceptual drawings, but IT gives the sense of sort of wanting to honor the topography that exists. And and this is obviously very modern, but making IT feel right in terms of the context of of the vegetation and uh and the train that exists is and not just have you know a beautiful glass box obviously you want glass you anna look out and see that gorgeous blue ocean but um but how do you do that in a way that doesn't feel generic and isn't a squander opportunity to create something new?

Integrated with the al landscape is a celebration of the natural landscape around IT. So I guess you start from this dream like that exist, feels like a dream. And then when you're faced with the reality of the building materials and all the actual constraints of the building that IT evolves from there.

yeah and so much I mean, so much of architecture you don't see, but its decisions made. So how do you how do you create independent structures where you look out of one and don't see the other? How do you sure the sort of the stacking um and the master plan works in away that's harmonious and view cord or and all of those elements, all of those components of decision making are super appreciated, but not often .

about what a view quoter .

like to make sure that the top unit, you're not looking out and seeing whole bunch unit, you're looking out and seeing the ocean. So that's where you take this and then you start angling everything and you start thinking about, well, in this context, do we have Green roof? So if there is any hint of a roof, it's camouflage by vegetation. Matches were already exists on the island where the engineers become important. How do you build into a mountainside um while being sensitive to to the beauty and of the islands.

It's also like a mathematical problem. I take a class competition geometry grade school where you have to think about the these few quarters is a math problem well, but is also an art problem because it's not just about making sure that there's no clusium to the view. They have to figure out when there is inclusions, like what is the vegetation is, you have to figure all that out. There is probably. So every single, every single room, every single building is a is a thing that has extra complexity.

And then the choice is like, how does the sun rise and set? So how do you want to angle the hotel in relation to the sunrise? In the sunset, do you obviously want people to experience those? So which do favor a the directionality of the wind in on, on an island.

And you, on this case, the winds coming from the north and the vegetation is less lush on the northern. And so do you focus more on the south thern end? And I know the horse backrib trails and amenity is up towards the the north. So there are these really interesting decisions and and choices you get to reflect on.

That's a fascinating discussion to be having. And probably there's like actual constraints and like infrastructure issues.

So all that will the rate of the lands, right, if it's super steep. So also finding the areas of topography that are flatter but still have the great views. So it's it's fun. It's I think real estate and building is like a giant puzzle and I love puzzles. Every piece relates to another and it's all sort of inner connected yeah like you said.

no post office like there everything room is different. So every single room is a puzzle when you do in their innovation. That's just saying .

and if you're not thoughtful, like gets slake at best really quirky, that works completely ridiculous.

Quark y such a funny word is that you ve walked .

into i'm sure you've walked into your fair share of like quark y rooms and sometimes like that's charming but most often it's charming when it's intentional yeah through like .

smart design yeah you can tell if it's accident or it's can tell so much I mean, the whole hospitality this is not just like house design, is how wants the thing is Operating for the hotel. Like how everything comes together. Yeah, got the culture of the place .

and the warmth. Yeah, like I think with spaces that you can feel like the soul of a structure. And I think on the hotel side, you have to think about like flow of traffic. You saw these things when you're building conomo ims or or your own home, you want to think about like the warmth of a space as well. And especially with super modern designs, sometimes like warm, the sacrificed.

And I think there is a way to sort of marry both and and that's where you get into sort of the interior design elements and disciplines and how fabrics can create tremendous warmth in a space which is otherwise sort of older were all building materials. And that's a really interesting like how texture matters, how color matters. And I think often times interior design is not IT doesn't take the same priority. And I think the I think that underestimates the impact they can have on how you experience A A rumor space.

Yes, especially when it's working together with the the architecture. Yes, yeah, fabrics and color is so .

interesting. Initial choice of .

wood that's making me feel horrible about the space were sitting like that. I need to work. This is a big to do. This is a big to do item you're making me i'll listen .

back this over and there be but I actually I appreciate the vegetation .

yeah you know .

I love about this space. There is it's is like you come through like every single element. There's a story behind that. So it's not just some you didn't have some interior design or curate your bookshop you know like nobody came in here with books by the yard.

This is basically I A uh, like this is not this is not deeply thought through, but IT does bring .

me joy yeah uh.

which is one way to do design as long as you're happy. That usually means if your taste is decent enough, that means others will be happy. Or we'll see the joy radio through IT, I appreciate you are grasping for complimenting when you got, no.

I actually, I love IT. I love you. You have like a little I love this guy that is.

yeah, you're holding on to the monkey, looking at a at at a human skull, which is particularly real IT.

And this I mean, I feel like you're really thought about all of these.

Yeah, there's robot. I don't know. I mean, I don't know how much you looked into robots, but there's there's a way to communicate love and affection from a robot and really fascinated by and a lot of cartoon's do this too. You have to when you create cartoons and non human like entities if to bring out the joy that would well um robots and and star wars to be able to communicate emotion to anger and excitement through robot is really interesting to me and people that do is successfully, uh are smile yeah that makes me smile .

for .

sure there's a there how do you do that .

successfully as you as you bring them your projects to life?

I think there are so many detailed elements they think artists know well.

But one basic one is something that people know and you know know if A A dog um is the excitement of the dog has when you when you first show up just the recognizing you like catching your eye and just showing is excitement by wigging as button and tail and all this kind of this this intensive joy that overtakes his body that that moment of recognizing something yeah it's the double take the new year, that moment of like where this joy of recognition takes over your whole cognition and usually like there and there's a connection and then the other person is exciting. You both get excited together. It's kind like that feeling. H, I put IT, you know, like when you go at airports, you get to see people who haven't seen each other for a long time, also a hug that moment, but it's awesome to watch you so much .

joy and and dogs that will have that every time you could walk into the other room to get a and milk and you come back and your dog sees you like, it's the first time. yeah. So I love replicating that in robots.

They actually say children. Like one of the reasons why pig boo is so successful is that they actually don't remember not having seen you of your seconds prior. Um there's there's a term for IT.

But I remember as when my kids were Younger, you leave the room and you walk back in thirty seconds later and they experience the same joy as if you had been, you know, gone for four hours. And we grow out of that. people. I can't .

have forever be excited by the peek of phenomena, the simple joys we were talking to, buy on fashion, having the confidence of taste to be able to serve, push through on the idea of the design. We've also mentioned somebody admins a group bin in his book, the creative act. IT has some really interesting ideas, and one of them is to accept self doubt and imperfection. So there's some battle within yourself. You have a sort of striving for perfection and for the confidence and always kind of having IT together versus like accepting that things are always going to be imperfect.

I think every day, I think I wake up in the morning and, you know, I want to be Better. I want to be a Better mom. I want to be a Better wife.

I want to be more creative. I want to be physically stronger. And and so that very much lives within me all the time. You know, I think I I also grew up in the context of being the child of two extraordinary successful parents, and that could have been debilitating for me. And I saw that in a lot of my friends who grew up in circumstances similar to that, they were afraid to try for fear of of not measuring up.

And I think somehow early on, I learned a kind of harness the fear of not being good enough, not being competed enough um and I hardest IT to make me Better and and to push me outside of my comfort zone so I think that's always lived with me and and I think you probably always will. I think you have to have humility and anything you do that you could be Better and and strive for that. I think as you get older IT, it's softens a little bit as you have more raps, you know, as you have more examples of of having been thrown in the deep band um and figured out how to swim you you get a little bit more comfortable in your sort of abstract competency. But if that fear is not in you, I think you're not chAllenging yourself enough.

Harness the fear. Um the other thing he writes about is intuition. They need to trust your instincts and intuition. That's a very recruitment thing to say but so what percent of your decision making this intuition of what percent is through rigorous careful analysis?

We just it's like trust but verify. And you know I think you I think that's also where age and experience comes into play because I think you always have sort of a gut instinct.

But I think intuition, like well honed intuition, comes from a place of of accumulated knowledge, right? So often times when you feel really strongly about something, it's because you've sort of you've been there like, you know what's right um or on a personal level, if you're acting in accordance with your core values, you know just feels good. And even if you would be the right decision for others, if you are acting outside of of your sort of integrity or core values, that doesn't feel good.

And and if you know your intuition will signal that you you'll never be, you'll never be comfortable. So I think because because of that, I start often times with my intuition. And then I, and then I put IT through like a rigorous ous test of of at whether that is in fact true um very seldom do I go against what my initial instinct was not at least at this point of my life.

