Stacy Parker Aab’s White House career began in the Marvin Center.
The year was 1992, and Bill Clinton had just been elected president. The Presidential Inaugural Committee had set up shop in the Marvin Center’s Great Hall, and Ms. Aab—then a freshman in GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs—answered its call for volunteers.
One volunteer job led to another, and she soon found herself working in the White House Office of Communications. “I had no idea that a girl like me—a girl from Detroit, a girl who came from neither power nor money—could have a place in the White House,” says Ms. Aab.
That summer, she moved into George Stephanopoulos’ office in the West Wing. She stayed as a White House intern until graduating in 1996 with a political communications degree.
“Because I attended GW I was able to work in George Stephanopoulos’ office for three years,” she says, “unlike the average White House intern from outside D.C. who can only be away from school for a summer or single semester.”
Her White House responsibilities included answering phones and supervising Mr. Stephanopoulos’ correspondence operation. “Working in the White House was definitely stressful because my assignments were rarely ‘fluff’ or trivial,” says Ms. Aab. “I also believed that any failing could doom my life in politics forever, which wasn’t true but that was my 19-year-old thinking. And it added more pressure to an already stressful situation.”
After a year-long fellowship at Oxford University, she returned to the White House to work as presidential aide Paul Begala’s assistant. She stayed until 1998 when, after more than five years in the White House, she decided she needed a break from politics. “I always wanted to be a writer, and that pushed me,” she says.
But she didn’t completely sever ties with the West Wing. In addition to an oral history project on Hurricane Katrina and blogging, Ms. Aab helped handle logistics for presidential trips for the White House and the Clinton Foundation, traveling to Vietnam, Asia, Europe and Africa in the process.
Eventually, she began writing about her experiences in government, including two screenplays and a stage play about the turf wars between White House staff and Secret Service agents. She didn’t consider writing her own story until another kind of agent—the literary sort—approached her. Two years later, her book Government Girl is set to be released in January 2010. The book is about Ms. Aab’s years both as an intern and as full-time staff in the White House.
Writing the memoir came easily but telling her story without compromising former colleagues’ privacy was trickier. “The hardest part is that it’s not just your story but others’ stories as well,” says Ms. Aab. “I tried hard to be accurate, emotionally honest and compassionate. However, I tried to never let fear of others’ reactions guide my choices. Not an easy thing to do in anxiety-drenched political Washington.”
The book gives an insider’s view of the White House and also chronicles how it is to be young, female and at the epicenter of American politics, says Ms. Aab.
Now that her memoir is done, Ms. Aab, who now lives and works in New York City, hopes to complete her oral history project. She is also interested in writing about fear, especially fear driven by racism, and its effect on political decision-making, including the response to Hurricane Katrina.
“And I’m always thinking of storylines for my imagined one-hour HBO drama ‘Staff v. Agents’ that focuses on the personal and professional lives of U.S. Secret Service agents and White House staff as they run presidential events around the world—all the conflicts, passions and disasters averted,” she says.
Ms. Aab urges GW students interested in politics and public service not to let a lack of connections or experience hold them back from pursuing their career dreams. “I would advise anyone, no matter his or her background, to be proactive and reach out to those you’d like to assist,” she says. “You could end up in lofty places.”
A version of this article appeared on the Web site for the School of Media and Public Affairs.