Wendy Sherman on Hard Conversations in Hard Places

Amanda Sloat

Welcome to Power and Purpose. We are delighted to speak with Wendy Sherman, who I had the pleasure of serving with in the US government. She served under three presidents and five Secretaries of State, becoming known as the diplomat for hard conversations in hard places. Most recently, she served as Deputy Secretary of State during the Biden administration. The first woman in that role during the Obama administration, she was Undersecretary for Political Affairs, leading Iran negotiations and counselor leading on North Korea and engaging in Middle East negotiations.

She has experience in academia, working at Harvard Kennedy School and the private sector, helping former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright build a global consulting business. She started her career as a social worker before working at a range of government and nonprofit organizations. And in 2018, she published an excellent memoir: Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence, which we will link in the show notes as it addresses many issues of interest to the podcast. Wendy, welcome to the show.

Wendy Sherman

Great to be with you both.

Nathalie Tocci

Well, Wendy, let me begin by talking a little bit about one of the major contributions that you made to foreign policy, which was Iran and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how does it feel, you invested so much in what was really a landmark agreement, which was an instance of effective multilateralism.

It strengthened international security. It could have opened the way to a more stable Middle East. And it was a rare instance of the transatlantic relationship together with others, actually getting something done. And here we are, speaking in the fall of 2025. It’s ten years since, the JCPoA, and that agreement is in tatters.

Not just because the United States pulled out of it in 2018. Not just because there has been a war in Iran. But also now with the Europeans, threatening the snapback of sanctions. So I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit, firstly, how it feels on a personal level to kind of see all of this unraveling.

And then perhaps if you could also tell us a little bit about how you actually viewed the situation. I mean, how do you see developments moving forward?

Wendy Sherman

 

Well, first of all, again, great to be with you both. Second, Amanda mentioned my book and it was called not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power and Persistence. And the reason for the title is exactly what you just outlined. Diplomacy is not for the faint of heart. It is not cocktails and fine dining, though that happens from time to time.

Not my favorite part of diplomacy. But it is about really, really hard work and the hard work of a team. And in the case of the JCPoA, definitely happened because of a team and tremendous leaders from the European Union like Cathy Ashton and Federica Mogherini, and obviously from the United States, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and of course President Obama, and a fantastic team with which I had the honor to work and lead, going day by day.

And I can’t fail to mention an extraordinary European Union diplomat named Helga Schmidt, who kept us all together and drove us to closure. Just an extraordinary diplomat. And the persistence part of that subtitle really speaks to what you just asked Nathalie. When World War One happened, it was called the “war to end all wars”.

And yet, 20 years later, which is truly a blip in time, historical time, we had World War Two. And so I’ve learned at my ripe old age that you have to persist, and that one probably is going to have to do, and redo, and reestablish, and retool. And I think what the Europeans are trying to do right now with snap back and beginning the process, is to try to push Iran to do the right thing.

And we saw recently, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who actually was my counterpart during the Iran talks, meet in Egypt with head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, and at least begin a process of the IAEA back inside of Iran inspecting. No, I don’t know all the details. And my guess it isn’t what I would hope it would be.

But quite frankly, more than anything else, while we try to see if negotiations can get back on track, we need the International Atomic Energy Agency inside of Iran so we know what the heck is going on.

Nathalie Tocci

I see the logic of what the Europeans are trying to do. Of course it’s a high-risk gamble because if it works great. You actually, perhaps unambitious as it may be, it actually opens the first step in that journey of reopening a diplomatic track.

If it doesn’t work and the Iranians simply shut the door, the Europeans are also shutting themselves out of the process. And so you could really see this working both ways, but I guess, a another big theme of diplomacy not being about cocktail parties is that diplomacy is all about risk taking.

Wendy Sherman

 

Absolutely, absolutely. And President Obama took an enormous risk, when he told Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan, who were leading the secret bilateral negotiations that jumpstarted the multilateral negotiations, that even though the United States for so long had said absolutely no enrichment, which is what the Trump administration is saying, absolutely no enrichment. President Obama took the risk of saying he would consider allowing Iran to enrich under very strict monitoring and verification, and that risk opened the door to a successful negotiation.

No deal is perfect. But as you noted, we would have had eyes on what was happening inside of Iran. Europe was very anxious to get back in economically to Iran and having Europeans, more Europeans on the ground, doing business, likely would have changed the environment over time to some extent. So we’ll never know what we don’t know.

