The word thinking means you are exercising your thought process consciously, isn't it? Right now this is in a state of mental diarrhea, it's just pouring all the time. What is negative is, it's happening unconsciously, that is what is negative, not the content. You thought about a devil that's negative, you thought about a god that is positive, there's no such thing. A whole lot of people have destroyed themselves, trying to stop those thoughts that they think are negative. They try to fight them in so many different ways. Don't identify any thought as negative because it's just a thought. You're making it up, maybe you like it, what's the problem? If you understand it's just a thought, it has no power.


So, do you have any HQDs in the house today? Yeah? Pretty good? Represent? Alright, that's like, I'll explain HQ Trivia. Okay, so my name's Hank, and yep, I'm here to suggest to you that if at first you don't succeed at beating HQ Trivia, try cheating, and if you don't like the word cheating, we can call it tool-assisted gameplay, if that makes you feel better. Seriously, a little bit about me. I'm an iOS developer at Lyft right now. I have a cute dog named SodaPop, and I like to win. And so, just to get this out of the way, I have a little Twitter fight going on. I'm trying to get the most pictures of my dog into my presentation to be Joel, and so here's a slide that has a lot of pictures of my dog. So, we're done with that. Let's talk about HQ Trivia. So, HQ Trivia is a live trivia game. Oh, here, let me restart this. It's freezing. Should be animated. I have a lot of animated gifs in my presentation, so that's really important. Okay, yep. So, HQ Trivia is a live trivia game that you can play on your phone. You have to answer 12 multiple-choice questions. You have 10 seconds to answer each question, and you can win cash prizes if you answer all of them right. The prizes are sometimes really big, and sometimes they're like 50 cents. It just kind of depends on how many people win and what the prize is. So, what's the problem here? As the game progresses, it gets really, really hard. The questions get really, really hard. And so, if you're really just guessing randomly, the odds are really, really low that you're actually going to win. And if you're Han Solo, you might say, okay, well, I don't care. I'm just going to guess randomly. But for people like me, you probably need a little bit more help. And so, how can we be HQ Trivia? So, I had a little thought process, you know, but I can Google it really fast or I can write a neural network, but at the end, I want to write an app that will Google it really fast. And so, like, let's divide and conquer this problem. So, if you want to build an app that can play HQ Trivia, for number one, I have to get the actual question and multiple answers from my iPhone app and then put it into another app. And then after that, I have to actually make a search query that can help me decide, like, which answer I want to pick within 10 seconds, which is kind of a lot of time-pressure, kind of like this talk. Okay, so, one thing about me is I'm an iOS developer, and so, every problem that I look at, the solution looks like an iPhone app. That's not necessarily the best way to solve problems. It's kind of like if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so, originally, I wrote an iPhone app to solve this, and then eventually, I wrote a Mac app. And so, now that we know what the problem is, we know what we want to use to solve it, let's just get down to the nitty-gritty, right? Let's get this show on the road. So, step one. So, this is really good timing because Apple actually released a vision framework last year at WWC. And so, what this does, and one of the things it does is it can actually detect text rectangles. And so, you can see in the screenshot, it's actually doing a pretty good job of finding where the text is. So, you might be thinking to yourself, does this actually do OCR? And one thing that surprises people when I talk to them about vision is that it actually doesn't do the optical character recognition for you. So, you have to do it on your own. And so, oops, yeah. And so, step two is OCR. And so, originally, I was going to write, you know, or train this model to do character recognition based on like inputs from the app, screenshots and everything. But I just didn't really have time and I kind of wanted to just start winning. And so, I ended up using an open source project called Tesseract. It works really, really well. And so, that's step two. So, step three is to Google it. I was looking at the Google custom search engine API and it kind of looked like it wanted you to only choose one domain or a few multiple domains, but I really wanted was the entire internet, right? And so, what I did was I just made a get request to Google the search, like URL.  And they're partly right. I guess I was a robot. And so, I moved on to the Bing Web API. And so, I used that for a little bit, but they actually want to charge you money. And I don't want to pay money just to win HQ trivia, especially if it's like 50 cents. And so, the solution I finally ended up with is to use Safari inside of my app. And so, again, iOS and Mac, you know, you can have a web view.  I use JavaScript to put the query in and then I hit the submit button. And then Google is like, okay, you're cool.  So, another advantage to this too is that you can actually see the context of the search results page while you're trying to play HQ trivia. Okay. So, we have that out of the way. We actually still need to figure out, like, what a good search query is, right? Because this is more of a heuristic approach. There's not like an algorithm that's going to get you the right answer all the time. So, like, how can we get close to helping us decide what to put in there? So, one option I had was, you probably can't read that, but it's asking three different questions with the answer combination. And so, and then looking to see how many search results there are. And I thought this would be a good idea, but it basically tells you, like, which is most popular, not necessarily what's correct.  I'm just appended at the end. And then we can see here, the question is, like, what is playing music in public places called, and busking is the right answer. And here it shows up five times. And the other two times that actually showed up were in reference to the HQ trivia question itself. And so, that's pretty good. Making a small optimization for that, you can also wrap those answers in OR. And so, then what this does is it kind of prevents you from getting search results from pages that have all of those queries, or all of those answers that just kind of isolates you to the right answer. So, that's a little bit better. So, this is a screenshot of what the original iOS app looked like. It was kind of clunky, because I had to have two phones. So, I had one phone running HQ trivia, and I had another phone that I was pointing at it to do OCR.  I quickly learned that there's a better way. And so, I ended up running a Mac app. And so, this is the Mac app I have currently, or almost currently. So, what it does is you air play your screen to your Mac, and then your Mac takes a screenshot of that. And then, the OCR is actually a lot better, because it's a clean screenshot. And the search results show up. So, you can kind of scan it and get a better idea of what the right answer may be. So, while I was doing research for this talk, I actually found some people who did a little bit more research and had a different way to solve the first problem. And so, there's these blog posts. I can't read them to you right now, because I'm in the middle of a talk. But I'll probably like post these somewhere, so you can read those too, because I want to give those people credit. But basically, what they found was that if you use a tool like Charles to look at the network traffic between H2 Trivia and their back end, you can actually find a web socket they can connect to. And then, you can get all of the chats and all of the question-answer combos. So, you don't have to do OCR at all. So, I basically wasted a lot of my own time. But that's because I wanted to run an app, right? And so, I looked at that, and I was like, okay, actually, I can build on top of this, right? And so, I built a new feature, and it's called Ask the Audience. So, it's like, who wants to be a millionaire? I can scan all of these chat questions. And often, people in HQ try to put in the answer that they think is right. So, like, the chat is scrolling so fast that you usually can't see it. But it-programmatically, you know, I can just look at those answers and then have a tally of them. And so, the sample question I want to use is, what word does Aretha Franklin spell out in her iconic 1967 hit? So, let's see how well this works, right? So, we're looking, counting, counting, and yes, nailed it. All right. So, yeah, if you guys remember Robocop, that was a classic song. So, yeah. In the end, it didn't really work that well, and I wasted more of my own time. And this kind of, like, validates my idea, and I think a lot of people's idea that you should never read the comments. Just never look at them. Swipe them away. So, yeah, in the end, like, how well does my solver actually do? I guess about 70 to 80% of the question's right. And that's still not good enough to win. And then there's also this weird, like, metagame you have to play, where you, not only do you have to try and figure out, like, what answer is right, you have to figure out whether or not the robot is right or not. So, it's like two games in one, and it kind of takes the fun out of it a little bit too. But so does losing. So, how can HQ actually, like, defeat cheaters? It actually does pretty well. And so, there are certain questions that Google just can't really answer very quickly. HQ can do a little bit better job with, like, certificate painting, so you can actually look at the network traffic, and they prevent quick time sessions, but for some reason they don't prevent air play. So, that's how I got around that problem. So, here's some examples of HQ questions that are hard to answer for Google. So, one of them is, if you ask things about, like, the first or the last, you know, extremes, then it's really hard for Google to come up with that. Like, the way I would do it in person is just to look at, like, a list of country names and then search each one, but you can't do that in 10 seconds. Another one is to add, like, a red herring answers, and these are kind of, like, savage questions, right? So, Jackie Robinson is known for playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but this question is actually asking about this minor league baseball, and so the right answer is Montreal, which most people got wrong. So, yeah, that's all, about all I have. In closing, if you want to follow me, I'm on Twitter. If you want to follow my dog, he's on Instagram.  And I want to actually leave with one more thought, and maybe it's that the real HQ Trivia prizes, there are technologies we learned. All right. Thank you.


