Page 283 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

BECOMING A WHITE HOUSE FELLOW

PEELING BACK THE LAYERS IN AFRICA
After leaving his White House Fellowship, Henry Cisneros (WHF 71–72)
went on to become the four-term Mayor of San Antonio, the first His-
panic-American mayor of a major U.S. city. He was appointed Secretary
of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by Presi-
dent Clinton, the first Fellow to become a cabinet secretary. A class trip
to Japan would set the stage for Cisneros to score a major coup for his
city years later when, after nearly two decades of building on connections
established in Japan as a White House Fellow, he and a group of dedi-
cated local leaders persuaded Toyota to open a plant in San Antonio. Cis-
neros credits another policy study trip—this one to Africa—with giving
him the understanding he needed to make San Antonio a stronger, more
efficient place during his terms as mayor. In Africa, Cisneros saw for the
first time how all the layers of societal infrastructure—agriculture, elec-
tricity, ports, water systems, roads, and more—come together. “It is too
complex to see in a modern industrial society, but seeing it where the lay-
ers were pulled back as they were in Africa was the key for me. When I
became mayor, that was the stuff of my work, and I ended up champi-
oning things that were not normal issues for a minority because I had had
that experience in Africa.”
Another of Cisneros’s classmates was strongly impressed by that trip
to Africa too. In one east African village, Deanell Tacha (WHF 71–72)
and her classmates hiked past mud and grass huts where children played
outside in the dust. Suddenly, a little girl with a dazzling smile reached
out and handed Tacha a small clay doll she had made. “She gave it to
me as proudly as any child would give a treasured gift,” Tacha recalled.
“I intended to take it home, but when I got back to my hotel that night,
my preoccupation with Western sanitation drove me to wash the little
doll in the sink before I packed it in my suitcase. Well, it was not clay
at all—just dried mud. Horrified, I watched the little doll wash down
the drain. I remember crying most of the night about my extraordinary
self-preoccupation, mourning a lost connection caused by my silly wor-
ries. I wish I could find that little girl today. I can still see her face and
still feel my desolation when her precious gift was lost forever down the
drain. For me, it has been a symbolic reminder of the trivial things that
divide us.”

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