Provided by Vinay Reddy

Vinay Reddy advises former President Biden on a speech. “It doesn’t matter who you’re writing for,” Reddy said. “The real, most important thing is [that] you understand that person.”

As soon as Director of the Office of Speech Writing Vinay Reddy arrives at his office, the room buzzes with energy. The team is excited for the annual Diwali White House celebration being hosted later that day. From a Georgetown student to an astronaut, Reddy prepares all the speeches, including Former President Joe Biden’s.

During Biden’s campaign in 2019, Reddy joined the administration and was brought into the White House in July, making history as the first Asian-American speech writer for a president. His role represented a shift toward recognizing and hearing the stories of different marginalized communities.

“My mom didn’t get a formal education growing up and didn’t even speak English when she came to America,” Reddy said. “In a single generation, not only am I writing English, I’m writing for president. I try to make sure that I don’t lose that sense of honor about doing it, but also the pride in having the opportunity to really make sure that you have a sensitivity and awareness about the entire country and everyone’s different stories.”

Reddy pursued an education in law at Miami University and Ohio State. He then interned at an International Crisis Group where he learned about writing reports that dealt with agreements between country leaders. He was introduced to the composer Phillip Glass and found inspiration for storytelling through his minimalist classical music.

“[Phillip Glass] talked about how he thinks about the story of his sound, what he’s trying to accomplish and how to make people feel that way,” Reddy said. “I learned a lot about storytelling, but not in a traditional way. It wasn’t storytelling for someone who writes but how music tells that story, and how you fuse it with how an opera gets made visually.” 

He applied to be a speechwriter for Ohio senator Sherry Brown in 2008 who introduced Reddy to former President Obama. There, Reddy worked with the vice president and key speakers during the 2012 administration. Afterwards, he worked for the National Basketball League and the Secretary of Human Health and Human Services before joining Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020.

He wrote countless speeches, everything from inaugural addresses to eulogies. Reddy recounts the speech he wrote addressing two mass shootings: one an elementary school shooting and the other an open fire in a grocery store in Texas which occurred in the same week.

“It’s always: you stare at the blank page, like, ‘Where do I start?’” Reddy said. “The hard ones are sometimes the most meaningful. You never feel like you have enough time. Say something happens, and two days later, the president is going to go visit. You have two days to write on something that serious and heavy and you just got to get to it.”

Reddy lived in a predominantly white neighborhood in the Midwest growing up and hopes that his speeches will continue to help uplift small communities similar to the ones where he grew up. 

“Politics is a tough business—sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t, but I learned, if you believe in something, you can never give up on it,” Reddy said. “Things may not go the way you think it should but that doesn’t mean you stop believing in that thing. You learn from the good experiences and the not so good ones. If you can keep growing, keep trying to push yourself to be better — you learn something about yourself.”

Reddy described some of the unseen subtleties and dynamics of his job, noting the power of leaving impressions through writing.

“You think of it as writing, but a lot of it is listening,” Reddy said. “When you hear people talk about their experiences, what are they really saying? That’s what we need to address. And a lot of it is what’s almost left unsaid. If you can leave someone with a feeling; you’ve done a good job. They feel motivated to do and learn something that gives them a sense of understanding.”

Regardless of who he is writing for, Reddy always has the same process for his writing: creating a deep, personal connection to the people he serves.

“It doesn’t matter who you’re writing for,” Reddy said. “The real, most important thing is [that] you understand that person. How do they talk, how do they feel, their preference on how to tell a story or how to explain an issue. Everyone’s different. Everyone has a different voice and how they want to use it. Everyone has a different view on how they’re best at explaining something.”