But obviously when President Trump in his first term pulled out of the JCPoA, I happened to be in Malta, in Valletta. And my cell phone rang and it was John Kerry to both commiserate, but also to do what he always did, which is we’re going to keep working at this. We’re going to keep seeing if there’s something to be done here. And I appreciate all the diplomats all over the world who are trying to do that now, absolutely.

Amanda Sloat

Well, let me bring this a little closer to home. You are the first American guest that we have had on our show, and it’s impossible not to talk about the current moment in the United States. You invoked your age a few minutes ago, and with age comes wisdom and experience. And you came of age during the civil rights era in the United States, which, of course, also saw political assassinations, a very divided country and a difficult moment.

So I’m interested in your thoughts on where we are now and also what perspective you can bring to the moment based on where we were during another very difficult moment in our country’s history.

Wendy Sherman

Well, we are a very difficult place in the United States, and I would say around the world, not just in the United States. I did come of age during the civil rights movement, during the great divisions in our country over the Vietnam War. I was one of those young college protesters at the time. And we saw assassinations not only of leaders Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, but obviously President John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

We saw bombs in townhouses in New York City by the Weathermen. We saw kids killed on Kent State’s campus. It was a really horrible, horrible time. We are now in a very horrible time again. But it’s different in some ways. I think part of what’s happening in our country, yes has to do with economics and people feeling economically insecure.

 

Why immigration and migration is such a hot button issue, not only in the United States, but around the world, because, as happened in our country historically, every time a new group came in, the group that had just come before them didn’t want them there because they were afraid they’d lose their economic status. So economics certainly is playing a part in where we are.

But globalization, which brought a lot of good things to people around the world, also displaced people. Jobs they once had, they no longer had because they were being done somewhere else. It was cheaper for consumers, but probably most assuredly bad for some workers. But there’s been another trajectory during this time, and that is very rapid social change. Automation, the coming of AI, quantum, all of these things are happening very quickly.

It’s not the Industrial Revolution which took 40 years. This is here now. There’s changes socially in that women are in the workplace, men have had to adapt. In the United States, women put off having children, oftentimes because they now have an opportunity for a career and they have birth control, and reproductive rights or had reproductive rights in our country.

Some of that’s being taken away. People who are gay can marry. And all of this has happened fast. And it’s made people, I think, in our country, particularly white men, feel disempowered and like they don’t have a place anymore in society and they want to push back. And we have leadership right now in the United States that I think wants to return us to the 1950s, where women are in the kitchen with their babies, men are in the workplace.

But it’s a false narrative because artificial intelligence is changing and will change everything, it will be even more profound than globalization. And we should be spending our time thinking about that, just like we should be spending our time thinking about climate and what it’s doing, because it’s going to exacerbate that migration and the immigration challenges we all face, all around the world, and put tremendous pressure on leaders to figure out the identity of their countries, the identity of their people, and what their future should look like.

Amanda Sloat

What advice do you have to young people coming of age now? Again, drawing on your experience from that difficult time. Natalie and I came of age in the 90s. It was a time of great peace and prosperity in the United States. There was so much optimism in Europe about eastern enlargement, the introduction of the euro.

And it’s not a particularly inspiring time for young people who maybe thought they were going to be diplomats or go into to government seeing a clear path forward for themselves.

Wendy Sherman

Without a doubt, I have talked to any number of phenomenal Foreign Service officers and civil servants who have been kicked out of service, or have resigned or have been pushed out, see they have no opportunities, no future. People often join government all over the world because it’s security. It’s a long term commitment, and it’s a passion. What I would say to young people and I still, do some work at the Kennedy School and did some work at Columbia as well.

Don’t give up your hope. You are the future. You get to decide where things go. I don’t, the future belongs to you. And I see my job is to mentor, to help, to inspire, to support. But the future really is in the hands of the people that you all are teaching, that I have taught, in the hands of those folks who are going to be the mechanics, whose jobs aren’t going to be taken over by robots and AI.

The people who are in community colleges and even the people who are in trade schools, those are the folks, the young people who are going to decide our future. And so you should be telling us what you want, where you want to go, and what we can do to support you to get there.

Nathalie Tocci

I was thinking about the various reasons why we are where we are also has to do with the fact that whereas on the undemocratic, illiberal, authoritarian sort of neck of the woods, there’s actually a lot of energy, even intellectual energy, there are ideas floating around. This is a Jacobin phase of revolution and tearing down the system.

