CGI members raised $500 million to support small businesses, farms, schools, and hospitals in Haiti after the devastating earthquake in 2010. They sent five hundred tons of medical supplies and equipment to West Africa to help fight the Ebola epidemic in 2014. They helped support more than one hundred thousand new STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teachers in the United States and brought together unions and pension funds to create America’s largest private infrastructure bank. Water.org, the nonprofit that Matt Damon and Gary White founded at CGI, has increased access to safe drinking water for sixty-three million people around the world. In 2023, the CGI Ukraine Action Network launched partnerships to channel desperately needed resources to humanitarian groups on the ground amid Russia’s continuing onslaught. The list goes on and on.
I love going to CGI meetings and watching plans and partnerships come together in real time. For example, in 2014, I helped organize a coalition of educators, community leaders, workforce training organizations, and businesses from across the country focused on the challenge of youth unemployment. Nearly six million young Americans between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four were out of school and out of work. For those who hadn’t graduated from college or even high school in the years following the Great Recession, most doors just wouldn’t open, no matter how hard they knocked. So, job training was crucial. But too many state workforce development systems and nonprofit training programs weren’t connected directly with local employers, and as a result young people often weren’t learning the skills that businesses were actually looking for. This was a coordination problem that seemed solvable. At our CGI America conference in Denver, nonprofits and employers from a wide range of industries—from high tech to hospitality, from financial services to retail to manufacturing—made specific and measurable commitments to do better. They pledged to connect young people to training, jobs, and mentoring opportunities.
Those partnerships, and the CGI model more broadly, were the three-legged stool in action. Business and labor leaders, nonprofits, and government officials all working together, bringing their unique experience and expertise to bear in solving common problems. Too often over the years, I’ve seen well-meaning people and organizations take on big challenges but circumscribe whom they will work with based on ideology. They won’t work with business, or with government, or with people they disagree with politically. That’s fine if you care more about looking pure than delivering results. But I know from experience that bringing together all three legs of the stool is often the only way to get things done. And that’s what I care about. Networks of creative cooperation can solve problems better, faster, and at a lower cost than any one sector can alone. There’s a reason my slogan in 2016 was “Stronger Together.” By drawing on diverse talents and perspectives, we can achieve more than any of us can do alone—and more than we can do by working just with people like ourselves. This isn’t “let’s hold hands and feel better about ourselves”; it’s “let’s roll up our sleeves and work together to make positive differences in other people’s lives.” Talking together is nice; working together is better. That’s the idea at the heart of CGI and its “community of doers.”
Bill had another big idea. I could hear it in his voice, all the way from Rome. It was April 2005, and Bill was attending the funeral of Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, but his mind was far from the marble and gold of Saint Peter’s Basilica. He was thinking about health clinics in sub-Saharan Africa, where about twenty-five million people were living with HIV/AIDS, including two million children, but the price of lifesaving drug treatments remained largely out of reach.
Wherever we are in the world, Bill and I always make a point of checking in at the end of the day, just to hear each other’s voice. He’ll be in a motorcade in Malawi or a meeting in Malaysia and turn to his aides and ask, “What time is it where Hillary is? I don’t want to miss her.” The phone will ring, and I’ll hear his voice from halfway across the globe. For a moment, I’m back in New Haven, and this tall, handsome young man is holding my hand as we wander through the Yale University Art Gallery on our first date. I’m back in the living room of the little red-brick house in Fayetteville, saying “I do,” as Arkansas sunlight pours through the bay window. Bill and I have been married since 1975, and there’s still no one I want to talk to more than him. About politics, public policy, and our foundation projects, yes. But also about the streaming series we’re watching or the books we trade back and forth. Or the funny new game Aidan and Jasper invented or how Charlotte might like to celebrate her birthday. Tales from our adventures in grandparenting are an especially hot topic. If one of us sees Chelsea, Marc, and the kids when the other is traveling, a thorough report is expected. Bill and I have built a full life together. Sharing that life now—all the little moments that bring a smile—is a gift only the passage of time can give.
On that phone call from Rome, I listened intently as Bill shared the thoughts racing through his head. He had just flown across the Atlantic on Air Force One with President George W. Bush so they could pay their respects at the pope’s funeral. Bill is always restless on long flights. I like to sleep, but he keeps everyone up playing cards, telling stories, or chewing over some complex policy question. On this flight, he had used his time with Bush to talk about an issue near to both their hearts: HIV/AIDS.
