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"America sees her as the polished, private daughter of the world&amp;#x27;s most famous power couple. But the real Chelsea is a woman all her own, with a happy marriage, baby plans, and, as Glamour discovered when we joined her on a trip to Africa, a job she absolutely loves. Just another day at the &amp;quot;office&amp;quot; Chelsea with a group of Hiv-positive women and children at ZAPHA House in Zanzibar. &amp;quot;They are not just surviving but thriving,&amp;quot; she says. Chelsea Clinton, 33, is having a Fear Factor moment. We are at a primary school on the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda. She is standing on the school&amp;#x27;s field, wearing a trim white blazer and jeans and surrounded by a group of students in vibrant yellow and blue uniforms. The kids crowd around, mouths open and eyes wide with anticipation. On a table in front of Chelsea and her father, President Bill Clinton, sits a bucket of water so thick with grime you could lose the sun in it. In a few minutes, Chelsea is going to drink this water. Chelsea dumps a small packet of powder into the bucket and begins to stir. While she and her father take turns with the spoon, representatives from the Clinton Foundation and some of its partners explain that the mix will trigger a chemical process that has brought more than 6 billion liters of drinkable water to the developing world. President Clinton gets a little lazy with his stirring. Chelsea gives him a nudge. &amp;quot;C&amp;#x27;mon, Dad,&amp;quot; she teases, &amp;quot;like you mean it.&amp;quot; Soon, the water in the bucket is astonishingly clear. Chelsea and her father lift their glasses in a toast and knock them back. The crowd erupts in applause. A grin stretches across Chelsea&amp;#x27;s face&amp;amp;#8212;a grin you&amp;#x27;re not used to seeing on the serious, measured woman once known as America&amp;#x27;s Most Private First Daughter. It&amp;#x27;s the grin of a woman who straight-up loves her job. The job in question is as vice chair of the new Bill, Hillary &amp;amp; Chelsea Clinton Foundation (previously known as the William J. Clinton Foundation; it was renamed this spring to reflect the increased presence of Chelsea and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton). After years of avoiding the family business, Chelsea&amp;#x27;s now fully committed, helping to shape the foundation and even putting her name on the door. She looks happy&amp;amp;#8212;but what Chelsea should be is exhausted. Kigali was day six of a whirlwind tour through sub-Saharan Africa. We&amp;#x27;ve been in four countries, visiting more than 20 different foundation facilities. By the end of this day, Chelsea and her father will have helped fit children with hearing aids, met young medical trainees who are learning lifesaving technologies, and rubbed elbows with dignitaries at a state dinner. Chelsea will also squeeze in some gym time, leave her husband a rambling good-night voice mail, respond to every email she&amp;#x27;s received in the past 24 hours, and catch up with a friend over a late-night glass of wine. It&amp;#x27;s a day that would bring most of us to our knees, but for Chelsea it&amp;#x27;s Monday as usual, and she&amp;#x27;s savoring every minute. The new gig is a major change for Chelsea, who for years took pains to keep her work separate from that of her parents. &amp;quot;I was proud of my parents and grateful for the work that they did, but I was living my own life,&amp;quot; she says. After earning degrees at Stanford and Oxford universities, she took jobs not in politics but at McKinsey &amp;amp; Company and later Avenue Capital Group. &amp;quot;I loved working on Wall Street,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I loved the meritocracy of it and the camaraderie of the trading floor. There was one metric for success: Did you make or lose money? I think we need to care about the metrics of success in life, and I&amp;#x27;m a pretty competitive person. But whether I made the company $2 or $2 million just didn&amp;#x27;t matter to me. I didn&amp;#x27;t fundamentally care about making money.&amp;quot; She started to think about public health&amp;amp;#8212;an issue that had interested her since her dad&amp;#x27;s White House years. She went to Columbia University, quietly earning a master&amp;#x27;s degree while keeping her day job at Avenue Capital. &amp;quot;I was working full-time and going to school at night and on the weekends. It was just crazy,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;At one point a month had gone by, and Marc&amp;amp;#8212;my then boyfriend, now husband&amp;amp;#8212;and I hadn&amp;#x27;t gone out on a date. I was like, I don&amp;#x27;t want to be this person. I want to be a person who cares where she&amp;#x27;s investing her time and energy. And I want to be a good wife, daughter, and friend.