The Warrior

Profoundly scorched in public more than 20 years ago, MONICA LEWINSKY is lighting another kind of fire— to protect others and speak up for herself

- Laura Brown

Social activist, speaker, and writer Monica Lewinsky has lived a thousand lives since she unwittingly entered the public spotlight two decades ago. We all know why, and we all know what happened after. But as Lewinsky reminded us in her viral TED Talk in 2015, thanks to the nascent Internet (the news of the then-24-year-old’s affair with President Bill Clinton broke in January 1998), she was “patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.”

Now 45, Lewinsky has spent the intervening years rebuilding herself and using her public evisceration to help others. What is poignant about her is that she can credibly say, “I feel like I’m still just coming into who I am as a woman, having been delayed in many ways.” What is badass about her is, well, everything else. When Lewinsky wakes up in the morning, wherever she is in the world, she can unsuspectingly be hit yet again by the news cycle, as she was with Clinton’s awkward #MeToo era interview on the Today show in June.

But what’s different these days is how she has equipped herself to weather the storm. A philanthropy-summit invitation snub is greeted on Twitter with a deft mention of Emily Post and a peace sign, while Clinton’s answering a question about her resulted in a re-post of a Vanity Fair piece she wrote, “Emerging from the House of Gaslight in the Age of #MeToo.”

So, while the news will feed itself over and over, I found it more interesting to talk to Lewinsky about confidence: what she has learned—and what we can learn too.

LAURA BROWN: Your ability to metabolize difficult situations and take the high ground is extraordinary. How do you do it?