In Monday’s edition of Working, Slate’s Jacob Brogan talks to Paulette Aniskoff, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Aniskoff began working with Obama in the early days of his first presidential campaign and now spearheads the White House efforts that connect the president with the American people. Aniskoff walks Brogan through the daily tasks her team works on—things like selecting which folks will best represent the “Real People” in meetings with the president, connecting with underserved communities, and strategically arranging seats in the Roosevelt Room for public engagement meetings.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity, and may differ slightly from the podcast.

Jacob Brogan: What is your name and what do you do?

Paulette Aniskoff: My name is Paulette Aniskoff and I run an office in the White House called the Office of Public Engagement.

Brogan: What does the Office of Public Engagement do?

Aniskoff: Under past administrations, it was called the Office of Public Liaison. I think they did a lot of constituency work, and working with organizations here in D.C..

When our administration began, one of the I think very cool concepts was to organize the grass roots, not just here in D.C., but to really try to make sure we’re talking to people all over the country. And engaging the grass roots on the president’s priorities, that can look like a lot of things—health care was one of our biggest and most well-coordinated campaigns, and was really fun.

Brogan: When you start to have a conversation about something like health care, who are you talking to?

Aniskoff: Our starting point is, literally us sitting in a room and saying, “OK, the goal is young people. How the hell are we going to do this?” We lay out who we know. What organizations we think are really good at this work. We always do the obvious ones, and then we start digging; we say “Who are we not thinking about that might have a really good impact?”

We knew that if young people didn’t sign up, the health care system wouldn’t work as well. Because we’d have a lot of sick people but not a lot of healthy people.

Someone said YouTube stars are great at reaching out to youth. And some of these people have way bigger followings than a lot of the celebrities we normally engage. So, why don’t we kind of call them up and see if they’re interested?

Brogan: A lot of them have bigger followings than Donald Trump.

Aniskoff: That is very true. Things like the Between Two Ferns episode with the president, which was really funny, with Zach Galifianakis.

Brogan: Was that your doing?

Aniskoff: Yes, our office. And something that, to be honest, was a little hard to convince people, because a lot of folks had not seen Between Two Ferns.

But I think our office is ultimately known for the not-glittery cool stuff that ends up on TV. Our office, I think, does our best work when we’re doing what we did on the campaign, which is organizing communities. We did things like a Healthy Mayors Challenge, where you get every mayor to work with these non-profit organizations and dig into their community and say “We’ve looked at the numbers, have you thought about signing up this group of people? Have you dug into your community colleges?”

So we’ll do a call with every community college and then we’ll make sure we connect them, connect the dots with the mayors. And we know that we are trying to reach a lot of people who are underserved in their community. Those people tend to congregate around organizations that are always working with them. The United Way, the YMCA, Catholic Charities. Tons of faith organizations really wanted to get people signed up.

When people are hurting and don’t have health care, we are looking for them and where they go.

Brogan: Tell us about the shape of a more typical day. When do you get here? What’s the beginning of the day look like?

Aniskoff: I’m a new mom, so my day starts a little bit earlier than it used to. I usually get in a little bit after 8. And then I’m usually on my breast pump for a while, to be honest.

And then I plot out my day. I make sure that I’m thinking through what I want to check in with my deputies about, and my boss.

Because things happen really rapidly at the White House, we do a lot of check-ins, because things change per day. We don’t have a weekly staff meeting. You have to check in daily.

Brogan: That means you’re checking in with your whole team?

Aniskoff: Yep. We check in with our boss. Our senior staff get together every morning at 9. I check in with my deputies and they relay information. You’ve got to have an opportunity to both give and get feedback very quickly.

So we have a ton of morning meetings. I think that’s very typical in the White House.

And then our job is to engage the public. So my staff are meeting with the public all day, every day. Calling grassroots organizations. Setting up conference calls. Bringing in a lot of to talk through some strategic planning. They’re not all in D.C., so I’ve got about eight chairs in my office and they are full for a good portion of the day.

Brogan: Where in the White House itself do you work? Are you in the West Wing? Are you here in the Executive Office building?

Aniskoff: I’m in the West Wing on the second floor. People have told me it’s Karl Rove’s old office, which is kind of a fun fact.

It actually made me realize that who is sitting in different chairs in this White House can make such a difference. Who is sitting in each of these offices? Maybe that seems really obvious, but when you actually swap out one person for another, it’s an interesting thing to consider.