I am, I'm excited to have you all here. Thank you for coming. This is very important, very important for us, very important for CSIS, very important for WISE. And I wanna welcome all of you for, and thank you for coming tonight. I especially wanna thank Nina Easton for being with us tonight to moderate a discussion with these two remarkable women who've joined us from the administration.  And that's because they're both central figures in the policy pulse of this administration.  And but we were very fortunate that they were both able to come. We did lose Wendy Sherman, but that we understood and that this was, let's say, when you shoot for three of the biggest names in the government, we knew we were going to not get everybody, but we do wanna say special thanks to our colleagues for joining us. I, you know, my role here is strictly to introduce Joel in Shoemaker, but I can't resist. You know, I'm gonna say just a few words if you'll indulge me. You know, we're just, we've just hooked up with WISE. WISE is a 25 year old organization started off at the University of Maryland. And back when they were starting, this was a time when to be a woman in international security was a real challenge. There were not many women in the business. Matter of fact, I look out in the audience, I see some of the pioneers that were involved in this, but it was lonesome. There are a lot of the people here tonight that weren't even born when this was starting off, which is good because I'd hate to have you have to endure the kind of restraints we put on ourselves back then. Why we thought it was better to deny ourselves 50% of the gene pool to run this country. I'll never figure out, but that's kind of where it was back then. And so when WISE was first starting, you know, it was genuinely needed to provide mentoring and networking opportunities for women. It was a lonesome field and challenging. And frankly, there was a lot of, there were strong headwinds, you know, to many women that were entering this field. So it was very important. Now the question is what is WISE doing now? What do we need it for now? And I can only give you my personal view.  And I've had many conversations with Joe Lynn about this, but I can only tell you some of my own personal views. I mean, we have an obsolete civilian personnel management system for this government. You know, it's kind of a world war two blue collar label grind your way up from the bottom, start as a GS7, spend your 30 years to work up the system. That's our system. Well, think about what that means for trying to hire talented women in this era. Women that have so many more opportunities in the private sector than they did 30 years ago. And to say, oh no, you can't leave if you want to proceed. You've got to stay in this job, grinding away without any change for 30 years. Well, I'm sorry.  Michelle will tell you about this. She's several times, we've been the beneficiary because she came to CSIS for her family at one point in time. But yet, our government personnel rules really don't accommodate that. Unless you come back as a political appointee and that's a fairly thin veneer. You know, we're cheating ourselves because we have obsolete personnel rules. And I would also say part of, and this is, I'll probably offend some people when I say this, but we are on the wrong track in this country on public government ethics. Because in essence, we're saying, if you have had relevant experience, you are suspect. Right? If you know something, we probably don't want you in the government. You know, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. Well, so if you want to have a career path for women, and women do need to be able to get in and out of the field because they've got family obligations, and sometimes that goes into the private sector, aren't our ethics rules starting to get in the way? I don't know, they are. I mean, these are things we have to start thinking through. We've got a lot of work to do. So there's a big agenda in my mind, for wise. And it's part of the reason that we wanted to host them here. I mean, this is an opportunity for us. We hope it's an opportunity for wise, and we're gonna need everyone here. We're gonna need all of your help. Because there's a lot more, and honestly, more structural and deeper, harder work in front of us. So, and that's why I want to say special thanks to these very talented women that would kind of launch us off. This is our first real experience. We've had a couple of private things, but this is our first big public thing. And it couldn't be a better way to do it. And Jolin, let me turn to you. Why don't you get this started for real? Thank you. Everybody thanks for coming. Thank you so much, Dr. Hamry. I think it's just such an honor to be affiliated with CSIS. And of course, we have strong linkages historically with CSIS with Michelle and many other women who have been a key part of wise over the years, also being key parts of CSIS. It's also the beginning of our 25th anniversary. So it's a perfect time to have this kickoff event for our new chapter for wise, as I see it. I just wanted to say briefly that 2011, and I think so many of you in the audience know this, was a big transition year for wise. And so many people were really critical to that process. There are so many of you in the audience who really offered so much insight, advice, and support during the process. I wish I could thank all of you from up here, but it would take up all of our time, so I won't do that. But I just do want to send a special thanks to my colleague, Marie Lore. Where did you go, Marie Lore? Okay, who's like the right hand of this operation. And I couldn't do anything I do for wise without her help or team effort. So thank you very much for all you do. I'm just very pleased to see so many people who have such a long history with wise. In the audience as former board members, advisory council members, as supporters, and as friends, and members, so instrumental to the organization's growth. And of course I want to second Dr. Hamry's point about thanking both Michelle and Samantha for being here tonight with their very busy, both professional and personal lives. I'm also very thankful to those of you who are new to WISE here tonight, and we really look forward to involving you in our programs moving forward. I just want to say a couple things about the WISE mission. Our mission is to promote women's leadership opportunities in peace and security at all levels of their careers. A couple of important things about WISE. We are global, we are inclusive, and we are unique because our community brings together many sectors. We bring together many expertise areas, many geographic areas, and many perspectives, and I think that makes this an incredibly special organization. We have about 7,000 people in our network. They're individuals and they're organizations and institutions who share with us the mission and work towards the cause of women's full participation in peace and security. We provide a platform for elevating the perspectives, experiences, and voices of women, and most importantly for supporting the next generation of female leadership that is so crucial to peace and security. We've played an incredible role in supporting the rise of women in this field over the years, and we really do celebrate these incredible accomplishments that I think are truly embodied by the women here on this stage tonight. But we must acknowledge there is much work to be done. The challenges we face globally cannot be tackled without the full participation of this talent pool. Unfortunately, we're losing women's contributions at many stages along the way, either through leaky pipelines or decision-making processes and cultures that continue to exclude or sideline the voices of women. Therefore, we must all work, those of us here today who care about this issue collectively and diligently to close these gaps. It is my hope that you'll leave this event with a renewed dedication to this goal and assisting us in our mission, and I welcome all of your involvement and your expertise in all of our programs. I just wanted to make a quick housekeeping note. You each have cards on your seats, and we really welcome you to write down questions for the speakers tonight. What we're gonna do for efficiency's sake is collect those mid-program, and then we'll try to choose some of those that we can ask with time permitting. It is now my pleasure to welcome Nina Easton. Nina, as many of you know, is an accomplished and well-known journalist. She is Fortune's Washington columnist and senior editor, and serves as a panelist and commentator on many news shows as well. Had previously worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and is, of course, an author of an acclaimed political history as well. And we thank you very much, Nina, for taking the time out of your schedule as well and flying down from Boston to join us for this event. I'm gonna turn it over to Nina, who has graciously also offered to introduce our speakers and to facilitate our discussion tonight. Thank you all once again, and I look forward to the next era for whys at CSIS. Thank you. Thanks so much, Jillian. Obviously, our speakers really don't need any introduction, particularly with this crowd. We are so honored to have both of you. Samantha Power, as you all probably well know, is a journalist whose coverage of the Balkans conflict led to a Pulitzer Prize-winning book criticizing policymakers for not getting involved enough and trying to stop genocide. That's become, I think, a lifelong passion towards human rights. She's the founding executive director of the Car Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, where I have an office right now, isn't it, and a fellow chef? Jealous. And she's currently special assistant to President Obama for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. Her title is Much Longer, but we'll leave it at that. And obviously, as we'll go into it, quite critical and central to much of the policymaking of this administration. Michelle Flournoy often has been touted as the, I hope she