I think on the other side of the fence, that energy is clearly not there. And that energy can’t simply be about conservation. And I think it comes back to the role of young people because people kind of your age, our age, I mean, this is not where the ideas for the new ideas are going to come from. Very clearly. It can’t just be about defending something. It will have to be about constructing something new. And and that’s where it will have to come from.

Wendy Sherman

Yes, I agree, I’m all for disruption. I certainly was a disruptor in my 20s. And so I’m all for disruption. I’m not for destruction. I’m not for destruction. And, I think you’re quite right. The brilliant ideas of the future… I mean, my grandsons who are about to be 12 and 10, know more about managing technology than I do.

And it’s second nature to them. It is even to my daughter, who is now 42. But, it’s not to me. I know how to use it. I try to get myself, but more likely than not, I scream out of whatever office I’m in for a 20 year old, to come and help me. So I agree that’s where the ideas are going to come from.

Nathalie Tocci

Onto you actually, and your own path. So we talked a little bit about, how you began indeed and your role in and that period in history, the civil rights movement. But how does a social worker like you were at the beginning become deputy secretary of state? What was your journey?

Wendy Sherman

So I tell young people, I wish for them an unexpected life.

Nathalie Tocci

Wonderful.

Wendy Sherman

Don’t have a five-year plan, because if you have a five-year plan, you may miss phenomenal opportunities. If you had asked me in my 20s whether I’d be sitting opposite the Iranians or sitting opposite the North Koreans talking about nuclear weapons, I would have just laughed in your face. I was trained with clinical skills, which have been very helpful to understanding people.

But I was predominantly a community organizer, helping people forge connections to achieve a goal. And that set of skills I have used as a social worker, I consider myself still a social worker. I’ve used it when I was in Maryland state government, as the Director of Child Welfare, I used it in building a business with – I miss her every day – former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and I certainly have used it in diplomacy.

So my caseload has changed over the years, but the skill set. So what I say to young people, get yourself a core skill set that you can then adapt to the opportunities that come your way. I think if I’d asked you all whether you’d be doing what you’re doing right now, you’ve had a more linear trajectory, but not totally. And I don’t think Amanda, for instance, thought she might end up at IE in Madrid. But there she is. So, you have to be open to opportunity or you’re just going to miss the best things in life and the most exciting risks that one can take.

Amanda Sloat

No, I completely agree with that. And Nathalie and I actually talked a lot about our own paths on the first podcast, and that is the same advice that I give to students. I never thought I would live in Iraq. I never thought I would live in Northern Ireland. And yeah, a couple of years ago, I certainly never thought I was going to live in Spain.

I’m curious either coming from the social work background or just your general approach to leadership. Is this idea of authenticity which you write about in your book. And I think one of the sections of your book that really captured the public’s imagination was your anecdote about bursting into tears during negotiations with the Iranians. Can you tell us a bit about what happened there?

Wendy Sherman

Sure. I think authenticity is critical. I actually learned about that in politics. One of the things I got to do in my life was to run the Senate campaign for Barbara Mikulski when she became the first Democratic woman elected in her own right to the United States Senate. I was from Maryland, I’d gotten to know her.

She is tiny, pleasantly plump, round as we say. She talks strongly. She has a loud, booming voice. As she said, togas didn’t come in a size 14 petite. And when people asked her “how can you run for Senate?” She said “this is what the Senate looks like”. And she never stopped fighting for the people of Maryland.

She was authentically who she was. And I learned a very important thing that people who are authentically who they are travel the furthest, meet their goals, fulfill their dreams. Now, the anecdote that you’re talking about Amanda, was at the end of the negotiations when we were negotiating the UN resolution around the arms embargo and the use of missiles.

And the United States always held the pen on that resolution. And so it was a bilateral negotiation. So I was sitting in a room with Rob Malley by my side, who was acting as my deputy and the liaison to the White House. And across from me was Abbas Araghchi and Majid Ravanchi. And I had gotten approval from the president and Secretary Kerry, of a couple of formulas that the president would be comfortable with.

I put two options on the table. Abbas said “Okay, I can do this”. And then he said, as the Iranians always do “One more thing”, and I lost it, I was exhausted. I hadn’t had any more than 1 or 2 hours of sleep for the last few nights. I had was supposed to have gone to the Kennedy School as an Institute of Politics fellow in September.

