We spoke with the president’s sister and vice chair of UD’s Biden Institute on life, leadership and lessons learned.

At 27, you ran—and won—your brother’s wildly improbable Senate campaign. How? What lasting lessons did you learn, and to what do you attribute your successes?

We won that campaign because, while we had no political experience, no political capital, and no political power, we had ideals, passion and a commitment to our democracy.  We also had the most important resource: the best candidate, Joe Biden, who was a true leader.

 A couple of lessons that we applied in that campaign and that we continue to take with us in all of our endeavors is to be confident, not cocky, and to be bold, not brash.

I think one of the reasons we won is because we weren’t inhibited. Because we had limited resources, we had to be innovative and creative. We couldn’t go on TV or afford to do mass mailings, so we created our own Biden post office, we went door to door, and we engaged in old-fashioned politicking. We understood from the beginning that the media shapes the story, so we created good ones for them to cover. We learned to have vision, to improvise and to be resilient.

You have also faced disappointment with other campaign efforts, including Joe’s 1988 and 2008 presidential bids. What have you learned from defeat, and what keeps you fighting in the face of loss?

While we may think we are masters of our own fate and we can control what is coming, serendipity plays a role in all of our lives.  Life has a way of interrupting, and although you can’t always know what’s coming around the bend, you can become stronger than when you started out. You can’t let yourself be defined by your losses. With resilience, character, gumption and courage, you can suit up and return back to battle. You have two options when faced with defeat: Go into the corner and hide in your shell, or keep moving forward and recognize that you may be down, but you don’t have to be down for the count.

What’s something about Joe that most people don’t know?

While my brother is often characterized as being a great talker, he is—even more so—a great listener. He listens between the lines. Our mom used to tell us that what you say is just as important as what you don’t say. Joe is an active listener. He can distinguish between a thoughtful pause and a resigned sigh. That is where his empathy shines through.

What was UD like in the mid-1960s? What did you love most?

I loved everything about my time as a student at UD. While the courses were challenging, I felt well prepared. I loved my professors, living on campus and the breadth of activities I was able to participate in. Going to UD let me step out from the small world of my childhood and adolescence into a bigger world with people from all over the country and all different backgrounds. I wanted to taste all of it—the academic, the social and the political—and I took advantage of every part of it. UD allowed me to grow in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

How would you describe the Blue Hen spirit in three words?

Reach and risk!

As vice chair of the Biden Institute, what successes are you most proud of so far, and what do you still hope to achieve?

Our mission at the Biden Institute is to influence, shape and work to address the most pressing domestic policy problems facing America. We are a research and policy center working to bring together the sharpest minds and the most powerful voices to address our nation’s toughest problems, and I am proud of the work we have been able to do with the students and the broader UD community to facilitate critical discussions and debate the issues of the day through respectful and civil discourse.

I am most proud of asking the woman who was the executive director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard for 20 years [Cathy McLaughlin] to be our executive director, which let us start off leaps and bounds ahead of the game. In less than three years, thousands of students, faculty, alumni and community members have participated in Biden Institute events and classes. We have brought together high-profile guests from a wide range of diverse backgrounds with students, faculty and staff to have conversations about important issues facing our state and our country.

 What I hope to achieve is to have a role in creating many future Joe Bidens—men and women leaders from all different backgrounds. We hope to continue to engage the students at the University to make a difference in this world so that we will not only have more presidents, senators, mayors and people in elected office, but also more people who choose a career in public service, working in and out of government for a better world. Democracy is a work in progress, and UD students are the future leaders whom we want to engage to participate in that process.  

In your spare time, you advise women in emerging democracies around the world on political organization and communication. What do you tell them?

I remind them of a fundamental truth that we all know but have somehow managed to bury deep within

our psyche, something so obvious that it is often overlooked: a woman, as designed by nature, is a leader.

As a mother, she is the ultimate leader. She can be a homemaker, a businesswoman, a scientist, a doctor, an engineer or even a president. But in all those roles, she is first a woman. She who can carry the heartbeat—the pulse of the human race “in her belly”—can also carry the pulse of the human race in the “real world.”

My mother taught me, but more importantly, her sons, that every issue is a woman’s issue. Peace, equality, justice, respect, responsibility are not gender specific. Opportunity, however, is—and that is what we have to change so that our sons and daughters can walk side by side, hand in hand, both locally and globally.

What advice would you give this generation of Blue Hens, tasked with rebuilding and repairing a very broken and divided world?

Be open to new opportunities and new ideas. Strive to collect as much information and facts as possible, but understand there are different perspectives, and the world needs good listeners.

I would make sure our students know that they do not need to put down others to get ahead. You can be successful without being negative. I would share with them that every life is an incredible act of bravery and remind them that the things that matter most are simple acts of kindness.

I would also share a story about Michelangelo, whom we think of as a great painter of the Sistine Chapel, but who thought of himself as a sculptor. He used to stare at a block of marble for weeks at a time. One day, a passerby asked, “What are you doing staring at this slab?” and he responded, “I am working.”  Later, after seeing the beautiful statute of the angel that he carved, the passerby asked, “How did you create that?” and Michelangelo replied, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

So, I would tell the next generation of Blue Hens to “Pick up your chisel and carve to set your angel free. And in the process, help set other angels free, too.”

You could be doing anything in the world right now. Why choose to be here, at UD?

I am happy and humbled that the University of Delaware has chosen to honor my brother’s legacy, and that they have welcomed and embraced him by allowing us to pursue his goals and vision. My brother’s long career has been defined by honesty, integrity, compassion and courage. He cares deeply about this country and has never been timid in the face of unfairness and injustice. These same characteristics and spirit define the Biden Institute, and I am excited every day when I get to go to work to help move that vision forward.

The University of Delaware will always be home base for the Bidens. We have been provided an opportunity to pass on to the next generation of the UD community what we were given by the University as students here ourselves. That is why we have chosen to do this work at the Biden Institute and why I couldn’t think of anything else I would rather be doing right now.