Run for Something Cofounder on AOC, the Chance to “Rebuild,” and the Next Generation’s Call to Action

Amanda Litman was tired, burned-out. She had spent years racing from one political campaign to another, always on, never getting to be a real person outside of work. “For those of you not in the political sector, campaigns are wild,” she writes in her new book, When We’re in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership. “There is no work-life balance because you have no time for life outside of work; there is similarly no time for management training or thoughtful leadership development.”

Litman worked as an email writer for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, and later as the email director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, before cofounding her liberal PAC, Run for Something. The organization recruits and supports young people running for local office, aiming to lower the barriers to an “industry known for burning people out hard and fast.” Now in her 30s, Litman is married and has two children, a two-and-a-half-year-old and a seven-month-old, a life that seems night and day from her mid-20s schlep through long-haul campaigns, one where she feels a responsibility to lead with compassion and redefine the workplace.

I spoke with Litman prior to Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis, but as Democrats were confronting reports of damning new revelations about his decline, amid an ongoing intergenerational struggle within in the party. As Democrats still tend to encourage deference to veteran leaders, progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have bucked the establishment and are bringing enthusiasm and life to the party in Donald Trump’s second term.

Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

Vanity Fair: You dub this book a no-bullshit guide for the next generation of leaders. As a founder of Run for Something, I know this was important for you. How do you see the next generation of political leaders using this manual?

Amanda Litman: For political leaders, in particular, especially at this moment, thinking about how to be authentic in a way that still maintains boundaries is going to be really important. Thinking about how to do things differently—how to run a campaign but also how to rethink the role of government in people’s lives. We have a unique moment where, sadly, everything is being destroyed, and we get to rebuild it. Refusing to let the way things happened yesterday dictate the way they have to look tomorrow is a really exciting opportunity.

You mentioned early in the book that you were exhausted from political campaigns and wanted to build something sustainable. Can you talk about campaign culture? How could political campaigns be better led?

Political campaigns are unique creatures; they are small businesses meant to shut down the day after Election Day or shortly after Election Day. And they have a really strict, time-boxed nature to them. You don’t get more time to do the work. Campaigns are around the clock from when you wake up until you eventually go to sleep. In 2016, I did not go to the grocery store in-person for the first five months of the year until the primary was really over. It was not unusual to be answering emails starting at 7 a.m. or 6 a.m. and to leave the office after 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. We were in the office six days a week, ultimately seven by the end. I don’t think that’s good. I understand why that’s the case on a campaign, and I think that there are few industries or workplaces where that should be the norm. And there’s basically no other political operation where that has to be the case.

Maybe some of it was fun, but no one was doing their best work between the hours of 8 p.m. and midnight. We just weren’t. Being really clear-eyed, we didn’t have to do it that way. What would it have looked like if we had done it differently? How would we have staffed it differently? How would you have run processes differently? There are many constraints of reality around this, but it’s necessary to refuse to accept that it’s a good thing. It’s what next-gen leadership is: refusing to accept the way we did something.

“Bad boomer bosses” are one of the biggest antagonists in your book. And I can’t help but think of the intergenerational divide happening in the Democratic Party. Do you also see those characteristics you mention in politics?

Totally. And I don’t think they’re all bad people. But I think there is a certain mindset that is stuck in the moment they became political adults. You know, it shows up in communication tactics, how they treat staff or constituents, and how they understand the opponent, especially among older Democrats. This is not the Republican Party of Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, or John McCain. It’s Donald Trump’s Republican Party, and that’s a very different opponent. There are certainly some boomers who have risen to the occasion. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the leaders who are able to step forward in this moment are younger, people who became political leaders in the last eight or nine years.

When you were doing research for this book, I know you conducted many, many interviews. Were there other industries where you noticed this cycle of “bad boomer leadership” that could use your next-gen toolkit?

It was amazing. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I talked to faith leaders, lawyers, doctors, tech executives, members of Congress, people who ran school systems and summer camps. I talked to small business owners. I talked to influencers and people who run their own independent consulting work. I heard the same themes across every single one. Some industries were further toward disruption. I would say legal and finance were a little bit on the tail end of it. But each person brought up the same exact challenges and the same kinds of frustrations. And almost all of them noted that, as they and their peers are becoming partners in the law firm or taking over the pulpit of the synagogue of the church, they’re doing it differently. And they feel that tension. When I would prod a little bit and ask how they felt like they were breaking the mold or how they were doing it differently, they would get really excited to tell me. I think we’re going to see it more and more. We’re gonna see it in Hollywood. We’re gonna see it in media companies. It is everywhere. And it makes sense. The youngest boomer is gonna hit retirement age after 2030. We are about to have a full-scale generational turnover across all kinds of industries.