He had a actually a discussion yesterday with a big time business owner investor who who's talking about being impulsive and following that, like on a phone call, shifting like the entire everything, like giving away a very large amount of money and moving IT in another direction on an impulse, making a promise that he can at that time deliver, but knows if he works hard, he'll deliver and all do the following that impulsive feeling and said, now that you know, his is a family that probably something that impulse is quite downed with his more rational, thoughtful ones on.

But wonders whether it's sometimes good to just be impulsive and just trust your gut and just go with I don't deliberate too long then you you want to do IT. It's interesting. It's the confidence of stupidity, maybe of youth that leads to some of the greatest breakthrough. And yeah, it's like there's a cost to wisdom and deliberation there.

There is but I I actually think in this case, as you get older you may act lesson pulse vely. But I think you are more like a tuned with um you have more experience. So your your god is like more well honed.

You hope so. Your instincts are more well honed, I think I found. That to be true for me, you know, I doesn't feel as like reckless as when I was Younger.

amongst many other things. You were on the apprentice. Yeah, people love you on there. People love the show. So what did you learn about business, about life from the various contestants on there?

Well, I think you can learn everything about life from the universe. So i'm just got IT just .

that one human amazing um but .

you know I IT was such a wild experience for me because I was I was quite Young when I was on IT just getting started in business and I was the number one television show in the country and I went on to be syndicated all over the world and I was just as wild like phenomenal success in a business show had never had never crossed over in the sort of way that was really a moment in time.

And um you had regular apprentice and the celebrity apprentice but but the task I mean they they went on to be studied at business schools across the country. So every other week I be reading case studies, how the apprentice being examined and talk to class is in this university in boston and you know so was extraordinary and and this was like a real life classroom I was in. So I think because of the nature of the show, you learn a lot about you know teamwork um and you're watching IT and analyzing real time, you learn a lot about a lot of the task were very marketing oriented um because of you know the shorter ation of time they had to to execute.

Um a lot of um you learn a lot about time management because of that short duration. So almost every episode would evolve into people historical over the fact that had ten minutes laugh to with this herculean left ahead of them. So so was that I was a fascinating with a fascinating experience for me.

And we would be filming, I mean we would film first thing in the morning I like five or six A M in tram tower often times like in the lobby of trust tower that's where the war rooms um and board rooms of the candidates were, the contestants were um and then we would go in the elevator to our office, we would work all day and then we'd come down and we had evaluate the task that at least weird, like real life television thing experience in the middle of our sort of on the book ends of our work day. So IT was intense. You're .

accurate, the revision version of IT and being .

and often times there was like an over leg like there were episodes said they came up with brand campaigns for my show collection or my clothing line um or um our design chAllenges related to you know hotel I was responsible for for buildings. So there was this unbelievable cross over that was obviously great for us from a business perspective that um it's sometimes to real to to experience .

what was IT like was IT was a scary to be in front of a camera when you know so many people watch. I mean that that's a new experience for you that time just the number of people watching. Yeah, was that weird?

I was really weird. I I really struggles watching myself on the episodes like I really I still do this day like television as a medium like the fact that we're taping this. I'm more self conscious than if we weren't. I just it's some hey.

I have to watch myself as after after record this before I publish IT, I have to listen to my stupid self talk so and so you're saying .

he doesn't get Better, doesn't get I still I myself, I might does my voice really sound like, no, why do I do this thing or that thing? And I find that some people are super editions and and who knows, maybe they're not either. But some people feel like there you know my father was I think like who you who you saw who got and I think that made him so effective um in that medium because he was just himself and he was totally on self conscious.

I was not I was totally self conscious. So he was IT was extraordinary but um but also little chAllenging for me. I think .

certain people are just like born to be entertainers like Elvis. I on stage, I come to life. Yeah this is where they this is where they're truly happy.

My of my guys like the great rock stars, think this is where they feel like they go on on stages, is not just the thing they do. And a the certain as per they all certain as as they don't know. This is where this is where they alive.

This is where they, they've always dreamed of being. This is where they want to be forever. Michael Jackson son was like that. Jackson, some pictures, you hang IT out like Jackson school.

He came once to a performance. I wanted to be one moment in time. I wanted professional .

ballerina OK. yes.

And I was in working really hard. I was going to the school of american link center. No cracker. I was super serious, you know, nine ten year old and and my parents came to a Christmas performance of the now cracker. And my father brought Michael drugs son with him. And everyone was so excited that all the dancers, they wore one glove that I remember he was so shy, he was so quiet um when you see him like in in smaller group settings and then you'd watching walk on the stage and I was like a completely different person like the vitality that came into him and you say that like someone on who was born to do what he did and and I think there are a lot of performers like that.

And I just in general love to see people that have found the thing that makes them come alive. Yeah OK, as I mention what to the jungle recently with a rosy and he's a guy who just belongs in the jungle.

Yeah, I does a guy where when I I got a chance to go with them from the city to the jungle, and you just see this person change of the happiness, the the joy he has when he first is able to, uh, jump the water, the amazon river, and to feel like his home with a crocket out and all that with his calling friends and probably dances around in the trees with the monkeys. So he that he, this is, this is where he belongs. I will seen that he felt that.

I mean, I I watched the interview did with him and and he felt that like you at his passion and enthusiasm, like a radiated and capital. I mean, I I love animals, like, I love all animals, never love snakes so much. And he almost made me, now, I appreciate the beauty of that much more than I did prior to listening to him speak about them.

But it's an infectious thing. He actually were talking about skyscrapers before I loved. He called trees, skyscrapers of life. And I thought that was so great. yeah.

And they are, they are so big, just like skyscrapers or large buildings. They also represent a history, especially in europe. I would like to think, look at the all these ancient buildings you like to think of.

All the people throughout history that have looked at them, have admire them, have been inspired by them. You know, the great leaders of history in france is, like napoli, just the history that contained within a building. You almost feel the energy of that history.

You can feel the stories nominate from the buildings in the same way when you look at giant trees that have been there, uh, for for decades, for centuries. In some cases you you feel the history, the stories. Ama, I I just have to climb some of them. Do you feel like there's a visual feeling of the power of the trees? It's cool.

Yeah, that's some experience i'd love to have be that disconnected being .

in the jungle, among the trees, among the animals. You will remember the year forever, apart of nature. You, you fundament our nature that this is the earth is a living organism and you're a part of that organism, and that's humbling, is beautiful. And you get to experiences that in a real, real way. That sounds simple to say.

But when you actually experience IT days with you for a long time, especially if you're out there alone, I I get to just to spend time in the jungle solo just by myself and you sit in the fear of that, in the simplicity of that, all of IT and just no sounds of humans anywhere. You just sitting there and listening to, uh, all the monkeys in the birds trying to have sex with each other all around you just screaming. And there's like romantic, I mean romantic size everything.

There's like birds there monogue for life, like my cause you could see like two of them flying. They're also, by the way, screaming each other else wonder like they arguing or is this love language? We just have these like two birds that you know have been together for a long time and there's just screaming at each other .

and body because there aren't that many animal species that are monogamous. And you highlighted one example. They release something like just they're bickering.

but maybe to them is beautiful. I don't want to judge, but they do sound very loud and very good notices. But my stall of that, it's just, I don't know.

I think it's so humbling to like feel so small too. Like I feel like when we get busy and when we're running around, it's easy to feel we're so in our head and we feel sort of so consequently like in the context to move in our own lives and then you find yourself in a situation like that and it's I think you feel so much more connected knowing how many a school you are in the broader sense and I feel that way when i'm on the ocean on a surfboard. Um you know you just it's it's really humbling to be so small and it's that vassy and IT feels IT feels really beautiful, you know, with no noise, no chatter, no distractions, just just being in the moment. And that sounds like you experience that in a very, very real way in the amazon.

And the power of the is cool. I swiming into the ocean, feeling the power of the ocean. You just like this spec.

and you can't fight IT, right? You just have to sort of be in IT. And I think in surfing, one of the things I love about IT is feel like a lot of water sports, like manipulating the environment, you know and there's something that can be a little like I learn about IT.

Like you look at wind surfing and where's with surfing, you're like in harmony with IT. So um you're not fighting at you. You're flowing with IT and you still have like the agency of choosing which waves you're gona serve. And you sit there and you you read the ocean and and you've learned, understand IT, but you can control IT what's .

