Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Governor Christine Todd Whitman

I recently interviewed Governor Christine Todd Whitman on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a former governor and cabinet member. Christine Todd Whitman is the only woman to serve as governor of New Jersey. Elected twice as governor before becoming the head of the EPA. Governor Whitman, thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Delighted to be with you. You grew up in Old Wick, New Jersey.

Governor Whitman: Where I still live. I live on the farm on which I grew up.

Adam: And you grew up in a family deeply engaged in politics. When you were nine, you attended the Republican convention and met Dwight Eisenhower, who was president at the time. When you were in college, you worked on Nelson Rockefeller's presidential campaign. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Governor Whitman: Well, I'm the youngest of four children by eight years, which meant that I was the one at the dining room table when my siblings were away in college and boarding school. I was always listening to my parents talking about what was going on in the world, what was happening in the state or the local community, and I got fascinated by policy. I also got exposed to a lot of politics. As you mentioned, I was at the convention when I was nine, the 1956 convention out in San Francisco. And I did a lot of the grunt work, the stamping, stuffing, sealing, and sending that you did back in those days, before the days of the internet, when you mailed things out, doing the mailers out, and also did door-to-door. And I can remember particularly going to one door where the person said, it's my right not to vote. I couldn't argue with that. But my feeling, I think I was about 13 at the time, was, yeah, but if everybody felt that way, we'd be in pretty bad shape. And unfortunately, it seems to me we've gotten pretty close to that in primaries, particularly in this country, which is a real problem for us. But I was always interested in politics. And since I'd done so much domestically, when I got to Massachusetts, where I went to college, I majored in international government. And then things just, as so often happens with careers, quote, unquote, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated. I had a minor in history, majored in international government, thought maybe the State Department, something like that. What had happened was the summer between my junior and senior year, I'd interned down in Washington with the last Republican senator from the state of New Jersey. That's been a rather long time. And it wasn't so much that experience, although that was a good one. It just happened that that place where I found housing, the house was rented by a gal who had a full-time job on the Hill. And when I graduated from college, She called and said, look, my congressman has just been appointed to the head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, which was a poverty office that Kennedy had started. And this was under the Nixon administration. And she said, would you like to come down and help move him from the House to OEO? I didn't have anything else to do. So I said, sure. And one thing led to another. And so that was Don Rumsfeld. And I ended up being an aide to him for a while at OEO. Then, it just happenstance. I met the chairman of the Republican National Committee, and this was 1969, when we were having race riots in the cities and the college campuses, anti-Vietnam demonstrations, where the National Guard had actually shot students. And I'd been thinking about why wasn't the political process working in this instance, and had developed in my mind a program to reach out to these various groups and just sit down with them across the country and say, what's wrong? Why aren't you using the political system? And I pitched that idea to the Republican national chairman, whom I happened to meet at a lunch where dad was Republican state chairman at the time. And he invited me to come along to a state chairman's lunch. And lo and behold, the national chairman said, do it and hired me on the spot. And so I said, as in most of life, a lot of it is serendipitous. You've just got to be willing to take advantage of the opportunities as they come.

Adam: I love it. So much of it is just showing up, putting yourself out there, being there, being present. When you have ideas, not being afraid to share them. You had an idea, you were really young, but that didn't stop you from putting it out there, from sharing it with people who had the ability to green light it. And that was the beginning of how things got started.

Governor Whitman: Exactly. It is just precisely that, being willing to get out of your comfort zone as well. Because later on, when I was elected to local office, we were calling them freeholders in those days. Now they're calling them county commissioners. And I was asked by the then Republican governor if I wanted to become president of the State Board of Public Utilities and be part of his cabinet. And I knew nothing about regulating utilities other than garbage, which at that point in time, the Board of Public Utilities did regulate. And I knew about that, having dealt with it as a freeholder as a county commissioner. So I said yes, because it exposed me to the entire state and made me a part of the governor's cabinet, which was a real learning experience. And getting in there was a real learning experience. But what I did was the same thing I'd done when I was elected as a freeholder, was I went around to the various departments because at that point, VPU regulated telephone service, and we'd just broken up AT&T, so you had interrelates and interrelates. I knew nothing about them. You did gas, water. We did garbage. I went to each one of the departments and said, what is your biggest issue? What's your biggest concern? What keeps you up at night? Where do we need to focus? By doing that and listening to them and learning, I didn't try to know everything because there was no way I was going to. And that's one thing I found in any job I've had. There are always going to be people there who know more than you do because they've been doing it all their lives. The key is to find the good people and to listen to them and then to go from there.