Now I knew I wasn’t going to get there at least until October, because if we got this done, we had to get our Congress to agree to it. So my entire life had been screwed up and I was exhausted. And somewhere along the line, I learned that women can’t get angry, but we can cry. And when I get angry, I cry.

I stick my fingernails into my hand. I try to take deep breaths, but I cannot when I have strong emotions, particularly anger, keep from crying. And so that’s what happened. I said, “Enough, Abbas, I’ve had it. Everything’s off, Nothing’s working. Do you really want to put this all at risk?” Tears streaming down my face.

Nobody in the room knew what to do with me, including Rob. And then Abbas said, “Okay”. Now, ultimately, Javad Zarif, the foreign minister asked Secretary Kerry for one more thing, and we actually left something in our pocket to give him because we knew that was going to happen. And Abbas Araghchi, when he was being confirmed to be or their version of confirmation to be foreign minister, actually had that anecdote brought up, was he weak?

And of course, this wasn’t about him. This is about me. And but just goes to show you, no matter what happens, the guys see it from their perspective, not from my perspective. But anyway, I was who I was, and I couldn’t be otherwise. And I’ve tried all my life to be who I am. Sometimes that works, sometimes not so much.

Amanda Sloat

The reason why this struck me so much, and Wendy this is a confession, I have always been completely intimidated by you and have found you the most intimidating, I worked for the president, and I still found you more intimidating.

Wendy Sherman

Why?!

Amanda Sloat

You have such a no-nonsense demeanor. You make people want to sit up straight. Not mess around and get the job done. And I actually remember the first time I worked with you. I’m sure you don’t remember this. It was very early in my time at the State Department, and you were the undersecretary, and you were doing a call, actually, with my former boss, a member of Congress and my current boss at the State Department.

The assistant secretary couldn’t make the meeting. And so he sent me up to your office. You were on the phone and an issue came up, and you muted the phone and looked at me and asked if I had the answer to the congressman’s question. I had a couple of points, but I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t really know the issue.

I started around and it actually was the only time before or since that I had been that unprepared in an engagement with the principal, and I was mortified. I actually still remember the question and what I said and what I wish I had said. And so at the same time, you were very intimidating. There was also a real sense of kindness and grace, because you turned to me after the call and said: “Don’t worry about it, you weren’t even supposed to be here. This isn’t your meeting. It’s not your responsibility. It’s not your fault.”

And so I’m curious. You seem surprised that I said I was intimidated by you. You must know that you are intimidating to people. Is that your professional demeanor? Your badass women vibe? Tell me, how do you manage to command such incredible respect?

Wendy Sherman

That’s very, very wonderful to hear. Probably one of the things I’m most proud about is when people say to me, as you just did, “I think you’re tough and expect great things, but you’re kind and generous too.” I can’t think of a nicer compliment. When I get emails from folks who have worked for me or with me, and one of them said to me once, “I’ve learned to be confident in myself, on top of my game and a team player at the same time.”

It’s just crucial. Yes, I know I can be tough. But I do hope that everybody is also seeing, maybe not everybody, but enough people that kind and generous. I’m a bit of a control freak. I’m sure that’s true. But, I absolutely have learned over time, nothing of importance gets done by one person alone. Nothing. It’s always a team effort. Always. And I have immense, immense, respect for all the amazing people with whom I’ve worked who will know more about things. The two of you know more about so much substantively, than I ever will.

Nathalie Tocci

Well, I’m not so sure about that Wendy.

Wendy Sherman

I am, I am. It’s not what I’ve done lifelong. I’m not seen in the foreign policy and national security complex as one of them. I’m not. I don’t spend all my time writing and trying to position myself. And certainly now I am post ambition. So I’m not trying to get the next job in the next administration. I don’t need to do that anymore. But I hope both of you are, strong, confident people and generous and kind people as well.

Nathalie Tocci

Not only you personally convey, by what you’re saying, but by who you are, how these two things are really two sides of the same coin.

I wanted to come back to women and women leadership, and really ask you two sets of questions, which are related, but actually quite different. And going back to the anecdotes of you crying in the room and saying, well people expect men to get angry and women to cry. And of course, in that room, the people that you were mentioning were all men.

So the first question is, how does it feel to be to be the woman amongst men? And how does this make things harder? How can it make things easier? And a related question really has to do with the traits of women leadership, which of course are traits that men can also have. But is there something about, I mean, you spoke a lot about working in teams, which I think comes with empathy and listening and kindness. Is there’s something there which is particular to women leadership? Which, again, doesn’t necessarily mean that men can’t have or acquire those skills.

