Sheryl Sandberg, Marianne Cooper, and me on Lean In’s launch day, March 11, 2013
Courtesy of Sheryl Sandberg
MAN AT LEAN IN BOOK PARTY: So you’re the woman behind Sheryl Sandberg.
ME: Yes, I’m behind Sheryl Sandberg and running as fast as I can to keep up.
I FIRST LAID EYES ON SHERYL SANDBERG WHEN FRIENDS started emailing me the link to her 2010 TED Talk with subject lines like, “You have to watch this!!!” Or “Have you seen???”
I assumed her talk advised women to use multiple punctuation marks.
The talk, “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders,” opened with Sheryl telling a story about attending a boardroom meeting where several women took seats on the side of the room until she waved them over to join her at the table. I flashed back to my first Newhart table read and how I, too, chose a chair on the periphery. I had believed this instinct stemmed from my natural timidity, but Sheryl made me realize that choice was instilled by our culture. Then she explained why it mattered.
“Boy, it matters a lot,” Sheryl said. “Because no one gets to the corner office by sitting on the side, not at the table, and no one gets the promotion if they don’t think they deserve their success, or they don’t even understand their own success.”
I was captivated. As the head of Online Sales & Operations at Google and then Chief Operating Officer at Facebook, Sheryl had hired over ten thousand employees, which gave her a broad perspective. Her talk zoomed from the big picture to minute details, offering hard data and studies to support Sheryl’s own conclusions. Sheryl connected the historical sweep of gender bias with individual decisions and then offered a way forward. Everything she said rang true.
Over time, I had learned to sit at the table, literally and figuratively, but getting the corner office had brought a new set of obstacles. Sheryl unpacked the unsettling feelings I’d encountered when trying to lead:
What the data shows, above all else, is that success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. And everyone’s nodding, because we all know this to be true.
How did she know I was nodding? This stranger was in my head.
When I finished listening to Sheryl’s video, I felt odd. Normally a discussion about women in the workplace leaves me feeling agitated. Every few years, I used to get together for brunch with a group of upper-level female TV writer/producers and we’d unload stories about the unfairness we’d encountered. I’d tell my story about the time I was renegotiating to stay on a show and the Executive Producer stopped by my office to check on the deal.
“Did your agents call business affairs?” he asked.
“Yep, they’re on it.”
“And you don’t care about money, right?”
I looked at my boss, incredulous.
“Yeah, I’m just here for the salty snacks,” I said.
My favorite stories are ones where the sexism is blatant. As Co-EP on a show, I was asked to rewrite the script of a low-level writer. I did a big pass over the weekend and then sent the new draft to the EP on Sunday night for a polish. The next morning, the EP pulled me aside.
“Great job, Nell,” he said. “But if you don’t mind, I think it’s better if I tell Mike that I did the rewrite. I don’t want him to feel emasculated.”
The women at the brunch would gasp at these stories before telling their own gasp-inducing tales. And the stories would keep coming. And coming. By the time the frittata was served, the relief of realizing the bias wasn’t personal was replaced by the horror of knowing it was so pervasive. I’d always leave the brunch feeling worse than when I arrived. But Sheryl’s talk made me feel calmer. In fourteen minutes, she had given me deep insight into my twenty-five-year career without a single carb. I forwarded the video to other friends with my own multiple punctuation marks. I also sent Sheryl a friend request on Facebook.
Around the time that I discovered Sheryl’s talk, I started hearing some positive news about late night staffing. Leno added a female writer to The Tonight Show staff and Late Show with David Letterman added one, too. And while there’d been hundreds of dads writing comedy for late night, I believe Laurie Kilmartin holds the distinction of being the first mom when she joined Conan’s staff in 2010.
Work on Warehouse 13 continued. We had a strong season and finished as Syfy’s most-watched series. Over hiatus, I teamed up with Tim Carvell (now head writer/Executive Producer of Last Week Tonight) to write Backstabber, an update of All About Eve, set in the fashion industry with a gay male assistant taking over the Eve Harrington role. (The spec script is still available as it appears we misjudged the market for a screenplay starring a woman in her forties and a young gay man.)
Like many Americans in 2010, I started spending lots of time on Facebook. I’d been an early adopter, joining when you still needed a dot edu address. Through the site, I reconnected with Elliot Schrage, a friend from college who was now running Facebook’s media and communications. Elliot knew I worked in TV and reached out with some comedy-related questions.
“Should Mark Zuckerberg do a voice on The Simpsons?”
Yes!
