Sometimes the issue is about whether families and communities think girls are even worthy of an education in the first place. It's about whether girls are valued only for their labor and reproductive capacities or for their minds as well. And it's about whether women are viewed as second-class citizens or as full human beings entitled to the same rights and opportunities as men.

It's important for us not to lose sight of the fact that this is a family that's grieving and there's been a tremendous loss. And we all have to rally around that piece of it.

When I'm unhappy with something, people know, because I don't want to hold on to it. I'd rather deal immediately with the stuff that bothers me, so using my network - my girlfriends, my husband, my mom - I talk a lot, I vent.

I had the honor of meeting a young Pakistani woman named Malala Yousafzai, who was shot and nearly killed just for trying to go to school. I also heard about how nearly 300 girls in Nigeria were kidnapped from their school dorms in the middle of the night. There are girls like this in every corner of the globe. In fact, there are more than 62 million girls worldwide not attending school, and that's an outrage.

Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don't matter, or like you don't have a place in our American story - because you do.

Believe it or not, when we were first married, our combined monthly student loan bills were actually higher than our mortgage.

My goal has always been to add value, not to be redundant, not to get in the way, but to do things that lift and move things forward in a very strategic and objective way so that there are real outcomes.