A job at the White House. Perhaps it doesn’t sound the most appealing of prospects under the current occupant. But Barack Obama’s White House? For most go-getting graduates heading to Washington DC during the Obama presidency, landing a position at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would have been the stuff of dreams. Not for Beck Dorey-Stein, who arrived there in 2011 nursing an innate suspicion of the US capital and its “DC creatures”, and with no desire whatsoever to work in politics.
She intended to stay just a few months: “The city seemed too buttoned up for me, too obsessed with politics.” Yet within a year, aged just 25, she found herself at its epicentre, working as an aide to President Obama. As one of five stenographers responsible for recording and transcribing his speeches, briefings and official statements, both for the press office and the presidential archives, Dorey-Stein joined the elite team who accompanied the president wherever he went. Travelling the world at his side, she visited 45 countries, becoming “a front-row witness to history”.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2uxMSYk