IT like to like. Like falling your face when you trying to serve what I hadn't served before. I just feels like I always see videos of one. Everything goes great. I just one thing when IT doesn't the ones people.

So um well, I actually had the unique experience of one of my first time surfing. I only learned a couple of years ago, so i'm not good. I just love you.

I love everything about IT. I love the physicality. I love being in the ocean. I love the everything about IT. The hardest st thing with surfing is paddling out because when you're like committing, you catch a wave. Obviously, sometimes like you know, you flip over your board and that doesn't feel great.

But when you're in sort of the line of impact and you've maybe served a good wave in and now you're going out for another set and you get sort of stuck in that impact line, there's like nothing you can do. You just sort of sit there and you try to dive underneath IT and IT will pound you and pound you. So i've been stuck there well.

And you know, four, five, six waves just like crash on top of your head and and the worst thing you can do is get reactive and you know um and scared and and try and fight against that. You kind of just have to flow with that until and availability there's a break and then paddle like hell back out to the line. I'm order to the beach what you know whatever you're feeling but if that to me that's the hardest part um the .

puddling out how did life change when your father decided to run for present?

Well, everything changed. You know, almost, almost overnight. We learned that he was planning to announce his candidacy two weeks before he actually did. And nothing about our lives had been constructed with politics and minds.

You know the most often when people are exposed to politics at that level, that sort of national level, there's first like city council run and then maybe a state level run and and maybe maybe you know congress, senator um ultimately the presidency. So IT was unheard of to for him never to have run a campaign and then run for president and and win. So IT was um IT was an extraordinary experience there.

There was so much intensity and so much scrutiny um and and so much noise. So that took for sure like a moment txt mate to not sure ever fully acclimated, but IT IT definitely was um was a super unusual experience. But I think then the the process that unfolded over over the next couple of years was also like the most extraordinary growth experience of my life. You know, suddenly I was going into communities that I ve probably never would have been to. And I was talking with people who, in thirty seconds, would reveal to me their deepest and security, their gravest sphere, their wild distensions, all of IT with the hope that in telling me that story, IT would get back to a potential future president of the united states and have impacts for their family, for their community. So the level of canter and vulnerability people have with you is not like anything i've ever experienced and I don't the apprentice before people may know um who I was in some of these situations that I was going into, but they would would have shared with me these things that you got the impression that often times their own spouses wouldn't know and they wouldn't do so within thirty seconds. So you learned so much about what motivates people, what drives people, what their concerns are as you grow so much as a result of that.

So when you're in the White house, people, unlike in any other position, people have a sense that all the troubles are going through. Maybe you can help yeah so they put IT all .

out there and and they do so in such a raw, vulnerable and railway. It's it's shocking and I opening and um and super motivating. I I remember once I was in new hampshire and i'm early on right after my father head had announced his kenza had a man walks up to me in in the greeting line and within around five seconds he had started to tell me a story about how his daughter had died of an overdose um and how he was worried his son was also addicted to aides his daughters friends, his son's friends and and it's heartbreaking it's it's heartbreaking and it's it's something that I would experience every day .

and talking with people .

and story just .

stay with you always you know I took a long road around the states in my twins and kind of think about doing IT again just just for like a couple months for that exact purpose. And you can get these stores when you go to like a bar in the world of nowhere and just sit and talk to people and they start sharing and it's reminds like beautiful the country is IT reminds several things one the people h IT show you.

There is a lot of different actions that's for um but as I know that people are strugling all the same stuff yeah and always said that time, I wonder what IT is now. But at that time, I don't remember on the service like political divisions, there is a republican and democrat and so on. But like underneath the there are people are all the same.

The concerns are all the same. There's not that much of a division right now. The the surface division has been amplified even more maybe because the social media, I don't know why um so I would love to see what the countries like now but I suspect probably is still not as divided as IT appears to be on the surface. What the media shows, what the social media shows. But what did you experience in terms of the division?

I think couple reactions to what you just said. I think the first is your when you connect with people like that, you are so um inspired by their courage, you know in the face of adversity and the resilience. And it's like a truly remarkable experience for me.

The campaign lifted me out of a bubble I didn't even know I was in, you know I grew up on the up right side of new york, and I felt like I was well, well educated. And I believe that, I believe at the time that i'd been exposed to divergent for viewpoints. And I realized during the campaign how limited my exposure had been relative to what I was becoming. So there was a lot of there was a lot of growth and that as well. But I do think you think about the vitreal in politics and you know whether it's worse than it's been in the past or not, I think that's up for debate. I think you know there have been few, there have been duals and there been screaming and there's into politics has always been a blood's board and it's always been incredibly vicious I think in the toxic sort of social media ates more amplified and um there are there's more sort of democratization around participating in IT perhaps um and IT seems like the voices are louder but it's always been IT feels like it's always been that but I don't believe most people are like that and and you know you meet people along the way and they're not leading with what their politics are you know there they're telling you about their hopes for themselves and their communities and and IT makes you feel that we are a whole lot less divided then mean, as the media, others would have us believe.

I though I had to say haven't deals sounds pretty cool. Maybe I just remember to size western, my must clean with movies. Okay, but it's true. Like you read, some of the stuff like internal with politics used to be in the history in the united states.

Those those folks weren't pretty like way often, actually, but they didn't have social media, so they had to go at grill hard in the media was rough to. So all like that. The fake news, all of that does not recent been not stop.

You know, I look at the surface division, the surface bickering. And that might be like just a feature democracy. That is not a bug of democracy is a feature where in the state conflict is the way we resolve.

We try to figure out the right way forward. So in the moment, IT feels like people just turning each other apart, but really were trying find the way we are. Like in the long ark of history, IT will look like progress.

But in the short term, ge sounds like people making stories up about each other and calling each other names and all this kind of stuff. But in the, there is a purpose to IT. I mean, that's what freedom looks like. I guess that's what i'm trying to say and is Better than the alternative.

I think that the vast majority of people aren't participating in IT. You know, I think there's a minority of people that are doing most of the yelling, screaming and the majority of americans just want to and their kid to a great school and while their communities to thrive and. Want to be able to realize their their dreams and aspiration. So I saw a lot more of that. Then IT would feel obvious if he looked at like a twitter feed what went .

into your decision to join the White house as an adviser.

You know, the campaign I never I never thought about joining, I was kind of like get to the end of IT. And when IT started, I was like everything in my life was almost firing on all cylinders. I tw Young kids at home during the course of the campaign, I ended up I was pregnant with my third so this Young family, my businesses, real state and and fashion and working alongside my brother is running the trump total collection.

And with so many, my life was full and busy and and so there was a big part of me that was just wanted to get through just get through IT um without really thinking forward to what the implications are for me um but when my father one, he asked jd and I to join him and in asking that question, you know keep in mind he was total outsider so there was no bench of people um as he would have today he had never spent the night in washington D C. Before yeah staying in the White house and so when he asked us to join him, he trusts us. He trusted in our ability to to execute.

And there wasn't a part of me that could imagine the seventy or eight year old version of myself looking back and having been OK with having said no and going back to my life. As I knew IT before, I mean, in retrospect CT I realized there is no life as you know IT before you know um but but just the idea of of not saying yes wherever that would lead me and and so I I dove in you know I was also during the course of the campaign, I was just much more sensitive to the problems and experiences of americans. I I gave you an example before of the the father new hampshire, but not even just in my consumption of information. I and I had A A business um that was predominantly Young women you know many of which were thinking about having a kid had just had a child. Um we're planning on on that life event and I knew what they needed to be able to shop every day and and realized the dream for themselves and and the support structures they would need to have in place.

And I remember reading this article um at the time and one of the major newspapers of of a woman SHE had had a very solid job working at one of the bluechip um accounting firms and the recession came SHE lost her job around the same time as her partner left her and over a matter of months he lost her home so SHE wound up with her two Young kids after bouncing around between neighbors living in their car SHE gets a call back from one of the many interview SHE had done for a second interview where he was all but guaranteed the job should that go well and he had arrange childcare for her two Young children with with a neighbor um in her old department block. The morning of the interview SHE shows up and the neighbor doesn't answer the doorbell and stand for five, ten minutes, doesn't answer, so he has a choice. Does he go to the interview with her children, or does SHE try to cancel? SHE gets in her car, drives to the interview.

Leaves are two children in the backseat of the car with the window cracked, goes into the interview and gets pulled out of the interview by police because somebody had called the cops after seeing her, her children in the boxes of the car, SHE gets thrown in jail. Her kids get taken from her, and he spends years fighting to regain custody. And I think about that's an extreme example, but I think about something like that.

