TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Over the years, I’ve been grateful to share conversations with lots of wonderful guests, and each time there are lessons learned from every story, but the greatest reward always comes from you listening and enjoying. And so thank you for sharing with your friends and family, and for following along wherever you might be catching this right now. I truly appreciate it and if you’ve been enjoying these, I hope you can also submit a kind rating and review.

So I've been thinking a lot about how we tend to our own proverbial gardens in a way, often assuming and relying on systems and policies in place to ensure that those gardens have resources and safeguards not just now but for the future. Hopefully, in the rooms where things happen and where those policies are being shaped, there are people we trust, insiders… who synthesize data into a vision, reflect current innovations and guardrails through sound strategy, and then ready them for public implementation to closely mirror our values. So especially in an American election year, and as the intersections in creating policy and strategy continue to become more complex, it was superb to share a conversation with a true insider in Rohini Kosoglu. Rohini is a Sri Lankan American who grew up in New Jersey, and is a national policy expert as well as a veteran of the White House, Congress, and presidential campaigns. Over the last two decades, she’s been at that leading edge of driving transformative change in social, tech, and economic policy. She has over a decade of experience in the Senate, and played a key negotiating role in helping pass the Affordable Care Act. Rohini recently served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Domestic Policy Advisor to the Vice President. And In this role, she became the first Asian American woman to hold this position, leading and promoting initiatives on behalf of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to strengthen democracy, advance gender and racial equity, and create economic mobility for millions of American workers and families. Rohini has truly brought her experience to shape policy and progress in everything from the COVID-19 crisis to infrastructure and healthcare to forging critical public and private partnerships in addressing key national priorities. It should definitely not be any surprise to hear Vice President Kamala Harris praise her as a “brilliant and trusted leader”. Now, Rohini has steered her leadership toward the tech and healthcare sectors,serving as a policy fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human Centered AI, Director of Public Policy and Political Affairs at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, and a Venture Partner at Fusion Fund. So we had a chance to catch up and talk about everything from building trust with leaders to policy intersections and governance with AI to the imperatives of this upcoming election cycle. But since Rohini and her husband are also the proud parents of 3 young boys, we started by talking about what parenting has taught her about relationship development when it comes to policy…