Brogan: Do you ever feel like it’s a little haunted by that other presence there?

Aniskoff: I did have this moment where we got these new phones.

These three people come in to install my new phone. And one of them said, “I want to talk to you about your speed dial. You are the office in the West Wing that has the most speed dials set in. They all are direct lines to various cabinet secretaries. We don’t know if you have put those in, or if they were the person before you, or the person before you.”

They sent me this list; they said “Who do you want to keep?” I had put none of them on there, but it was literally a list of cabinet secretaries. I don’t know if they were the Clinton Administration, the Bush Administration, our administration—but a direct line to, I mean, everyone you can imagine. The Pentagon. The Attorney General.

It was kind of funny to see that.

Brogan: Does much communication still happen on the phone? Are people emailing each other? Are you walking from office to office?

Aniskoff: For the most part, our check-ins are in person.

We have a weekly meeting where anyone is invited. Most of the progressive community shows up, but we get, believe me, just about everybody. It’s an open meeting. It’s an off-the-record meeting. You can ask any question you want. And that meeting has made me realize how important face-to-face communication is. People still desire the ability to meet. We can’t do that with grass roots organizations outside of D.C.. We do conference calls. We certainly use a flood of email. Our social media team is fantastic.

But when it comes to organizing and really collaborating with people, there is something to be said about sitting them down in a room and working through some issues together that you just can’t do on a conference call.

Brogan: Do you ever have the opportunity to sit down in a room with the president?

Aniskoff: We do. Our office gets to set up—this is embarrassing, but we call it “Real People.” When we want the president to get a sense of an issue or of what people are saying, my office will pick those people. And the more real, the better. If they take their placard with them when they leave, because it has this little White House thing, you know you’ve got a good one.

Brogan: Because they were impressed to be there?

Aniskoff: They were excited to be in the White House. It’s probably their first time. They’re clearly not from D.C. if they take their placard with them. It’s sort of this litmus test we have in our office to make sure that we’re getting real people.

Brogan: When you’re planning that, what is the standard of a real person? What does that mean for you and for your office?

Aniskoff: They’re almost never from D.C.. Some of them are part of an organization, but rarely a lobbying organization. We will work with an organization to find these people, and we work with our correspondence office to find these people.

It’s folks who might have a typical problem, or feel like they’re a typical American. Maybe they’re people who wrote in about a health care issue. People who you can imagine there are thousands of. Working with our correspondence office, we get an opportunity to hear from people that are just hard to connect to directly. We get this little peek into that world. They’re always really shocked when you call and say, “Come on in. We want to meet with you.”

In the health care campaign, we brought in, I want to say, 10 or 12 people to sit down and talk to the president about what the ACA meant to them. Some of them had a preexisting condition, some of them had never been on health care in their entire lives, some of them had gone bankrupt.

Brogan: How much work do you do with a real person before you bring them in to be a real person? Do you A/B test your real people? How do you figure out which is the realest real person?

Aniskoff: It’s usually by having a conversation with them over the phone.

Brogan: Are people who don’t necessarily agree with the president surprised when you invite them to come in?

Aniskoff: Yes. Always. But it’s the only way you’re going to have a healthy conversation and interesting dynamic. And frankly, the president doesn’t want to be around a bunch of people who just agree with him all the time. It makes for a more interesting conversation.

You don’t want someone who is threatening death to everyone who works at the White House, but someone who has just a healthy disagreement. We can easily find those people, too. We’ve got a lot of people that write in and say, “I didn’t vote for you. I don’t agree with you. But here is something that I wanted to tell you about.”

Brogan: Has it ever gone awry when you’ve brought in someone who didn’t agree?

Aniskoff: I have never seen someone completely—oh, that’s not true. I have seen someone really lose their cool.

Usually, though, when you are in a room with the president, I think people are a little more thoughtful about what they say. And people usually prepare for the meeting a bit.

People may pushback. The president’s also a really smart guy and really good at kind of talking through his thinking. So a lot of times there is a disagreement in the room, but people sort of agree to disagree.

It’s only gotten toxic once that I’ve seen.

We had a group of people who are extremely used to getting their way, very much beltway insiders. The president just fundamentally disagreed with them. And usually we’re on the same side of these issues. The president just said, “People have told you up and down the chain that this is not what we’re doing, and now you’re hearing it from me. This is not what we’re doing.” They were surprised. I think a lot of people think, when they get a “no,” it’s not coming from the boss. It’s coming from some staffer who doesn’t know what they’re doing. But sometimes when it’s from the boss there’s nowhere else to go.