&amp;quot; Chelsea took this conundrum to her grandmother and oracle, Dorothy, Hillary&amp;#x27;s mother. &amp;quot;She had strong ideas about what I should do with the opportunities I had been given. I realized that as much as I tried not to care about the things my parents cared about, I did care about them,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Which was frustrating, in some ways. My grandmother, in her wizened way, just said, &amp;#x27;Yes, I&amp;#x27;ve been waiting for you to come to this realization.&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; Chelsea tried to leave her job, &amp;quot;but my bosses asked me to stay and I just said, &amp;#x27;Oh, I&amp;#x27;ll&amp;amp;#8212;totally. I&amp;#x27;ll stay.&amp;#x27; I think a lot of women struggle with this. Marc came home and was like, &amp;#x27;So, did you quit?&amp;#x27; I said, &amp;#x27;Well, I agreed to work part-time.&amp;#x27; And he just said, &amp;#x27;What&amp;#x27;s wrong with you? If you were a man, you would have quit.&amp;#x27; And that&amp;#x27;s probably true.&amp;quot; But in November 2011, Dorothy died&amp;amp;#8212;and the loss cast a veil of grief over every aspect of Chelsea&amp;#x27;s life. &amp;quot;It was such a fundamentally unmooring event for me,&amp;quot; recalls Chelsea. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve never been so lost as I was when she passed.&amp;quot; Chelsea and Marc had been married a little more than a year; the loss pushed them to examine what they wanted their lives to be about. &amp;quot;We sat down and said, &amp;#x27;Here&amp;#x27;s what we want to do.&amp;#x27; The first thing on the list was simple: We want, God willing, to start a family. So we decided we were going to make 2014 the Year of the Baby. And please,&amp;quot; Chelsea pleads, &amp;quot;call my mother and tell her that. She asks us about it every single day.&amp;quot; Next on the list? &amp;quot;Work really, really hard, and in a way that makes an impact,&amp;quot; says Chelsea. &amp;quot;I was ready to answer that calling and be the person my grandmother had always known I was.&amp;quot; By then the foundation had more than 1,400 employees and volunteers in 40 countries. Chelsea had held a board position since 2011 and routinely offered advice (&amp;quot;often unsolicited,&amp;quot; she admits), but she took her time signing on the dotted line, first taking a gig as a special correspondent at NBC. She also considered other nonprofits: &amp;quot;I looked for a place where I could be more effective, but there wasn&amp;#x27;t one,&amp;quot; she says. Then her mother&amp;#x27;s tenure as secretary of state came to an end, and Hillary made a home at the foundation as well. Just like that it was a family affair. (When I mentioned to Chelsea that the foundation would make a great launching pad for a 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential bid, she politely replied, &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ll support my mother in whatever she does. Always.&amp;quot;) Next: Growing Up in the Spotlight &amp;amp;#187; This is the moment in Chelsea&amp;#x27;s life in which I meet her, and she knows she&amp;#x27;s in a sweet spot. She refers a lot to the &amp;quot;psychological coherence&amp;quot; that has come with answering this call, and with knowing that she and Marc are working as a team. &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s a delight to watch Chelsea in this phase,&amp;quot; says Jen Lee Koss, who was one of her bridesmaids at her wedding. &amp;quot;She&amp;#x27;s good at everything she&amp;#x27;s done, but this work brings her real joy. As a friend you only ever want to see the people you love flourish, and that&amp;#x27;s exactly what&amp;#x27;s happening right now.&amp;quot; Schooling Dad &amp;quot;Chelsea sees the world through younger eyes,&amp;quot; says President Bill Clinton of his daughter. Case in point: On the first day of our trip, in Malawi, we visit a farm where the foundation has brought in methods that have dramatically increased crop outputs. Some of the wives describe the things their new income has afforded them&amp;amp;#8212;more bags of seed, education for their children, a tin roof for their home. &amp;quot;Did you hear that?