More than 12,000 people attended the sold-out Pennsylvania Conference for Women, which included a highly anticipated conversation between former first lady Michelle Obama and television producer Shonda Rhimes.
Obama has been a strong advocate for LGBT rights, speaking out against a Mississippi anti-LGBT “religious-freedom” bill in 2016 and hosting the Democratic National Committee’s LGBT Gala in 2013.
Rhimes opened the conversation by noting the man Obama is married to — but made sure to emphasize how the conference is centering the voices of women.
“So you’re married to a very nice man,” Rhimes said. “Let’s put that over there because that’s not that interesting. What we’re interested in is you.”
Rhimes asked Obama what it was like to transition from being a “workaholic” to taking some time to relax.
“It’s good. It’s really good,” Obama said, eliciting laughs from the audience. “I don’t know if I call myself a workaholic. I like chilling but it’s good to have control over your day-to-day life.”
She noted how comforting the nation in times of tragedy, like with the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, is an unfortunate part of the job when you’re the First Lady.
“Sadly, overseeing that kind of loss and not having a solution to offer families when you comfort them [is hard],” she said. “But that’s the kind of stuff that you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis. You open up the newspaper and everything on it is your husband’s responsibility and indirectly yours. So I’m kind of good with chilling for a bit.”
While they’re taking some time to decompress after eight years in the White House, Obama said she and her husband are still eager to be involved in national movements.
“That’s the work that we’re working on now, figuring out what that next chapter is going to be because, definitely at my age, and Barack’s age, we’re not ready to stop. Now we have to figure out what that new chapter looks like and understanding what it means to move forward and how do you continue to be relevant and have impact.”
She noted efforts to create the presidential archive, the Barack Obama Presidential Center.
[It’s] not just an archive, a place to go to see my dresses,” Obama joked. She said the center will also develop “the next generation of leaders.”
“We don’t want to be the folks that don’t go away and don’t give up our seats,” Obama said. “[We want to] make sure that other young people are being brought up and supported and have the resources, knowledge and expertise to take our place.”
Obama referred to her own childhood, saying her parents treated her and her siblings equally. When her father taught her brother how to box, he bought her a pair of boxing gloves as well.
“I was never so precious that I couldn’t be in there right at the table,” she said. “We think it’s just enough to love a girl. No, you have to treasure a girl and you have to respect her and you have to give her power at a very young age.”
Obama encouraged women to “speak up in all of the tables that we’re in.” She said she was always most productive at work when she was in a “flex situation.” When she was vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center, her children were still young and she had to juggle work and family; however, she made sure to make that clear to her employer.
“One of the things I told my boss, the president of the hospital, was, ‘Do not check for me for needless meetings,’” Obama said. “‘I do not have time for that. I will be getting work done but if you are looking for me to show up and sit in a bunch of meetings to make you feel good, I can’t do it.’
“That was part of me using my voice,” she added. “I wouldn’t have taken the job without the clarity and expectation that, given where my life was, that they would get the product. But they would have to get it in the way I delivered it, and not the way they thought it should be delivered.”
She also encouraged employers and companies to “make sure the problem-solving table is diverse.”
“If we are trying to get anything done and if we look around and we all look alike, we’re all sitting around the same table and we feel really comfortable with ourselves, we should question that at any table that we’re at,” Obama said. “We should be working actively to mix it up so we are getting a broad range of perspectives on every issue.”
Obama’s conversation also fell on her 25th wedding anniversary. Toward the end of the event, a video message from the former president was broadcast.
“Your strength, grace, determination, honesty and the fact that you look so good doing all of this, the way in which you’re always taking responsibility for your own actions but also looking out for the people around you, is remarkable,” Barack said. “It’s no wonder that as people got to know you as I got to know you and they fell in love. It’s truly the best decision I ever made, to be persistent enough in asking you out for a date that you finally gave in, and I hope you feel the same way.” n