That’s about as specific as I can get on that one.

Brogan: Do you prep for your day differently if you know that you’re going to have one of these sit-downs, one of these interactions with the president?

Aniskoff: Definitely.  I want to make sure that I really understand these people’s bios. And it’s always a really fun and interesting day, because you never know how it’s going to go. I’m definitely going to get in the office a little bit earlier, make sure that everything is tight.

Where people sit in the room is a big deal for conversation. We will choose exactly who is going to sit across from the president in the Roosevelt Room.

Brogan: Could you describe that room for our listeners? What does it look like?

Aniskoff: It’s one those old school, leathery, brown rooms that you would imagine is in the White House. There’s a very long oval table. It’s very shiny and you always feel bad putting your drink on it.

Brogan: Is it cool to put your drink down?

Aniskoff: You’re allowed. Yes.

There are, I’m guessing, 16 chairs around it. One of them is just a little bit taller, and that’s the one for POTUS. He sits in the middle.

On one end there’s this very famous painting of Teddy Roosevelt on a horse. It’s very rugged looking. There is this old hutch that houses a modern video conference capability in it. There’s a lot of pomp and circumstance stuff in that room.

Brogan: Does that kind of environment of power calm people down or focus them?

Aniskoff: I think it makes them take it really seriously. Certainly, we’ve not had trouble with it intimidating people. That’s never the case. But I think people tend to prepare for a meeting in the Roosevelt Room. And when we want people to really have a focused good meeting, whether it’s with or without the president, that’s a great room to do it in.

Everyone knows it. It’s sort of historical and pretty legendary. A lot of organizations and people will get together, you know, if we’re meeting with a group of civil rights leaders, let’s say. They will all get together ahead of time and say, “We’ve got a meeting in the Roosevelt Room. Let’s connect on who is going to ask what question, what order.” They really think it through and organize themselves really well when they know it’s a big deal.

Brogan: Is that where support staff also sits?

Aniskoff: Yes. They will be there if we have to cue up a video, or if we need to have someone come in and pass people notes or memos, or prompt them on something.

And then we’ve got someone who comes in to give the president tea. He will pop in during some point. If it’s a fancier meeting, we sometimes have water and tea and coffee, which is not always the norm.

Brogan: Does only the president get tea?

Aniskoff: Usually, but then if he’s going to get tea service, usually they’ll offer it around to be polite. He’s a pretty polite guy.

Brogan: He’s not a coffee guy?

Aniskoff: Not that I know of. I’ve never seen him drink coffee. Only tea.

Brogan: This is really the first administration that’s embraced social media as part of its way of communicating with the public. Is that something that you’re involved with?

Aniskoff: Yeah. It has been in some pretty fun ways. And I would say the president is busy. We don’t always get the president. So, figuring out how to utilize social media, or his voice via video, or his likeness is, you know, a very helpful way of doing our jobs.

There are a few examples I would bring up. One is bringing in the YouTube stars and really talking through with them how they can help us reach a whole new group of people that we just don’t tap into easily. Asking people to organize their own “It’s On Us” anti-sexual assault campaign on campus, we really used social media to drive that launch. And then follow up with it and got it to really trend in a big way online for it to take off around campuses. And that’s something obviously if you’re on campus, you know, we’re not going to have the president visit 200 campuses or bring them all in, so making sure that we can launch that in a way that will immediately hit campuses. That they can take their own campaign, put their own stamp on it, and run with it was really important to us.

Brogan: Do social media platforms make it easier to reach out to niche audiences—smaller demographics and groups do you think?

Aniskoff: Definitely. We did an Instagram takeover with an API star, an Asian-American Pacific Islander celebrity. And it meant the world to young API people across the country to see someone that they knew, who looked like them, taking over the White House Instagram feed for the day. That is the kind of simple but really fantastic thing that we can do that hits a very specific number of people who enjoy it, see it, feel really good about it, and then engage with us.

One of the most heartfelt events we’ve ever had here was a disability LGBT event. And people were crying in the room, telling me that they had never been in an entire room of people who were LGBT and disabled. Everyone was crying. It was so amazing to bring those folks together and let them celebrate together. It meant a lot to us, certainly—but wow, it meant a lot to them. Mostly teenagers in the room. They were really thrilled.