doesn't cringe too much, the likely next female Secretary of Defense. She serves as the Pentagon's really the chief policymaker, the highest ranking woman, and helped shape the administration's Afghanistan strategy. She served in a range of top defense positions under the Clinton administration. And in 2007, co-founded the Center of New American Security. Center for, I'm sorry, I wrote that wrong, Center for a New American Security, which was a think tank credited. This is interesting with really breaking new ground on counterinsurgency strategy, which I found quite interesting. Our conversation is gonna range. We're gonna talk about women in policy, but I also kinda wanna show off these women and the policies that they're involved in right now and their leadership right now. I wanna start with Samantha. You were part of something that came out in December, little notice, the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. I had the honor of interviewing Secretary Clinton at the APEC Summit and she gave us a brief overview of it, but it came out in detail without a lot of notice. Could you give us a good overview of that? I can try. I think Michelle also, who was a huge champion of these issues, could speak to it. But basically what we have are a number of almost axioms about the way societies progress and don't progress. And one of the axioms, of course, is if women are left out of economic development, societies are more likely to stagnate. If women are left out of peace processes, those peace processes, it turns out, correlatively, are much less likely to succeed. And it turns out women who are part of those peace processes bring attention to the kind of sustainable issues, not merely ending conflict, but the kinds of reconciliation, health, welfare, sort of DDR, demobilization of soldiers. They just have attention, bring an attention to the long game. Women, of course, are often early warners of conflict to come. They're often, they see their sons, their husbands, et cetera, going off or could be alarm bells in conflict prevention situation. So all these things we know or we think we know, we need more empirical work and CSIS is a big part of the solution as is a new center at Georgetown that was just set up in conjunction with the release of the National Action Plan. But we in the government, and certainly our leadership, have made it very clear that we should have policies that act upon these axioms. And those of us who know women should be involved in peace processes, let's get them involved in peace process. If we know that political transitions are more likely to endure if women are in the parliament or in the governing ministries and our diplomacy toward Libya should reflect that. So we know all this, but prior to the president taking on this task and instructing the cabinet agencies and Secretary Clinton and Secretary Panetta and others and USAID administrator Raj Shah really embracing the bureaucratic implications of those axioms is in a way it's left to chance. And so what the National Action Plan does and the executive order that accompanied it from the president is it has all of the agencies involved in foreign policy stepping up and saying, here's how we're gonna change our training. Here's how we're gonna change our diplomacy. Here are, here's how we're gonna inject a regard for sexual and gender-based violence into the mandates that we put before the UN Security Council. And so what you'll see, and I brought a little prop here at the National Action Plan, the National Action Plan available on a website near you has a series of very, very concrete commitments and I would note, and this is again something Michelle can speak to far better than I can, but DOD is one of the best examples of how when you can get a set of presidential priorities, a set of strategic priorities into the DNA of the building, all kinds of things happen. It gets integrated into doctrine, into training. You will end up seeing in planning guidance in some theater of operations that we may not have had on our minds when we were developing this plan together. Suddenly it turned up that, well, we've gotta have a gender advisor to the combatant commander, or we've gotta make sure our soldiers out there as they train foreign militaries, bringing women and encouraging those foreign militaries to have units that comprise women as well as men, et cetera. So that's what the executive order does. It's a statement of US policy. It's a statement of prioritization and it's an effort to institutionalize the insights that many of the people here have been preaching for a long time, but to get them into the fabric of the way we do our business in the US government. And it raises the question though of how, particularly with cultural bias, and let's talk about Afghanistan. I mean, how could you see this moving forward in Afghanistan as one of the chief architects of the strategy there? It actually has already had an impact on the ground. For example, one of the challenges in a society like Afghanistan is the separation of the genders and that particularly if you have a predominantly male unit of soldiers, they're only interacting with the male half of the population and the female side of the population is really sort of off limits in an Afghan culture to most of our soldiers. So one of the things that this work inspired was the creation of female engagement teams where we actually train small teams of women to go in with a combat unit, female soldiers and Marines, and actually seek out the women in the village and talk with them. It's amazing what you learn. You're female Americans. Female American soldiers and Marines who go in and now focused on interacting with the women. It's amazing what you can learn culturally from an intelligence perspective, just a whole different perspective on what the needs of that area are, what's happening in that area, and the stresses and strains on the population, and so forth. So it's been a really invaluable tool. At the same time as we try to build capacity in the Afghan government, we've encouraged, for example, the development of female police officers, the development of female army officers, and so forth. Again, somewhat foreign concept for the Afghan security forces, but one that they too have seen the benefits of embracing this and being able to have members of their own security forces who can interact effectively with their female population. Another example of this is just sensitizing our folks on the ground to the need to bring women into community processes. I mean, traditionally Lloyd-Jerga's, Shora's, these community gatherings where issues are worked through, and in traditional Afghan society, those usually don't include women. One of the things that started to happen is that the recent Lloyd-Jerga, for example, did include female parliamentarians, it included female activists, and so forth, and so, and at first it's a sort of uncomfortable, awkward situation in a culture that's not used to that, but I think at the end of the three days of the last-Jerga, without question, it was, I think, universally accepted as a really positive development, and that the participation of women brought a lot to the table. So what kind of numbers are you seeing, police officers and military officers? It's still small numbers, but it's a start, and... And was there resistance or must have been... Well, it ranges, you know, the institutional resistance, I think, has diminished substantially. The real resistance is real, it's a foreign notion for the society. I make a point whenever I go to Afghanistan to seek out one of these units, and the last, I visited the police training center in Kabul this last time, and met with all of the women recruits, and some stories, you know, the stories varied from one woman who felt that had the full support of her family, as this is the most patriotic thing she could be doing for a new Afghanistan, to another woman who was completely disowned by her family because she was choosing to join the police force, as this is something that was so outside their realm of experience that they couldn't accept it. Can you talk more broadly about Afghanistan and how you see, I know this is a broad question, but how do you see things playing out there and the role of the Taliban in particular? I think we're at a really critical juncture. The strategy review that President Obama undertook, and then the really the recommitment of effort and focus and resources, both on the civilian and military side, have enabled us to really make a lot of progress on the security side and shift the momentum. For the first time in five years, the level of violence in Afghanistan is down. The momentum has shifted away from the Taliban. They have not been able to regain key areas in the South and they're sort of heartland, if you will, but it's so it's created some security space. We've begun a transition process with handing over different areas to the Afghans for security lead, but the real critical juncture we're at now is that we've created space for something else to happen and that something else really needs to be a political settlement within Afghan society and that's where Afghan-led discussions with the Taliban with other stakeholders in society is gonna be so critical to actually consolidating the security gains and charting a course for stability in the future. So you see the Taliban as being part of negotiations and moving forward and talking with them and incorporating them into the process. Yes, they're not a monolithic group. They're gonna be some who choose to come and be part of the process and be reintegrated into society and there'll be some who choose not to and will be dealt with through continued military pressure, but I think that that process is gonna be central to the outcome in Afghanistan. Samantha, I wanted to turn to you about the Arab Spring. I mean, you were at the center of, at least according to news reports, the president's decision to intervene in Libya for humanitarian reasons, which was controversial. People, there were those who didn't want us intervening at all. There were