A lot ask how they can get jobs and what the job market is going to be like in the future. So this past April we asked Alexis Herman, secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, to lead a discussion. She told her own story about struggling as a woman of color in the South, and other young people from the community told their stories. What’s especially exciting about the local discussions is that people get to know each other. We want to show young people that politics can be social and fun.

Is Gingrich a big draw?

Well, the most common comments we got were: "I never thought I was going to be speaking to Newt Gingrich. I never thought I would have an opportunity to interact with this national political leader. It was so easy, and really cool." We get the word "cool" all the time.

Wouldn’t Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie get a bigger audience?

Brad and Angelina, if you are out there and want to participate, we’ll talk. But we don’t want the focus to be on celebrity appeal. We want the real stars to be civic leaders and politicians and people who have given themselves to public life.

Could you make this happen without your own recognizable names?

The project would have died very soon after it began if the idea were not able to stand on its own. But whereas at first we were writing lots of letters to politicians asking them to participate, now we are actually receiving requests from them. About one-third of our funding comes from private individuals who, just as we are investing in young leaders at the local level, are investing in us. People invest in people. An idea can be great, but if you don’t have the right person backing it, it is not worth the investment.

You are frequently seen at political and cultural fundraising events. Seems that activism has been fun and social for you.

I sit on the board of the Alliance for the Arts, which lobbies for the arts. It is right at that intersection of art and politics that I love. At Yale I majored in politics, but I think I took more art history classes than politics classes. Generation Engage actually has a politics-through-art initiative. We did an event recently with Spike Lee and Michael Arad, who designed the World Trade Center memorial.

Another cause that is ingrained in every piece of DNA in the Rockefeller bloodline—Republicans and the Democrats—is that the environment is worth preserving; there’s a lot of emphasis on conservation, so I try to stay active in that field. I tutor in the Teague Fellowship program, which shows urban youth how to work for environmental causes.

I’m a person who has a fundamental flaw, which is that I try to please all the people all of the time, and I run the risk of spreading myself too thin. In the past, I’ve stopped working out and stopped sleeping and taking care of myself. New York City is the best. I absolutely adore this city. There’s so much to do that it can be problematic for a personality like me who wants to do it all.