16 Quotes by Alyssa Mastromonaco

I ended up as the assistant to the CEO at an Internet start-up called SenseNet on Hudson Street. I had no interest in the Internet, or venture capital, or really anything I was doing, but the people were nice and I could wear whatever I wanted to work and it was within walking distance of our apartment. Sometimes, for a little while, that's enough.

You should always be prepared to defend your choices, whether just to yourself (sometimes this is the hardest) or to your coworkers, your friends, or your family. The quickest way for people to lose confidence in your ability to ever make a decision is for you to pass the buck, shrug your shoulders, or otherwise wuss out. Learning how to become a decision maker, and how you ultimately justify your choices, can define who you are.

What you realize is that everyone has her own priorities—her own constituency. Often, being a leader is not about making grand proclamations or telling people what to do; it’s about balancing all these priorities and constituencies.

Part of knowing how to be prepared comes from being self-aware—being able to anticipate what you’ll need (or screw up) and planning accordingly. I know I am rarely, if ever, the smartest person in the room. And that’s totally OK. What’s not OK is (1) not recognizing that and (2) not coming ready to participate in a meaningful way.

Larry (Summers - director of the National Economic Council) taught me two very important lessons. The first: Never judge a book by its cover (or the articles written about it). The second: Always make time to help a gal out. Kindness - you can call it generosity, or goodwill - really means something.

I once tried to impress him by telling him about the time my friends and I had climbed on Newt Gingrich's car. Bernie was unmoved; his attitude was basically, "Well, what else would you have been doing?

Senator Kerry walked into the room. He blew past me and into his office, but then I heard him ask who I was. His team told him I was interviewing. He asked for my résumé, and I heard him say, "She worked at Sotheby's—she must be good." Forward motion is always better than no motion—even if you don't think it's taking you in the direction you wanted to go.

I thought it wouldn’t work, but I didn’t know it wouldn’t work, so I didn’t say anything. That might be the difference between men and women: Women need to know they are right before they stand up. Men are OK objecting if they just think they might be right.

There is no bigger compliment than being intellectually curious about what someone else spends his or her days doing – it turned out that not having the answers did me no harm. The feedback I got was that the WHMO directors all “felt good about my leadership.