those who thought that was a bad reason to intervene, a bad precedent. But you've got Libya and you've got Egypt, among a number of countries there, Egypt in particular, women who were at the forefront of the revolution are now, as Hillary Clinton put it, they've been out in the streets where they were protesting. They've now been humiliated and beaten and repressed not to mention just completely shed out of the decision-making process there. What's your overall prognosis for women in the Arab Spring? And again, broad question, but what's your thinking on that and what role can the US really play? Well, first, just to take the opportunity because I don't get out much to correct the press reports. Turns out we have this amazing president, President Obama, who made these pretty amazing and in the case of Libya, extremely brave decisions that resulted in saving so many lives. And just, it was a sight to behold really, to see somebody step up. One of the things I documented in A Problem From Hell over many years, looking at many cases from time immemorial really, was just that by the time we realized that the benefits of acting outweighed the costs, because there are always costs and there are always genuine risks and by acting the range of things you can do in different circumstances. But by the time we had that realization, it was too late. And I think President Obama, this spring, whether it was with regard to Egypt and the leadership and drawing on the relationship that had been built over many generations with the Egyptian government, but also over several years with President Mubarak to try to get ahead of events there or with regard to Libya with Benghazi hanging in the balance and so much at stake for him to lead the world in the way that he did and move beyond a no-fly zone to something that would really protect civilians on the ground. I mean, it really was remarkable. And like you say, it's not necessarily politically rewarding to do that, but I had the opportunity to travel with Ambassador Rice to Libya not long ago and just to see the level of just the effusive regard for this president, this country, the American people and the sense that America's on Libya's side through what will be a very, very difficult road ahead. We have a great head start because, and I point again to Michelle and the Defense Department's remarkable leadership in this very, very complex operation, but the dividend now lies ahead and of course the overall success of the policy that was made in the spring will be judged over time, both in terms of the answer to the question you posed about women, but more broadly about the durability of this democratic transition. In terms of women, I mean, I met again when I was there in Libya with a group of women leaders and you definitely already had the sense of nervousness that things were slipping away, that look where there we were in Benghazi Square, we were out there risking our lives. Women were supporting men in Tripoli as they rose up and very much a part of that kind of remarkable operation and coordinated operation that ended up bringing about the fall of Tripoli. And they're saying, where is our place? By virtue of their advocacy, they secured two ministries. I think they had hoped for more in this kind of transitional cabinet. They were very focused on the election law and I think right now we have word that the election law allots 10% of the seats in the parliament for women, and but there's some debate and I think we just came from a meeting on this today about whether the 10% is a floor or a ceiling and of course our position is an instructive ambiguity that it's a floor and only the beginning of the dialogue but it's not our position. It's a peek into the challenges you face. Yeah, well, so it'll be women advocates who in the same way that they lobbied for some, again, prededicated, predesignated allotment will now argue for a more maximal interpretation of the law and there's a lot of interaction.  I mean that was how repressive it was. So the fact that people have activated in this way doesn't guarantee outcomes that are consistent with the values that we're here to talk about tonight but it's a precondition for that and I think you see the leadership of the TNC and the transitional authorities really feeling like they have to cater to this community. It doesn't mean they're catering sufficiently or in the way that satisfies the demands of the women but there's a definite sense that there's a constituency out there and so that's already a kind of democratic ethos taking hold that sense that you have to be responsive that you're accountable in some fashion. With regard to Egypt, I can't say it better than Secretary Clinton who I think just gave such a poignant sort of issued a poignant appeal for the better angels to emerge there and for these issues to be taken to be elevated and to be taken very, very seriously. But I would say again if you look at women's participation in the recent elections, participation as a whole was kind of jaw-dropping relative to the logistic challenges that a society that hadn't done a free or fair election before I think that there were a modest number of irregularities obviously were very concerned about the treatment of women in the streets but again just as the Libby example underscores I think is devastating as the treatment of women has been in some regards the counter movement, the counter protest, the fact that those women came out and took to the streets and protested in that fashion again making their voices heard saying it wasn't just a change in the titular leadership of the society that we're talking about, we're talking about a change in business as usual and so of course it's gonna take time but I think it's the fact where we would have to start to be worried is if you started to see people disengaging and just sort of saying it's lost. Whereas in fact what you're seeing is people more and more activated every day and reacting to the problems that are almost inevitably accompanying the transition. Just one quick follow up to that, does our what is it $1.3 billion in military aid give us leverage on things like how women are treated, women's rights or is it really you have to use the bully pulpit more? Well I think we use all the tools in our disposal and I think one of the amazing features of the US response the Arab Spring and I've only been in the executive branch for three years so I don't have a vast well of government sort of analogous tales to draw upon but in the Arab Spring the degree to which the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department if they're going on economic missions which is so important. Everybody's singing from the same song book and so whether it's General Dempsey in his consultations the role of women is very very prominent in his engagement and so the leverage that we have by virtue of that relationship is something that is accompanied by an attention to this set of issues, same with the NGO issue which affects women and men alike, the crackdown on NGOs and the suspicion particularly of the American NGOs who have run into trouble but also Egyptian NGOs who get less attention. Again, seeing all of the tools in the relationship all of the history and the bonds that have been built up by virtue not only of the military assistance but the training and again just the understanding of synergies that have existed over generations those are an advantage in our diplomacy. Those are tools I think that help us get a hearing in places we may not otherwise. Did you have one? No, I would just add I think because of some of these long-term security relationships with a place like Egypt for example since the Camp David Accords. We have very strong military to military relationships very clear and open channels of communication at the highest level but they also have an experience dealing with us as a democracy and they understand that these issues, the treatment of women, the treatment of NGOs are very important issues in our democracy and so when issues like foreign assistance requests, security assistance requests go to the Congress these things do get connected and I think the Egyptians in particular who have a very long relationship with us and have gone through many, many legislative cycles to be beneficiaries of American aid really do understand this and so we have the channels and they have the experience to understand that these things really are related to one another as we think about the relationship we're charting going forward and I think that the leadership has been very receptive to some of the messages that have been sent recently and they are taking some steps to try to correct some of the missteps that have been taken like the treatment of the NGOs. Yeah, let's turn the conversation since we have limited time on the role of women. Foreign policy recently said what we all know that women are woefully underrepresented in national security ranks at the very highest level which begs the question, why does it matter? I mean, obviously it matters to the women sitting in this room and their career paths but why does it matter on outcomes and I wanted to pose the question to both of you are women including women in the highest level decision making on national security issues whether here or elsewhere does that lead to a more peaceful society in your view? Do you really think women make a difference there? You go first. Well, I think I'd say a couple of things. I'd say a couple of things. First of all, you know, back to John Hammary's point, you know, you want to fully avail yourself of the talent pool if you will and when women are underrepresented you by definition are not accessing the full range of talent. And so just from getting the best quality people, the highest standards of excellence, the best people who are able to contribute to policy, to contribute to problem solving and all that, you want to have women included in the pool as fully as men by definition. You know, I think the question of outcomes, you know, I think there's a lot of literature that suggests that the answer is that you do