Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security Melanne Verveer

On social media, from a huge variety of sources—a lot of them foreign policy oriented. And then, I have this urge to read the newspaper, so I have the New York Times and the Washington Post, and on weekends, the [Financial Times]. I also watch news occasionally on TV.

It might’ve been going to Papua New Guinea, which is in the Pacific… Probably most of the travel to Asia was the most distant.

Sometimes I don’t have much opportunity to get my bearings! I have to hit the ground running, depending on what the schedule is. I’m usually coming in early in the morning or, at any rate, not at a reasonable time, so I’m either crashing or getting ready for the day, but I don’t usually have the luxury of some sort of acculturation process.

I remember a time in Afghanistan when a group of women gave me a small bouquet of plastic flowers and told me to remember them by the fact that one flower alone does not make a spring, but when we can be bunched together, there’s no telling what we can create. I’ve had so many gifts that stayed with me because they remind me of the people I’ve met. The most marginalized and those who have the least are often the most generous.

Probably. Even back to grammar school, I was the one selected to greet the dignitaries or whomever. I can’t say I’m the best extemporaneous speaker, but it’s something that is more commonplace than not.

Mostly to walk around to different parts of D.C., where I live. One tradition that we’ve begun with some of our neighbors is to gather every Sunday evening with a drink in the middle of the street. We have a fine time catching up and trading hints of what works and what doesn’t. It’s just a fun time.

You know, I’m quite rusty now, but it has come in extremely handy when I travel, particularly in Eastern Europe and Russia. Most countries today want to revert to their own national language, especially since the Soviet Union collapsed, but it’s understood, and I can understand them for the most part. So it’s been extremely helpful.

I grew up in a small town that had a forested area where I’d love to go because it had brooks and all these secret special places where I could imagine extraordinary things happening. And oftentimes, as a result, I would arrive home for lunch quite late.

That they’re all just a bunch of hacks, and they’re not. There probably are among the numbers, but in reality, there are people who care deeply about what politics can do for good, what it represents for the country. They’re usually extremely dedicated and talented. And most people I know involved in politics are people I would want to associate with as opposed to have nothing to do with.

I’ve been reading these studies about why we all are so exhausted and feeling that this period is so intense, and it’s because, for the most part, we are just looking at a screen. There’s none of that physical socialization that we’re accustomed to. We’re doing far more in terms of jamming our schedules because we’re not moving from an office to an office or going out to lunch or doing any of those “normal” things. And we’re living and working in the same space.

So it is extremely intensive, and I don’t have any magic answers to that. I tend to say to some people now: “Can we do a call instead of…”—especially when I’m Zoomed out after back-to-back-to-back Zooms. Because I deal a lot with people overseas, I have to start that much earlier at times because of the time zones. So, if I start early and then work late for the U.S., it can be rather too much.

I had a boss [David Cohen] at an organization called Common Cause years ago when my children were very, very young. I had my family early, and I desperately wanted to work outside the home, too, but I couldn’t juggle everything. I went to do this work, which was all about good government and a whole lot of reform issues, and I remember how encouraging he was. He let me do all kinds of things that nobody else was able to do, which was work part time.

I remember this vividly: he was going to meet a group of activists in Mississippi and Florida, and I had done the whole briefing. And he came back and just raved and raved about the way I put it together, how helpful it was, the comments he got from the activists. I try to do that now, remember that with my younger colleagues, because that kind of feedback and confidence building, it means volumes. He turned out to be one of the best mentors I ever had. He was a giant in the field, but he was also somebody who would pay attention to this very young person, relatively speaking, who was working part time thanks to him.

I have so much stuff that it will be hard to know what to do with them at some point. I literally have a home filled with items that I have collected over years from around the world.

I have collections from when I was younger—there was a time when I was in high school that I had the covers of TIME and Newsweek autographed by the people on the covers. That went on for a couple years. I have so many books. I don’t know where we’re going to put them anymore.

So it’s this accumulation of life. And I’ve been privileged to have a life that has been lived much on the road, so to speak. My granddaughter once said to me—I would bring things back for them—and they said, at one point, “We know, the women made it.” I try so hard to be validating of these women around the globe who make beautiful, beautiful things.

It used to be West Wing back when, because I worked in the West Wing for eight years, and I had a lot of friends who were advising the producers. [I enjoyed] just looking for those moments of great familiarity—or criticism—from when something was not exactly kosher.