By Canadian Press

Former Obama White House official sees glimmers of optimism in Trump’s America

Oct 26, 2017 | 1:50 PM

CALGARY — A former official in the Obama White House says she has seen glimmers of optimism even as U.S. President Donald Trump dismantles much of his predecessor’s legacy. 

Tina Tchen was special assistant to former president Barack Obama, chief of staff to former first lady Michelle Obama and the executive director of the former administration’s Council on Women and Girls.

She says she believes cultural shifts that took place during the Obama years can withstand the current political climate.

In a speech to a Canadian Women’s Foundation breakfast in Calgary, Tchen likened it to climbing a mountain in left-to-right switchbacks rather than straight up.

“We are perhaps in one of those moments, certainly in my country, where this switchback is taking us backward, at a time when there’s no one at the top driving change forward, and it’s certainly a time of struggle,” she said Thursday. 

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In an interview, Tchen admitted to feeling discouraged at times as she watches policies that took years of work disappear in a matter of months. She cited as examples rollbacks of Obama-era guidelines on campus sexual assault as well as on rules meant to address pay inequality.

“I know that there are real people who are going to be harmed,” she said.

“We can’t be exhausted because there’s too much at stake. We can’t let down our guard. We can’t give up.”

But while top-down policies from Washingon can sometimes nudge things along, real long-term progress happens at the community level, she suggested.

“We think about LGBT issues entirely differently and we’re not going back. We think about women in the workplace entirely differently and we’re not going back,” Tchen said.

“The genie’s out of the bottle and those progressive issues aren’t going to change.”

Tchen has returned to her work as a lawyer in a private practice, where she is devoting much of her attention to fostering change in the corporate world.

Gender discrimination, sexual harassment and diversity in the workplace have been seen as only human resources issues for too long, she said.

The scandal surrounding disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s behaviour toward women has brought those issues to the fore, as have the many women coming forward to share their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault using the #metoo hashtag.

Tchen said more and more business leaders are realizing that neglecting to properly handle cases of misconduct can destroy their business.

“If you don’t have a culture of compliance and respect for your workers across the board, then that can lead to workers cheating your customers or defrauding the government,” she said.

“Because if company management tolerates or even engages in unlawful acts of sexual harassment or worse, then why would employees expect management to do business honestly or respect consumer protection laws?”

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press