get a different outcome what I'll just speak to from my experience. I think that there, you know, you can, it's the way in which people approach their positions, approach leadership, approach problem solving is very individually, it's very specific to the individual. But what I can say is in the Pentagon, for example, you know, as we've gone from, you know, when I first went there in 1993, we had, we invited, had a lunch for all the senior women in the building and we were at one table. And then for the next six weeks, it was like, what were they talking about? Yeah, the great conspiracy theory. Now, I mean, I would fill the, I would overflow out of the executive dining room in the Pentagon, which is a big room. There are a lot of women leaders. That said, there are a lot of women leaders kind of coming up and at the middle ranks and there's still very few at the top. There's still ceilings to be broken. When I, we go into a leadership conference with the secretary and the chiefs and the service secretaries and the chairman and the co-com, the combatant commands, more often than not, there's one woman at the table, maybe two. It's myself and a colleague and out of this, this whole room, that's gonna change over time. The thing that's been different is you've had a lot of women leadership at that middle level, for example, of our QDR. I was very proud. The first QD, set of a quadrionnal defense review briefings. First person stood up to brief the strategy. It was a woman, Kathleen Hicks. Next person stood up to brief home line defense. It was a woman, Christine Wormitt. Next person stood up and so on. There were four or five women leaders in the QDR process that I actually do think affected how the process was run. It was more open, it was more collaborative, it was more inclusive just by style, by virtue of their leadership. Whether that's attributed to their gender or to these individuals, I'm not a social scientist who can make a conclusive observation, but I think that there was definitely a different approach that was influenced by the leadership of this handful of key women. Which raises a personal question. Let's get personal with you.  How much is the work, life, work, family balance an issue for women getting and staying at the top? Well, I have a wonderful older mentor who once said to me, Michelle, you can have it all, you just can't always have it all at the same time. And I think these jobs, and Samantha can speak to this, are incredibly demanding. They're 24-7 nonstop. I think for our family, the issue is that my husband's also serving. He's the deputy secretary at Veterans Affairs. So you have two parents of kids nine, 12, and 14 who were once six, nine, and 11 when they started. You know, who basically had parents who were very, very committed and engaged in supporting this president. And at some point just from a family perspective, something has to give. You know, the good news is what I've discovered over my career is that there are many seasons and many chapters. There are many ways to do public service. Doesn't all have to be in government. It can be in government on, and I hope I'm not done in that respect. I hope I do have future opportunities to formally serve in government, but there are many ways to contribute and to serve in a public service sort of way from outside government. And I'm fully committed to that path and whether it's in a think tank or in mentoring programs or whatever, I'll be finding my way in the future to continue on that path in some way. But with a little more time to see my future. I was gonna say, there at a critical age. Samantha, I didn't forget you on that question. You didn't wanna answer it first. Oh, women. I don't wanna answer any questions. I've learned that. Do you think women, our inclusion of women is more likely to lead to more peaceful outcomes? And it's particularly somebody who's covered, you know, genocide, atrocities, and there are women in some of those decision-making roles. What's your overall perspective on that? I'm very, not coincidentally, very much with Michelle in terms of just the individuated nature of the human condition and just believing. I mean, I remember as a kind of kid in my early 20s in Bosnia, one of the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs. There was this woman, Biliana Plavchich, and she was famous for kissing the warlord archon on the cheeks, and everybody took her, sort of plucked her out of contact. You see, you see women leaders too perpetuate ethnic cleansing, you know, as if it was itself sort of a whopping case sample. I mean, I think Michelle's point and John's point, right, which is we don't even begin to know. We don't have the case sampling. I mean, we've got these isolated examples, and you know, for every Biliana Plavchich, you've got an Ellen Johnson Surleaf, and you've got what the Nobel Committee did this year sort of affirming the role of women. So there's the intrinsic sort of good and necessity of people who represent half the population and who are just by virtue of being mothers and connected with education and health and so forth in different ways by virtue of taking care of their families and so forth, you know, often in the home. I mean, that is a special sort of set of insights, but I think it's gonna take us some time of really integrating women into these leadership roles to have a kind of empirical base from which we can draw, you know, conclusions. I will say that, you know, I worked on my own, I mean, much more in a line of work like yours, you know, writing and kind of doing, and there are all kinds of issues people ask about women in journalism and women in academia, and there are versions of this conversation that occur everywhere. It is different being in a large institution. I mean, there, you know, the impact of having Michelle, you know, at the table, at the deputies, you know, for women like me, you know, is very profound and very inspirational in the same way that for all of us, it's incredibly inspirational to see Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Rice and Secretary Napolitano duking it out at principals meetings with one another and with, you know, and it means the nature of the deliberative process. It's, you know, I can't even think of an issue that's had a gender alignment, at least that I've seen. So I don't think you can draw easy, easy correlations in terms of where people would end up, but, you know, again, for all of the challenges that Michelle has described, which I think we're chipping away at and again, mentoring begets mentoring, hopefully.  Are they welcome when they come back? We're talking about utter exclusion, you know, and so there, what we know empirically and just as a matter of, you know, common sense is that, you know, we can achieve, you know, dramatic improvements with, you know, just added weight, the weight of U.S. diplomacy, the weight of U.S. leadership, but also just a few individuals in those societies which is where the leadership ultimately has to come from can make such a profound difference in a short period of time, and the difference that the Yemeni Nobel Prize winner has made to women, you know, to bringing women out to the streets. I think it's profound in having a ripple effect across the Arab world. So telling those stories and highlighting those leadership profiles I think is critical. Yeah, because there's a question here about to what extent do people in the U.S. government actually know about the National Action Plan and certainly people in the public don't know about it. But I think, and so I was gonna have you address that, but the same way that Secretary Clinton I think a terrific economic argument about integrating women into economies, you actually have studies out now that say if you integrate women in, it actually adds to your GDP. So she can go around and say to foreign leaders, if you include women, there's a self-interest in it. So how do you make the self-interested case around the world for this A and B? How do you, how do you get people talking about this and not just like putting it on the shelf and moving on? Yeah, well we folded into the plan and Rob Bershinsky is here who is a detail, Michelle was kind enough to loan him to the NSC. He's our woman in chief, Rob, in coordinating these amazing people across the government's efforts with regard to the National Action Plan. But Rob and I would have these tortured exchanges. I'd get this research that he'd say, well where's the data? I mean basically looking to be able to make the pragmatic case not only externally but also within our own government, right? You want to be able to, if there's any non-convert out there, you want to be able to sway them. And Rob would send me what, to my former academic eyes, looked a little more like anecdote than empirical work, not Rob's fault. But it just isn't, we have some of what we need and what we did was we put all of what we, the sort of greatest hits of the empirical work are in the plan as a compliment to the actions that the different agencies are taking. But I mentioned earlier that Georgetown has created the center, which I think they hope to make a hub for this kind of work going forward. And the funding from foundations has to follow. This is the longing because over time, I think what I described as axioms in this country and in our policy process and in this administration, I think they are axioms at the leadership levels for sure, but they're not axioms in the world. And I think you need the data, but you also need to not walk away from just the intrinsic point that John and Michelle made, which is just, even if you didn't have data, even if it didn't correlate, they don't get to be excluded. So you start there and then again, I think we've got good anecdote and we're building toward good empirical work. Michelle, how would you make the case? You know, again, I think right now we are going on an anecdote and experience and particularly in places, first in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, in places like Libya, where we see the difference in terms of particularly societies emerging from