Page 47 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE PROGRAM

health news to the global network. It was a great discussion. But it didn’t
make sense to me then—I didn’t quite understand what it would mean.”
What it meant was that four years later, when it came time to expand his
network’s medical coverage, Johnson remembered the young neurosurgeon
and former Fellow and recruited him to serve as CNN’s chief medical cor-
respondent. “He clearly had a huge impact on my life professionally, but
personally Tom is very close to my family—he’s like a grandfather to my
daughters,” Gupta said. “We spend time together talking about life and the
world, and I can’t say enough about how that particular relationship has
affected my life.”
Gupta recalled others he met during his Fellowship year who have
gone on to become lifelong friends. Ted Sorenson, who had been Presi-
dent Kennedy’s special counsel and main speechwriter, spoke to Gupta’s
class during a lunch seminar, and Gupta approached him afterward and
told him how much he admired his body of work. Sorenson invited
Gupta to call him to arrange a lunch date. “I thought, Yeah, right, like
he’s going to have time to have lunch with me,” Gupta recalled. “But I
called him, and he did have lunch with me, and we have remained
friends. And U.S. Senator Bill Frist came to talk to us too. He had been
a heart surgeon who became Senate majority leader, and I was fascinated
by that. So I called his office—he didn’t know me at all—and said I was
a White House Fellow. Within an hour his office called back and said,
‘Send him up.’ You could call people that you really wanted to meet, and
they would return your call and meet with you. That’s the power of the
Fellows program.”
U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (WHF 83–84) shares Gupta’s belief
that the White House Fellows program opens doors. “People are extraor-
dinarily accommodating and accessible . . . if I wanted to learn about any
topic, there would be people inside the government and outside who
would be more than willing to come and give me a tutorial right away,
whenever I called,” Chao said. “This was a tremendous privilege.” Chao
credits one of those people, senator and two-time cabinet secretary
Elizabeth Dole, with giving her a boost in her career, saying, “Senator
Dole appointed many young women to leadership positions, and I am one
of them. I’ve met so many others whose personal examples of leadership
have taught me a lot about how to strive to be an inspiring, motivational,
and effective leader.”

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