You write that “authenticity is the buzzword in modern life,” but there’s a certain amount of privilege with being yourself. Those who are not white or male or straight don’t really have the permission to say or do whatever they truly feel. How do you think next-gen political leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are fulfilling or counteracting that line of thought?

AOC is a great example of this. The way she talks about the kinds of makeup she uses and wearing hoops…and I think she had leopard-print flats at one point. I remember because I love animal prints.

They’re Rothy’s.

I know! I looked for them. I was like, man, I really like those jeans too. But that’s a good example of, you know, 10 years ago, if you were a woman member of Congress, you had to wear the pantsuit. Full stop. You had to dress in a way that emulated male leadership. There was no room for another way to show up. Similarly, we see women on TV wearing bright colors and showing up with different kinds of makeup and hair. Even LGBTQ men doing gender performance very differently, and LGBTQ women, of course, too. It is an expansive model of what you can be taken seriously as. And what you have to look like to be taken seriously. And I think that’s a good thing. I also think that’s a scary thing for anyone beholden to the old way of doing things.

I talked with Kayla Young, a state legislator in West Virginia, a pretty conservative state. She’s one of the few Democrats in that chamber and she described getting yelled at by the sergeant in arms for wearing her sneakers on the Hill or on the chamber floor, and her being like…these men are wearing sneakers too, you just can’t tell because they’re ugly. That mentality of busting through what it looks like to be, particularly, a professional woman in a space that’s not meant for you is exciting. Scary and hard but exciting. It’s also what allows them to better show up as themselves. Which makes them better at their jobs.

What do you think are the advantages and dangers of political and professional leaders taking on the influencer persona or engaging with influencers?

I think it’s a good thing as long as you’ve got clear boundaries, a strong sense of who you are, and a moral compass. I write about this in When We’re in Charge. Influencers are leaders in that they build trust with our community to get them to take action. Now, that action might be buying shoes or cyberbullying someone. I don’t know. But that action is what leadership is. It’s about generating trust and moving you to do something. And so it’s about taking cues from how influencers are doing that tactically, thinking about how they perform themselves—because it’s all a performance—and how they build community, especially for people who are leading online communities, not in-person, which many politicians have a lot to learn about. And there’s a difference between learning from it…and taking brand deals. But the tactics influencers use are worth considering and modeling within a different sphere.

Near the end of your book, you write, “When workplaces are more equitable, life is better.” At this moment, some might say that could be a charged statement. How do you think workplaces stay or become equitable when DEI is being attacked on a national scale?

Segregation is wrong. Hot take in 2025.

I think that leaders with strong moral compasses shouldn’t back down because it is the right thing to do and it is good for business. We see this in capitalism. There’s a reason Nike’s hottest ad is the most recent one Malia Obama directed with A’ja Wilson. That’s a super compelling ad, and I’m sure it is doing good business for them because it works. Diverse teams—we know this from every possible amount of research—generate better outcomes. I think it is imperative for leaders to know how to do it well, and it is tricky. Doing it well will mean making mistakes. I think that is one of many reasons, along with bigotry, that some executives have shied away from it because it feels like if you try and fail, you are punished more than if you don’t try at all. I think we should try anyway. And I think backing down, especially at this moment, is cowardice and will also doom your business. We’re seeing that with Target.

I love that “we should have equitable businesses” is a hot take. I’m right, so I don’t care. It is so fundamentally correct. Also, not to be like, “demographics is destiny,” but millennials are more diverse than Gen X, Gen Z even more so. It is a practical reality that there will be more women and people of color and LGBTQ people in the workplace because there are more women and people of color and LGBTQ people. So we better figure out how to do it right in a welcoming and productive way because we’re gonna have to.

Is there anything else that you want to talk about?

The only thing I’ve been coming back to a lot as I think about the book at this particular moment is that people who run workplaces and community spaces, especially right now, have a responsibility to make them as compassionate, humane, and inclusive as possible. Because we’re not going to get that nationally. We’re not for a while. We’re not going to get paid family leave. We’re not going to get universal child care on a national scale. So business owners and team managers should do everything we can.

Ultimately, we need big structural change. And this is actually a big shift in my mental thinking. Up until Trump won again, I thought that businesses shouldn’t do this because it should be the responsibility of the government. But right now, we need business leaders to step up and do more. And when they do that, to zoom out a minute, when businesses and community spaces are better run, more compassionate, and have more boundaries, people will have time to be better citizens and better partners and better parents. If your job is not as shitty, you won’t be as snippy with your husband or your wife. If you have time to take off to go volunteer, you might be able to do more for your community. It can actually be transformative for everything if the people who are in charge make different decisions. Which is like a no-duh statement.

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