Fireside Chat features Boys and Girls Club director

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By Kyle Magin
Bonanza Staff Writer
May 4, 2008

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Isabelle Rodriguez Wilson said arranging travel schedules for the Clinton White House — both President Bill and wife Hillary — wasn’t nearly as challenging as her current job at the Boys and Girls Club of North Lake Tahoe.
Wilson was a guest at the Fireside Chat series Thursday night on the campus of Sierra Nevada College. She talked about her lengthy career in public policy, beginning as a legal assistant in Southern California in the early 1970s, to serving as a senior aide to President Clinton and the first lady from 1992 to 1995, to her current position as executive director of the Boys and Girls Club.
“An individual can make sure the trains and planes get the president where he needs to go on time,” Wilson said. “But few people are willing to stand up and help all youth, this is the most rewarding work I’ve ever done.”
Wilson shared her past on Thursday with a full house at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Studies. Wilson credited her success to liberal use of the word “sure,” since she rarely turned down new opportunities. She talked about her rise from a job as a legal secretary to running the campaign schedules, a task called advance preparation, for the wives of presidential hopefuls Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.
“What advance work meant for campaigns was that I would manage a candidate’s spouse’s schedule from the time they woke up until their head hit the pillow each night,” Wilson said. “It meant including campaign stops, family time, doctors appointments and travel schedules.”
Wilson said every aspect of a candidate’s personal and family schedule is planned, from which entrances they use to when they are able to exercise.
A candidate’s conventions and rallies must work into a schedule that looks like every other American’s, Wilson said, with in-home leaks to take care of, parent-teacher conferences to attend and family events to deal with.
Those roles — two losing elections in 1984 and 1988, respectively — prepared her for a winner with the Clintons in 1992.
“In 1992 I got a call from the Clinton campaign to see if I would come down to Little Rock to schedule in advance for Hillary and Tipper Gore,” Wilson said. “So I said sure.”
That decision proved fateful, as the Clinton campaign turned out to be a winner, pushing Wilson into a role as senior adviser to both President Clinton and Hillary Clinton and into the position of director of scheduling in advance.
That meant preparing Air Force One for the president’s trips, coordinating the first couple’s arrivals in foreign countries and working to oversee all the travel arrangements for the president.
“If I knew the job description ahead of time I would have said no. Being in charge of the president’s arrival to the 1993 inauguration scared me out of my shoes,” Wilson said.
Although initial doubts about the position almost caused her to quit, Wilson said she accepted it and learned how to run the travel schedule on the fly.
As President George H.W. Bush and his staff left the White House, Wilson said she had to figure out her responsibilities without the assistance of a predecessor.
“When you show up at the White House there is no manual, no assistant to greet you at the door and show you around. The entire staff turns over,” Wilson said.
Wilson got through it, however, and in 1995 decided to move on to her own public policy firm.
“The White House is an adventure, not a career, people return your calls because of where you are calling from, not because of who you are,” Wilson said.
At the public policy firm, Wilson turned her management abilities into a business, taking on causes for nonprofits she was passionate about.
In 2000 she organized a “Million Mom March” in Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about cancer. It was personal for Wilson, she said, because she had just recovered from a battle with breast cancer.
Following the march, Wilson said her cup was full in Washington, D.C., and she took a job at the Boys and Girls Club.
“It was a whole new challenge for me,” Wilson said. “I went from doing analytical work on policy issues to actually being in the trenches, and I am so proud of the work we’re doing there.”