“What if he doesn’t love the pages they sent?”
Ask for new jokes.
“SNL wants Mark to do a cameo when Jesse Eisenberg is hosting. Do you have any ideas?”
Yes!
The setup was Mark would stand with Lorne Michaels at the monitors and watch Jesse Eisenberg chat with cast member Andy Samberg. Both had impersonated Mark onscreen. The money shot was all three “Marks” together, so it seemed obvious that the real Mark should want to join the two fakes. The conflict would be that Michaels doesn’t think it’s a good idea. I pitched this exchange:
Mark shortened the pitch to a much-snappier “I invented poking” and it got a big laugh.
Writing occasional jokes for Mark Zuckerberg was a fun side project. Then in March 2011, Elliot sent an email asking if I’d seen Sheryl Sandberg’s TED Talk.
“Seen it?” I wrote back. “I memorized it.”
I wrote him that Sheryl had shifted my perspective in a positive way and my P.S. mentioned that I’d sent her a friend request but hadn’t heard back. Five minutes later, I smiled as a message flashed on my screen: “Sheryl Sandberg has accepted your friend request.”
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Sheryl was set to deliver the Forrestal lecture at the U.S. Naval Academy in April. She had a partial draft written in bullet points, but as a full-time COO and mother of two small children, she was looking for someone to pull the speech together and make it flow. Although I’d never written a serious speech before, I was eager to do anything to support her. She sent me her draft, which contained this bullet point:
This was Sheryl’s first public mention of the phrase “lean in.” Today, the term is so widely used that a friend recently asked me, “What did we say before ‘lean in’?”
Speechwriting came easily since it combines two skills I’d already developed. Like a magazine article, a speech needs to present an argument with a strong opening, a logical flow of ideas, and a thoughtful or uplifting conclusion. Like TV dialogue, the speaker needs to sound natural and have a consistent voice. Sheryl has off-the-charts charm and her natural character combines three of my childhood heroes: she has the logic of Mr. Spock, the empathy of Dr. McCoy, and the leadership abilities of Capt. James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.
The Forrestal lecture was followed by the 2011 Barnard Commencement Address. Again, Sheryl asked me to collaborate and we considered what we would have wanted someone to tell us when we graduated from college. Sheryl said she wanted to give young women permission to be ambitious. Too often, our culture discourages that. She also wanted to discuss how women unconsciously hold themselves back out of fear.
I flashed back to my teen years, when I’d listen to Barbra Streisand sing “I’m the Greatest Star” from Funny Girl over and over. I also idolized Bette Midler, who radiated confidence. She even dubbed herself “The Divine Miss M.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but Bette and Barbra were modelling fearlessness and self-esteem. They were teaching me how to “lean in.”
The day of the address, Sheryl was battling a cold and her voice was hoarse, but the force of her conviction never wavered. She encouraged the all-female graduating class to aim high and believe in themselves. “Never let your fear overwhelm your desire,” she urged at the end. “So please ask yourself: What would I do if I weren’t afraid? And then go do it.”
Watching a livestream of the speech in Santa Monica, I cheered along with the hundreds of new Barnard graduates.
After Barnard, there was buzz about trying to reach a broader audience with a book. At a conference, WME (William Morris Endeavor) book agent extraordinaire Jennifer Rudolph Walsh followed Sheryl into the Women’s Room to pitch the project. “Books start conversations,” Jennifer insisted.
Sheryl had a packed schedule and couldn’t see a way to fit in an additional major project. Then one day, she called, excited.
“Jennifer just called me. She got an offer to write a book and I think I want to do it.”
“That’s great!”
“I told them I wouldn’t do it without you. Are you in?”
A wave of fear hit me.
“You know, Sheryl,” I stammered. “I’ve never written a book.”
“Neither have I!” she replied.
Dave Goldberg, Sheryl’s brilliant and supportive late husband, saw the importance of the message and together the couple carved out a way forward: Sheryl would write at night after the kids went to bed, pull back on social dinners, and devote vacation and weekend time to the book. I would also work nights and weekends, but my kids were older so it was less of a strain. Researcher Marianne Cooper was recruited from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research to find and vet studies. The three of us all had day jobs and families, but we learned that while work expands to fill the time, time expands to fill a mission.
In December, Knopf editor Jordan Pavlin, Jennifer, Sheryl and I all met in New York. It was supposed to be a let’s-get-the-ball-rolling meeting, but Sheryl arrived with a full outline and completed introduction. She’d been writing this book in her head for twenty years.