And I say if I was the mother and we were homeless, like, would i've gone to that interview? And I I probably would have and that is not like an acceptable situation, you know. So you you hear stories like that and then you get asked where you come with me.

And it's really hard to say, no, no. I spent four years in washington. I feel like I left IT all in the field. I feel really good about IT and and I I feel really privileged to have been able to do what I did.

a chance to help, to help many people, saying, no means the your kind of turning away .

most .

people yeah yeah but then it's the term al of politics that you're getting into IT really is a leap into the abyss. What was the like trying to get stuff done in washington in this place where politics as a game um IT feels that way maybe from an outsider perspective. And you go in there trying, given some of those stories, trying to help people, what's the way to get anything done?

It's an incredible cognitive lift.

That's nice way to put IT .

up to get things done. There are a lot of people who would prefer to clean to the problem, and they're talking points about how they are gonna solve IT rather than sort of all up their sleep and do the work IT takes to build coalitions of support and find people who are willing to compromise and move the ball. And so it's extremely difficult, and you and I talk about all the time, and IT probably should be because these are highly consequential policies and impact people's lives at scale, shouldn't be so easy to do them and they are doable, but it's chAllenging.

You know, one of the first experiences I had where IT really was just a full ground effort was um with tax cuts and and the work I did to um get the child tax credit doubled LED as part of IT and IT just meant meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting with lawmaker convincing them of why this is good policy um going into their districts campaigning and their districts helping them convince their constituents of of why it's important, of why childcare import is important, of why paid family leave is important um of different policies that in pass working american families. So it's um it's hard, but it's it's it's really rewarding. And then to get that done, I mean, just the child tax credit alone, forty million american families got in an average of two thousand two hundred dollars each year as a result of the doubling of the child tax credit at one component tax cuts.

When I was like researching this stuff, you just get to think the scale things, the scale of impact is forty million families. Each one of those is a story as a story of struggle, of trying to give a large party you left to a job, while still being able to give love and supporting care to a family, to kids and to manage that. Each one of those is a little puzo that they have to solve.

And the life and death puzzle, it's a, uh, you can lose your home, your security, you can lose your job, uh, you can see stuff up with parenting so you can mess all that up trying to hold them together. And government policies can help make that easier or can in some cases, make that possible. And you got to do that a scale out of like five or ten families, but like forty million families. And that's just one thing.

Yeah the people who shared with me their experience and you know, during the campaign, that was what they hope to see happen when you were in there IT was what they were seeing, what they were experiencing, the result of the policies and and that was that was the fuel. You know, on the hardest days like that was the fuel child tax credit. I remember her visiting with a woman, britain husband.

He came to the White house, said two small children. SHE was pregnant with her third. Her husband was killed in a car accident. SHE was in school at the time.

Her dream was to become criminal justice vacant that was no longer on the table for her after he passed away, and he became the sole learner and provider for her family. And SHE can afford childcare. SHE can afford to stand school.

So he ended up creating a child care center in her home. And her center was so successful because in part of different policies we worked on, including the child care block grants that went to to the state. He ended up opening additional centers I visited hurt one of them in colorado.

Now SHE has like a huge focus on helping teenage moms who don't have the resources to afford quality childcare for their kids come into her centers and programs. And you know, it's stories like that of the hardships people face, but also what they do with opportunity when they're given IT. Um that really like powers you through tough moments when you're in washington working about .

the process of life, bringing that to life. So the child tax credits, so doubling them from a thousand two thousand per child. Well, what are the chAllenges of that getting people to compromise? I'm sure there's a lot of politicians playing games with that because maybe it's the republican. They came up the idea or democratic up with the idea so they don't want to give created idea. Probably all kinds of games happening when when the game is happening, you probably forget about the families each politician thinks about how they can benefit themselves if you get like the serving part of the role is possible.

There were definitely people I met with, a washington I felt that was true of, but, you know, they all go back to their districts, and I assume that they all have similar experiences to what I had, where people share their stories. So theyd be something really cynical about thinking they forget. But you know, some do you hope.

get people together. What's that take? Trying to get people to compromise, trying to get people to see the common humanity.

I think first inform, as you have to be willing to talk with them. So, you know, one of the policies I advocate for was paid family leave. We left in nine million more americans had IT through a combination of securing IT for a federal workforce. I people in the White house who are pregnant, who didn't have access to to pay leave. So we want to keep people attached to the workforce yet when they have an important life event like a child, um we create an impossibility for that.

You know some people don't even have access to to unpaid leave um if their part time workers and and so that and um and then we also put in place the first ever a national tax credit for workers making under seventy two thousand dollars a year where employers could then offer IT to their workers. That was also part of tax cuts. So you know part of IT is is really taking taking the arguments as to why this is good, smart, well designed policy to people and you know was one of my big surprises that um on certain policy issues that I thought would have been well socialized, the policies that existed were never shared across the aisle.

So people just lived with them maybe in hopes that one day they would have the votes to get exactly what they want. But I was surprised by how little discussion there was. So so I think part of IT is be willing to have those tough discussions with people who may not share your viewpoint and be an active listening her when they point out flaws and they have suggestions for for changes um not believing that you have a monopoly on good ideas. And and I think there has to be a lot of humility and in architecture these things and um and a policy should benefit from that type of around IT input .

yeah b to see like you said, well, design policies is probably like the details are important to like they just just like with architecture and you walk the rooms this probably ably really good designs of policies, economic policy that helps families that delivers the maximum amount of a money or resources to families that needed and is not a waste of money. So like that, there are probably really nice designs. There are nice ideas that are by parties and that has not do with politics as to do, which is great economic polis scrip policies, and that requires listening .

quires trust to, like I learned, tax cuts was really interesting for me because I met with so many people across the political spectrum on advancing that policy. I really figured out who was willing to deviate from their talking points when the door was closed and who wasn't you know, IT takes some courage to do that, especially without charity that I would actually get done.

You know we are especially if theyve campaigned on something that was slightly different. And um you know not everyone has that courage. So through tax cuts I I learned the people who did have that courage and I went back to that well time and time again on policies that I thought was we're important, some where we're by partisan.

The great american outdoors act is something it's incredible policy and yeah, it's amazing. It's one of the largest pieces of conservation legislation. The national park system was created, and you know, over three hundred and million people visit our national parks of us, majority of them being americans every year.

So this is something that is real and beneficial for people's lives. Getting rid of the different maintenance, permanently funding them. But there there are other issues like that, that just weren't being prioritized, modernizing vocational education. And it's something I became super passionate about um and and help lead lead the charge on, I think in in amErica for a really long period of time, we've really believed that education stops when you leave high school or college and that is not true and that's a dangerous way to think. So how can we both galvanized the private sector to ensure that they continue to train workers for the jobs they know are coming and how they train their existing workforce into the new jobs with robotics or machines, air new technologies that are coming down the pike. So galvanizing um the private sector to join us in in in that effort or whether it's the legislative side, like the actual legislation of of percent t which was focused on on vocational education or whether it's the ability to use the White house to gravani ze the private sector, we got over sixteen million commitments from the private sector to retraining scale workers into the jobs tomorrow.

Yeah there's so many experts of education that you helped access the stomach of your science education. So the the city thing you're mentioning, modernizing career tech education, that's millions, millions of people. The act provided nearly one point three billion dollars annually to more than thirty million students to Better line the employer needs and all that kind stuff, very large scale policies that help a lot of people. His education .

often isn't like the great chinese object everyone's run towards. So one of the hard things in in politics, when there's something that is good policy, sometimes that has no momentum. Because IT doesn't have a cheer leader.

So where are areas of good policy that you can like literally just Carry across the finish line? Because people tend to run towards what's the news of the day sort of to try to address whatever issues being talked about on the front pages of papers. And there are so many issues that they need to be addressed.

And you know, education is one of them that's just under prioritized in a human trafficking. That's an issue that I didn't go to the White house thinking I would work on. But you hear a story of a survivor, and you can not want to eradicate one of the greatest evils that the mind can even imagine, you know, the trafficking of people, the explosion of children.

And I think for so many, they assume that this is a problem that doesn't happen on our shores. You know, something that that you may experience that far flung destinations across the world, but it's happening there and it's happening here as well. And so through a coalition of people that on both sides of the air that I came to trust and and to work well with, we were able to get legislation, which the president sign past nine pieces of legislation, combating trafficking at home and abroad and digital exploitation of children.

