Page 153 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

didn’t know what to do with me at IBM. They just weren’t ready for a
female branch manager yet,” Pfeiffer recalled. “So I saw this ad about the
White House Fellows, and I thought, ‘With my ten years working with
IBM’s government division it would be great to further my understanding
of how the government really works.’” Pfeiffer was awarded the Fellow-
ship and received a plum assignment: to work as administrative assistant
to the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Robert
“Bob” Weaver. When Weaver was told that Pfeiffer had been assigned to
work with him for the year, he allegedly exclaimed, “My God, it’s a girl!”
“Now, you have to put that into the time sequence, and when you do,
you realize how legitimate and absolutely hilarious that reaction is,” Pfeif-
fer explained with a laugh. “But he got used to the idea, and it wasn’t long
before he moved me into an office near his, and I had a real job and was
part of everything.”
Weaver had been HUD secretary for only a few months, and every-
one in President Johnson’s administration had very high hopes for him. He
had earned a Ph.D. from Harvard and had been the administrator of the
federal Housing and Home Finance Agency for several years. He was an
expert on two of the most important issues of the day—black labor and
urban matters—and had written highly regarded books on those topics.
“He was like a superstar. He lived right down the street from my mother
in Washington,” Pfeiffer recalled. “Back then I had a convertible white
Corvette Sting Ray with a red interior—I love sports cars—and I used to
pick up Secretary Weaver on Saturday mornings and drive him to the
HUD office in that Corvette. He loved it. He became one of the dearest
people in my life, a lifelong mentor who taught me so many valuable lead-
ership lessons.”

The lessons Pfeiffer learned that year would serve her well when, in 1978,
she was named chairperson of the NBC television network and became
one of the nation’s most powerful women. The lessons of her year at HUD
were especially significant because of one noteworthy fact: Secretary Robert
Weaver was black, the first African American ever to be appointed to a
presidential cabinet post. When he accepted President Johnson’s historic
appointment, Weaver carried the hopes and dreams of millions of African
Americans on his shoulders, and he did not disappoint them or the

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