When I first got to the White House, I was super anxious all the time about not knowing the answer to every question. And Obama was actually the person who let me be me. He was like, "Alyssa's not the person who wears the Ann Taylor suit. She's not the kind of person who always says the exact right thing." And I'm a bit of a wild animal. I brought a different perspective and I was a little bit more irreverent and casual.

When you travel with the president, especially when you are traveling to foreign countries, the people that you travel with really become your family pretty quick. ... Most of the people who travel with me, they knew when I would get a stomachache.

Find someone who you really believe in - that can be at a state level. The one thing I can encourage women to do the most is to start at the state level.

I don't think that Donald Trump treated Hillary any differently than he treated Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. He is a deeply disrespectful person who didn't have enough reverence for the office he was running for to act humane.

I would encourage young women to find a person, give it your all, and leave it all on the field. The one thing I have found is that, if you are sitting at a table, most women will want to only give their opinion only when it's almost fact in their mind - whereas dudes will pontificate a lot more. And I will tell you, I've started pontificating a lot more, which is very satisfying. Women should not be afraid to speak.

President Obama really just let all of us genuinely be who we were and didn't expect — I'm goofy. And so for him, he just never expected us to be any different than who we were and he wanted us to always give our opinions. He is not the kind of person who wanted to sit around and be told he was right all the time. Especially if he wasn't. And I think that seeing that in him made us all take that away with us.

I saw Obama's thought process behind the few moments of free time he had and how he used them. So, I knew that him taking the time to call me meant he really cared and really deeply understood how upset I was. That's what made it so meaningful.