At the 2002 International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Nelson Mandela had talked with Bill about the urgent need to increase the availability of HIV/AIDS drugs in Africa and across the world. Bill had recently established the Clinton Foundation and immediately decided this should be a priority for the new organization. He began negotiating agreements with drugmakers and governments to lower medicine prices dramatically and raising the money to pay for it. The Clinton Foundation created the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (now the Clinton Health Access Initiative, or CHAI) and sent experts to improve quality and increase production at generic drug factories in India and elsewhere. Around the same time, Bush also decided to make the fight against HIV/AIDS his administration’s signature global health initiative. He launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), one of the most impressive and effective examples of American global leadership in decades. But there was a problem: PEPFAR funded only expensive brand-name medications. Even with Big Pharma’s discount, low-income countries couldn’t afford to treat everybody, and PEPFAR’s partners, mostly in Africa, couldn’t use U.S. aid to buy cheaper generic drugs, keeping prices up and access down.
During the flight to Rome, President Bush asked Bill about the foundation’s AIDS work. Bill was full of compliments for PEPFAR—it really is an amazing program—but he also said, “You know, you’re wasting a lot of money paying way too much for drugs I can get you for much less.” At the time, the Food and Drug Administration was testing only a few generic AIDS drugs, while there were many more available. Bush was worried that those generics were not as good as the more expensive brand names.
“So,” Bill said, “I know you really want to save lives. This is the compassionate part of your commitment to compassionate conservatism. I know it’s real.”
“It is,” Bush replied.
Bill proposed that if CHAI could marshal the evidence and win FDA approval for more generic drugs, Bush would then allow them to be bought with PEPFAR funds. Bush was skeptical but agreed.
On the ground in Rome, Bill’s mind was racing with plans for how to get this done and what it would mean for millions of people around the world. I told him I thought it sounded fantastic—and important. Go for it, I said.
In the end, the FDA found nearly all the generic drugs—twenty-two out of twenty-four—to be safe and effective. President Bush was as good as his word, even though he probably took some heat from his backers in the pharmaceutical industry. CHAI then collaborated with drug manufacturers on the supply side and PEPFAR partner governments on the demand side to transition the market for HIV/AIDS treatments to a high-volume, low-cost model. It worked. Some twenty-one million people worldwide now have access to cheaper HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria medications through CHAI. And not just a little cheaper. The initial price of medicine came down from $500 a year per person for generic drugs and $1,500 per person in the PEPFAR countries to $60 a person. PEPFAR quickly expanded the program from seven to fifteen countries, treating more than twice as many people for the same amount of money.
Bill and I have always been drawn to practical, everyday problems that impact people’s daily lives—from dirty cookstoves that cause respiratory diseases to sugary sodas in schools that cause obesity—and pragmatic solutions that may be unglamorous but deliver meaningful results. That does not mean shying away from the hardest fights or transformative solutions, but it does mean a relentless focus on what can be done to actually make people’s lives better as opposed to scoring rhetorical points, virtue signaling, or hoping for a “revolution” that may never arrive. This is how we both approached our time in government, and it’s the spirit still driving the Clinton Foundation today.
Every marriage involves sacrifice. Building a shared life together means giving up some measure of independence. It means making your partner’s cares and concerns your own—sometimes at the expense of your own. Partnership takes work. It can extract painful costs, but it also brings joy and emotional nourishment. Something lost, something gained.
Bill and I have been partners since day one. In law school, we teamed up in the Barristers’ Union for moot court competitions. We’d stay up late researching cases and crafting arguments. Occasionally, he’d get distracted and launch into a story about his home in Arkansas, or the novel he’d just read, or a brilliant piece of music he couldn’t get out of his head. I’d gently redirect us back to the law books spread out on the table. We made it to the finals of the competition, presenting the arguments we’d honed together to retired Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas.
I knew that marrying Bill would be like hitching a ride on a comet. Was I brave enough to take the leap? He thought that marrying me would be like planting an oak. It would root him and give him strength and resilience. He was certain it was the right choice.
