“There is never a dull moment as a Clinton Fellow,” said Amelia McKenna ’28, “especially when Secretary Clinton comes to sit down right next to you for lunch.”
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ’69 returned to Wellesley over Wintersession to teach a civic leadership workshop for this year’s sophomore fellows from the Hillary Rodham Clinton Center for Citizenship, Leadership, and Democracy (HRC Center). The two-hour workshop, which began with an intimate lunch with Clinton and the 86 fellows, focused on ways to bring about change through democracy.
Clinton opened the session with remarks about her own civic pathway and reflections on the current moment.
“What is the place that you want to occupy?” Clinton asked the fellows. “You can think about it privately and personally, you can think about it professionally, and you can think about it publicly. And I really believe that in each of those dimensions of your lives, there is a real goal, and, yes, a responsibility to explore your citizenship and your leadership, and to find ways that are important to you to contribute to our democracy and our democratic governance.”
Clinton shared how she thinks about her own place in the world, and the ways she has learned to work with people from all perspectives in order to enact change for issues she cares about.
“Part of democracy is figuring out how to work with people you don’t agree with, you have nothing in common with, and, frankly, you don’t really like,” said Clinton. “I was in the Senate for eight years. I spent a lot of time with the other 99 senators—some I adored. Some became close friends. Others I just literally could not make heads or tails of—I couldn’t figure out why they were there, what they wanted to do, what the point was. But we had to figure out a way to work together every day, and somebody I might be disagreeing with yesterday I might have to work with tomorrow.”
She spoke about her experience after 9/11, when she was a newly elected Democratic senator from New York, and how she had to convince a Republican president and a Republican Congress to give her constituents the funding they desperately needed to recover and rebuild from the attacks. “I said, ‘President Bush, we need $20 million for New York,’” she said. “I had not voted for him, my husband had defeated his father, I had voted against him repeatedly in Congress as a senator, and he looked at me and said, ‘You got it.’ And he was good to his word.”
To have the Clinton Fellows practice their negotiating skills, Clinton had each table discuss one of three policy challenges she is working on at the Clinton Foundation—vaccine hesitancy, cell phone bans in schools, and the use of AI companions—and come up with a strategy to tackle the issue. “How do you make a case, how do you persuade, how do you convince—particularly people you are not in agreement with—to do something that you think is important?” she asked them.
In groups of nine or 10, the fellows spent 45 minutes talking about the topics and brainstorming ways to enact change, while Clinton circled the room, checking in at each table and chatting with students. Then a representative from each group stood to present their ideas to Clinton, who listened intently.
“These are terrific ideas! For such a short exercise you all came up with some incredible suggestions,” Clinton said. She asked the groups to type up their notes and send them to her to bring back to her team at the Clinton Foundation.
Throughout the workshop, the groups had lively conversations, and the fellows seemed energized and inspired. “My time as a Clinton Fellow has bolstered my commitment to civic action, empowered me, and helped me connect with amazing individuals,” said McKenna.
During her visit, Clinton also met with the the 39 juniors and seniors who are the 2026 fellows from the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs and, in front of an audience of the Albright Fellows, spoke with Michele Sison ’81, director of the global office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Albright Institute’s 2026 distinguished visiting professor. During their conversation, Clinton talked about the importance of questioning one’s own beliefs and being open to new information. “I always want to be prepared to change my mind. That is not a sign of weakness,” she said. “Do everything you can at Wellesley to expand your own horizons, to get out of your comfort zone, to challenge your opinions. … You may think that your opinion about something is 100% true, but I can tell you that it is not 100% true, and you won’t know that unless you speak to someone with a different opinion than you. … It will be uncomfortable, but ultimately, it will be very beneficial.”
Following the conversation with Sison, the Albright Fellows had a chance to ask Clinton about the conflicts in Gaza and the Balkans. She answered their questions candidly and stressed the importance of listening and learning from criticism. “It is not easy to be in any room where you’re going to be criticized, I know that,” Clinton said with a smile, “but if you’re going to be a leader you have to learn how to take that. You have to take it seriously but not personally.”
During her visit, Clinton told both groups of fellows how delighted she was to be back on campus. “My Wellesley experience was incredibly consequential in my life,” she said to the Clinton Fellows. It was Wellesley, Clinton shared, that inspired her to apply to law school, and she spoke of her famous 1969 commencement speech and how she tried to be the voice for her classmates through it.
“It was a powerful moment of learning for us—to see the human behind the history, and to speak not only with a global leader, but with someone who once was in our shoes,” said Clinton Fellow Katherine Law ’28. “Hearing Secretary Clinton speak with honesty, patience, and humor made her 1969 call to ‘practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible’ resonate even more—both in the world and in our lives as Wellesley students today.”