Wendy Sherman

So going back to the beginning of this conversation, how crazy was it that the three people who spent more time with the Iranians than anybody else were women?

Nathalie Tocci

Right.

Wendy Sherman

Cathy Ashton and Federica Mogherini and Helga and me, and we all knew how weird it was. And with the Iranians of all people, with whom we could not shake hands or touch, it was just amazing. And what I thought was really amazing about it is that over the course of that negotiation, except for the Iranian delegation, every delegation found a woman to bring to the negotiation.

Other than the leadership at the start, the American delegation was the only and the European Union, of course, the only ones with women. The French, the British, the Germans, the Chinese, the Russians had no women. But over time, even if they had to go find a junior woman, they showed up with a girl. And I think they did that because they understood they’d be at a better advantage if they had a woman among them because of the leadership of the negotiation.

I think they were right. So there’s no question that one of the things that I think women do, and I learned this from reading In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan, I think it is, many years ago. Women tend to think horizontally. Men tend to think vertically. I won’t go to any visceral descriptions of why that is, but I do think we naturally do get raised to connect and relate to others, and men get socialized to be number one, supported by everybody else.

And so yes, we each can learn from each other. To be more supportive of each other. And I know plenty of men who do that. My husband is one of them. And women, can learn to be the leader and feel confident in that ability to bring all the pieces together. So, yes, I think there’s some socialized differences.

I think some of those are disappearing. But I do think it is what is so scary right now for so many, that the roles that people thought we each had are being changed, and none of us as human beings do particularly well with change, some better than others. And I think that’s what we’re all coping with now. And as I said, because of technology that’s going to get harder, not easier.

Amanda Sloat

You talk about being post-ambition, which is a phrase I love. As you, look back on your career, I’m curious, what things are you most proud of?

Wendy Sherman

Oh, I’m I’ve been so privileged and so honored and so lucky to have had opportunities that were simply extraordinary, helping Senator Mikulski win that Senate race was unbelievably spectacular. Building a business. When Madeline, Susie George, Carol Browner, Jim O’Brien, one great guy who dealt with four strong women, none of us had ever built a business in our lives, I was really proud that we did it.

In the first week we were in our offices was 9/11, and we are having this conversation around the time of 9/11 remembrance and nothing like starting an international global consulting business when no airplanes are flying. I’m also incredibly proud, of course, of the JCPoA of being with Madeline, the first time a secretary of state went to North Korea. And trying to move that forward, working with the amazing Bill Perry, the former secretary of defense who helped us do that, really lucky to have been part of negotiations around the Middle East at Wye River, a little bit at Camp David, Shepherdstown, with the Syrians.

I just have had amazing, amazing opportunities. I think I am probably proudest, of course, to have helped to raise an extraordinary daughter and have two fantastic grandsons who are complete soccer fanatics.

As you all know, we’re having this conversation while I’m in Tuscany, in Italy, and my daughter, who’s just extraordinary, literally drove from here for three hours on these crazy roads, to take my grandsons to a soccer game because they wanted to see Italian soccer. And I’m proud of my marriage, which is about to be 46 years old.

So really lucky, great group of friends. And colleagues. And I should have said, when you asked the question about women, every place I’ve gone, every kind of job I’ve had, I’ve tried to create a support group largely of women – sometimes of what I call the Galahads good men – largely women who would tell me the truth.

They’d celebrate my victories and they’d tell me when I was being a jerk. And I trusted them. And we trusted each other for that kind of feedback, both the support and the constructive critique.

Amanda Sloat

What lessons did you learn about work-life balance? Is that possible in these jobs? I mean, obviously, if you’re doing diplomacy with the Iranians, the North Koreans, you’re traveling all the time and to maintain a happy marriage, to raise a child, even to maintain friendships if you don’t have children. What lessons did you learn about preserving that part of your personal life, even while you were doing all of these important professional things?

Wendy Sherman

I don’t talk about work-life balance anymore. I talk about work-life integration, all of ourselves in what we do to be our best selves in the workplace and our best selves at home. Some countries do a better job of that than I think the United States does, but we’re all working on it, because it has to be integrated in a better way.

It’s not just about balance. I learned I can’t have it all at once, but I can have it pretty much all over time. There’s no question there were times I was absent from my daughter. She and I have talked about it. And I remember one time, when my daughter was young and she was at some gymnastics class and split her lip and had to go to the Emergency Room, and my husband took her there.