We became partners in life, in parenthood, and in politics, too. A lot of people didn’t understand that. Or chose not to. They were convinced our marriage was purely transactional. “It doesn’t seem like a family—more like a merger,” one Republican operative told the New York Times in 1992. I thought that said more about their own relationships than about ours. Was it so strange to share each other’s passions and fuel each other’s aspirations? I’ve always thought “love” was a verb as well as a noun, and that’s proven true for us.
Bill has been my greatest champion since the moment we met. He never once asked me to put my career on hold for his. He never resented that I made more money than him or that my work and independence (keeping the name Rodham, for example) sometimes caused him political problems. He never once suggested that I bow to the critics and trim my sails. He always dared me to dream bigger. From the beginning, we’ve been in it together.
My run for president in 2016 exacted a toll that neither one of us saw coming. It still pains me. The Clinton Foundation was like Bill’s second child. He poured his enormous energy and enthusiasm into building it. He got so much pleasure and satisfaction from seeing its impact on the world. All those people finally able to afford treatment for HIV/AIDS. Thousands of farmers in Malawi, Rwanda, and Tanzania going from subsistence to prosperity. More than thirty million American kids leading healthier lives because of the deal Bill struck to get sugary sodas out of school vending machines. The work kept him young. The results kept him happy. I could not have been prouder. And I loved that Chelsea joined him in this labor of love. She brought her expertise in public health and sharp management skills to help the foundation grow and professionalize. It was a family operation in the best possible way.
I expected that when I ran for president all our work over the years would be scrutinized and that right-wing media and political operatives would go on a fishing expedition looking for any hint of scandal. But the smear campaign that targeted the Clinton Foundation surprised even me. It didn’t matter that independent watchdogs gave the Clinton Foundation top marks as a well-run philanthropy. CharityWatch gave it an A. Charity Navigator gave it four stars. GuideStar rated it platinum. None of that stopped the brutal partisan attacks or the gullible coverage in the press.
In retrospect, this was a clear case of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” in action. It was driven by a fake-news factory misleadingly called the Government Accountability Institute, which was founded by Trump advisor Steve Bannon and funded by the right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer—the same duo behind the toxic far-right propaganda outlet Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica, which became infamous for using illicitly obtained Facebook data to target voters for Trump. The head of the Government Accountability Institute was a Bannon associate by the name of Peter Schweizer, and he concocted a web of lies about the Clinton Foundation in an effort to hobble my campaign. In 2015, Schweizer published a garbage book called Clinton Cash that peddled a wild conspiracy theory about how I had supposedly arranged the sale of American uranium to Russia in exchange for millions of dollars in contributions to the Clinton Foundation. It was a lie, pure and simple, but many in the press took it seriously—including, shamefully, the New York Times. Eventually, the Times and the Washington Post realized the uranium story was a lie and tried to undo the damage of their initial stories. But the damage was already done to the foundation and board member Frank Giustra, which hurt a lot. The stupidity dominoes kept falling. FBI agents read the book and decided to open an investigation that the Justice Department later described as based solely on “unvetted hearsay information.” Of course, word of the investigation then leaked and became fodder for more partisan attacks. None of it came to anything at all. But the Trump administration kept the investigation open until the final days of his term, despite prosecutors determining much earlier that it was baseless. For his part, Schweizer shifted his focus to spreading conspiracy theories about Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
All these lies caused a lot of damage. It hurt my campaign, just as intended. It also tarnished the Clinton Foundation, which, as a nonpartisan charity, was not equipped to fight back. The bogus uranium story and all the right-wing huffing and puffing created a stink during the campaign that no amount of nonpartisan fact-checking could wash off. As the founder of CharityWatch said, “If Hillary Clinton wasn’t running for president, the Clinton Foundation would be seen as one of the great humanitarian charities of our generation.” Instead, it became a punching bag. Donations dried up. Staff had to be let go. CGI shut down. Impactful programs had to cut back or end altogether. Needy and vulnerable people all over the world paid the price.
Bill put on a good face, but I could tell how much it hurt. I felt terrible. I knew that if I had not decided to run for president, none of this would have happened. Marriage takes sacrifice, and politics isn’t for the faint of heart, but this was too much.