How much of a told does that take? Seeing all the problems in the world is such a large scale the man save at all. Was that hard to walk around with that? Just knowing how much sovereignty in the world as you're trying to help all of IT, as you're trying to design government policies to help all that, it's also a very visual recognition that there is suffering in the oil. How difficult is that to walk around with?

You feel IT intensely. You know, we were just talking about human trafficking. I mean, you don't design these policies and the absence of the input of survivors themselves, so you hear their stories. Remember A A woman who is really influences, and my thinking Andrea had well, who SHE was in college, where he was lord out by a guy he thought was a good guy, started dating him.

He gets her hooked on drugs, convinces her to drop out of college and spends the next five years selling her SHE only got out when he was arrested and all too often that's happening to that, the victims being targeted um not the perpetrator. So we did a lot with the O J around changing that and um but now she's helping other survivors get skills and job training and um the thai tic interventions they need. But you you speak with people like Andrea and so many others and I mean, you can not your your part gets seized by IT. And it's both. It's motivating and it's hard.

It's really hard. I was just talking to a brain surgeon. Many of the surgery has to do. He knows the chances, a very low success, and he says that that wears, that is armor. Yes, he chips away is like only so many time i'm going to do that .

and think godd, he's doing that because I bet sure there are a lot of others that don't choose that particular field .

because of those suck. But you can see the pain in his eyes, like maintain your humanity while doing all of IT. You can see the story. You can see the family that loves that person, you feel the monster of that and you you you you you feel the heart break involved with mortality in that case and was suffering also in that case and general allies in human trafficking um but even helping families try to stay a flow, trying to break out or escape poverty, all that you need to see those stories struggle is not easy um but the people .

that really feel.

the humanity that feel the painter that are probably the right people to be politicians. But it's probably also why you can't stand there too long.

It's the only time in my life where you actually feel like there's always a conflict right between work and life and making sure and I I as a woman, i'd often get asked about and how do you baLance work and family and and I never I never like to that question because baLance it's like elusive your your one fever away from like no baLance you know like your child.

Sc one day a what do you do um there goes baLance or you know you have a huge project with a deadline. There goes baLance like I think a Better way to frame IT is, am I living in accordance with my priorities, maybe not every day, but every week, in every month, and and reflecting on, have you architected a life that alliance with your priorities so that more often than not you're where you need to be in that moment. And service at that level was the one time where you really you feel incredibly conflicted about having any priorities other than serving.

It's fine, you know, every business i've build your building for duration, you know, and then you go to the White house and IT is santanna class. Whether it's four years or eight years, it's a finite period of time you have. And most people don't last four years.

I think the average in the White houses, eighteen months exhAusting. But it's the only time when you're at home with your own children that you feel you think about all the people you've met and you feel guilty about any time that spent not advancing those interests in to the best of your capacity. And that's a hard that's a hard thing.

That's a really hard feeling as a parent and it's really chAllenging them to be to be present, to always need to answer your phone, to always need to be available. It's um it's very difficult. It's taxing, but it's it's also the greatest privilege in the world.

So through that the torn mol, that the hearts of that was draw a family throughout jet and the kids who is that .

like that was that was everything you need to have that to have the support systems I had in place with with my husband. And, you know, we had, we had left new york and wound up in washington, in new york. I lived ten blocks away from my mother in law, who, if I wasn't taking my kids to school, he was.

So we lost some of that, which was very hard, but we had what mattered, which was each other. And um and you know, my kids were Young when I got to washington, theo, my Young gest, was eight months old. And arabel, my oldest, my daughter was five years old, so they were still quite Young.

We have a son, Joseph s. Three, and and I think for me like the dose of levity coming home at night and having them there and just joyful and. IT was super grounding and important for me.

I still remembers the o um and he was around three, three and half years old. Jerry used to make me coffee every morning, and I was like my great luxury that I would sit, that he still makes up for me every morning. I told him I never for the life, I separately know how to actually work the call, but I convinced him that I no idea how to work the option.

Now i'm going to be a good if the skill I don't want to learn because it's it's one of his like acts of love. He brings me coffee every morning in bed while I read the newspapers and um and then I would watch this and so he got her to teach him how to make coffee and they'll learn how to make like a full blown catinot. And he was so he had so much joy in every morning bringing me this cap china.

And I remember like the sound of his little steps, you know, like the slide dis IT was so cute coming down the hallway with my like perfectly formed capital. Now I trying to get him to make me coffee. And he's like, come on. Not that was a moment in time, but we had a lot of like, little moments like that, but we're just amazing. So yeah.

I got a chance to chat with him. And he is a his silliness and sense of humor is, ah it's really joyful. Yeah I guess see how that could be in escape from the madness washington of the adult life.

the adult we really kept, like our homelife, pretty sheltered from everything else. And we were able to do so because they were so Young, and because they weren't connected to the internet, they were too Young for smart phones. All of these things, we were able to shelter and protect them and allow them to have as Normal as upbringing as as possible in the context we were living. And and we've brought and continue to bring me so much, so much joy, but they were, I mean, without chair and without the kids, that I would have been much more lonely.

So three kids, you've not upgraded. Two dogs and a hamster .

are second dogs. We we rescued him thinking we thought he was probably like part german shepherd. Part lab is what we were told he's now I don't even know if he qualifies as a dog. He's the .

size of a horse sima.

Um so I don't think he has much a lab in ham. I think we chose that is now wanted to do a DNA test um because he really wanted a german shepard. So he a german shepherd.

He is gigantic and we also have a hamster who is the newest addition because my son theo, he tried to get he tried to get a dog as well. A first dog, winter became my daughters dog as SHE wouldn't let her brothers play with him or sleep with him, and was old enough to vote them into submission. So then joe wanted a dog and got symbol. Fiona wants the dog and has bester the hamps's. In the interim, they will see.

What advice would you give to other mothers just having planning on having kids and may be advised yourself hug featuring out this puzzle.

I think being a parent um you have to cultivate within yourself like hidden levels of empathy. You have to really look at each child and see them for who they are, what they enjoy, what they love and and. And meet them where they are at.

And I think that can be enormously chAllenging when your kids are so different in temperament you know as they can older, that difference in temperament may be within the same trial depending on the moment of the day. Um but is is really I think it's actually made me um a much softer person, a much Better listener. I think I see people more truly for for who they are as supposed to, how I want them to be sometimes.

And I think being a parent is three children who are all tional and all incredibly different has has enabled that in me. I think for for me though, they've also been like some migrate test teachers and that we were talking about the the present you felt when you were in the jungle and the connectivity you felt and sort of the simple joy. And I think for for us as we were older, we kind of disconnect from that.

Like my kids have taught me how to play again. And that's beautiful. I remember just a couple of weeks ago, we had one of these crazy miami torrential down for us and arabel comes down at around eight o'clock at night. It's it's really raining and she's got rain boots and the drama pants on and she's going to take the dog for a walk right, which you know he had all day walk and but he wasn't doing IT because they needed to go for a walk.

SHE was like, this would be fun and i'm standing in the doorstep watching her and he goes out with Simon, went her, this massive dog and this little tiny dog, and i'm watching her walk to the end of the driveway and she's just dancing and it's pouring and I took off my shoes and I went out and I joined her and we dency in the rain. And even as like a protein who Normally, she's like allowed me to experience the joy with her, uh and IT was IT was amazing. We can be so much more fun if we allow ourselves to be more playful.

We can be so much more present. I look at if you love games, so we play a whole lot of board games, any kind of games. Um so he started with board games.

We do a lot of puzzles that IT became car games. I just told him how to play poker. He he loves back him and like any kind of game and he's so fully in them you know when he plays, he plays my son Joseph. He loves nature and he'll say to me sometimes when like i'm taking a picture of something he's observing like a beautiful sun, said his mom. Just experience that you just just experience, you know, so so those kids have taught me so much about sort of reconnecting with what's real and what's true and being present in the moment and an experiencing joy.

You must give you permission to the set of a ignited inner again, and IT essentially what you said, that the puzzle of noticing each human being like what makes them beautiful, that the unique characteristics like what they're good at ah the way they want to be mattered like I I often see that um especially with coaches and athletes, Young athons inspiring to be great.

