But what I learned about myself is that I was carrying around a lot of unresolved questions about my own childhood, about loss.

So I think I credit that deep dive into myself with much more of a sense of peace now at this stage of my life. So I feel really lucky.

Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wenders. I'm Kelly Corrigan and today I'm wondering about helping and how it works and goes wrong on a global scale.

My conversation partner is Samantha Power. She is one of our foremost thinkers on foreign policy, former ambassador to the UN, current head of USAID.

She's also a Pulitzer Prize winning author who wrote a beautiful memoir that everyone in my house devoured, the education of an idealist.

We'll be right back to talk about how helping works with Samantha Power.

Welcome back to Kelly Corrigan Wenders and Kelly Corrigan. There is a 250 year old tension in our country between getting involved in the world beyond our borders and focusing on our attention resources and might on our own people.

There are probably as many examples of essential interventions and glorious achievements abroad as there are a flood thinking and crushing ineffectiveness.

These are thorny issues on which the public with access to almost no unbiased information tries to form an opinion.

Samantha Power has been at the table guiding policy and aid for decades. It is her job to form an opinion often choosing between a little better and a little worse or terrible now but potentially much better in time.

She's written a Pulitzer Prize winning tome on genocide and a best-selling memoir on idealism.

She's been the ambassador to the UN and now runs the largest foreign aid organization in the world with two kids at home wondering what's for dinner.

Here's my conversation. Originally recorded from my PBS show Tell Me More with immigrant, athlete, public servant and highly educated idealist Samantha Power.

So many people know you from the Obama administration. You were the ambassador to the UN and lots of people including my 18 year old devoured your memoir education of an idealist.

But for the last year you've been running USAID for the layperson. When your kids ask you what do you do? How do you describe this work?

Well, what USA does, it was created by John F. Kennedy 60 years ago and it goes forth into the world and tries to improve the health, wealth and welfare of vulnerable people.

And these days what that looks like is trying to ensure that it isn't just Americans who get vaccinated or who have PPE to deal with COVID.

But where really poor communities where health infrastructure may not exist also have access to vaccines and to PPE and to treatments for this disease.

When there's an emergency, whether a volcano or a wildfire or a tsunami or a war, USAID goes forth in an emergency response mode and provides humanitarian assistance, provides shelter.

And we project American values and American generosity and it's an incredible privilege at a time when so many threats cross borders to be in a position to say, what's the right set of tools that Americans need to deploy in this country?

So just think about problem solving globally and USAID is generally at the heart of figuring out what to do.

And so you're partnering with people on the ground in all these different countries and you're also doing a lot of public-private partnership, like for every dollar that's coming from USAID, how are you able to match it from the private sector?

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