It’s a remarkable thing to be married for nearly fifty years. Some couples bicker more as they get older. Others find that a little hearing loss with age—or the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s marriage advice to practice “selective deafness”—can go a long way. You can’t start a fight over your spouse’s impatient sigh or muttered sarcasm if you don’t hear it. Other couples grow so close they start finishing each other’s sentences. My parents often sat in silence, which saddened me. For Bill and me, the conversation we started all those years ago in the law library is still going strong. It’s comfortable, comforting, and energizing all at the same time, this person beside me whom I know so well. I never get tired of hearing what’s on his mind (except when he can’t let go of a grievance that’s too late to fix—he says that’s the Irish in him). And he seems just as interested in what I have to say. On my regular Zoom calls with girlfriends, he’ll sometimes settle onto the couch beside me to join the chitchat or just listen, soaking up the easy banter of lifelong connection and the joy it brings us both. It’s no secret that Bill and I had dark days in our marriage in the past. But the past softens with time, and what’s left is the truth: I’m married to my best friend.
During the pandemic, when our frenetic travel schedules came to a sudden stop, we spent more days and nights together than we had in decades. We put together puzzles of all sizes and degrees of difficulty with our family. Chelsea and Bill were, by far, the most prolific. My favorites were the Zen puzzles with wooden pieces. For a time during COVID, Chelsea, Marc, and the kids moved in next door so we could all be together in a “pod.” Bill and I loved it. Many mornings before eight a.m. our grandchildren came over to play or eat breakfast. It was sacred time. No Zooms, no calls. Just family. At home we’re not Mr. President and Madam Secretary, we are Pop Pop and Grandma. There’s nothing better. We spent our secluded days playing countless games of hide-and-seek or Tiger, which consisted of Bill or me pretending to be a tiger pursuing Charlotte and Aidan. We spent long summer afternoons in our pool, introducing Jasper to the water and watching his brother and sister gain confidence as swimmers. Water fights and dunking contests kept us all laughing. We even produced our backyard version of The Wizard of Oz. I searched online for a much-abridged children’s version of the script, ordered costumes, and convinced everybody to participate. Charlotte played Dorothy with her family Yorkie, named Soren, playing Toto. Aidan was the Scarecrow; Bill, the Lion; Chelsea, Glinda the Good Witch; Marc, the Wizard; and little Jasper, a flying monkey. Other friends in our pod played the Tin Man and the Wicked Witch. I was (no surprise) the director. It went off without a hitch but closed after only one performance.
Bill’s mind is quicker than ever, but it takes him a little longer to get out of bed in the morning. He’s always been a night owl, but now I hear him moving around at all hours. I wish he slept more. In 2021, we had a scare. Bill was traveling in Southern California and came down with a bad infection that turned into sepsis. At the hospital, Bill was in the intensive care unit for five long days while doctors figured out what was wrong and started treatment. He was delirious with fever for two of the scariest days and couldn’t recognize people he’d known for years. Chelsea and I immediately flew out to be with him. On the flight, I wondered what condition I’d find Bill in. His aide had sounded worried on the phone. When you’re our age, the thought is always in the back of your mind that you have fewer tomorrows than yesterdays. One day time runs out. But not this time, thanks to the miracle of antibiotics. When I walked into the hospital room, he gave me a big smile, and I could finally breathe. Bill went right to work trying to reassure me that he was going to be just fine. He even got me to laugh about his two days of delirium, which I was surprised to learn from his doctors occur in 80 percent of ICU patients. “Were you as scared as I was?” I asked him. In that aw-shucks way he’s always had about him, he laid his hand on my shoulder and confessed that he was too sick to know he should be scared, adding, “I should probably be scared now that the young men who were with me took notes on all the crazy things I said!”
I’ve always loved Bill’s hands. He has narrow wrists and tapered fingers. For half a century they’ve closed comfortably around my smaller hand. Sometimes now, when he’s tired, his hand has a slight tremor. The doctors say it’s just normal aging, nothing to worry about. One more little legacy of a long life well lived.
I still think he’s the most handsome man in every room. We recently both got dressed up to attend a formal state dinner at the White House honoring the Japanese prime minister, with a musical performance by Paul Simon. Bill looked stunning in his tuxedo, every inch the debonair former leader of the free world. As we entered the White House through the East Colonnade, filled with cherry blossoms and enormous Japanese fans, Bill grinned and pointed to the portrait hanging on the wall. It was me, painted by Simmie Knox in 2002. How young I was then! What a strange, magical life we’ve lived together, I thought. Bill squeezed my hand, and we went into the party.