&amp;quot; she asked me excitedly. &amp;quot;A tin roof is one of the greatest indicators of prosperity in the developing world. If these people can now afford them, then this program is really working.&amp;quot; This enthusiasm is not rare for Chelsea. Over the course of our time together, she spoke with similar excitement about malaria-preventing bed nets, the regulated price of AIDS medication, and&amp;amp;#8212;her personal favorite&amp;amp;#8212;diarrhea as a public health hazard. &amp;quot;I think it&amp;#x27;s unconscionable that so many people die of a disease that, in our country, could be treated with Pepto-Bismol,&amp;quot; she says. And you have to hand it to her: When Chelsea tells you about it, diarrhea indeed sounds fascinating&amp;amp;#8212;and important. Nobody appreciates this moxie more than her father, but that&amp;#x27;s not the only reason he&amp;#x27;s glad she took the job. He points to her advanced degrees and lifelong interest in public health and adds that &amp;quot;she also has all of this management experience and a keen sense of how things should operate.... We&amp;#x27;re the fastest-growing foundation in the world, with millions of people whose lives depend on us. And she&amp;#x27;s helping us become sustainable.&amp;quot; Later that evening&amp;amp;#8212;after we&amp;#x27;d left Malawi and flown to Zambia&amp;amp;#8212;Chelsea and I meet for a drink. She talks about growing up in Arkansas, where her father was governor at the time she was born. &amp;quot;When I was with my parents, I was the governor&amp;#x27;s daughter,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But when I wasn&amp;#x27;t, I tried very much to just be a kid. I was just Chelsea Clinton in school, or ballet class, or on the softball field.&amp;quot; Their family was small, but their collection of family lore and inside jokes was robust. &amp;quot;My parents were definitely on the incentive side of parenting,&amp;quot; she says, laughing. &amp;quot;Like, they told me that my father had learned to read when he was three. So, of course, I thought I had to too. The first thing I learned to read was the newspaper. I had these word flash cards&amp;amp;#8212;this is so nerdy&amp;amp;#8212;and we would practice every day. When I learned 500 words, my parents gave me a little trophy. When I learned 1,500 words, I got another one.&amp;quot; (These trophies, I am told, still have a place of pride in her parents&amp;#x27; house in Chappaqua, New York.) Apart from all of the obvious things that made it extraordinary&amp;amp;#8212;the Secret Service, the politics, the scandals&amp;amp;#8212;Chelsea&amp;#x27;s upbringing does seem remarkably normal when you hear her talk about it. So normal, in fact, that the people closest to her sometimes forget about the other stuff. &amp;quot;Obviously I understand that her dad was the president and her mom was secretary of state, but that quickly fades into the background,&amp;quot; says D.C., and I asked Chelsea what part of town she grew up in. She just kind of looked at me and was like, &amp;#x27;Uh, Jen?&amp;#x27; &amp;quot; Another thing Chelsea learned around the kitchen table: how to handle the public scrutiny that comes with her last name. When Chelsea was six and her father was running his gubernatorial reelection campaign, he took some heat in the press. &amp;quot;They were saying some pretty rough things about me,&amp;quot; he tells Glamour. &amp;quot;And she was reading about it. We started a game at breakfast where Hillary, Chelsea, and I would be either me or one of my opponents. By the end of the election, she was defending me better than I could defend myself.&amp;quot; That early training paid off. Shortly after our return from Africa, The New York Times ran a story criticizing the foundation for mismanagement of funds and cronyism. When I ask her what it&amp;#x27;s like to wake up to criticism like that, she takes issue with some of the charges but is thoughtful and measured. &amp;quot;When people say crazy stuff about me or my family, I don&amp;#x27;t take it seriously. Someone didn&amp;#x27;t like what I wore? I don&amp;#x27;t care about that. But there&amp;#x27;s also criticism that I take seriously&amp;amp;#8212;if the foundation wasn&amp;#x27;t represented in the way that it should be? That you have to learn from.&amp;quot; Next: Finding Happiness in Her Personal Life &amp;amp;#187; Global Citizen &amp;quot;My parents taught me that if I could do something, I should do something,&amp;quot; says Chelsea, with students at Camp Konobe Primary School in Kigali, Rwanda. For Chelsea, one thing that keeps the public hullabaloo from cutting too deeply is the comfort she takes in her marriage to Marc Mezvinsky. &amp;quot;I said this in my toast at their wedding,&amp;quot; says Koss. &amp;quot;Marc brings out this incredibly silly, sidesplittingly hilarious side of Chelsea, and that&amp;#x27;s something she really needs.