Adam: You shared a lot of great nuggets that are key themes of so many conversations with so many of the most successful leaders. The importance of getting out of your comfort zone, humility, commitment to learning, the power of listening, asking questions, and just taking a step back, recognizing that There are always going to be people out there that know more than you and the way that you're going to be successful is by showing up with the humility to recognize that and the desire to listen to the people around you who can help you get better, who can help you get to where you ultimately want to be.

Governor Whitman: I grew up riding horses, so I use that analogy. But when I was governor and appointing a cabinet, one of the things I'd said is I'd always prefer a horse that I had to rein in than one I had to kick. So I wanted cabinet members who were willing to come to me with new ideas, who were willing to say, no, what you want to do here is crazy. You really shouldn't do it. I mean, at the end of the day, I made the decisions. But I wanted people who were coming up with ideas. And I mean, I didn't know anything about transportation. I knew enough. But that's what I wanted my transportation secretary to do, to say, hey, here's something new we can do. Here's how we can improve this particular system. I didn't want to, as the CEO, be the hands-on administrator of everything. You can't do that. So you have to pick good people that you can trust, and they will do better, I have found, if you give them their head. and let them come up with ideas, let them challenge and push things. I mean, you have to rein them in at times. You have to say, nope, you're getting ahead of me. I'm not ready to do that. Concentrate over here. But for the most part, you get a lot more done that way. And it's better quality. It's things you wouldn't have thought of. I mean, you can't think of everything.

Adam: What's the hardest decision that you had to make as a leader? And what advice do you have for anyone listening on how to effectively make the difficult decisions?

Governor Whitman: Well, the first thing you have to understand is you can't make everybody happy. There's no way. Everybody has different needs, different priorities, different concerns. And so what you have to do, at least what I always did, was I decided what was in the best interest of the greatest number of people, not what the last person who came in said to me. And understanding that there were going to be some people who wouldn't be benefited by this decision and some that might actually be hurt and try to figure out how do you mitigate that. But probably the hardest in a personal way along those lines was when we deinstitutionalized some of our facilities that we had for mentally and physically challenged people. I listened to a lot of the professionals and they said, look, these people can do much better if they're in home settings, if they're out in the community, they can hold jobs, they can be productive. But meeting with the families, they were terribly upset because they said, look, my son, their daughter is in a facility, they know the routine, they know what they have to do, they're comfortable. Don't do this because that's just going to upset everything. And I said, look, I promise you we're going to fund these places. We are going to monitor them. We're going to follow up. And we did it. And the best part was parents coming up to me afterwards saying, I never thought my son or daughter could do this. I never thought they could be a grocery clerks. I didn't think they could handle this kind of job. But by breaking it up, instead of just institutionalizing them, by giving them a positive experience and an opportunity to grow, they responded, but it was tough because it was very emotional for the families. I understood what they were saying. I would probably have felt much the same way, and they didn't trust government. They didn't trust that we would continue to fund these community settings, and we did. That was a promise I made to them, and that was something that I made sure was taken care of in the budget.

Adam: What you shared reminds me of a conversation I recently had actually with a CEO who said that as a leader, you know what the right decision is almost every single time. But the challenge is, do you have the courage to make that right decision? Because there are always going to be reasons why It's easier for you not to make that right decision. And as a leader, you have to make those decisions. That's why you're there.