When Bill was an undergraduate at Georgetown, he had a professor named Carroll Quigley who made a lasting impression on him. Professor Quigley used to say that the most important gift Western civilization has brought to the world is the idea that “the future can be better than the past, and each individual has a personal, moral obligation to make it so.” As Bill explained it to me a few years later, he took that as his life’s mission: focus on the future. Or as Fleetwood Mac sang: “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”
As we get older, we find ourselves thinking more about how we can help build a future we’ll never see. One of my favorite proverbs is from the Greeks: “A civilization flourishes when people plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.”
Today, Bill is busier at the Clinton Foundation than ever before. He and Chelsea painstakingly bound up the organization’s wounds and breathed new life into its programs. Thanks to their leadership and the staff, led by Kevin Thurm, the foundation has not just survived, it’s thrived. CGI is back and new partnerships are launching.
After 2016, I was initially reluctant to get too involved for fear of inviting more partisan attacks and undercutting the progress they were making. But Bill and Chelsea are persistent, persuasive advocates. They say there’s too much important work to do, and we can’t let fear hold us back. They’re right, of course. So I dived back in.
The challenges facing future generations will look different from the ones Bill and I spent our careers tackling. But the principle of putting people first is just as critical in an era when the world is fracturing, the planet is rapidly warming, artificial intelligence is changing everything, and democracy is hanging by a thread. Our world will need new leaders who understand how to solve problems, feel a responsibility to address them, and are ready to take action. We will need what the Clinton Foundation does best: collaborative, catalytic leadership that mobilizes partnerships to make a difference in people’s lives. More than ever, we still need all three legs of the stool working together.
Three decades ago, Bill reinvented the Democratic Party by putting solutions ahead of ideology. Two decades ago, he reinvented philanthropy by centering partnerships and action. The Clinton Foundation’s model for solving problems and building partnerships has the potential to inspire a new generation of leaders, organizers, and philanthropists to help people build better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities.
Progress is hard. You have to work at it, day in and day out, for a long time. We may not live to see the full impact of our work. No generation ever does. But if you believe in the promise of the future and feel a responsibility for building it, you have to try. That’s how Bill and I see the next ten years of our life: putting down a firm foundation that can benefit and be built on by those who follow.
KEEP MARCHING
Since 2016, a lot of people have wondered how I’m spending my time. Long walks in the woods followed by a glass of chardonnay? Yes to the walks, but not so much wine these days. Quietly retiring was never an option. Yes, I have grandchildren to enjoy, piles of books to read, places I still want to travel to, work to do with the Clinton Foundation, and a husband who’s good company. True enough. But I’m still committed to “doing all the good.” I need to dive into projects, not settle into a rocking chair.
In this book, you’ve read about some of the ways I’ve kept busy, from teaching at Columbia University to helping Afghan women escape the Taliban. Because I’m so concerned about the future of our democracy, I also spend time on my political action committee Onward Together, which helps fund and support candidates and organizations dedicated to our democracy. We’ve supported organizations that fought against Trump’s Muslim ban and family separation at the southern border, helped recruit and train women and people of color to run for office, mobilized voters, fought for abortion ballot referenda in red states, combated disinformation, and so much more. Since 2017, we’ve raised about $66 million for candidates, causes, and organizations of all kinds standing up for a fairer, more inclusive, democratic America.
I’ve also tried new things that my previous life never had room for, like teaming up with my friend and mystery writer Louise Penny to write a thriller during the pandemic. Together we penned State of Terror, about a female secretary of state racing to outmaneuver international terrorists and homegrown traitors hell-bent on turning the United States into a Russian satellite state. When a publisher approached us about collaborating, I was excited but nervous. I had never written fiction before, and I didn’t want to disappoint Louise or jeopardize our friendship if the writing partnership bombed. Turns out Louise was also concerned. She confessed that her first drafts can be “really soft and smelly,” and she was reluctant to let me see that. She was being too hard on herself. I soon saw for myself that her first drafts are brilliance in progress. The partnership went so well that now Louise and I are collaborating as executive producers on a screen adaptation.
