half of what I’d been earning as a lawyer, that I literally couldn’t afford to say yes.
Which led to a second revelation about certain nonprofits, especially young-
person-driven start-ups like Public Allies, and many of the bighearted, tirelessly
passionate people who work in them: Unlike me, it seemed they could actually
afford to be there, their virtue discreetly underwritten by privilege, whether it
was that they didn’t have student loans to pay off or perhaps had an inheritance to
someday look forward to and thus weren’t worried about saving for the future.
It became clear that if I wanted to join the tribe, I’d have to negotiate my
way in, asking for exactly what I needed in terms of salary, which was
significantly more than Public Allies had expected to pay. This was simply my
reality. I couldn’t be shy or embarrassed about my needs. I still had roughly $600
of student debt to pay off each month on top of my regular expenses, and I was
married to a man with his own load of law school loans to cover. The
organization’s leaders were almost disbelieving when I informed them how much
I’d borrowed in order to get through school and what that translated to in terms
of monthly debt, but they gamely went out and secured new funding that
enabled me to come on board.
And with that, I was off and running, eager to make good on the
opportunity I’d been handed. This was my first chance ever, really, to build
something basically from the ground up: Success or failure would depend almost
entirely on my efforts, not those of my boss or anyone else. I spent the spring of
1993 working furiously to set up an office and hire a small staff so that we could
have a class of Allies in place by the fall. We’d found cheap office space in a
building on Michigan Avenue and managed to get a load of donated secondhand
chairs and tables from a corporate consulting firm that was redecorating its offices.
Meanwhile, I leveraged more or less every connection Barack and I’d ever
made in Chicago, seeking donors and people who could help us secure longer-
term foundation support, not to mention anyone in the public service field who’d
be willing to host an Ally in their organization for the coming year. Valerie Jarrett
helped me arrange placements in the mayor’s office and the city health
department, where Allies would work on a neighborhood-based childhood
immunization project. Barack activated his network of community organizers to
connect us with legal aid, advocacy, and teaching opportunities. Various Sidley
partners wrote checks and helped introduce me to key donors.
The most exciting part for me was finding the Allies themselves. With help
from the national organization, we advertised for applicants on college campuses