Governor Whitman: That's the whole point. The other thing is, I've said this to a lot of classes that I've spoken to, is the definition of being a leader is getting other people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it. And what that means is you've really got to know why you think this is an important step to take, why it's going to benefit people, what has brought you to this decision. Because if you don't understand that fully yourself and believe it yourself, you'll never be able to convince others that this is the right decision. So it's important that leaders also fully believe this is the right decision. It's going to be tough, but it's the right decision. And very many times I've also said to a lot of people, I think we give too much leeway or we're too afraid of the people that yell the loudest because they are allowed to influence outside of their field or outside of their right or it doesn't collate to their numbers actually. One of the earliest controversial jobs, as it were, I had was when I was a county commissioner. It was my reelection year, and the men on the board, because it was all men and me, and the men on the board said, the state demanded that we establish a waste facility in the county. I said, okay, you do that. You're in charge of that. And of course, that was not going to make the community happy wherever it was located. But what I did was I was very clear and said, we're looking all at county-owned land. We're going to try not to move it to any place that we'll have to do a taking. These are the things we have to do. I had a public hearing that went till 2 in the morning. I left the public record open for as long as possible. When we decided on the site, that was my re-election year. I didn't win it by as much as I'd won it before, but I still won that community. Because I think they didn't like the decision at the end of the day, but they appreciated the process. And I really believe that as long as people think you're honest and believe you're honest, and you're trying your best, and you're doing a fair process, that they will support you. They may not like it at the end of the day. They may not like that decision, but they get it. They understand it, and they'll move on.

Adam: I love it. And I love your philosophy and approach to leadership, which is almost verbatim Dwight D. Eisenhower's approach to leadership.

Governor Whitman: He's the one that said that first about leadership.

Adam: I don't know if he gave you that quote when you were nine. Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do what you want to be done because he wants to do it.

Governor Whitman: Right. That's what he said. I don't think he gave it to me at nine, but I've read enough about him. We didn't engage in a deep conversation. I just handed him something I'd made at camp to hold his golf tees.

Adam: How do you get someone to do what you want to be done because they want to do it?

Governor Whitman: I think it's explaining the need. It's like solving so many problems. I've found if you take people who are opposite sides of an issue and put them together and say, look, is this a problem we need to solve? And if they say yes, then you say, okay, get in that room and do it. I mean, we did it at EPA, where non-road diesel engines, which are backhoes tractors and things like that, are actually a bigger polluter than the on-road diesel engines, because they tend to be more concentrated in cities and things like that, where you're doing a lot of construction. They're a bigger mess. And so when I came into office, my scientists were saying, look, this is a big issue. We've got to do something about it. We just approved the leftover Clinton regulation on road diesel engines, but they said this off-road is really critical. And I was told, look, you can't do that because that's the backbone of the administration. Those are the farmers. Those are the construction workers. But what I did is I found one engine manufacturer that said, well, we're willing to talk about it. I put them together in a room with one of the leading environmental groups, Environmental Defense Fund, OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, who actually controls Washington, although people don't understand that because they control every budget, and my people. And I said, sort this out. See what we can do about this. And they came out with a regulation that everybody liked, that all of the group approved of, Now it has reduced those non-road diesel emissions, the pollution, by about 98%. And I even got a letter from the National Resource Defense Council saying it was probably the best thing done for human health since we took lead out of gasoline. And I got people on the Hill who were telling me I was going to ruin their industry. They had engine manufacturers in their district and I was going to kill it all. Didn't happen. Because we put them together in a room and say, if we all agree this is a problem, then let's agree how to solve it. But we all have to have a place at the table.

Adam: And that's such an important topic, especially today, when it seems like it's harder and harder than ever to build consensus. It's harder and harder than ever to get people to see eye to eye on certain topics, on certain issues. When you're in a professional setting, you have to work with people who you might not necessarily agree with, who you oftentimes might not necessarily like. And it's something that every single one of us has to learn how to do.

Governor Whitman: Absolutely. Even on the most difficult of issues. I mean, let's take abortion. If you put pro-choice and anti-choice people together and say, look, let's start looking at this seriously, a huge percentage of them will agree that there should be protection for the life and health of the mother. You can start peeling back the onion so that you come to a point where you can't get beyond it. And there's just, okay, this is where we stop as to when you can have or can't have an abortion or who has to say. But you will find there's a lot of room for positive discussion and come to a place where people are comfortable with the decision. Not everybody's going to get everything they want, but it still can work out.

Adam: And that's an important lesson, especially as we're thinking about listeners who are showing up at work, working with people who they might disagree with, who they might not like. Focus on that commonality. Focus on the positive elements of the discussion rather than harping on the negative elements of the discussion. There are always going to be negative aspects that we can spend all of our time focused on. But to your point, there's a lot more that we have in common than that divides us.

