Anne-Marie Slaughter ‘80 is the President & CEO of New America, a think tank and civic enterprise.

Q. What advice would you give yourself when you were graduating?

A. I wish I’d had more confidence and courage then. I wish I’d known then that I could put myself in uncomfortable situations. So to give you an example, I stayed in school until I was 30. That has its advantages, but I did that in part because I was scared to do other things. In part I didn’t like the law firm, but I sort of wish now I’d taken two years off and gone and been in Washington or been somewhere else. I knew I was good at school, and I was scared that I wasn’t good at other things. From where I am now I look back and think, “Oh come on, of course you could have done that.” It wasn’t until my mid-thirties, you can tell my mid-thirties were a big time for me, that I developed this idea that, “If you’re scared, do it.” In 1980, I did not follow “If you’re scared, do it.” I stuck closer to things with which I was comfortable.

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