Valerie Jarrett Quotes

Change is never fast enough to satisfy us. I still hear too many stories of women who go back to work too soon, but I do believe that we have been able to change the paradigm in attitudes towards family leave in that it’s no longer a nice thing to do for women, it’s a must do for competitiveness, and that’s a big change over the last seven years. Changing it into an economic issue is a big sea change in the last seven years.

A new era of responsibility is here.

The United States is a strong and ardent ally of Israel. The fact of the matter is that friends can disagree. I think what’s important is that world leaders are able to sit down with one another, have frank conversations and move forward.

American people aren’t interested in the procedural analysis. What they want is an up and down vote. They deserve an up and down vote on health care.

For those that are working part time, in small businesses, or who are unemployed and do not currently have health insurance, we want to make sure that you are covered.

From day one, President Obama has made improving the quality of life for woman a top priority. It’s why he created the White House Council on Women and Girls that I’m so proud to chair. Our directive was to look across the board at all of the federal agencies and determine what we could do to improve the quality of life for women and girls.

Women spend 30 percent more time doing household chores. No surprise. But women also spend more time volunteering in their community. And if you add up all of the hours of non-leisure time, women are working more than men. So I thought that was very interesting, and I was surprised about the voluntarism piece, but when you think about it, it makes sense.

My goal in the new administration is to engage all of the stakeholders, everyone who can help us meet the challenges of the 21st century, and ensure that we work together.

We talked about the resources that the justice department has available to help them — the technical assistance to ensure that we’re diffusing situations, not encouraging them to spiral out of control.

One of the major goals of health insurance reform is to bring down the cost.

I think, traditionally, when the federal government has gathered statistics, it’s been done in silos, so every agency really focuses on the statistics that are important to agency.

For me, having a daughter made me much more efficient and productive. I would wake up in the morning trying to figure out how to organize my day so that I could get home. The phone calls with friends, the lunches out with colleagues – all of that got scrapped so that I could be as efficient and productive as possible.