Governor Whitman: No, absolutely. Without question. I mean, we all basically want the same thing. We want security. We want the ability to support our families or ourselves. We want the opportunity for success for people to move forward. The proverbial American dream, whether that includes a house or not and something else, but whether people want that or want to live in a city, it doesn't matter. But we want safety. We want security. We want opportunity. We want to feel that we're being protected by rule of law. so that we can feel we have that safety and security and know what's happening. It's pretty basic, and that's the same for people all over the world, to different degrees, obviously, depending on your situation and how dire it may or may not be relative to things like hunger and war. But what we all want is peace. We want to be able to raise our families if we have them or live our lives the way we want to live them, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. And to ensure that we have adequate food, we have the kind of protection that we need, and a roof over our head.

Adam: Something you shared right at the beginning of our conversation, how you got started, a willingness to get outside of your comfort zone. Your first run for major office was a Senate race. You ran against Bill Bradley, a legend, and you were a heavy underdog in the race. You lost, but you made it a close race, and that was really what launched your career on a national level. How did you get to a place where you were willing to take on that race, knowing that you were likely going to lose? How were you able to get outside of your comfort zone? And what advice do you have for anyone on how they can push their comfort zone, how they can get there?

Governor Whitman: Well, it was 1990, as you said, and Bradley was looked on as the next Democratic presidential nominee. He won his first reelect by 16 percentage points. And that was the end of the woman who had run against him. And so it was a real gamble. I mean, I was the underfunded unknown. But at that point in time, I had decided that the best job in the world would be governor of New Jersey. And I didn't like the way things were going. We had a governor who had just come in raising taxes on everything. And people were leaving. We lost 350,000 jobs in the three years before he was defeated. It was bad in the state. And I thought I could make it better. I cared. I wanted to do something. And by running for the Senate, even though there was a chance if I'd been defeated by 16 percentage points, that was it. But at least it exposed me to the entire state. But as small as New Jersey is, we are very divided, and the South always wants to secede from the state. So you have to get around, and you have to see people and get to know people on the ground in all the different counties and different parts of the state. And this gave me an opportunity to do it. And fortunately for me, Bill Bradley, with whom I didn't disagree a lot, we were pretty much the same on a lot of the positions, certainly international. and most domestic, but the only thing I can figure out is he believed his press and he believed his people in Washington who said, don't worry about this. She doesn't have any money. We have 12 million in the bank. She doesn't even have a million. Don't worry about it. Don't give her any cover. Don't talk about her or anything. And so he didn't. And every morning, every day, I would wake up and I'd say, OK, when is he going to knock me out? because the thing I kept hammering him on, which the people were so upset about at that point, were these taxes. And I kept asking, what does he think about the taxes in New Jersey? And he would not respond. And all he had to do was to get up and say, look, I hate taxes as much as the next person, but the U.S. Senate doesn't have anything to do with the state taxes, and I've got to give the governor his credit. He knows the budget. He knows what needs to be done. Simple. And it would have taken me out. I mean, then we wouldn't have had that much that we could have fought back on, but he wouldn't do it. And then he didn't want to debate, which is true of every incumbent. They never want to debate the challenger. And so it's the only time I've ever used sexism, as it were, because we finally put out a press release quoting him from several different times when he said how important debates are to the political system and to democracy, and said he either must feel it's beneath him to debate a woman or he's afraid to debate me. And within 24 hours, we had two debates. because I was able to at least appear credible and put two or three sentences together during those debates. That kind of surprised him and surprised a lot of people. And then there was a lot of just anger vote because of what the governor at the time was doing. And so he only beat me by just about three percentage points, which gave me the base because the party actually hadn't helped me at all. In fact, the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee had promised me $300,000. which we were going to use at the very end of the campaign for media, and they took it away within the last week and said, sorry, we have other candidates that are trying, other first-time people running for office, and we think they'll do better than you will. So they took it away, which didn't happen. I did better than any of those other challengers, but it meant that I didn't owe anybody anything. So what I did is I put together a political action committee to help local candidates, and I just spent the next three years going around and helping doing research on issues that they didn't have the ability to research. I was able to raise enough money to do that because it had been so startling that Bradley had come that close to being defeated. And he basically never ran again. He never ran for the Senate again. He thought about the presidential a couple of years ago, but that didn't happen.

Adam: Your entire political career was ultimately the byproduct of being able to get to a place where you made a really hard decision. That race could have ended your career as you shared, could have gone either way. You could have gotten blown out instead you made it an incredibly competitive race a lot of people Regardless of what they're pursuing aren't necessarily willing to put themselves out there and take that step What advice do you have for anyone on how to get to that place?

