Questioning How Society Is Constructed Is the Best Way to Enact Change

As a staff member working for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the mid 2000s, Tomicah Tillemann reported to now-Vice President Joe Biden and worked extensively with, he says with a chuckle, “a new senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.”
Inspired by successful policy work, Tillemann remained in government, serving as Secretary Hillary Clinton’s speechwriter (once going 100 hours without sleep in order to perfect a speech) and later, as her senior adviser. That work informed Tillemann’s current position as director of the Bretton Woods II initiative at New America, a new model of investing that combines the public and private sectors and technology to further social impact causes worldwide.
NationSwell sat down with Tillemann at New America’s minimalist offices in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House, to discuss the importance of collaboration and why appealing to logic isn’t always successful.
Is there an innovation in your field that you’re particularly excited about right now?
In the work we’re doing right now at the Bretton Woods II initiative, we started from the realization that we’re living in a world with a huge quantum of capital and problems. We don’t do enough connecting the two, and we have yet to develop a business model that allows us to move resources to solve big global challenges. What we have recognized is that with good data and good analytics, you can provide big asset holders with the information they need to see how targeted investments in social impact and development can address the root causes of the volatility that eat away at their profits.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received on leadership?
If you can build a community that is passionately committed to the cause that you are trying to advance, then your job as a leader becomes immeasurably easier. What I’ve tried to do in my work in the private and public sectors and now straddling the two is to bring together individuals that share a common commitment to the work that we are seeking to advance. At that point, I can kind of step aside and get out of the way and watch them do incredible things.
In our current efforts, we are fortunate to have partnered with some of the leading foundations and many of the largest financial institutions in the world. When you put these guys together, provide some vision and serve as a catalyst for their collaboration, they’re going to do spectacular things. The great challenge of leadership is to deliver a vision that can appeal to people who wouldn’t otherwise work together. If you can provide that, then you’ve got it made as a leader.
What inspires you?
My grandfather came to the U.S. as a penniless Holocaust survivor. He arrived with $7 and a salami in his pocket, and his salami was confiscated at customs. Through a lot of hard work and education, he eventually served the United States in the Congress for 30 years and became chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I was able to grow up learning at his feet; I spent virtually every summer in Washington, D.C., with him. The great benefit of that was seeing his commitment to improving the state of the world. He recognized what could happen if you didn’t; he’d seen the evil that could be unleashed when people looked the other direction.
What do you wish someone would’ve told you when you started working in Washington, D.C., but didn’t?
In so much of what we do in Washington and certainly the work we do trying to mobilize the world’s largest asset holders to invest in social impact, we’re trying to change behavior. Part of that is based in logic, but a lot of it goes beyond that. We tend to focus a lot of time and energy on logic, and it’s necessary but it’s not sufficient. In order to do everything else, you need to build communities, relationships and get very good at leveraging different centers of power. Ultimately, you can have the best case in the world, but unless you know how to speak to people through those other channels, you’re probably not going to do what you set out to accomplish.
What is your idea of a perfect day?
My most important job is dad to five amazing kids. Our oldest is 10 and our youngest is 16 months. My happiest days involve them. We go to the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest every summer, and if we go out and catch some crabs, read some books together and spend some time on the beach — that’s real tough to beat. It’s a reminder of why you do everything else that you do.
What is your proudest accomplishment?
Definitely my five little people, and they’re in a class by themselves. Beyond that, I hope to someday say that my proudest accomplishment is leaving them a world that’s materially better than it would’ve been if I hadn’t engaged in these issues.
What is something that people don’t know about you but should?
I was born in the car on the way to the hospital. My mother was a very brave woman.
What is your all-time favorite book?
I really like Thomas More’s “Utopia,” which is a great exercise in how to reenvision and reimagine a society. The questioning that is evident in that book and the reexamination of some of the fundamental principles that you assume that need to undergird our civilization is something that we need more of. I think we can benefit from constantly looking at the way our society is constructed and asking, “Do things really need to be built as they are?” To the extent that we can make that part of our constant conversation in our heads, we can do good things.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.

