Former White House director of presidential scheduling Stephanie Streett believes the demanding, fast-paced job prepared her for the really important work she is doing now.
No, not her work as the Clinton Foundation’s first and only executive director, her job as a working mother of the three girls she has with husband Don Erbach, a vice president at Paschall Strategic Communications.
“I always tell people being the scheduler for the President of the United States was a great training ground for being logistics director of the Streett-Erbach household,” Streett, 48, says of her daily duties, which include packing lunches, helping with homework and making sure basketball shoes and soccer gear leave the house with the right child.
However Streett’s other job, the one she is paid to do, is pretty important too, and more so these days. As part of her Foundation duties, Streett oversees operations of the Clinton Presidential Center, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a host of exhibits, functions, visiting dignitaries and tie-ins with other museums and institutions around Little Rock.
“We want to celebrate the past but most importantly want to focus on cultural initiatives,” Streett says.
The Clinton Foundation is planning a number of anniversary events for Nov. 14-18 and the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau is planning a 10-day slate to celebrate.
President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary — the former First Lady, New York Senator, secretary of state, past and possible future presidential candidate — are to attend several of the events. Also expected are various members of Clinton’s cabinet and staff dating to his days as governor of Arkansas.
The Clinton Center is coordinating events and exhibits with institutions like the ESSE Purse Museum, the Governor’s Mansion, the Arkansas Museum of Discovery, the Arkansas Symphony and the Arkansas Arts Center. Additionally the center is offering free admission days Nov. 16-18, with a “Day of Action” at the Arkansas Foodbank and a series of programs and lectures.
The anniversary’s theme “The Work Continues,” is taken from a permanent exhibit highlighting President Clinton’s ongoing humanitarian work at home and abroad. “It’s all about building community,” Streett says.
Speaking in her second-floor office at the Clinton Center, Streett, smartly dressed in a dark blazer over a brightly patterned dress, is surrounded by memorabilia and artwork from the Clinton presidential years and the life of the center.
Her daughters Olivia, 12, Katherine, 11, and Caroline, 7, are well represented among the framed photos, pen sets and Peter Max paintings; examples of the girls’ scholastic art efforts hang among the other works.
Just as Streett’s professional and family life intersect on the crowded walls, so, she says, do they intersect in the humanitarian and educational work done by the Clinton Center and Foundation.
“Being a mother of three, that’s very important to me,” Streett says. “We have to provide opportunities for kids of all walks of life. That’s a directive from the President we take very seriously.”
Love And Politics
Growing up in Russellville, Streett toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer — as three of her five siblings did — but from an early age she was entranced by politics, traveling with her father Alex, a former prosecuting attorney now in private practice, to campaign events around the state.
She never desired a political office herself, preferring the action behind the scenes.
Streett was a page with the Arkansas Legislature, campus coordinator for the 1988 Michael Dukakis-Lloyd Bentsen presidential campaign at the University of Arkansas and, with help from former senator David Pryor, a staff assistant on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee — which necessitated a break from college and a promise to her parents she would return and finish, which she did in 1991.
“I was the lowest gal on the totem pole but it was a great experience,” Streett says.
Among the peach festivals and chicken fries of the campaign trails she shared with her father, Streett first was introduced to Clinton. Later, when as governor he was touring the state seeking constituents’ approval to run for president, she asked to join his campaign if he made the race.
Streett worked as a volunteer in Clinton’s Little Rock campaign office, was hired as a campaign staffer and begged for and got a position in the campaign’s scheduling and events office. From there Streett worked on the presidential transition team, moved to deputy director of the White House Department of Scheduling and was director for Clinton’s final six years in office.
Streett describes the atmosphere of the Clinton White House as collegial but “very, very intense.” It was a time when email was still a novel concept and no one had smart phones, wireless Internet or social media. Staffers worked long days and weekends, slept with their pagers and every schedule had to be printed on paper only to be revised again and again.
“Time is the President’s most important resource,” Streett says.
