Michelle Obama declared on Tuesday that in her years of attending high-level meetings, she has yet to encounter a white man who acknowledges feeling impostor syndrome. “I’ve never heard a white man talk about impostor syndrome. I haven’t met one,” Obama said during a live recording of her podcast IMO at the SXSW London festival. She described sitting at “every powerful table there is” and observing that women and minorities are the ones who typically harbor such self-doubt.
The remarks, part of a wide-ranging conversation that also touched on parenting and personal responsibility, are the latest from the former first lady as she continues to build a media presence a decade after leaving the White House. Obama’s podcast, which she hosts with her brother, Craig Robinson, has helped her cultivate a loyal audience, and her public speaking engagements draw large crowds internationally.
Obama said she wanted to “demystify” the experience of being in elite meetings. “There’s so many people like me, like you: women, minorities, folks who aren’t supposed to be at these tables … they are sitting around thinking that they’re impostors,” she said.
Turning to parenting, Obama criticized overcontrolling “helicopter” parenting, saying it can signal to children that they cannot succeed without constant intervention. “If we helicopter [parent] a bit too much; if we’re trying too hard to prevent our kids from failing or fear, you’re kind of signalling to them that ‘you can’t do this without me’,” she told the audience.
She contrasted her own upbringing, describing parents who insisted she and her brother take “responsibility for their lives” from age five. That included using an alarm clock to wake themselves for school. “Our parents were like: ‘No, you can do this.’ This is just life, and everybody does it, and you’re pretty smart kids. So you’ll figure it out.”
Obama added that her parents did not curate their children’s experiences. “Our parents did not feel like our lives were theirs to manage or make better. We had food on the table, but they weren’t riding on our highs and lows.”
The former first lady had recently returned from a speaking tour of Australia, where some attendees raised eyebrows over premium ticket prices of £476. Obama and her husband, former President Barack Obama, also run Higher Ground, a production company that recently parted ways with Netflix after eight years. Higher Ground created the Oscar-nominated film Rustin and the documentary Crip Camp.
Obama also revealed during the session that Elton John recorded a special version of “Candle in the Wind” for her mother’s funeral. Marian Robinson, whom Obama described as a “rock, always there for whatever I needed,” died in 2024 at age 86 and was a devoted fan of the singer.