Governor Whitman: Well if you believe strongly enough in something and you want to achieve it you got to go for it nobody's going to do it if you don't and you've got to believe in yourself. That's one of the harder things to accept is you've got to have an ego. You've got to believe in yourself. If you don't believe that you're the best person for that particular position, why should anybody else support you? It doesn't mean you have to be arrogant. It's just within yourself, you've got to say, yes, if I get this, I can do it. And particularly for women, that's important because we tend to, when asked to do something that's outside of our comfort zone, we tend to say, well, there's somebody else who knows more about it, probably somebody who can do it better than I can. And stop it. We need people from all walks of life. to make the kinds of decisions that will stand the test of time. We need people who have different life experiences, have different ways of approaching problems, different sets of priorities. We need all those things because that's who we are as a nation, as a world. And they have to be at the decision-making table. And we've seen studies time and again that shows how businesses do better when they have a more diverse board, that companies do better, that politics do better. One party states, I don't care whether it's Republican or Democrat, are not good for anybody. They don't serve anybody as well as they should. So it's one of those things where anybody can do it, but you also can't take it lightly. If you're going to do it, if you're going to take on a challenge, learn about it. You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to know more than anybody else, because that isn't going to happen, but know what it is you want to do and why you want to do it.

Adam: Those are two great tips. Step in with confidence. And how do you step in with confidence? Through preparation by putting in the work. There's always going to be noise, there's always going to be doubt, but to the best of your ability, shut out that noise, shut out that external noise, shut out that internal noise. Recognize that if you put in the work, if you're prepared, you're going to be able to add value. Like you said, every single one of us brings something different to the table. We all have a unique set of experiences, a unique background, ultimately a unique perspective. What is yours? What makes you different? What makes you special? What makes you unique? Understand that, recognize that, appreciate that, and bring that to the table. When you value who you are, when you value what it is about you that makes you special, and you share that with the world, the world is going to be so much better for it.

Governor Whitman: Yes, and also remember there's only one person you get up with every single day and look at in the mirror. And you've got to be true to yourself. You've got to be able to look that person in the eye and say, yes, I made the decision for the right reasons. Maybe it was the wrong decision, but I believed it was for the right reasons. Because even all of us make wrong decisions based on what we know and what we don't know. It'll happen. And people learn also as much from defeat and from mistakes as they do from success. Don't be afraid to falter. It's like people who run for office once and lose and don't go back again. And you want to say, no, you spent all this time, you've gotten your name out there. More people know you than ever before. Don't squander that. Go back at it. Maybe it's the third time that's a charm, but often it's the second. If you really believe in something, if you really want something, you've got to go for it.

Adam: What's the biggest mistake that you made as a leader and what did you learn from it?

Governor Whitman: My biggest mistake, I think, was not reaching out to former governors while I was governor to spend a little more time learning from them. You get so overwhelmed. There's so many things coming at you all at once. And I had some extra special little things that came at me right after the election as governor with an errant campaign manager who said some untrue things that caused a huge brouhaha. But I should have spent a little more time with them. I don't regret. One of the things I'd run on was a 30 percent income tax cut in three years. And every time people get, after, are you going to do it? Are you going to do it? Yes, I'm going to do it. And then after I was elected, they said, well, OK, now what are you going to do? And I said, I'm going to do it. And I heard some rumblings from the legislature, even the Republicans, because they control the legislature, saying, well, you know, things are difficult. Once you get in office, you see new things. So I had a feeling they were not going to be on board with this the way I would have liked them to have been. So what I did was I prepared a, I mean, you're about these executive orders, but this is a bill. It wasn't an executive order, actually, that I had prepared for my inaugural address. And I didn't tell the legislature that I was doing this. And it was Republican. And the Republican leadership was all sitting behind me. The whole legislature was on the stage when I did my inaugural address. And it was the year that Bill Clinton had retroactively increased income taxes. And so I said, if Bill Clinton can retroactively increase income taxes, I can retroactively cut them. And I've got a bill here to sign right now that starts the first cut of the income tax. Well, of course, the audience went wild because that's what they wanted. It didn't do great things for me with the legislature, but I figured I had to start this. Otherwise, they would put up the roadblocks. And once we got rolling, we did it in the three years. And 450,000 new jobs had come into the state by the time I left. And we balanced the budget and had the largest rainy-day fund and all those good things too.

