Hi everyone. I'm Jonathan Cape Heart and welcome to Cape Up. You know what? I think we need a little levity.

So sit back and have a listen to my conversation at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June with Valerie Jarrett

about her book Finding My Voice. The former senior advisor to President Obama

writes about and we talked about her upbringing, her historic family, her failed marriage, and the

best hire she ever made, Michelle Obama.

You can hear all of the good career and life advice she has to offer right now.

All right, we've been looking forward to this for weeks now.

So long. Hello everybody. We cannot see you unless you're in the first or second

row, but we know you're there.

So thank you for coming out and spending a little bit of the evening with us.

All right, so I just want to dive in because a major message of your book comes in on page 11. For those of you who have the book, please turn to

page 11. And you write on that page that your father, quote, had experienced success based on merit and hard work

just as my mother had years earlier by the time she graduated from college and

thanks to both of them I grew up believing that was possible it's much easier to be what you see. My parents were

role models and they gave me the early impression that my potential in life was limited

only by my willingness to work hard and be resilient combined with a good bit of luck.

My mom and dad had taken me across the color line and around the world showing me what was possible

so that I could dare to imagine any kind of life I wanted.

And so there's no better way to start this conversation than talking about your parents,

Jim Bowman and Barbara Taylor.

And also the fact that you were born in Iran.

So why on earth were you born in Iran?

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