Streett and her team coordinated with every other White House office, from the State Department and National Security teams as well as outside entities like the military, in planning a presidential appearance.
“It’s the epicenter of the White House,” she says of the scheduling office.
The daily schedules were subject to sudden change caused by a world event or a Presidential whim, Streett says, and she recalls whirlwind advance work that allowed her to see the world as if it were a film on fast forward.
But within the fast-paced life there were perks. Streett, a Catholic, experienced a career highlight when the President introduced her to Pope John Paul II in St. Louis. And she recalled a state dinner for Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel in which she shared a table with musician Lou Reed, who performed in the East Room for Havel, a fan, and sat next to Cars lead singer Ric Ocasek.
“That was a very interesting state dinner,” Streett says.
The most important meeting of all came when Streett, hustling people in and out of an Oval Office meet-and-greet, met Erbach, then advisor to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, as Erbach brought constituents in to meet the President.
Erbach asked Streett out and in 2000, after a five-year courtship, the couple was married at St. Benedict’s Abbey in Subiaco, with President Clinton and the First Lady attending.
“I knew on the first date I was going to marry him,” says Streett, always comfortable with an accelerated pace. “It took him a little longer to reach that conclusion.”
The Work Continues
The Clinton Center opened in a cold rain on Nov. 18, 2004, with four current and former presidents in attendance as well as U2 guitarist The Edge and front man Bono, who sang a version of the Beatles “Rain” in which he declared the event had gotten “four presidents out of bed.”
“The rain was a great equalizer,” Streett says. “You had prime ministers and presidents and kings and everyone was cold.”
Estimates say more than 3 million have visited the center, contributing to a 25 percent increase in the number of tourists visiting Little Rock since 2003, and the Clinton Presidential Center has taken its place among the city’s most iconic landmarks.
The center houses the Clinton Foundation offices, features the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, a park, 80 million pages of archived presidential documents and the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, which was the first institution in the nation to offer a public service master’s degree program.
With its partners, the Clinton Foundation has developed initiatives in the U.S and around the world tackling climate change, hunger and poverty in Africa, children’s issues, Haitian relief efforts and more.
The center holds permanent exhibits charting Clinton’s political career and post-presidential work. Streett says the center has people working “around the clock” to locate and obtain the diverse selection of temporary exhibits, which in the past have ranged from baseball to Elvis Presley.
The current exhibit is of the glass creations of American artist Dale Chihuly, a Clinton family favorite. Next year, family-themed exhibits will include Dr. Seuss, “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz and dinosaurs.
“I surely can’t take credit for all the great things that happen here,” says Streett, noting the Clinton Foundation’s 2,100 staff around the world and the center’s 300 volunteers. “That’s something the staff makes happen.”
The Clinton Center draws a mix of people from around the world. Streett says there are groups, not unlike roller coaster enthusiasts or Grateful Dead fans, who are presidential library aficionados, and an Elvis Presley fan club from Japan once came for the Elvis exhibit.
“We get a lot of people who are just driving by and pull off the interstate,” Streett says.
Streett is gratified by the non-partisan cooperation that went into the creation of the center as well as certain Clinton Foundation initiatives like the Presidential Leadership Scholars Program, a combined effort of the Clinton, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Lyndon B. Johnson centers.
“I think people yearn to see that kind of bipartisanship,” Streett says. “You bring people together that would normally not have an opportunity to interact to solve problems. We all have to get out of our silos.”
And, with three daughters, Streett places special importance on the Clinton Center’s educational efforts on behalf of women and girls. As she spoke, on the lawn outside, the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas was holding its Girls of Promise Conference designed to introduce eighth-grade girls to careers in economics, science, technology, engineering and math.
Surrounded by her children’s artwork, stopping at one point to take a call from one of her girls, Streett points out that without such vital work, the Clinton Center wouldn’t have much of an anniversary to celebrate.
“The work we are doing is life changing and I feel blessed every day to be a part of this,” she says.