She is a board member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and Boston University, where she befriended the university's late president and chancellor John Silber. At his memorial service on November 29, 2012, she recalled how he was fired as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Texas in 1970 while she was writing about him as a beginning reporter. She is the Chairman on the board of trustees for RAND Corporation since 2009. She is married and is the mother of four children.