Adam: You've spent your entire life around the most successful leaders in the world of politics and around so many successful leaders outside of the world of politics. Who are the best leaders that you have been around and what did you learn from them?

Governor Whitman: The best leaders, obviously Eisenhower, but I learned from him by reading about him, obviously, not getting to know him. In a funny way, I wasn't a good leader, but a brilliant person was Richard Nixon. I mean, he was fatally flawed, and I never was that comfortable with him, but he was certainly in international relations. He was a calculated risk taker and very bright, knew what he was doing. Other leaders, my parents were as big an influence in my life as anybody. And one of the things that they always said is, good policy is good politics. And I always believed that if you're really doing the right thing, if you're working hard on policy, not letting partisan politics dictate, but really policy and solving problems, that that will accrue to your benefit in the political realm when you run for office. That's the best way to do it. And always, to be honest, my father's word was his bond, and both sides of the aisle appreciated that and respected him when he was state chairman, because you don't lie. I wouldn't be good at it anyway because I'm sure I couldn't remember what I told somebody if I wasn't telling them what I knew had happened or knew was going on. I just wouldn't have been very good at it. But his leadership and my mother's leadership, watching them, watching how they interacted with people, how they respected people from all walks of life, those were the values that were really instilled in me and that gave me the confidence to do what I tried to do.

Adam: Governor Whitman, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Governor Whitman: Find their passion. What is it you care about? Do you care about health? Do you care about the environment? Do you care about the arts, education? And then find out where those decisions are being made and learn about it. Learn what changes can be made, what kind of changes you think should be made. And then be heard. I mean, one of the things that people forget, having been a county local office holder, nobody comes to those meetings unless they're complaining about something. If you want to go to those meetings just to talk about an issue, then you're being heard. And if you have a positive thing to say, not just a negative, yelling and screaming, but the positive, look, here's the issue, and here's how I think we ought to do it. Then you get known as someone who is thoughtful, as someone who wants to be engaged. And people will start reaching out to you, and people within the political structure will reach out. Of course, now I'm co-founder of a new political party, which is different than the two current ones, but it still holds true that if you're someone who can add a positive element to a discussion on any of the issues about which you care, you will start to be respected and known, and the opportunities then will open up. I really started when my husband and I got married, moved to England. When we came back, I was asked if I'd be on the county college board of trustees, and that was a way to get to know the other players in the county, the political people in the county. And so I said yes, and one thing led to another. So besides the fact that I enjoyed that very much, it really comes down to that, comes down to finding what it is that you really care about. Whatever it is, find your passion and then follow it.

Adam: Do you have any advice for anyone listening on how to find their passion if they haven't already found it?

Governor Whitman: When you go on the internet, what do you read? What are you looking for when you talk to people? When you're out walking or when you're working, are you enjoying that job? Is your mind wandering to other things? What other things is it wandering to? What are you reading? And what kind of reading do you do that says, I'm really interested in this area or that area? It's a question of knowing yourself, of getting to know yourself, getting to know what excites you. Getting to know what makes you feel good when you go out, when you get up in the morning, as you can do different things. And don't be afraid to, in this day and age, certainly people move from job to job pretty Rapidly, in the old days, you'd join one company and you'd be there for life. As I say to my grandsons who are now deciding on what they're going to do as 19-year-olds, about to be 20, don't be afraid to change your major in college. You may think this is what you want to do and then discover, no, really it isn't. And don't be afraid if you get into a job that you don't like. I hated the bureaucracy of the federal government. I knew after spending the time I did at the Office of Economic Opportunity; this was just not the career for me. And I was fortunate enough to be able to find others. It'll come to you. It comes to everybody. And some people don't want to do anything. Some people are happy where they are. I have one friend who's been a secretary all her life. She's very comfortable with that. She does an incredible job. That's her ambition. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that.

Adam: A lot of it really comes down to know thyself, understand who you are. It's a process. It's a journey. But once you get there, you're there.

Governor Whitman: Exactly. And it doesn't happen necessarily overnight. It is a gradual thing.

Adam: Governor Whitman, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Governor Whitman: Well, thank you for having me. It was my pleasure. And tell everybody, go to forwardparty.com to learn about a new and different way to handle our politics.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and on LinkedIn and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.