Hillary Clinton gave a paid speech in Silicon Valley Tuesday. But before her public remarks to the Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women, the Democratic presidential candidate met with her daughter’s boss.
“Before the conference, Mrs. Clinton attended a private round table arranged by Barry Diller, the chairman of the media conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp, where her daughter, Chelsea, is a board member,” the New York Times reported in the twenty-first paragraph of its article on Clinton’s speech.
“Among the executives from Twitter, Facebook and Google at the event was Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, who was a high-level Treasury Department aide in President Bill Clinton’s administration before becoming a generous Democratic donor. Her 2013 book, ‘Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,’ became a much-debated guide for wealthy working mothers.”
Interestingly, in October 2011, soon after Chelsea Clinton’s gig with IAC/InterActiveCorp was announced, the New York Times published an analysis trying to determine whether Clinton’s hire made financial sense for the company. The piece definitively states Chelsea was hired because of her parents, former President Bill Clinton and the possible future president, Hillary Clinton.
For her efforts, Ms. Clinton will be paid about $300,000 a year in cash and incentive stock awards. Not bad for a 31-year-old in graduate school.
Is IAC also getting a good deal, or is this another eye-rolling celebrity appointment?
Ms. Clinton appears to be a smart, capable individual. She worked in her 20s at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and at a hedge fund run by a loyal Clinton donor. She is now working at New York University and pursuing a doctorate at Oxford. Ms. Clinton appears to be level-headed, despite growing up in the limelight. She is also popular — her wedding last year was one of the social events of the year.
But let’s be real. Ms. Clinton has this position only because she is the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the current secretary of state. This is clearly an appointment made because of who she is, not what she has done, one that defies American conceptions of meritocracy. Even most celebrity directors earn their way to such celebrity — sort of.
But one word was missing from the Times‘s 2011 write-up: access. And Tuesday’s meeting between Chelsea Clinton’s boss and her mother, Hillary Clinton, proves just how valuable a board member the young Clinton is to the media company.
