Clinton has history of hiring women Cribs in offices, flexible hours hallmarks of accommodations for female staff members
By any office standard, and especially for Bill Clinton’s 1990sera, male-dominated West Wing, Patti Solis Doyle had an unusual work arrangement: a baby crib in her office.
It was her employer, then-first lady Hillary Clinton, who encouraged her scheduling director to bring her new baby girl to work. The arrangement lasted three months and included intern babysitting shifts and a nap-time door sign reading, “Lee is sleeping.”
Over more than two decades of public service — as first lady, presidential candidate, senator and secretary of State — a hallmark of Clinton’s management has been the hiring and promotion of women, from high-profile policy advisers and campaign managers to entry-level clerical staff.
It’s reflective of how she’s likely to staff and operate the White House, as well as an indication of how she would seek to govern as the nation’s first female president (she’s committed to appointing women to half of her Cabinet positions).
“She made the workplace flexible for us to grow. That was happening in very few places in corporate America,” said Solis Doyle, who worked for Clinton for 17 years and said she “firmly believes she supports women.”
“I can say this stronger than anybody because she fired me,” said the onetime 2008 campaign manager, who endured a painful public split as the candidate retooled her failing campaign.
DEMANDING BOSS
USA TODAY contacted a dozen former female employees of Clinton, many lower-level staff listed on a 15-year-old government expenditure report from her Senate office.
These women say she could be demanding and blunt, and she expected results.
Heather Hurlburt, a former speechwriter, recalled one unpleasant situation in which she was sent back to the drawing board to rewrite a speech several times.
Clinton was almost always accommodating for women whom she considered talented. Even now, some of the nation’s highestprofile female executives, such as Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer, reject the flexible work schedules that Clinton allowed 20 years ago.
As the first woman to have had her own professional career up to the time she became first lady, Clinton had experienced the balancing act of having children and a career.
“Basically out of nowhere in a meeting, she said, ‘You know what, Patti, I’ve been thinking about it: Babies are very portable at this age. I think you should put a crib in your office,’ ” Solis Doyle said. “She could tell I was anxious” about returning to work.
In the White House, a significant percentage of Clinton’s staff was female.
A review of a Senate payroll from 2001 shows more than half of her staffers were female. Fiftyfive percent of her current campaign staff are women, according to a recent Federal Elections Commission report, including political director Amanda Renteria, two of her three top policy advisers and most of her communication team.
The campaign’s top advisers remain mostly male, including chairman John Podesta, manager Robby Mook and chief strategist Joel Benenson.
Melanne Verveer, a former chief of staff to Clinton when she was first lady, said she “didn’t set out to hire women,” but they formed a large pool of applicants. Working inside the Clinton White House was grueling, including marathon meetings and 18- to 20-hour days, and Clinton didn’t “take crap from people,” Solis Doyle said. Yet her staff loyalty is well-documented. The word “Hillaryland” is often used to describe her innermost circle of confidantes.
Critics accuse the Clintons of earning loyalty like the mafia — via iron rule and intimidation. Groups supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump run ads suggesting she’s no advocate on women’s issues.
Interviews with former staff, none of whom works for her presidential campaign, suggest a different source of that loyalty.
They said Clinton played the role of mentor — from accommodating working mothers to encouraging younger women to pursue higher education; as well as smaller gestures such as including junior staff in meetings, giving advice on toddler ear infections, remembering birthdays, sharing leftovers from events and even participating in an ’80s sing- along planned by junior Senate aides.
“She recognized that you get great talent out of people when they feel they’re part of a family,” said Neera Tanden, who served Clinton from the time she was first lady to her 2008 campaign. “I’ve had the success I had because at the time I had kids, I didn’t have to take a step back.”
Jennifer Kritz, a hospital communication director in Boston, hasn’t worked for Clinton for more than 14 years, and her tenure lasted only about nine months total, which included a stint working on constituent services in her New York Senate office.
She also described her office as “like a family.” When Kritz decided to leave and attend graduate school, Clinton arranged “a sitdown,” she said, “and I really felt like she was engaged and interested in me.”
April Springfield Blanco got an internship by cold-calling Clinton’s office after seeing her testify before Congress.
She later dropped out of college to type Clinton’s book It
Takes a Village. For at least six months, Blanco was by Clinton’s side as she passed the handwritten pages.
The decision upset Blanco’s father, a bus driver from Georgia who’d worked hard to send her to college. Clinton invited Blanco’s parents to her birthday party. “She pulled him aside and told him she would make sure I went back to college,” Blanco said.
And she did. In 1996, Clinton set aside time from the campaign trail to proof Blanco’s essays.
“She was probably the primary reason I went back to school,” she said, adding that the first lady reached out to her while she attended Wellesley, Clinton’s alma mater.
A FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE
Clinton’s own child care struggles had been mitigated by the fact that her mother, Dorothy Rodham, moved in with her in the Governor’s Mansion in Arkansas.
One experience may have been formative. Before she was first lady, Clinton represented the American Bar Association crisscrossing the country listening to female paralegals and lawyers struggling to balance work with child care demands.
“I don’t think she anticipated what she heard,” Verveer said. “What she got was an earful from partners in those hearings, about the difficulties women in the profession were having.”