conflict. You see the difference that the participation makes and you may not be able to document it and prove that it's statistically relevant, but folks on the ground see the difference and so they follow it as a best practice, but I agree with Samantha that part of what we have to do is build the body of work to actually demonstrate that this is the case, that it's not just... We have a question here and maybe you could address this just looking around at the women you've hired and so on, what are the examples of skills or traits unique to women that facilitate success in this field? Unique to women. You know, again, it's hard to generalize, but one of the books I read in college that I still remember is about, was written by Carol Gilligan, who's a famous psychologist who researched the development processes of young girls and young boys. And her thesis, which I think a lot of research has borne out, is that boys tend to develop by placing themselves and this is very oversimplified, so for those of you who are professionals in this field, really forgive me, but the general, the layman's sort of interpretation is that boys develop and the name of the game is sort of placing themselves in a hierarchy, whereas for girls, the name of the game becomes developing and placing yourself in a network. And as much of that may be stereotypical or oversimplified, there is a kernel of truth in there that I do think the women leaders that I see operating the Pentagon more often than not have an instinctive leadership style towards networking collaboration. And they're extremely, they tend to be very good, not again, not every individual, but they are more often than not very good at the collaborative stakeholder, getting participation, buying, drawing people into a process to feel ownership and so forth. The latest example that I just watched was the development of this new defense strategy where you have, I think, unprecedented amount of buying from the senior leadership because of the very collaborative leadership style of the people who led it, to whom happened to be senior women. Doesn't mean that it couldn't be, you couldn't get the same result with some wonderful talented male leaders as well, but I do tend to see that as an approach that more often than not the best of the female leaders in the Pentagon have. Do you have advice for women in this room?  Do you have any advice for the women, young women in this room on how to operate in that environment? I guess I would say don't mind it. Be yourself.  I'd just sort of shrug and say, gosh, you know, poor guy and, you know, smile and give a funny answer, but just sort of don't mind it and do your best and show your, be excellent at what you do. And more often than not, that will turn to your advantage to say, you know, and, you know, wow, you know, that person is really exceptional. And they may end up noticing you more because you do stound out as the only woman in the room, but the name of the game is to not let the otherness of the environment, which will sometimes strike you like, here I am again as the only woman in the room, just to not mind it and to just focus on the quality of your contribution and the quality of your work and that will speak for itself and that will create opportunities on its own. And Smith, you have a slightly different experience as somebody who rose to prominence outside the government structures. What's been your experience going inside and any, again, any advice to young women in this room? Well, I definitely agree with Michelle that I think that the more self-conscious one is about numbers or, you know, even like having a chip of some kind or fearing the worst or that wouldn't help very much. I think it just would kind of raise the overall level of anxiety. I think what helps, and this I would say to women and young women and men alike, is just knowing something about something. I mean, I think that the people who thrive in government are people who master their domain. They don't have to master every domain, but what you're there, I happen to love baseball and I'm struck and again, government is still quite fresh to me and so I still have these epiphanies where I'm like, oh, but just the degree to which to get anything done in government, it's occasionally there's very rarely, there's a home run that can be hit where the run gets scored simply by somebody doing something fantastic. That would be perhaps like a peace negotiator scoring a peace deal and bringing an end to a conflict or something exceedingly rare. Much more often, it turns on one person hitting a single and the next person moving the runner over and the next person. It requires, I mean, it's not just that collaboration makes for better product without collaboration and that kind of teamwork and that spirit, but everybody having a very precise domain and skill and chop as they say in government. There is no product or there is no output in the world and I think, again, for men and women alike, I think a focus, this is hard in government, but a focus on output, on impact in the world as against inputs. Sometimes we, at the end of the year, we go over what we've, in my tiny little office, smaller than Michelle's domain, but we go over what we've done for the year and there is a distinction between what we've done or gotten the government to do, which is really important and arguably a precondition to potential outcomes, but the real measure of the work that we do in public service is the difference that is made in the world and I think keeping an eye on that is very challenging and I guess the last thing I'd say is just on the work-family balance. I had a baby when I got to the White House, not that minute, but my water broke in a very heated discussion on an issue that showed go nameless. No, it didn't, the problem is I didn't know anything about, I had watched the movies and so I thought it was gonna gush, but it turned out like water breaking comes in many different forms. See, water really did break. Yeah, absolutely, in a very heated, I thought you were just saying, in a heated policy discussion with a very prominent, member of the administration. But he didn't know and I didn't know so we were no worse for wear. But I kept working, of course, and I was like, God, it's not that hot in here, like why am I sweating like this? Anyway, Rob will tell me too much information as we, where's Rob? Anyway, so, but to say that that's an example of the, and so when you're supposed to go quickly after your water break, but I was working and typing. How far away were you from your due date? I was over it two and a half weeks early. Yeah, so I think it was the tension of the discussion that precipitated the birth of my child. Anyway, who's no worse for wear, it turns out, but when I got to the hospital, they're like, you should have come right when your water broke and I said, but I didn't know exactly how water breaks because it had never broken before. And anyway, and was, of course, in the hospital on my blackberry, finishing everything up and all the ways. And then when I went back to work, having taken a leave, the breastfeeding blackberry, you can even do dual blackberry. I mean, it's, there's an awful lot you can do in the way of multitasking, but- Is there a pumping station in the- There's all kinds of pumping in the- There are many. In the White House as well. And that's the other thing about the women's network is the number of horrifying he walked in on me while I was pumping stories that I heard upon coming back, meant that I was like, literally like in a safe, top secret safe, so nobody. But anyway, so there are these challenges. But the challenges, and this is where I've such, both respect for Michelle for the sacrifices she made in being in the government for the ages of the children that she described, the sacrifices only get greater as your kid grows up. And so now I have this unbelievable, nearly three-year-olds who I just can't bear it apart with in the morning and run home at night to see. And that, so I think it only gets more and more pronounced. So thinking about the timing of how to go in and out. And it's not as if non-governmental life for people who work as hard as I'm sure everyone in this room and who are as committed to what they do is somehow a cakewalk in terms of the work-life balance. But there is something about government now having tasted a lot of different careers that is unrelenting. There's something unrelenting and I know I feel, when I wake up in the middle of the night and I see the red light on the blackberry and I just feel like it's going to be bad. And it's gonna be my problem. It's not gonna be anybody, whereas as a columnist or something, I could make it Michelle's problem. Which is much more fun. And write on your own time and so forth. So I just, I think it's, you can't have it all and you have to have it at different times. And I think, but child rearing is not a monolith. Work is not a monolith, there are different ways to think about how to sequence and how to stagger things. But definitely there is no, we're all kind of all in people and it's hard to feel as if you can't be all in in one direction or the other. So something has to give. Something is. Is it totally unrealistic though for the White House or, you know, upper echelons of state or defense to afford more flexibility in that, you know, you end up, my work day I find is just so merged with my life as a mother as well. I mean, I don't, you just, but it doesn't mean you're in the office from boom to boom but I don't know that that is ever a realistic possibility for you guys. I think it's very difficult in the White House given the demands of supporting the president and so forth. But I think in the agencies, you know, it really depends on the culture that's set in the organization. When I had my first child and came back and remarkably got promoted immediately after maternity leave it was the undersecretary of the time Walt Slocum bent over backwards to make a more flexible approach work for someone who was a deputy assistant secretary and Duel had it as a principal deputy. And