4 Takeaways from the Summit on Working Families

During the Summit on Working Families on Monday, First Lady Michelle Obama recalled once bringing her youngest daughter to a job interview.
“Who I was at that time was a breastfeeding mother of a four-month-old, I didn’t have a babysitter, so I took Sasha to the interview with me,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Look, this is — this is who I am; I got a husband who’s away; I got two little babies, they are my priority. If you want me to do the job, you gotta pay me to do the job, and you’ve gotta give me flexibility.”
Echoing the struggle many Americans face in striking a balance between work and home life, the First Lady  joined her husband President Barack Obama, the White House, the Department of Labor, and the Center for American Progress in hosting a day-long discussion directed at creating better workplace policies for parents.
Business leaders (including CEOs from Johnson & Johnson and Goldman Sachs), lawmakers, working families, and White House officials participated in the all-day summit, as well as Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden.
At Monday afternoon’s remarks, Obama announced a presidential memorandum requiring federal agencies to provide employees more flexibility to take time off to take care of ill family members, to nurse, or to be able to work from home without suffering repercussions. Though the president did not offer up a plan requiring paid leave, he outlined four major themes that could help create a better life for American workers.
Flexible workplaces
The White House argues that more flexible schedules lead to happier employees, boosts productivity, and reduces turnaround rates, as Bloomberg Businessweek points out.  As a part of the president’s executive order, federal agencies are required to review their policies on flexibilities as a part of the Office of Personnel Management’s plan to create a Workplace Flexibility Index, which will be updated annually to measure success, according to a White House fact sheet.
Obama also urged lawmakers to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would require employers to accommodate pregnant women with flexibility that would allow them to keep their jobs.
Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks also spoke, illustrating the point that U.S. workplace policies were outdated. Using her character on the AMC series, a single mom and professional, Hendricks said, “In the 21st century the only place for a story like Joan’s should be on TV.”

Paid family leave 

Obama also pointed out that the U.S. is the only developed country without mandated paid maternity leave. Women now comprise half the American workforce while men are increasingly playing the role of caregivers more than ever before.
“Many women can’t even get a paid day off to give birth,” Obama said. “That’s a pretty low bar.”

Obama also urged Congress to pass the FAMILY Act, which would annually provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave to qualifying workers for personal illness, to take care of a sick family member, or for the birth or adoption of a child. While current federal policy allows up to three months of unpaid leave for newborns or sick family members for some employees, the law only covers about 60 percent of the American labor force—leaving almost half of all workers without the ability take leave sans a paycheck, the president argues.

Child Care

Child care was also mentioned at the summit. As a part of his initiative for better work policies, Obama will ask Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to set aside $25 million towards childcare for employees who want to attend job-training programs. Today, more than 60 percent of families with children live in a dual-income household, compared to only 40 percent of households with two working parents in 1965, according to U.S Council of Economic Advisors report.

“One study shows that nearly half of all parents, women and men, report that they’ve said no to a job, not because they didn’t want it, but because it would be too hard on their families,” Obama said. “When that many talented, hard-working people are forced to choose between work and family, something’s wrong. Other countries are making it easier for people to have both. We should too, if we want American businesses to compete and win in the global economy.”

Equal pay and raising the minimum wage

The president also emphasized pay equality and increasing the minimum wage as part of setting a 21st century workplace agenda. While females are more likely to work in low-wage and minimum-wage jobs than men, more than 40 percent of mothers are their family’s primary breadwinner yet they earn just 77 cents to every dollar, on average, compared to their male counterparts, according to White House economic advisers.

The President argued that by limiting the female labor force the U.S. is hindering its global edge. The U.S. ranks 17th in female labor participation among the world’s richest countries, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Back in 1990, the U.S. placed sixth.

These four narratives underscored a greater message from the White House: supporting families through better workplace policies is not just a women’s issue.
“At a time when women are nearly half of our workforce,” Obama said, “anything that makes life harder for women, makes life harder for families, and makes life harder for children. There’s no such thing as a women’s issue; this is a family issue. This is an American issue.”