When President Bill Clinton visited Northern Ireland in November 1995, Vinca LaFleur helped him find the words to inspire new hope for peace. The Financial Times entitled its commentary on the president’s speeches “Ciceronian Clinton”; the Times of London called his Belfast Mackie plant address “one of the finest” of his presidency; and the Guardian newspaper advised the British prime minister to “hire that man’s speechwriter.”
Working at the White House combined two of Vinca’s passions: writing and international relations. During her three years as a foreign policy speechwriter and special assistant for national security affairs, she accompanied President Clinton to Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Previously, she wrote speeches for Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and before that served as a human rights analyst for the U.S. Helsinki Commission.
Since leaving the White House, Vinca has written and edited speeches, articles, books, and reports for corporate executives, former senior government officials, royalty, prominent think tanks, and public figures. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she also has published under her own name on issues from poverty to communications, and served as a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Additionally, Vinca is a sought-after educator on the art and craft of speechwriting, and has conducted workshops for business, government, and university audiences in the United States and abroad.
Vinca graduated summa cum laude from Yale and holds a master’s from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She and her husband, scientist David LaFleur, live in Washington with their two children.
More from my West Wing Writers colleague David Litt: Our more cultured readers will recognize the title as the tagline from the 2004 classic, Alien vs. Predator. But it’s also what popped into my head when I thought about the public debate over Supreme Court justices. Here’s why. When George W. Bush was president, he […]
Ruth Levine of the Center for Global Development (a fabulous organization, for anyone who cares about development issues) offers her take on President Obama’s recent speech in Ghana, and the reasoning he offers for U.S. support for public health in Africa and beyond: America will support these efforts through a comprehensive, global health strategy, because […]
A shout out to my friend and former Clinton foreign policy speechwriting colleague Daniel Benjamin, who had his formal swearing-in ceremony last week as Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department. Dan came to the White House in 1994 after serving as a foreign correspondent for TIME magazine and the Wall Street Journal, […]
A guest post today from my colleague David Litt: The era of bipartisanship seems to have ended before it began. Republicans want Democrats to own any potential failures. Democrats think that when push comes to shove, Republicans simply don’t believe in compromise. That’s why it was refreshing to see a recent report on immigration reform […]
I recently remarked on Sarah Palin’s use of a basketball analogy, since I can’t think of many female politicians who regularly drop sports references into their speeches (though as Wash Post columnist Ruth Marcus has aptly pointed out, after the point guard passes, does she typically walk off the court?). But speaking of sports analogies […]
Word lovers, check out the results of the Washington Post’s Style Invitational from Week 820, with guest judge Dave Barry. The contest invited readers to submit Q and A to and from Mister Language Person, “the great grammarian who appeared in numerous Dave Barry columns back in the day when newspapers had ads and subscriptions […]
Much chatter today about Governor Palin’s surprise announcement to step down. Is this a move to further her presidential aspirations, or does it reflect a desire to step out of the national limelight? Was she trying to protect her kids, whom she invoked repeatedly — and if so, if it was a purely personal decision, […]
Check out the latest World Public Opinion poll on the popularity of various global leaders among their own publics and abroad. President Obama is the hands-down “winner” — though Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Territories rate him significantly lower than does much of the rest of the world. Also of note: […]
A guest posting today from the latest addition to our West Wing Writers team, Julia Lam: Thirty-seven years ago today, President Richard Nixon signed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 into law, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity. While Title IX applies to nearly […]
I want to offer a counterpoint to Clark’s latest post, in which he argued that the president’s response to the dramatic events unfolding in Iran have “sharpened the growing impression that he is not a man of strength.” Scott Wilson, in this morning’s Washington Post, has a front page story describing the apparent partisan divide […]
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Melanne Verveer’s the swearing-in ceremony as our first-ever Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues. It was a lovely occasion — full of both rejoicing and resolve, as Secretary Clinton and her newest ambassador reaffirmed their commitment to “make sure that the concerns of women and girls remain central […]
We’re nearing the end of commencement season, and reviews are rolling in. Fletcher Dean offers up his faves and flops on Ragan.com; Joe Biden and Tom Brokaw get big props, along with environmentalist Paul Hawken, but he thinks Ellen DeGeneres missed in her appearance at Tulane. I admit, I cringed at the same section of […]
Thanks to Mark for his post on the President’s speech in Cairo, which I agree was terrific. I was also impressed by the forethought the White House gave to the speech’s distribution; same-day versions were available in Arabic, Chinese, Dari, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, and Urdu — which means […]
I heard a story this morning on NPR in which listeners had been invited to submit recession-inspired haikus. Some were heartbreaking; others darkly hilarious. All in seventeen syllables. It got me thinking about the economy of words — and how the best speechwriters make every sentence as meaningful and muscular as possible, given the limited […]
One of the challenges speechwriters confront is capturing our clients’ voice — at an immediate level, meaning writing in a way that sounds like the client at hand, but also at a meta-level: writing the way real people really talk, and about the things real people really care about. In that regard, I was struck […]
