White House Social Secretary Desirée Rogers on Conga Lines, Crashers, and Why She's Avoiding Sit-Down Dinners

The Creative Coalition hosted its annual meeting inside the posh screening room of HBO's Sixth Avenue headquarters Thursday night, where 100 or so members and entertainment industry big wigs voted in new board members (actress Dana Delaney among them) and munched on mini crab cakes and chips and salsa. The real reason for the packed house? A Q&A with press-shy White House social secretary Desiree Rogers.

Moderated by Delaney, the 45-minute conversation touched upon what a typical day for Rogers is—"I have three morning meetings, first with the president in the West Wing, next with the special events teams and house staffers, and third with the first lady in the East Wing,"—and the many challenges the nation's leading event planner faces. "The job comes with lots of logistics," she explained, adding that she's already planned 150 events since inauguration. "I'm essentially working in a house that is someone's home. But it's also a museum, an office, there are tours. Lots of coordination goes on to make sure things end and begin when they need to."

The fun part, Rogers added, "is the conceptualizing. What are the things we want to do? We've looked at the historical; we've decided what we want to keep, but what do we want to add?" One example she offered was this year's Governors Ball. Told by longtime White House staffers that the event was staid, and that no one dances, Rogers mused, "Really? I mean the average age is 50 years old, it was a relatively young crowd, and no one dances? So I brought in Earth Wind and Fire. This is a band that everyone loves. And by the end, they were doing the conga line. The point is, everyone wants to have fun."

When asked what she does with event crashers, Rogers replied (to much laughter), that she's begun adding an extra table, row, or bench to every event she produces, as each time she found extra people would show up in hopes of gaining entrance. "Lots of people just come anyways, they won't take no for an answer," she said. "Finally I just said, 'Alright, come on in, it's no use kicking you out.'" 

In her five-month tenure Rogers admitted she hasn't planned many sit-down dinners. "We've said from the get-go that we want people to come experience the White House. It's the people's house after all. Receptions can be larger. We had 400 people at St. Patty's Day, with two stages. We had an extra 10,000 people at the Easter Egg Roll this year."

When coming up with ways to rejuvenate this year's roll, Rogers did what she's done in her corporate past: she conducted a focus group—of kids. "They were all like, 'Hate that, hate that.' Kids do not hold anything back," she told a chuckling audience. "We ended up having hip-hop, Fergie, Ziggy Marley, and yoga. The President shot a few hoops. We created an environment where families could have fun and exercise together."

Perhaps the most poignant anecdote of the night was when Rogers described Inauguration Day, when she was both overseeing the V.I.P. parade-viewing stand and the Obamas' move-in day at the White House. "In one place you have all these V.I.P.s, in the other you have staffers folding clothes and putting bedding on. It was a stark behind-the-scenes moment for me," she said. "America was seeing the stands fill up, I was seeing the closets fill up. And the staffers—many of whom are black—the pride of seeing someone of their color move in, it was overwhelming. One gentleman who'd been there 50 years, he's close to retirement, told me: 'I never thought I would see a president the color that I am.'"

Going forward, Rogers is producing the Film Forum this summer, which she's thinking about moving onto the White House lawn in order to incorporate more people. The process of figuring out how to enact the annual event has been trying, as "the theater only seats 42," she said. "Who's going to come? How do we choose the movie? We really had to think about how we wanted to do this."

Summing up the conversation, Rogers said, "We don't want to be stale, we don't want to be boring. We don't want to repeat things over and over. This first year we are really trying to lay the foundation, to set the standard."