Jen Psaki on Life as White House Press Secretary and Her Best, Most Effective Communication Tips and Tricks from Her 22-Year Career in the Field

I have two surprise, special episodes for you this week, including today’s chat with none other than Jen Psaki! Yes, that’s right, the Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary and current TV host extraordinaire. Jen has a new book out today, May 7, called Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World, and I loved it. It’s a memoir of her time as White House press secretary but also a how to book on how to be a more successful communicator. I learned so much in the book—not just about Jen, but also about her best tips and tricks and strategies for communicating. She knows a thing or two about that, considering that she is 22 years and several communications jobs into this line of work. There’s no way you don’t know who the dynamic Jen Psaki is, but let me refresh your memory: Jen served under both the Obama and Biden administrations, serving President Obama as the White House deputy press secretary in 2009 and the White House deputy communications director from 2009 to 2011. She was also the spokesperson for the United States Department of State from 2013 to 2015 and the White House communications director from 2015 to 2017. She was also press secretary for both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, in 2008 and 2012. From 2017 to 2020, Jen worked as a political commentator for CNN, and in November 2020 she left the network and joined the Biden-Harris transition team; later that month, she was named the White House press secretary for the Biden administration, and she served until May 2022, as it was always her plan (as we’ll talk about on the show today) to stay for about a year. Jen then became a contributor at MSNBC, and in February 2023 it was announced that she would host a new Sunday morning program, Inside with Jen Psaki, beginning the next month, in March. The show is seriously great, and ratings showed that; in September, the program took over MSNBC’s Monday 8 p.m. primetime slot, and I highly recommend watching it for yourself. (The show focuses on public policy issues, by the way.) Jen is also a wife and a mother of two young children, and we talk about how she juggled marriage and motherhood with one of the toughest communications jobs in the world. Now she’s an author with Say More, a book that Jen said she wished she’d had when starting her career.

Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World by Jen Psaki