Each athlete needs to be trained in a different way, like I for example, with some need a softer approach. Like with me, I always like like a dictatorial approach. I like the coach to be this like menacing figure. That's one that brought out the best in me. I didn't want to be friends with the coach. Like I want to almost like weird to say, I yelled that like to be pushed but that doesn't work for everybody and that's a risk you have to take us in the coach context of like because you can just feel like everybody yeah you have to figure out like what does each person need and when um you have kids, imagine the business even .

harder and when they only different things but yet co exist and are sometimes competitive with one another. So you'll be at a dinner table the amount of time I can well, that's not fair.

Why did you let and my life isn't fair and by the way, like i'm not here to be fair, i'm like i'm trying to give you each what you need especially when i've been working really hard and you know I in the White house that say, okay, well, now we have a sunday and we have these hours and i'll have like a grand plan, you know, and we're going to make a count and it's going to involve, you know, hot chocolate and slid and whatever whatever IT is that like my great adventure. They we're going to go play minal and then I come down all staked up already to go and the kids of zero interest. And there are a bit a lot of times i've been like we're doing this thing and and then I realized wait is so good.

You know like sometimes you just like plop down on the floor and start playing magics, you know and like that's where they need you. And so so those of us who have sort of like alpha personalities who sometimes it's just just witness like witness what they need, don't like play with them and allow them to lead the play, don't force them down the road you may think is more interesting or productive or educational or ratifying, just be with them, observe them and and then show them that you are genuinely curious about the things that they are genuinely curious about. Think there's a lot of love when you do that.

Also, there's a just faster puzzles are talking to a affray yesterday. He has four kids and are they fight a lot and SHE SHE generally wants to break up the fights. But she's like, i'm nature.

If i'm just supposed to let them place, can they figure IT out? But you always break break them up because i'm told that it's okay of the fight. Kids do that.

They kind of figure out their own situation. That's part of like the growing up process. But you wanna always especially it's physical. They're like pushing each other. You want to stop IT, but uh, at the same time is also part of the play, part of the dynamics, and that's proposal you also to figure out. And plus, you're probably worried that they're going to get hurt.

I think there's like when IT gets physical, yeah that's like, okay, we have to in ervine, I know you're into bartie arts, but but that's Normally like the red line s IT once IT tips into that. But there is always that you know like you have to allow them to problems off for themselves like a little in our personal conflict is is good. It's really hard when you try to navigate something these everyone thinks you're taking their side.

You have often times in complete information. It's um I think for parents, what tends to happen to is we see our kids fighting with each other in a way that all kids do and we start to project into the future and like catastrophes. You know if like my two sons are going through a moment where they're like oil and water, anything one wants to do the other doesn't want to do, it's like a very interesting moment. So my instinct is they're not going to like each other when there are twenty five you know you sort of project into the future as opposed to recognizing this is a stage I to went through and it's Normal and not building IT in your mind into into something that's unnecessarily consequent .

is short term formative conflict.

不要。

so uh， ever since twenty sixteen, the the number in the level of attacks you have been under has been steadily increasing, has been .

super intense.

How do you walk to the fire of that? You've been very stock about the whole thing. I've don't think i've ever seen you respond to an attack.

You just let IT pass over you. You stay positive and you focus on solving problems. And you didn't engage while being in dc. You didn't engage into the back and fourth fire of the politics. So what's your philosophy behind that?

I appreciate your saying that I was very stuck about that. I think, you know, I feel things pretty deeply. So initially, some of that really took me off guard, like some of the derivative love and hatred, some of the intensity of of of the attacks.

And there were times when I was, I was so easy to counter IT, i'd even write something out and and say, well, i'm going to. I'm gna present and never did I. I felt that sort of getting into the mud fighting back IT didn't run true to who I am as a human being, like I didn't IT felt odds with with who I am and how I want to spend my time.

So I think as a result, I was often times on the receiving end of a lot of a lot of trip shots, and i'm OK with that because it's sort of the way I know how to be in the world. I was focused on things I thought mattered more. And you know, I think part of me also internalized.

There's a concept in judaism called blushin hara, which is translated into, I think, quite literally, evil speech. And the idea that you speaking poorly of another is almost the moral equivalent to murder, because you can't really repair IT. You can apologize, but you can't repair IT.

Another component of that is that IT does as much damage to the person saying the words and then IT does the person receiving them. And I think about that a lot. I talk about this concept with with my kids a lot. Um and i'm not willing to pay the Price of that fleeting and momentary satisfaction of sort of swinging back because I think I would be IT would be too expensive for my soul and and that's how I kind of made peace with that because I think that's just that feels more true for me but IT is a little bit contrary in politics. It's uh it's definitely um it's definitely a contrarian viewpoint um to do not get into the fresh actually somebody I love delhi pardon is that SHE doesn't condemn, criticize SHE loves and except and I like that IT feels IT feels right .

for me I also like they said that words have power. It's not sometimes people say the words when you speak negatively of others.

Are that just words? But I think there's a cost to that is a cost, like you said, your soul and as a cost terms of the damage can do to other person uh whether to their reputation publicly or to them privately, just as a human being psychologically, in the end, in the place that IT puts them because they think they start thinking negatively in general and maybe they are responded as the vicious downwards that happens that almost like we don't intend to, but IT destroys everybody in the process you call IT down. And what I love in a saying, quote, you are under no obligation to be the same person you wore five minutes ago. So how of the years in dc, in the years after change, you.

I love Allen, wants to, I listen to his lectures, sometimes falling asleep. He's got like an own plane. He's got like the most using voice. But but I love what he's said about you have no obligation to be who you are five minutes ago, because we should always feel that we have the ability to evolve and grow and and and Better ourselves like I think further than that, if we don't look back on her who we were a few years ago with some level of embarrassment, we're not growing enough, right? So there's nothing.

When I look back, i'm like of you note it's I feel like that that feeling is you know because you're growing into into hopefully sort of a Better version of yourself. And I hope and feel that that's been that's been true for me as well. I think the person I am today, you know we spoke in the beginning of our discussion about some of my early estaminets and real estate and and fashion and those are an amazing adventures and um and incredible experiences in government and I feel today that all of those ambitions are more fully integrated into me as a human being.

I'm much more comfortable with the various pieces of my personality and that any professional drive is more integrated into more simple pleasure like everything for me has gotten like much simpler and easier in terms of what I want to do and what I want to be. And um I think that's where you know my kids have been. My teachers just being fully present um and enjoying like the little moments and IT IT doesn't mean I am any less like driven than I was before. It's just more a part of me then being sort of the all consuming energy one has their twenties.

Yeah, I just think about your mom able to let go. Yeah, enjoy the water, the sun, the beach. Yeah, and enjoy the moment, the simple, the simplest of the moment.

I think a lot about the fact that you for for a lot of Young people, they they really know what they want to do, but they don't actually know who they are. And then I think as you get older, hopefully you know who you are and you're much more comfortable with ambiguity around what you want to do and accomplish. You're more flexible in your thinking around those things .

and give yourself permission to be who you are. yeah. You made the decision not to engage in the politics of the twenty twenty four campaign.

If it's the killing, you read what you rode on the topic. Well, I love my father very much. This time around, i'm choosing to prioritize my Young children, and the private life were creating as a family.

I do not plan to be involved in politics. While I will always love and support my father going forward, I will do so outside the political arena. I'm grateful we've had the honor of serving american people, and I will always be proud of many of our administrations accomplishments. So can you explain your thinking, you're philosophy behind that decision?

In first and foremost, that was a decision rooted in me being a parent, really thinking about what they need for me. Now, you know, politics is is a rough, rough business. And I think it's one that you also can't, devin, I think you have either be all in or or all out.

And I know today the cost they would pay for me being all in emotionally in terms of my absence, add such a formative point in their life and i'm not willing to make them Better at that cost. I serve for four years and feel so privileged to have done IT. But as their mom, I think it's it's it's really important dead.

I do it's right for them and and I think they're a lot of ways you can serve. You know, I think there's obviously, we talked about the enormity, the scale of what can be accomplished and in government service. but.

You know, I think there's something equally valuable about helping within your own community in I volunteer with the the kids a lot, and we feel really good about that service. It's different, but it's no less meaningful. So I think there are other ways there are other ways to serve.