 

And I had a meeting at the White House. And I went to the White House meeting. Today, nobody would have expected me to go to the White House meeting. I would have been able to go to the Emergency Room, and I wish I’d had the gumption to say, screw it, I’m going to the Emergency Room. So I think things have changed in a better way in that sense.

Every time I went into government, I would tell friends and family, I’m going to try to stay in touch. Of course, early on I didn’t have text messaging or even cell phones. We had pagers at best. So, I couldn’t stay in touch as much as I wanted to. But I do think at the end of the day, what I tell all professionals, including myself, at the end of the day, you have your friends and your family when your work days are over, pretty much over.

And so don’t forget them. They’re important. Sometimes I did that well and sometimes not so well.

Nathalie Tocci

Wendy, you talked earlier about those proudest moments. What were either, whether you have any regrets, sort of thinking back, would have done something different? Or alternatively, what were the failures that now, in retrospect, you look back on and you think, well, actually, that particular failure for me took me somewhere where I would have not have otherwise ended up, and you learn from.

Because, I think especially younger people, you started off this podcast talking about not having five-year plans and I think part of the problem are those five-year plans, and especially the way in which one looks at a success story like yours. And one doesn’t know about things that didn’t quite go as expected and doesn’t know about the blank spaces and doesn’t know about the failures, and therefore doesn’t really understand that if that success is what it is and what you see is precisely because all of those shades of gray, and I think it’s so important, particularly for younger people, to understand what those shades of gray actually are.

Wendy Sherman

I think when I was the Director of Child Welfare at the age of 30, that was nuts. I didn’t know enough. I mean, I think I did a fine job, but I don’t think I knew enough. I regret very much that things that I’ve started that I thought were going to head someplace like the JCPoA, negotiations what we were doing with North Korea at the end of the Clinton administration, got waylaid by others.

And I think we would have been in a very different place in both situations, had history been different. I wish earlier on I had done a better job, integrating my work life and my professional life. There’s just no question about it. My daughter and I are close, I think we had some hard times, in part because I simply wasn’t there in the way that she’d hoped maybe I would be.

So nothing’s perfect. But I think the other thing one learns over time is to be generous to oneself as well. I did the best I could. I am proud of as I said, more than anything, my family. My daughter teaches Immigration, Asylum and Human Trafficking Law at Boston University Law School. She’s a very strong advocate, as you can imagine, on such a tough issue.

And she’s a great mom, an extraordinary mother, extraordinary. A better mother than I was, much more relaxed, much more joyful. So I wish I’d been more joyful as a mother and less stressed out. So, there are things I wish I had done better, but as I said, we all do the best we can in life, and we need to not only be generous to others, but generous to ourselves.

Amanda Sloat

Well, speaking of joy, we like to end this podcast on a happy note. So, Wendy, can you tell us what has brought you joy recently?

Wendy Sherman

Well, without a doubt, having our daughter and our grandsons here going on adventures with them, Nathalie probably knows about these, you might too, we went to a six-hour cooking class.

Nathalie Tocci

Wonderful.

Wendy Sherman

And both my grandsons know how to cook. Because my daughter loves to cook. I never cooked, so I don’t know where she learned it from, but she’s a great cook. But the cooking class was fantastic. The teacher was great. There were 11 of us from all over the world in the cooking class, and the teacher was amazing. We made tiramisu, and we made pasta from scratch. We made a vegetarian sauce and a tomato sauce, and then we ate it all. Of course.

Nathalie Tocci

Obviously, that’s part of the joy as well.

Wendy Sherman

That is part of the joy. So it was it was such a fun experience. And to do it with them, was just spectacular.

Amanda Sloat

Well Wendy, it has been a fun experience for us to have you with us on this podcast. Thank you for your many years of public service, the continued mentoring that you are continuing to do, and for all of the wisdom that you shared with us today.

Nathalie Tocci

Thank you so much, Wendy. It was really, really, truly wonderful.

Wendy Sherman

Well, thank you both and thank you for the service you have given to your countries, to the world and what you now do to help the next generation move forward. You’re both fantastic, and for heaven’s sakes, I hope you’re intimidating some people yourselves.

Amanda Sloat

I am sure it’s happened.

Wendy Sherman

Take care.

Nathalie Tocci

Thank you.