--- title: U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power On Ambition and Motherhood description: The ambassador weighs in on motherhood and ambition at the Real Simple/TIME Women & Success panel canonical: https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-09-18T00:01:16.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:45:12.606Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Samantha Power Told A Very Important Person About Cuba Deal og:description: The ambassador weighs in on motherhood and ambition og:url: https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2bcb77abe7ccbaf9/6988641ff887dc5d99e926a2/samantha-power-nancy-gibbs-women-success.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2650 og:image:height: 1491 og:image:alt: TIME And Real Simple's Annual Women & Success Event og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Samantha Power Told A Very Important Person About Cuba Deal twitter:description: The ambassador weighs in on motherhood and ambition twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2bcb77abe7ccbaf9/6988641ff887dc5d99e926a2/samantha-power-nancy-gibbs-women-success.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Samantha Power Told One Very Important Person About Cuba Deal > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=abef50d7-dbdf-43f7-bf9b-4cc9225c7c2c&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Women And Success: Samantha Power on the Refugee Crisis [Watch (HLS stream): Women And Success: Samantha Power on the Refugee Crisis](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/rxD8KjHy.m3u8) (1:58)  _Published 2015-09-18. Women And Success: Samantha Power on the Refugee Crisis_  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Sep 18, 2015 12:01 AM UTC  From left: U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power and Managing Editor of TIME Magazine Nancy Gibbs take part in the TIME And Real Simple's Annual Women &Success Event at Park Hyatt Hotel New York City on Sept. 17, 2015. From left: U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power and Managing Editor of TIME Magazine Nancy Gibbs take part in the TIME And Real Simple's Annual Women &Success Event at Park Hyatt Hotel New York City on Sept. 17, 2015. Michael Loccisano—Getty Images for TIME and Real Simple  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Sep 18, 2015 12:01 AM UTC America’s Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power talked to TIME managing editor Nancy Gibbs about balancing international diplomacy with mothering — and it turns out, the two are not as separate as you might think. Speaking at the second annual Real Simple/TIME Women & Success Panel, Ambassador Power said her two kids, ages 3 and 6, like to be in the loop on everything. Her son has a world map on his wall that he likes to ask his mother about. He zooms in on Zimbabwe, said Power, “and he keeps asking me, ‘Is Mugabe still there?'” Power said the “Blackberry, distracted-mommy life” is “the only thing they’ve ever known.” But they’ve clearly internalized some of the important concepts, including the U.S.’s renewed relationship with Cuba. “When I knew what was about to happen with Cuba, I couldn’t tell anyone on my staff, so I told my \[then\] five-year-old,” said Power. She explained to him, “‘We stopped doing business, we stopped sending clothes and toys,’ and he said ‘_Toys_?!'” Some time later, her son was kicked in the face at school, resulting in a bloody nose. When Power got the call from the nurses’s office, her son grabbed for the phone and proclaimed of the kicker, he “needs an embargo!” Of her own career path from journalism to Pulitzer Prize-winning author to diplomat, Power said the trajectory seems much different in retrospect. “It sounds like this unbelievably contrived and Machiavellian path towards world domination, but as it was lived it was unbelievably confused,” she said. “More and more young people seem to be envisioning something and then working backwards,” said Power. “The best way to make any decision is by smell and by gut.” Power also weighed in on some of the issues that will likely dominate the U.N. General Assembly in late September, noting that the U.S. “must do more” to address the millions of migrants fleeing Syria and Iraq. “We need citizens and the private sector be involved. We need companies to come forward and say ‘hey, we’re going to hire refugees to do X or Y,’” said Power. “But as big as the gap is between the needs and resources being provided, it’s not for a lack of generosity — it’s because we’ve never had [60 million refugees ](http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html)being displaced before. And our system is buckling under the weight of that.” “Wars are not ending as quickly as they once did,” she added. ## Transcript We have been working intensively on the President's direction in advance of the Pope's trip, in advance of the General Assembly, to see how any more refugees we are able to take in this country. We are in a sequestered climate so, you know, we want to make sure that people who come to this country have money and are able to be settled appropriately and you know, not that they, that this is an appropriate transition for them, We also recognize the vast majority want to stay in the region, want to speak their own language, but need better conditions in those regions. So whether it's in terms of how many more we can take or how much money we can mobilize, we also need citizens and the private sector to be involved. If more refugees are coming to have Companies come forward and say hey, we're gonna hire some number of refugees to do x or y, just like we do for veteran. And to have foundations looking also at how we can mobilize untraditional donors because the truth is, Nancy, as big as the gap is between the needs and the resources being provided. It's not for a lack of generosity, it's a lack of sufficient generosity clearly because the needs are so much greater, but it's that we've never had 60 million refugees and displaced people before and the systems are just buckling under the weight of that. And wars that have always been horrific and even the ones that I covered when I was a journalist, like in the Balkans, or in Rwanda, or in Kosovo, or East Timor. They ended. And the challenge now is wars are not ending as quickly as they once did, and that's also put places of premium on the political push that has to be made, alongside the kind of heart breaking symptoms of conflict. But we will do more, we're going to try to Leverage our participation in the general assembly to get others to do more but the root causes and the politics of the conflict have to be addressed right alongside it. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/"},"headline":"Samantha Power Told One Very Important Person About Cuba Deal","datePublished":"2015-09-18T00:01:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:45:12.606Z","description":"The ambassador weighs in on motherhood and ambition at the Real Simple/TIME Women & Success panel","url":"https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/","keywords":["Living","women","politics","ideas"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2bcb77abe7ccbaf9/6988641ff887dc5d99e926a2/samantha-power-nancy-gibbs-women-success.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2bcb77abe7ccbaf9/6988641ff887dc5d99e926a2/samantha-power-nancy-gibbs-women-success.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"TIME And Real Simple's Annual Women & Success Event","caption":"TIME And Real Simple's Annual Women & Success Event","creditText":"Michael Loccisano—Getty Images for TIME and Real Simple","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/","name":"Samantha Power Told One Very Important Person About Cuba Deal"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Women And Success: Samantha Power on Explaining Diplomacy to Children","description":"Women And Success: Samantha Power on Explaining Diplomacy to Children","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Kw0RBGvK/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-09-18T00:03:20.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Kw0RBGvK.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/","duration":"PT2M36S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Women And Success: Samantha Power on the Refugee Crisis","description":"Women And Success: Samantha Power on the Refugee Crisis","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/rxD8KjHy/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-09-18T00:12:23.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/rxD8KjHy.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/","duration":"PT1M58S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4039610/samantha-power-women-success/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```