It was an odd period of my life. As Co-Executive Producer of Warehouse 13, I’d spend the day thinking up science fiction scenarios. Then at night, Sheryl would send me chapter drafts and we would iterate through another twenty—or forty—drafts on the barriers that women face. These two worlds collided just once when I was fleshing out a Lean In section on “Queen Bees”—a term for women who attain status in a male-dominated industry and keep other women out. I wrote: “Unfortunately, this ‘there can be only one’ attitude still lingers today.”
Sci-fi nerds will recognize this reference to Highlander, a 1986 action/fantasy movie starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery that I’ve watched an embarrassing number of times. I figured the line would be edited out of the book, but it managed to survive (much like the Highlander himself). When reading the book in galleys, I realized Sheryl might not know the source of the quote so I sent her an email and included the film clip. She wrote back that she had not gotten the reference, but it was fine to leave in.
Lean In is the book that I wished I’d read at twenty-five, not helped write at fifty-two. It acknowledges that we need better institutional and governmental policies to support and protect all women, especially single moms. We need equal pay, more affordable childcare, better parental-leave policies, more sponsorship, and greater awareness of implicit bias. The book also looked at the internal barriers that can hold women back and urged women to sit at the table, raise their hands, take risks, and seek leadership positions. The hope is that once more women become leaders, they will be in the position to spur faster change for all.
For women to lean in at the workplace, men need to lean in to their families. Even with parents who both have full-time jobs, moms do about 40 percent more childcare and almost 30 percent more housework than dads. This prompted Sheryl to advise women that “the most important career decision you will ever make is choosing who your partner is.”
I nailed that one. Still, it hurt my stomach to work on a section about negotiation. I got it so wrong. My instinct had been to prove my value by listing my personal contributions to a project. That strategy works fine for men who can self-promote with impunity, but women are expected to be nice and communal.
In October 2012, Sheryl hit Send on a final draft to the editor. It had been an intense nine months and we both had our first weekend off in a long time. My plans included seeing a movie with my family and yoga. I didn’t expect to hear from Sheryl so I was surprised when my phone rang that Sunday morning.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Sheryl said, sounding more excited than tired. “I want to start a nonprofit to go with the book that would help support women. I’ve already written the mission statement. Can I send it to you?”
Her mission statement turned into LeanIn.org, which now hosts a community of over 1.5 million and provides materials for creating small support groups called Circles. These Circles truly help members ask for promotions, dump unsupportive partners, and be more ambitious.
Sheryl Sandberg, Marianne Cooper, and me on Lean In’s launch day, March 11, 2013
Courtesy of Sheryl Sandberg
We hoped the launch of the book would change lives. On a personal level, it already had. I’d always been a feminist but relied on my actions to speak louder than my words. Now I was broadcasting my beliefs and it was awesome. After a life spent trying to break into boys’ clubs where I endlessly had to justify my worth, I was welcomed with open arms into a new club.
Sheryl introduced me to her League of Extraordinary Women. I met Mellody Hobson, the President of Ariel Investments, who inspired us both with her declaration that she wanted to be “unapologetically a woman and unapologetically black.” I met Joanna Coles, the funny and formidable editor of Cosmopolitan, who is the “universal big sister.” And thanks to Sheryl, I met Gloria Steinem. The Gloria Steinem.
I’d grown up fascinated by the founder of Ms. magazine so it felt surreal to sit in a small room with her and Sheryl as they discussed global issues. Gloria had just returned from India and had horrifying stories to relay.
“There are eight million missing girls in India,” she said. “Gone.”
Sheryl, who has spent time in India, nodded knowingly.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“From the age of one to five, girls are almost twice as likely to die as Indian boys,” Gloria replied. “Why do you think that is?”
I didn’t know. I shook my head.
“When girls get sick, their families don’t value them enough to seek medical attention or pay for treatment.”
My heart sank. Gloria and Sheryl continued to talk about enslaved women until Sheryl got called away. Alone with Gloria, I felt queasy. Suddenly, I blurted out my existential angst.
“I can’t believe I care about getting women hired on late night TV when that’s going on in India.”
Gloria leaned forward and placed a hand on my arm.
“Oh no. You worry about late night TV. I’ll worry about India,” she said.
She delivered this advice with a little smile. She knew it sounded flip, but her point was profound. Gender bias is everywhere and we need man-to-man—pardon the expression—defense on each front. We all need to speak up as much as we can with the specific influence we have.