that was because of his enlightened leadership and, you know, we made it work for a while because he knew that making that work was critical to keeping me. One of the things I've done following in his footsteps is really put an emphasis on within the parameters that Samantha described which is an, you know, very big job for a lot of people trying to create more flexibility. So for example, we've put a big push on alternative work schedule in my organization and almost every office has adopted it so that there is cross coverage of portfolios and, you know, when there is a law people feel like they can take some time get, you know, a little bit of recharging their batteries with their family and there's somebody's there to cover them and so forth. It's a work in progress but it's amazing not only the difference it makes in morale but when you invest in your people and their sort of quality of experience at work you actually get huge jumps in performance and all of the business literature says that. So it's a real, it's worth making the investment. It takes management, you know, relentless management attention to try to make it work but guess what? It's not just about making it more workable for the women. It's making it more workable for everyone and the number of young men who are now taking paternity leave in the organization has gone way up. I mean so it is, I think it's gotta be a leadership focused and it's gotta be backed up at the highest levels and one of the things I've had the blessing to have is now two secretaries in a row that have been very supportive of this agenda and trying to make a very demanding workplace a little bit more family friendly. I've watched President George H. W. Bush, President Clinton, President W. Bush and this president come in saying we're gonna be different. We're gonna be family friendly and watching everybody I know just kind of disappear into the tunnel and their families wonder where they went. I mean is there any alternative? I mean I think there are a couple things or maybe three things. One, Michelle has just described what's called it's an old fashioned word leadership. Actually putting in place using the position that she has as such an influential position in the administration to institute a set of practices that are gonna ease the burdens and the acute trade offs that I think people feel and that's incredibly important. I think there's a second dimension which is psychological and it's just liberating ourselves. I could leave the office in the day and I mean meetings permitting but I don't. You think people are gonna be looking at you? No, I don't even know if it's that. I mean I think it's whether it's some sense of what good girls do or what sense of what people. It's not so much about how other people would look at me. It's my own sort of I guess attachment to the work sense of responsibility, sense of ethic. It's an old fashioned ethic and it's an anachronistic ethic perhaps but I think you could have even as the kinds of leadership that Michelle has described and there still has to be women themselves have to liberate themselves and just do what they need to do in order to balance. But the third dimension is, let's not kid ourselves about what balance can look like. I mean there have been a kid like during the Arab Spring we were all, I don't even know if we ever lived in the situation room and that was just very hard to be away from your kids. It just kept going and it was great. It was one country after the other but you think that a country would have sort of subside and then the next thing you knew and I had won the height of the Libya crisis. It wasn't a deputies level meeting but it was a meeting that was setting up. The deputies was a very important meeting and I attempted to do the phone call from home with my then two year old and the entire call as I remember it anyway was, mommy stop talking, mommy stop talking, mommy not Obama time, Declan time. Not Obama time, Declan time over and over again and I just couldn't in here I was trying again, it was a mess and he was right, I was home so it wasn't Obama time, it was Declan time and there isn't much enough Declan time and so he had a point so we could free ourselves psychologically, we could have great leadership and there's still just the fact that you gotta be with who you're with, you gotta be with your work and your commitments and or your family and your commitments. Well it's also been somebody who's been familiar with putting the mute button on for the three year old. I was leading the call, I was leading the call, that was the challenge problem but I just wanted to thank you both for sharing some insights on policy but sharing your lives with this audience, it's really appreciated, I think you've been a great source of inspiration, thank you. Thanks for doing this. Thank you, Michelle, Samantha, Nina, we really appreciate you giving your time and your perspectives and your experiences this evening and this is I think really the unique space that WISE occupies is really allowing for this kind of discussion that merges obviously we want to shine a spotlight on all the wonderful female expertise we have on international security but at the same time provide this forum for talking about many issues that our younger women and our women coming up the ranks actually are asking about and wondering and often are struggling with and feeling isolated about so I really appreciate your candor and your participation. We are, we have a lovely reception for those of you who are able to stay and we would love to continue the discussion and of course visit with all of you that we haven't seen in so long so thank you very much and we hope to host many future events and discussions here at CSIS. Thanks.


There's numeracy. There are concepts in each one of our program of studies that explicitly support the development of numeracy. You need to be aware of numeracy in all subject areas to help draw the connections for our students. Some examples include, but they're not limited to in math, number sense, operation sense, patterning, geometry, in art, symmetry, line, perspectives, ratios, scale drawings, tessellations, geometry, in social studies we read statistics, mapping, scales, scale drawings, election data, coordinates, timelines, in science, accuracy, rounding, algebra, the climate, converting measurements, language arts, the vocabulary, explaining, justifying, interpreting, discussing, CTF, CTS, reading measurements, proportions, ratios, 3D designs, music, time, speed, fractions, patterns, phys ed, time, distance, speed, religion, numbers, patterns, probability. The list goes on and on and on. How can you incorporate numeracy into your days? Ask questions such as, how could you sort these? How many ways can you? What happens when you? How many different can be found? What's same about this? What's different? Use the Venn diagrams. Use graphing. Use timelines. Don't do this in English. Let's count the number of lines in this poem. Yeah, I finished. I did my math part. In art, don't calculate the amount of paint needed to cover the canvas. In social studies, don't multiply the number of King Henry's by the number of King George's. In phys ed, don't time yourself running 100 meters and then take a pulse and then draw a graph. Asking a simple question in your subject, where's the math in this, is not developing numeracy skills. These activities are just a waste of time, and they accomplish very little beyond irritating your students. But I understand why we do this. Math has a problem. The fact that many kids perceive math as boring and irrelevant needs addressing. It's important that all of us unite against the idea that being bad at math is socially acceptable. It's not. Numeracy is a life skill, one that we believe everyone has a right to throughout their life. Elementary schools, we play a key role in setting a strong foundation in numeracy skills. Secondary, we play a key role in improving numeracy skills. When you go back to your classrooms, tell yourself two questions. How can I use numeracy to enhance the learning outcomes in my own curriculum? And number two, how can my subject area be enhanced by students' numeracy? What does numeracy mean to you? Well, the secret of numeracy is that it's really not a secret. Being unable to use numbers is of course severely limiting, but being unable to think mathematically is socially unacceptable. We use mathematical thinking all the time. The trick is to make it explicit to our students. If you explain how your subject area uses math, uses numeracy to organize and express ideas, then maybe slowly the prejudices will start to shift.  It takes ongoing intentional work to create and sustain a school culture that will recognize, emphasize, and reinforce a cross-curricular approach to numeracy. As teams, you explore a school-wide capacity-building approach to numeracy. You will not be expected to replace the special expertise of our math teachers, but you'll be expected to encourage colleagues to highlight the numeracy in all of our subject domains. While math teachers still have the primary responsibility for developing students' mathematical thinking, all teachers have to work together to address the mathematical learning across the disciplines and across the day. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your day.


And when I was in the LAPD, I developed running operation. We developed a concept that we call the 10%. And basically, we put three concentric circles. And if you can imagine three concentric circles, one was people, one was places, and one was activities. And where the three overlap, it was sort of our 10%. I said, if you concentrate, and people that are doing things that are harmful, you concentrate on the activities that create that. And in sort of the locations that are more likely to have that. And you are very focused in dealing with this. You take care about 80% of the problem. Because we'll never have enough resources to deal with 100% of anything, right? But it's about 10% of places, people, and activities that cause about 80% of our problems.