Brogan: How do you decide on a community to reach out to or to work with? What kind of conversations happen in order to make an event like that happen?

Aniskoff: Sometimes they’ll come to us. Other times, our liaisons, who are just so creative and know their communities so well.

I have a disability liaison. I have an LGBT liaison. African American. Latino. API. They know their communities so well and I think they have a sense of where we haven’t gone yet. And where we should go.

It will not surprise you that our new liaison for LGBT issues is someone who is transgender, knows the transgender community incredibly well, has organized for years in that community. She knows that community inside and out. And so when we’re planning the year, there were things that we hadn’t done in that community that she felt like would be really symbolic and an amazing opportunity.

And, frankly, the staff across the White House is so diverse, that a lot of these ideas come in from various parts of the White House, not just my staff. We’ve got some awesome people in every place.

Brogan: Do those kind of conversations with your liaisons end up, do you think, ever affecting policy? Do they make their way up through the organization?

Aniskoff: Definitely. Both policy changes and symbolic changes.

Brogan: How many kind of issues or topics are you juggling in your office at any given time?

Aniskoff: That’s the biggest challenge of my office. With diversity comes strength, but also a lot of different issues. On the same day that I’m talking about, you know, a transgender bathroom issue, we’ve got labor leaders that are worried about a very specific thing, and a bill on the Hill. We’ve got disability rights advocates. You know, one of them is protesting outside on the same day as something else is happening.

Brogan: How do you make sure when you’re planning these events that the language you use, and all of the other factors that you bring to the table, are sensitive to everyone, whether or not they’re in the room?

Aniskoff: I have learned so much about various communities in this job. But the easy part is that our White House looks like those people. So we get an opportunity to know by asking the team around us.

I think they very rarely make a mistake, because it’s part of their life. Something like making sure that the White House does a better job making sure that folks who are disabled can watch every video we have online. I mean, we have someone who has fought for that on the outside and knows that from a policy perspective and works with people every day.

You can have the best staff in the world, but ultimately the structure itself has to support asking for that advice. I think that’s been a healthy thing here.

Brogan: Are there demographics or communities that feel especially hard to reach?

Aniskoff: No matter what, it is very tough to reach underserved communities. It is really hard to get direct information from the people who need government the most.

We generally go through organizations that serve them to reach them, but those organizations are underfunded. They are busy.

So reaching underserved communities is one of the toughest challenges.

Brogan: What kind of organizations do you reach out to in order to try to contact those underserved communities?

Aniskoff: I think United Way just does amazing work, as well as Catholic Charities. We work with many faith organizations, both their big, sort of association type of things in D.C., but also individual churches. We try to set up a lot of listserves. And through social services.

Brogan: We’re approaching the end of this eight-year presidency. Has that changed the way that your office thinks about issues? Does it add an urgency to what you’re doing?

Aniskoff: The urgency is there. I will say that.

Trying to get as much done as we can in a short time. I kind of thought that maybe things would, there’d be like a little down tick, particularly since there’s some policies we can’t execute in that kind of timeframe. That has not been the case. There has been no down tick.

The engagement piece maybe even goes up, because so many people are wanting to collaborate that haven’t. They see the time running out.

I thought there would be sort of a little time to sit back and talk about legacy and think about the things that are next. There is just no time for that. We are still working and I think we will be until January. I just don’t see this slowing down.

Brogan: Have you had time to think about what’s next for you?

Aniskoff: I will at some point. I’ve got a lot of work to do on that. I need a job. Starting Jan. 21, I’ll definitely need to figure out how to take a vacation and find a new role.

Brogan: I hope it’s a long vacation.

Aniskoff: I hope so, too.

Brogan: How does it feel to think about stepping out of this role and looking back on your legacy? And the legacy of the administration?

Aniskoff: I joined the campaign because I knew I would never regret it. And I am certain I will never have a job where I both feel like I’m making a bigger impact or working with more amazing people.

I can’t help but be deeply sad and deeply happy at the same time, knowing I got to be a part of this wonderful decade-long adventure that has completely changed my life.

Knowing it’s going to end, and knowing I won’t work with these people every day, or come to work every day here is—it is the saddest, saddest thing.

But I am so proud. And that will last forever.

Brogan: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Aniskoff: Thank you. Thanks for making me cry before my next meeting.