Ep. 382 — Cecilia Muñoz

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2020

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cecilia Muñoz is the former Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Obama administration and currently serves as Vice President for Public Interest Technology and Local Initiatives at New America, a public policy think tank. She joins David to talk about growing up as one of the few Latinas in a Midwestern town, her trailblazing work in civil rights advocacy and journey to the White House, Covid-19’s disproportionate impact on communities of color, and more.

Her new book, More Than Ready, draws lessons from the challenges she faced as the first Hispanic to serve as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and offers insights to other young women seeking to forge paths of their own.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files,
0:12.5	with your host, David Axelrod.
0:17.0	Cecilia Munoz is a remarkable person.
0:22.6	I first met her when she was one of the foremost advocates for immigration reform in the country
0:27.5	at the National Council of Laraza, which is now a unidosse US.
0:31.0	I worked with Cecilia when she served as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the White House
0:35.5	during the 2009 Financial Crisis, the H1N1 pandemic, and the Gulf Oil Disasters, so she
0:41.4	has a real perspective on what the government should be doing in moments of crisis.
0:46.2	She went on to lead President Obama's Domestic Policy Council, and now she's written a book
0:50.8	called More Than Ready, Part Memoir, and Part a series of lessons for young women of color
0:55.8	who want to follow in her path.
0:57.7	I sat down this week with Cecilia virtually, of course, to discuss her journey, how, based
1:03.4	on her experience, she feels the government is doing during the siege of COVID-19, and
1:08.1	about the fault lines in our society that the virus has once again exposed.
1:12.4	Here's that conversation.
1:19.1	Cecilia Munoz is so good to see you, my friend.
1:22.4	We went through a lot together sometime back, and it's great to see you now.
1:27.1	We did because you were the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the White House when I was
1:32.1	working as a senior advisor to the President, and I bring that up at the outset because
1:38.3	these are times in which intergovernmental relations are most important.
1:43.8	You worked with mayors and governors and local officials through a lot of situations.
1:49.2	It's the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, also H1N1.
	...

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