Litman: “Cultivate a Thick Skin”
Amanda Litman is on a mission to help young people run for political office. For the brave souls who do, she offers a warning: Prepare to be unpopular.
“Being a leader means taking a stance, and people are not going to like you for that,” Litman, a guest speaker, said during Nancy Rotering’s class, Women and American Political Leadership, at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.
“That’s OK. That’s baked in. If the criticism—which you will get—starts to affect you, you will crumble,” she added. “People will critique you for the things you say, the way you say it, the type of lipstick you wear while you say it. So much of it is not real. It’s criticism that comes because you are challenging the status quo.”
Litman, the founder of the political action committee Run for Something, which recruits and supports young progressives, was one of more than a dozen guest speakers in the class, taught by Rotering, the mayor of Highland Park, Illinois.
Throughout the quarter, students heard from a wide variety of people working in local and state political positions, including Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton; McHenry County Commissioner Pamela Althoff, a former Illinois state senator and Republican Caucus chair; and current students and alumni, including Izzy Dobbel, deputy chief of staff for the Illinois House speaker; and graduating senior Kaylyn Ahn, who inspired and testified for a bill to close a legal loophole in Illinois sexual assault law, stemming from her own experiences with sexual assault.
Litman, a 2012 Northwestern graduate, is the author of When We’re in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership. Before launching Run for Something, she worked as a digital strategist—serving as email director on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, digital director for Charlie Crist's 2014 Florida gubernatorial campaign, deputy email director for Organizing for Action, and an email writer for Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
Below are excerpts from her conversation with Rotering’s class:
I skipped a day of high school as a junior to hear Obama speak. I was hooked. I didn’t know politics could be or feel like that.
I wanted to change the news, not write the news. It was frustrating to be on the outside. I worked on the Obama campaign, got credit for it through the School of Communication, and was able to commit all my time outside of class.
I really tried to make myself invaluable so when I graduated and stopped getting credit for the work, they would have to hire me. They said, “We had no choice. We had to give you a job. You have a key function on the team.” That is how I got on the team. Many internships are not paid enough for a full-time job. But the way I got in and stayed in was by working my ass off, honestly.
I started Run for Something in 2017 because there was a problem I wanted to solve, and I thought I had the skills to do it. I also didn’t think it would last. Being an entrepreneur or startup founder requires a certain amount of craziness. You have to take the leap and be willing to fall. That’s fun for me. Being willing to do it is 80 percent of the challenge.
If you are going to be involved in politics as a candidate or operative, you need to be OK with people not liking you—especially women, who are cultivated to be people pleasers. Even the most popular person—a 65 to 70 percent approval rating—has haters. Think of the skills and tools you need to cultivate a thick skin.
Relationships are everything. Ask yourself: What problem do you want to solve? How does the office you want give you power to solve it? It’s important to have deep self-awareness. Know who you are and what you believe. If you don’t have a clear sense of self, you end up tying yourself in knots trying to satisfy others—and you can’t win like that.
Leadership, writ large, is not about me—it’s about you. Why do voters want you to win? The ones who get stuck are the ones who think, “Why do I want to win?” rather than, “Why do other people think I should win? How will you make schools better, improve soccer fields?”
Writing is thinking. You will be shocked at how many crappy writers are out there. To do a job well—any job—you need to be able to write emails, memos, talking points, decks, text messages to partners and funders. You need to be able to communicate clearly in writing, make an argument, back it up—and it needs to sound like you. The most effective writing sounds like a person.
This is one of the foolish things about people using AI to write emails and memos. It’s not good. It’s trained on the vast majority of other people’s writing. Writing can solve conflict within an interpersonal dynamic; it can establish a team culture. Being charming in these spaces really makes a difference. As things get more and more automated and robotic, good human writing will be even more important. Every job has writing.
My news diet is utter chaos. I read all kinds of newsletters, subscribe to 550 Substacks—too many. I read a lot of curated newsletters on all kinds of topics. Obviously, I’m on TikTok. It’s important to have reporters I trust but also to be able to critically review what they’re writing.
Anyone who is 70 or older should not run for reelection. Few of them are meeting the moment, and none are better than a younger person in their district could be. We are at a moment where we need to bring our best possible fighters, and generally speaking, those fighters have come from the folks who have risen to power in the last 10 years, not in the 20 years before that.
The biggest barriers are still structural. The jobs are unpaid or underpaid. It requires a lot of work outside a full-time job.
This is an incredible moment of opportunity for people who care and are willing to do the hard stuff to take things over. If you are not already volunteering on a congressional or local campaign, there are amazing races in your district in Illinois. If you’ve ever thought about running for office, 2026 and 2028 are good years to do it. High turnout, highly engaged electorate, people really mad at those in charge. If you’ve ever thought about running, this is the time. It’s going to be good.