One wonders if Chelsea might actually be happiest crunching numbers – as she did at her hedge fund – behind the scenes at the Clinton Foundation, rather than playing political protagonist. “It’s frustrating as a kid to realise you care about what your parents care about,” she says on stage at CGIU. “I tried to care about things like money. I just didn’t. My metric of success is the same as theirs.”

Some of the press corps at CGIU grumble that her parents pushed her into her leadership role at the foundation, but I don’t buy it. Her handle on each issue, from discussion of on-the-ground NGO fragmentation to the, yes, “metrics”, of each project she helps support, is detailed, expansive and anything but faked. Katie Smith Milway from nonprofit consultancy firm Bridgespan, a member of the panel she has convened here, tells me she was invited to participate after Clinton read one of her papers in an academic journal. This is no scion’s vanity project, nor is she a well-meaning figurehead: she’s someone who chooses to read Stanford Social Innovation Review.

This morning, Clinton stands behind a podium, her perfect blow-dry – the corrective to all those years of photographed frizzy humiliation – gleaming under the bright lights. She introduces the panel she is about to moderate. She talks about the post-earthquake devastation in Haiti, about the unsanitary conditions, details the higher risk of sexual assault in its aftermath. Her recall for statistics is stunning. But what’s also notable is an unsettling flatness of tone to the laundry list of horrors. I notice that a Siberian Fulbright student who remarked on Chelsea’s “awesomeness” is scrolling through her Facebook feed within minutes.