Jenna Bush Hager is open about the career perks that come with being the president’s daughter.

The 44-year-old TV personality looked back on her first appearances on the “Today” show during the Wednesday, Aug. 12 broadcast of “Today with Jenna and Sheinelle,” recounting how she’d promoted her 2007 book “Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope” on the NBC morning program before returning to talk about the 2008 children’s book she’d co-written with mom Laura Bush as the first lady guest hosted the third hour.

“I was on the show because my dad was president,” Bush Hager told co-host Sheinelle Jones about these promotional segments, which took place during President George W. Bush‘s second term. “And then they kept calling. But I wouldn’t have been given that opportunity [otherwise], and I know that… We have a privilege that we know [about].”

Bush Hager taught elementary school students for several years beginning in 2005, and after initially declining a gig at NBC, she was hired as a correspondent and contributor for “Today” in August 2009, seven months after her father left office. A decade later, in April 2019, she replaced Kathie Lee Gifford as Hoda Kotb‘s fourth-hour cohost.

“I kept teaching for several years, and as we all know teaching is the hardest job there is,” she said. “So eventually I took the interview and I started here.”

Jenna Bush Hager’s coworker thought she was hired because of her dad

Though she now feels “lucky to be here,” Bush Hager admitted, “I also feel like I needed to prove it.”

In her second month on “Today,” a correspondent allegedly told Bush Hager, “We just thought they’d hired you because of your dad.”

“I get it, and it’s the thing that probably all of us can feel bad about,” she acknowledged. “But then what we do to get over that is to work like crazy, work beyond to where we’re working ourselves too much.”

Seventeen years after she was hired, Bush Hager has shaken off the feeling that her hiring was solely due to nepotism.

“I think I’ve done that now,” she said about proving she deserves her job.

Bush Hager recently expanded her working relationship with the network by producing a new scripted series, “Line of Fire,” which premieres Sept. 21 on NBC.