I also think from you know politics is um is a is a pretty dark world like there's a lot of darkness, a lot of negativity and it's just really at odds with what feels good for me as a human being. And you know IT is IT is a really is a really rough business. Um so so for me in my family IT IT feels right to not participate .

so IT wears on your soul and yeah there is a bit at least from north that is perspective, a bit of darkness in that part of our world. I wish I didn't have to be this way.

I think .

part of that darkness is just watching all the legal tormal is going on. What's the like for you to see that your father involved, that going through .

that on a human level? It's my father and I love him very much. So it's it's painful to experience. But I ultimately, I wish you going to have to be this way.

I like IT that I need all this. I love my father's, the thing that you lead with. And so true and IT is family, and I hope I miss all this turmoil. Love is the thing that wins.

IT usually does in the end.

Yes, in the short term, there is like we are talking about, this is a bit of bitching, but I don't know more duals.

No deals .

image for.

That's the same that .

this was i'm not very good at the thing. I'm trying to okay that we both of the part so you're you're biking to like music. So maybe you can mention why love that partner.

I definitely would love to take love to interview her. She's such an icon. SHE is in about you.

What I love about her and I really come to love her in recent years. She's so authentically yourself and she's obviously so talented and and so a completion the extraordinary woman. But I just feel like he has no conflict within herself as to who he is. Um SHE reminds me a lot of my mom in that way and and it's super refreshing and and really beautiful to observe somebody um somebody who's so in the public lie being so fully secure and and who they are, what they are, talent is and what drives them. So I think she's amazing and SHE leads with a lot of like love and positivity, so I think she's very cool.

I hope you have a long conversation. Yeah increate musician, song writers, performer yeah also can create an image and have fun with that. You know like have fun being herself like over the top.

IT feels that way, right? Like she's really SHE enjoys after all these years that feels like she's enjoy SHE like and enjoys what he does. And you also have the sense that if .

he didn't SHE won't do and that's right. And just an iconic country musician, country music singer yeah um there's a lot we've talked about a lot of musicians who do you enjoy? Imagine a double seeing her perform.

Hang out with her yeah I mean, she's extraordinary. Her voice is unreal um so he is I found her to be so talented and she's so unique in that three year old love her music SHE was actually the first concert there are bell ever went to and medicine square garden when SHE wish he was around for and nine year old love her music. And that's pretty rare to have that kind of band with a resonance.

So so I think she's so talent. We actually just saw her. I took all three kids in lost bagus around a month ago, Alice Johnson, whose case I had worked within the White house. My father commuted her sentence. Her, her case was brought to me by a friend, came cardan's an and and he came to the show.

We all went together some neutral friends, and I was like a very profound IT was amazing to see adel, but IT was a very profound experience for me to have with my kids because SHE wrote with us and in the car on the way to the show and and SHE talked to my kids about her experience and her story um and how her case found its way to me and and I think for Young children is very abstract you know policy and so for her to be able to share with them this was a very beautiful moment and LED to a lot of really incredible conversations with each of my kids about are time in service because, you know, they gave up a lot for for me to do IT. Actually Alice told them the most beautiful story about the play he used to put on in prison, how these shows were like the hottest ticket in town, like you could ck IT into them. They always extended their run and um but for the people who were in them, a lot of those men and women had never experienced applause.

Nobody had ever shown up um at their games or at their players or and and clapped for them. And the emotional experience of just being able to give someone that you know being able to stand and and applaud for someone and how meaningful that was. And he was showing us pictures from these different productions and was IT really was a beautiful moment.

Alice actually after um her sentence was committed and and he came out of prison together we worked on twenty three different parts or commutations. So so the impact of of her experience and how he was able to to take her her opportunity and and create the same opportunity for others who were deserving and and who SHE believed and was, was very beautiful. So anyway, that was an extraordinary concert experience for my kids to be able to have that moment.

a story. So just that the sort, the we are dancing at .

a deal .

exactly, exactly like that.

Turning point later was .

almost to the days policy that meeting meaning of the my result in a major turning point in her life .

and I is life and all you .

yeah I mean, you mentioned also other I seen commutations where it's it's an opportunity that been and consider the ways that the justice system does not always work well.

Um I in cases when it's nonviolent crime and a drug of fences there, there's a case of a person you mentioned that received the license for selling weed yeah you know and it's just the number hundreds of thousands of people are in federal president jail and system for drug for selling drugs. But that's the only thing with no violence on their record whatsoever. And it's obviously there's a lot of complexity. There's the details matter, but often times the justice system does not do right in the way we think right is. And it's nice to be able to step in and how people like and .

right overlooked and they have no advocate. Jared um and I helped in a small way on his effort but he really spearheaded the effort on on criminal justice reform through the first step back, which was an enormously consequential piece of legislation that gave so many people another opportunity and that was amazing working with him closely and that was was a beautiful thing for us to also experiences together.

But in the final days of the administration, you're not getting legislation passed um and anything you do, administrative vely is going to be probably overturned by an incoming administration. So you know how do you use that time for max mum results? And I really like duggin on pardon and commutations that I thought were were um we're overdue and and we're worthy and and my last night in washington D C. I the gentleman you mentioned corvan, I was on the phone with his mother at twelve thirty in the morning telling her that her son would be getting out the next day you know so and I felt really it's it's one person but you see with Alice like the ripple effect of know the commutation granted to her and her ability and the impact you'll have within her family, with her grandkids. And now she's an advocate for so many others are voiceless, you know, felt like felt the perfect way and four years to be able to um to be able to call those parents and those kids in some cases and give them the news that I loved .

one was coming home and I just love the good image of you came cardio with kids.

Well, kim wasn't .

at the adelson.

but he had connected as I was beautiful.

Yeah like can hold just like the bad athas you has on stage like the SHE does like hardbake songs like but than anyone or no, it's not even hard break like what that genre of song like growing in the deep like a little anger, a little love, a little like some a little attitude. And like one of the greatest voices ever, all that together.

just her by herself, just strip IT down and the power for voice. You know, I think about that one of the things you are talking about life music at one of the amazing things now is you they're so much incredible concert material that's been uploaded to youtube. So sometimes I just sit there and watch these old shows um we both love Steve wave on like watching him perform. You can even find old videos that, like .

jane moment of the songs, you really like us to use this texas .

flood my bucket list .

is to learn how to see the you made me feel so good, because for me, taxi flies was the first so long guitar ever learned, because for me was the like the impossible solo yeah. And then so I work really hard to to learn IT is like one of the most iconic of blues songs, texas blue songs. And now you made me falling over the song again.

I want to play IT, at the very least put up on youtube, because that is is so fun and provides in when you lose yourself in the song. IT really is a blue song. You can have fun with that. I hope you do do that.

Throw honest, very garden.

I want you .

to play IT for me, but he, he's amazing. There are so many great performers that are playing life now, you know, I just saw a Chris stapleton and show he's an amazing country. Ara.

he's too good, good but .

lucas Nelson, one of my favorite to see live. And there are so many incredible songwriters and musicians that are out there touring today. But I think you also, you can go online and watch some of these old performances.

Like jangle ran heart was the first because I torture myself was the first song I learned to play on the guitar. And I took me like nine months to a year. IT was, I mean, I should have chosen a different songs, but U A two, one or more.

His one of his songs was and IT was like finger's style. And I was just going through and and grinding IT out and and that's kinder how I started to learn to play by playing that song, but to see these old videos of him playing, you know, without all his fingers and and the skill and the dexterity. One of my favorite ite life performances is actually who really influence to deal is a read the um and he did this.

He did a version of amazing Grace. Have you seen this video? No, I cry.

Look up. IT was in L A, was like the temple missionary baps church. Talk about to strip down. She's literally at, I mean, just listen to this.

When you can do what now and you could just kill IT. The pain, the soulfulness.

the spirit you feel in her when you watch .

this that's true. A doll Carry some of that .

spirit also. Yeah and you can take away all the instruments with the done just have that voice and it's so commanding and it's so made. Anyway, you watch this and you see like the arc of also the experience of the people in the quire and then starting to join in and it's anyway, it's amazing.

I love watching a queen for market queen performances. Yeah like terms of focus and .

just like great stage .

for mance.

He's so cool. We put at that .

for his second go to that .

part where where he's saying radio gaga and they're all um mimicking at his armory is so cool.

Look at .

that.

So that's an example of person that was born this so well.

we were talking surfing. We are talking, you did. Do I think life music is one of those kind of rare moments where you can really be present where something about the anticipation of choosing what show you're going to go to and then waiting for the date to come on Normally IT happens in the context of community. You go with friends and and then allowing yourself to sort of fall into IT is is incredible.