Hey guys, what's going on? My name is Zach and if you're new here, I love doing movie reviews. I love talking movies with you guys. So let's be talking the new movie because I got a brand new movie review for you guys today. And that is Jason Reitman's new film, The Front Runner. Now, The Front Runner is about American Senator Gary Hart's presidential campaign in 1988, when it is derailed when he's caught in a scandalous love affair. Those are Hugh Jackman, Veer from Miga and J.K. Simmons. And really, I was a little bit looking forward to this film because on paper, when you hear about this movie, you got Jason Reitman directing and writing the film. You have Hugh Jackman portraying Gary Hart, which in a sense could be a very interesting character and an interesting story to be told within the political climate and these political movies and that sort. And you got J.K. Simmons coming in, you got Veer from Miga, who's probably one of the most underrated actresses in Hollywood, if I'm being completely honest. I'll say this, The Front Runner is good. I don't think it's The Front Runner for best picture or frontrunner for any Oscar caliber awards, but I still think it is a good movie. This film really reminds me of The Post from last year. It feels like The Post and a lot of inferences, where on paper, The Post is a great, if not an excellent film. But when you see it, it's just good. There's nothing hugely special about it. And The Front Runner is kind of the same way. There's nothing huge special about it. There's no big breakout performance where it's like, that's the Oscar winner there. Everyone does do a good job in here. J.K. Simmons is great. Hugh Jackman is fantastic. And Veer from Miga is good. They're all good in what they're doing. And one of the good things that I think Hugh Jackman really did nail as Gary Hart, isn't just portraying Gary Hart, but it's also showing the emotion and the stress that goes through a guy as these affairs are coming out, as he's trying to cover it up, as he's just trying to get around it and still become president. And it's a very intriguing story on that part. And the way they stagnated this whole movie from week one to week two, week three, because it takes like three weeks going in to the presidential election, is interesting. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I feel like sometimes the film became a little bit unfocused with what it was. There's so many characters, so many different things that you really only get to know a couple of them, but they try to focus on certain ones towards the ending that I felt like didn't need to be. But again, I was intrigued from this film, especially within the week two segment, there's so much to digest in that segment and so much to get into within it that I was so invested within it and think the score benefited the film by upgrading it to another layer. One of the other great things about the film though is the script. The script, the dialogue is all superb. It's just, you can tell all these actors has such a great time munching and digesting each and every one of these words and spewing it out on the screen. The story elements of the story structure could have been a little bit told better. It feels like nothing was ended up on the chopping block, but I think certain elements should have been addressed a little bit more. I think the relationship with Gary Hart and his wife should have been addressed a little bit more. I think the affair should have been tackled a little bit more. And I think some of the other things leading up to him as being this outstanding man and about to win the presidential election and then turns out that he has this affair and how is he going to handle it? I think some of those can have been focused on a little more. That's why I said this film feels a little bit unfocused. It focuses on certain things but never grabs on the one thing and tackles it hard. Yes, this film is tackling freedom of press. It's tackling who do you want in presidential office? Do you want this person? Do you want that person? Yeah, times people can say that this film is a little bit timely and what is going on in today's climate, political climate. We're not talking about that though because this is the movie and we're talking about the movie. But I feel like there could have been a little bit more different things here and there about the movie. Again, I didn't hate this movie. It just turned out good. I think this film could have been excellent. I think some of the unfocused stuff from the direction could have been a bit better. Again, Jason Reitman directed the film fine. There's nothing horrible about it. It's a fantastic script, a great score with some good performances in here that makes the film a little bit interesting watch. I like going to these films that really plop you into a different time segment in the world of history that United States history class will never teach you and you can learn a little bit more about something that you might have never known about and then it's up to you if you want to go back and see, okay, what was true, what was not, what's actually going on, what was other things that were going on. That's some of the best things about these movies. So with all that said, I'm going to give the frontrunner a B minus. Learned this movie or maybe you lived around that time and you want to hear more about it and see it on the big screen. It definitely is worth the watch. It is coming out this weekend. So guys, go check it out. I'm curious to hear your guys thoughts down below in the comments. But also guys, if you guys are new here, hit up sandwich on films also down there because right down there you guys can get into advanced movie scenes. You can check out some movie news and even some movie reviews. But guys, of course, until next time, stay classy.


Hi, my name is Elizabeth. I'm from the United States, and I recently completed the ITTT course in international TESOL TIFO certification. So one of the things that I most appreciated about the TIFO TESOL certification course was I felt that the level of detail in all of the units was really good and helped me to understand exactly what the material was talking about. I especially thought that for the units that had references to ESA lesson plans, the amount of examples that were included were really helpful for allowing me to understand exactly what information should be included in the lesson plan and how it should be detailed and laid out. However, one of the things that I was not as enthusiastic about was having an amount of course limits that I had to adhere to each day. At first, I feel like it kind of seems to make sense like, oh yes, you should only go through three units each day because you need times to understand and comprehend the information before going into the unit test. However, because of my work situation, there might be a few days where I'm off and I'm not on call, and then there might be an entire month where I have to be at the location ready to work on call 18 hours a day, but I can't have my laptop and I can't be doing anything else. So I feel like if there had been a little more freedom to choose how I wanted to pace myself with the amount of courses that I was able to do per day, it might have been more helpful to me. I also took one of the ITTT courses in business English that was a complimentary course after taking the TISO TIFL certification course. That one only had six units, but I was able to choose how I wanted to pace myself, and I felt that that would have been preferable because I mean, I didn't go through the entire thing in one day. I still took several days to read over all of the material and to complete the course. However, I really appreciated having the option to choose how many I wanted to go through per day because I feel like in my situation and in a lot of people's situations, it was really helpful to be able to choose for myself how many I wanted to go through per day.


What's up guys take down here and it would appear that we are going to get a many weather versus McGregor fights again But this time it's going to be in the octagon So I just want to share my thoughts in a quick little video for you guys of the whole situation So as you guys seen last year, I hope you guys have seen it because I seen it. It was amazing I was rooting for Connor McGregor, but I knew Mayweather. It was his yard He was going to win the boxing match and he did Earlier this year we seen on I think it was Twitter or wherever he shared it Mayweather was training the octagon and was training for a UFC fights. He's 15-0 I don't know what the point is. It's probably just money, but the man is a millionaire So what's the point of having this match in McGregor's yard, which is the octagon where McGregor Has way more skills because Mayweather's never been in the octagon Mayweather's Never experienced anything like that. So I don't know how he's gonna do with MMA I think McGregor is gonna knock him out I would assume they're gonna let it go on for at least the second round something like that But I would like to see a first-round knockout, but I'm pretty sure just so they can get money That it's gonna be a second round and they'll let the fight go on a little bit longer Then maybe McGregor could have done, but I do think he's gonna win McGregor's gonna have the kicks I don't think Mayweather's gonna know how to counter them. For the boxing match they had last year I think it's kind of funny because McGregor did have boxing experience back in his days whenever he was starting to become a fighter But Mayweather has no MMA experience. So it's gonna be quite interesting to see what happens My money is gonna be on McGregor. It was last time too, but I think this time is a legit McGregor's gonna win We just have to see This is their second fight. Is there gonna be a third fight? I don't know what the heck they could do for a third fight. If they did do a third fight though It would be interesting if they both decided on a sports or a fighting technique that they've neither one of them has any Experience in and they both go in and do training for it and they both go in blind Not knowing never been in a fight for whatever it may be. I think that would be really interesting But I just think this is gonna be the last fight we see between the two and it's deserving I really wish McGregor instead of Instead of being put into these fights These super fights is what I usually call it that he would just defend his title in the UFC fight UFC fighters the ones that have earned shots for his title instead of I Understand the boxing match a little bit, but now to come and have a UFC fight It's like what's the point to fend your title be in the UFC fight the people that deserve a shot at your title I know it's not a hundred percent McGregor's faults. I'm pretty sure Dana White is telling him and pushing him and making him do some These things I do understand it as a business side to I would do it to think of the money Everybody is making all the promotions are making But I don't even know if they have a venue picked out yet. I know in June or July They're gonna have the actual official press conference. I'll probably do an update later on as it gets closer to that But they I don't even know where they're gonna have it. I think Vegas is a good shot again. Vegas is somewhere where I think they get a lot of money out of especially with all the betting and that But I think McGregor could pull one off by saying he's gonna have the fight in his own country because He went to Mayweather's Yard and fought in Vegas, which is in America, which is where Mayweather's from Let's have a fight in Ireland where McGregor's from since he is the UFC the octagon is his yard in this particular fight. So I would like to see it in Ireland myself, but Comment down below who you think is gonna win this fight. I think McGregor has it without a doubt I know in the boxing fight. He was allowed to use the Superman punch I didn't see him do that once so it's gonna be pretty interesting the amount of ass kicking He gives Mayweather in the UFC fights. I think he's gonna play around for a little bit honestly I don't think he's gonna just try to knock him out really quick I don't think he's trying to gonna try to submit him really quick I think he's gonna play around and tease them and make Mayweather regret getting into this fight But I'm gonna leave this video here comment down below your opinions Let me know what you guys are thinking like it if you did like it As I said, there'll be an update in the future, but I will see you guys in the next one. Please take care peace


And now for your strong Europe spotlight. Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the 3rd Infantry Division recently participated in a Norwegian-led exercise to rehearse combat operations in a severe cold weather environment.  None of my crew members are used to this cold weather and we just dove right in. We are taking part in an exercise called Cold Response 16.  We conduct our own training prior to coming up here but since being here, we've done multiple iterations of cold weather classes everything from the use of snow shoes to employing patrol bases in the wood line. It's important to remember that operating in cold weather and snowy conditions may have serious consequences if you don't do the right things. That is why this exercise is a very good challenge for junior leaders in all armies. For more on the U.S. Army in Europe, go to eur.army.mil