&amp;quot; The two met in 1993 when she was at the Sidwell Friends School, in Washington, D.C. They were friends first but are each other&amp;#x27;s champions now. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve known Chelsea since I was 15 and she was 12. What can I say? She&amp;#x27;s the love of my life,&amp;quot; says Mezvinsky, who started his own hedge fund around the same time Chelsea ramped up her role at the foundation. &amp;quot;Chelsea has Herculean willpower, but for all her intensity, she still doesn&amp;#x27;t take herself too seriously. Just yesterday, we were laughing at ourselves for laughing, not remembering what we were giggling about in the first place.&amp;quot; And it&amp;#x27;s true that when I&amp;#x27;m with her, the stories she lights up most while telling often start with, &amp;quot;So then Marc said....&amp;quot; She tells me about the quirky tendencies that endear him to her&amp;amp;#8212;his way with her friends, his predisposition for buying everything from tissues to Bordeaux in bulk. &amp;quot;Marc is in so many ways a feminist,&amp;quot; Chelsea says. &amp;quot;I love that about him.&amp;quot; In contrast to her small family, his 10 brothers and sisters have brought a welcome stripe of chaos into her life. &amp;quot;We have 18 nieces and nephews&amp;amp;#8212;19 by the time this story comes out, I think,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;There were so many people around the table growing up that one of his siblings actually caught a fork in the hand when reaching for something at the dinner table.&amp;quot; On the Tanzania leg of our trip, we tour a national park with an elephant expert. The illegal ivory trade is a passion point for Chelsea and her mother, and Chelsea wants to know everything: What deterrents are working best? Do they have community support? Which elephants are most rambunctious? This is the Chelsea that colleagues are impressed by. If President Clinton is like a circus coming to town&amp;amp;#8212;big, bright, and attention-getting&amp;amp;#8212;then Chelsea is more like the ballet: nuanced, studied, and graceful. On the flight back from Tanzania, I ask Chelsea why the ivory trade is so important to her. What comes is a detailed lesson&amp;amp;#8212;part civics, part race relations, part zoology&amp;amp;#8212;describing how the rise of China&amp;#x27;s middle class is increasing the demand for ivory and subsequently poaching. It&amp;#x27;s like that story about how a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon can cause a tornado in Oklahoma, and Chelsea can explain, in detail, every step of the process. In an outdoor market near a train station in Johannesburg, the president and I discuss his daughter&amp;#x27;s role in the foundation. We had just met a group of female food vendors who had been provided entrepreneurial training by the Clinton Foundation and Coca-Cola&amp;#x27;s 5by20 initiative. Chelsea laughs with the women, and her father is proud. &amp;quot;She has always been this way,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;When I ran for president, some of the kids were being mean to her at school&amp;amp;#8212;you know, kids can be cruel&amp;amp;#8212;and this huuuge guy came up to the group that was harassing her and said, &amp;#x27;She&amp;#x27;s my friend. She helped me learn to read when nobody else would, so don&amp;#x27;t you do this.&amp;#x27; And it all went away. Now, she&amp;#x27;d never said anything to me about what was happening or what she did for this guy. Chelsea has always just figured out what was going on and found a way to help.&amp;quot; Two decades later Chelsea says she&amp;#x27;s finally found a way to do that daily&amp;amp;#8212;and that she dedicates the work to her grandmother Dorothy. &amp;quot;My grandmother was determined that everyone feel a sense of optimism and opportunity,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Marc and I want to make sure we&amp;#x27;re doing that. This period of our lives is not just a tribute to her, it&amp;#x27;s inspired by her. And it&amp;#x27;s for when we have our own children&amp;amp;#8212;I want to help make sure we&amp;#x27;ve got a world I want them to live in.&amp;quot; Genevieve Roth is Glamour&amp;#x27;s special projects director."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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