Rachel Racusen

Some days the only exercise Rachel Racusen gets is sprinting after a presidential motorcade threatening to leave her behind.

As an associate communications director at the White House, Racusen works long days and nights promoting the White House’s messaging. On a typical day, Racusen arrives at the office around 7 a.m. for a flurry of meetings, prep sessions and events related to amplifying presidential initiatives.  

{mosads}On any given day, Racusen may help staff an interview for senior presidential advisers or oversee the press coverage of a policy rollout event. After 12- or 13-hour clock-ins at the office, she’ll return home only to log online and continue answering emails into the night. 

“I wish I was someone who is better at carving out free time,” Racusen says.

But her demanding schedule means sometimes improvising when it comes to putting herself together.

“I’m fairly low-maintenance with my routine,” she says, before noting an “embarrassing” part of her a.m. ritual: “I usually in the morning wait to actually put on make-up until I get to work and just do it in the bathroom, which was a totally a trick that I picked up on the campaign in 2012.” 

Racusen’s White House schedule has meant largely abandoning the co-ed soccer team she joined when coming to Washington. But whenever she can, she’ll squeeze in a run before or after getting into the office.

“I’ll just go down and around the mall, or I’ll go run around the Reflecting Pool which is like a nice, quick run,” she said.

And sometimes, the best way to get some R&R after a long day is spending some quality time with the small screen. “Good — and bad — TV is a huge vice for me because it’s sort of another nice escape,” she said. 

“The really bad habit that I have is I’ll work until 10 or 11 o’clock at night and then to unwind at that hour, I’ll say that I’m only going to watch 20 minutes of like the next episode of ‘Orange is the New Black.’ But I’m going to stay up until midnight watching it.”

— Justin Sink