So you've been training .

digital, trying.

I mean, i've seen you you just extremely various, like athletic, you know you know how to use your body to commit violence, maybe Better ways of phrases in that. But anyway.

in a skill that .

has been honed, I mean, what do you like about?

Well, first, while I love the way I came to IT, IT was my daughter. Um I think I told you the story. She's at eleven. He told me that SHE wanted to learn self defence and and he wanted to learn how to protect herself, which I just as a mama was so proud about because and eleven was not thinking about defending myself if you know, I loved that he had sort of that desire and awareness.

Um so I I caught some friends actually mututulo friend of ours and asked around for for people who I could work with miami and they recommended the voluntary brothers studio. Um you've made all three of them now, these remarkable human beings, they've been so wonderful for our family. And first starting with arBella used to take her and then sh'd can not encourage me and SHE sort of pull me into IT.

And I started doing IT with her, and then Joseph theo sauce doing IT. They wanted to start doing IT and how they joins and the Cherry joints and where we're all doing student. For me, there's something really empowering, knowing that I have some basic skills to defend myself.

I think it's something as humans, we've kind of gone away from. You look at any other animal and you know even the giraffe, they'll use their neck, the line and the tiger, every species. And then there's us, you know who most of us don't. And I didn't know how to protect myself and I think that IT IT gives you a sense of confidence and also gives you kind of a sense of calm, you know knowing how to do escalate rather than to escalate a situation.

I also think as part of the training, you um you develop more natural awareness when when you're out and about and I feel like especially you know everyone's get on a nevva or and like the first thing people do is pick up their phone. You're walking on the street there. People are getting hit by cars because are walking into traffic.

I think as you start to get this training, you become much more aware of the broader context of what's happening around you, which is which is really healthy and good as well. But it's been beautiful. They actually the valentine brothers, they have this seven, five, three coat that was developed with some of the sort of sami principles and minds. And all of my kids have memorized IT, and we'll talk to me about that at the o he's eight years old, hill. He was able to recite all fifteen how you know but nevertheless and um and fitness and nutrition and flow and awareness and baLance and its an unbelievable thing they'll actually integrated into conversations where they're talk about something that happened yeah rectitude, courage, but evidence.

respect, honesty, honor, loyalty. This is not about judicial techniques of fighting techniques. Is this boat way of life about the way you interact with the world, with other people, exercise, nutrition, rest, hygd, positivity. That's more on the physical side of things, awareness, baLance and flow.

It's the mind, the body, the soul. Effectively is how they break IT out. And and the kids can only advances and get stripes if um they really internalize this.

They give examples of each of them and and my own kids will come home from school and theyll tell me examples of how things happen that were in aligned with the seven, five, three codes. So it's it's a framework work, much like religion is in our house and and can be for others. It's a framework to discuss things that happen in their life, large and small and and has been beautiful. So so I do think that like body mind connection is is super strong and injured there.

So there's many things I love about the volunteer brothers, but one of them is the how rude IT is in philosophy, in history of martial, ts and general. You know, a lot of places you will practice the sport of IT, maybe the art of IT, but to recognize the history and what that means to be a martial artist broadly on and off the math, that's really great. And the other thing is great.

They also don't forget the salt defense root dixie fighting routes. IT is not just a sport. It's a way to defend yourself on the street in all situations.

And that gives you a conference, just like you said, an awareness about your body and awareness about others. IT is, you know, sadly, we forget, but there is a so the world's ll of violence, or the capacity of violence. So it's good to have an awareness of that and a confidence how to essentially avoid .

IT one hundred percent. I've seen IT with all of my kids and and myself how much i've d benefit IT from that. But um that self defense component and the philosophical elements of you did pater will often tell them about like we were and sort of soft resistance and um and some of these sort of more eastern philosophies that they get exposed to through through their practice there that are sort.

Of non resistance that that are beautiful and and hard concepts to finalized as an adult. But but especially um you know when you're twelve, ten and and eight respectively. So it's it's it's been an amazing experience for us all.

I love people like page or because he's like finding books. They're like a japanese and translating them to to figure out like the details of a particular history like he's a he's like an alter, a scholar of martial arts. And I love that elephant people give everything, every part of themselves, to the thing they're practicing.

You know, people been fighting each other for a very long time. And I love from the color is on, you can't fake anything. You can lie about anything.

Yes, it's is truly honest. You're there and use the winner lose and simple. And that's like it's also humbling that the reality that is humbling and often .

times in life things were not that simple but not that black and White.

So it's nice to have that that's that's the biggest thing I get from you just to get my in my aska. He was the humbling and and it's nice to just get mbl in a very clear way. Sports in general, I think fing prom magine you know yeah face planting, not being able to stay on the board is humbling and the power of the wave is humbling.

Just like your mom, you're an adventure. Are there your your bucket list is probably like one hundred and twenty pages. The third things like just pop to mine that you're like thinking about, especially your future. Just saying.

I hope IT always is long and I hope i've never like exhausted expLoring all the things i'm curious about. I always tell my kids whenever they say you mom, my board only boring people get bored. There's too much to learn.

There's too much to learn. So i've got a long one. You know I think obviously there are some like immediate tactical you know interesting things that i'm doing.

I'm incubating a bunch of businesses and investing in a bunch of companies that hope leo always can continue to do that about the fun things i'm doing in real state now. So those are all on the list of things i'm passionate and excited about. We are continuing to explore and learn.

But um in terms of the like the the ones or more peer sort of adventure hobby, I think i'd like to climb mount common jara. I actually I know I would and I the only thing keeping me from doing IT in the short term, as I feel like i'd be such a great experience to do with my kids and i'd love to have that experience with them. I also told at arbela we were talking about this, our tree competition that happens in mongolia.

And he loves horse background. Some like I feel like that would be an amazing thing to experience together. Um I want to get barreled by a wave and and learn how to play texas flood.

I want to see the northern lights like I want to go and and experience that. I feel like that would be really beautiful. I want to get my black belt like you.

I asked you how long did um but so I want to get my black belt. And jude, that's like that's going to be a longer term goal but within the next decade um yeah a lot of things you know i'd love to go to space. I'd like not just space, I think i'd like to go .

to the moon like step .

on the moon yeah or float you know, in close proximately like that famous photo yes.

just you know .

this face too. I feel like mars is, at this point of my life, what the moons like, four days feels more, more manager.

But the sunset on mars is blue. The opposite color I here is beautiful. Might be worth that. I don't know, negotiate with. Yeah.

yeah.

Let me know how that goes. Let me know that goes. I think actually, just even going to space, we can look back on earth. Yeah, I think that just to see this little .

a blue e blue.

that just all of the stuff that ever happened in human civilian is on that. And to be able to look at look at IT, yeah I just be in nothing. That's the .

thing that I think being interplanetary hope is that that hidden for us how rare IT is what we have, like how precious the earth is. I hope that IT I hope that IT has that effect ah because I know I think there's a big component to to interplanetary travel that kind of taps into this kind of manifest destiny inclination like the human desire to conquer territory and expand um the footprint of civilization that sometimes feels much more rooted in like dominance and conquete then curiosity, wonder um and obviously I think there's you know maybe an existent al imperative forward at some point or a strategic and security one. But but I hope that what feels inevitable at this moment I mean you know you on mask in what he's doing with space action, jeff basis and others IT feels like it's not and if it's it's a when at this point I hope IT also underscores like the need to protect what we .

have here yeah and it's I hope is the curiosity that drives that exploration. And I hope the exploration will give us a deep preparation of the thing we have back home. And the earth will always be home, and it's a home that we protect and celebrate. What gives you hope about the future of this thing? We have gone on human civilization, the whole thing.

I think I feel a lot of hope when i'm in nature. I feel a lot of hope when I am experiencing people who are good and honest and pure and true and passionate. And that's not an uncommon experience. So those experience give me help.

The other humans were pretty cool.

I love humanity. We're awesome. You know, not always, but but we're pretty good .

species the most part on the whole right. We create some beautiful stuff. And I hope you keep creating, and I hope you keep creating.

You have already done a lot of amazing things, build a lot of amazing things. A, and I hope you keep building and creating and a doing a lot of beautiful things in this world. evoker. Thank you so much for talking today.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with the vote trump, the support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with the words from mars.

Draw on the beauty of life, watch the stars and see yourself running with them. Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.