I’ve seen how women advocating for other women in late night can make a difference. When Jimmy Kimmel Live! moved from 12:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., ABC Entertainment President Anne Sweeney took an interest in adding more women to the staff. Head writer Molly McNearney, the only female writer on Kimmel at the time, reached out to me to get names of women who might want to submit packets. I compiled a list and encouraged Bess Kalb, a sly and hilarious writer at Wired magazine, to give it a shot. Dozens of other funny women applied. Standup Nikki Glaser was on my list but passed to focus on her performance career. The night before submissions were due, Nikki emailed me.
Courtesy of Nikki Glaser
If women who don’t help women get a special circle in hell, I think women who do help women should get a special cloud in heaven. Thanks to Nikki, Joelle Boucai’s packet made it to the show. And thanks to Anne and Molly, both Joelle and Bess were hired and have worked at Jimmy Kimmel Live! for more than five years.
In 2013, Laurie Kilmartin suggested I check out the Twitter feed of Jill Twiss, who made quirky observations like, “I’m just going to say it. Bananas are cliquey” and “Pretty worried for gluten-free pigeons.” I messaged Jill to learn more about her. During the day, she tutored kids for standardized tests and moonlit as a standup comedian and actress. When Last Week Tonight began staffing up, Tim Carvell asked for names and I mentioned Jill. That show reads submissions “blind,” removing any identifying details about the writer. Out of about a hundred submissions, Jill was one of eight people hired. She now has more Emmys than I do. (Although to be fair, anyone with one Emmy has more Emmys than I do.)
Jill Twiss bearing a striking resemblance to “Janice from accounting” on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Courtesy of the author
Last Week Tonight also hired Juli Weiner who was working at Vanity Fair. Juli’s blog pieces cracked me up and I emailed her with the same comment that I heard at roughly the same age: “I really think you could write for television.”
Unfortunately, my system for tracking down funny female writers isn’t methodical. It’s mainly based on word-of-mouth, which can cast a limited net. I always wish that I could help more women, and especially women of color.
In an ideal world, awareness would lead to action which would lead to change. But in the real world, awareness more often leads to defensiveness which leads to excuses. Emboldened by the forward motion in late night, I called a showrunner who ran a popular sitcom with a huge staff and only one female writer. We knew each other socially so I thought he’d be open to a discussion. I got as far as my observation that his staff had a gender imbalance before hitting a nerve.
“How dare you accuse me of being sexist,” he said. “My mother was the breadwinner in our family and my wife is one of the strongest women on the planet.”
I tried to salvage the phone call.
“I didn’t call you sexist. But just look at the numbers on your staff—”
“You think I don’t notice?” he said, ire rising. “I look around the room and notice it every . . . single . . . day.”
This showrunner bringing up his breadwinner mother and strong wife is a perfect example of “moral licensing.” Everyone—male and female—is biased. But no one wants to admit it so our brains search for examples that disprove the accusation. Moral licensing comes into play when people rely on past behavior to dismiss current prejudiced behavior. This is better known as the “Some of my best friends are . . .” defense. People who believe they are unbiased turn out to be more biased so it’s not enough to be aware that there’s a lack of women in a room; you must also be aware that your knee-jerk defensiveness is part of the problem.
“When you’re used to privilege,” the saying goes, “equality feels like oppression.” My showrunner friend felt under attack and our call ended on a sour note. I was angry with myself for coming on too strong. On the plus side, it taught me what not to do. It would be so helpful if blurting out, “Obviously, there’s a problem so just fix it!” worked. It doesn’t. Ask anyone fighting climate change or gun violence where the stakes are life and death.
Reshaping our culture means reshaping ourselves. We’re raised in a biased culture and that sinks into our psyches in ways that are hard to escape. A few weeks after the release of Lean In, Sheryl’s friend Michael Lynton threw a backyard book party for her in LA. It was a fun, festive occasion and at one point, a young woman approached me.
“Would you sign my book?” she asked.
Without thinking, I waved my hand.
“Oh, you don’t want my signature,” I said. “It’s Sheryl’s book.”
She looked at me strangely. “Please?”
I signed her book, feeling a little freaked out by my reaction. I had just spent eight months cowriting a book encouraging women to “own their success,” so why was I backing away from taking any credit? I thought of inscribing the young woman’s copy with “Man, this shit is deep.” Instead, I wrote, “Don’t skim!”
The next day, I emailed Sheryl to tell her about the exchange because it was such a perfect example of how women are socialized to downplay our achievements. Within seconds, Sheryl emailed me back: “You know there’s this great book you should read . . .”