“YOU DON’T FIT the image of a Turner employee,” said the president of Turner Broadcasting as he ushered me to the door of his impressively large office in Atlanta, the headquarters of this fast-expanding cable empire.
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying not to sound defensive.
“Well, you know,” he stammered, “you look so… serious.”
Serious? Did that mean old? I was clearly older than the youthful-looking executive interviewing me, Scott Sassa, and maybe I had looked a little too shocked at the rowdy stories about his boss, Ted Turner, that he’d just shared. Or maybe my formal tailored suit was a mistake; he was wearing jeans and a golf shirt.
After an awkward moment, I offered, “Well, I am serious about my work.”
He laughed. “Enjoy your meeting with Ted. He’s serious about his work, too.”
I’d already heard my share of legendary Ted Turner stories—that he was a loud-talking, hard-driving, Southern good old boy who quite literally lived at the office, often sleeping there and appearing at early morning meetings in his jockey shorts (or less). Some of the stories probably were true, and many were part of the legend that had already developed around this visionary entrepreneur who was rapidly transforming the media landscape.
I didn’t really want the job that I interviewed for—leading the documentary division of Turner Broadcasting—but I wanted a chance to pitch our documentary series on the history of women in America to Ted Turner. I had no reason to believe he’d go for the idea, but I was curious enough about the cable empire he had built in Atlanta to make the journey.
MOST OF THE media world—especially my colleagues in Los Angeles—were less than complimentary about the media entrepreneur, referring to him most often as “the Mouth of the South” because he publicly boasted about his company’s successes. But Ted had a lot of reasons to boast: transforming a small, independent, money-losing Atlanta television station, TBS, into the first superstation by putting its signal on a satellite that delivered its programming nationwide. Genius idea—and no one had done it before Turner. Then he bought a losing baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, and turned them into America’s team by putting their games on the superstation.
More recently, Turner had launched the first twenty-four-hour news channel, CNN, and even though NY and LA media circles dubbed it the “Chicken Noodle Network,” by this time CNN had already revolutionized the news landscape. Its coverage from the front lines of the first Gulf War was a game changer, as was the whole idea of delivering news 24/7. As a news junkie, the chance for a closer look at that operation alone would have made the trip worthwhile for me.
Of course, Ted was married at this time to the legendary Jane Fonda, whom I knew, although we were not the friends we are today. I had interviewed her a few years before when she was still married to Tom Hayden. She had just launched the Jane Fonda Workout Studios. To be more specific, I’d sweated and strained through a conversation while we did leg lifts and tummy crunches. I had seen her a few times in LA at Hollywood women’s gatherings, but I didn’t feel close enough to let her know that I was coming to Atlanta to ask her husband to fund a documentary series on women and that my partners and I were also secretly hoping she would narrate. Getting the chance to pitch the idea to her, too, would be a bonus for this trip that was already going south, metaphorically as well as geographically.
As Sassa ushered me to the door with instructions to take a cab downtown to the CNN building where I’d find Ted, I wasn’t feeling very optimistic about the outcomes of this quixotic return to the South.
THE SECURITY GUARD at the CNN entrance welcomed me with a big smile. “Take the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Can’t miss Ted’s office. Just follow the Oscars on the wall.”
I’d already picked up that everyone seemed to call the boss “Ted” and never “Mr. Turner.” As instructed, I followed the trail of Oscars, bathed in soft spotlights and placed strategically on pedestals in front of the posters of the corresponding Academy Award–winning films. The last one right before the big double doors that led to the chairman and founder’s office was for Gone with the Wind, reportedly Ted’s favorite and the reason he’d purchased the MGM movie library a few years before.
Dee Woods, Ted’s clearly protective assistant, ushered me to a seat on one of the large leather sofas. “Ted will be with you in a few minutes,” she said, giving me a quick head-to-toe appraisal much like the one I’d experienced from Sassa earlier. I assumed her intuitive radar was assessing whether I was a serious producer or one of the many wannabes known to make their way to Ted’s office.
A booming voice from the other room broke the silence between us, and Dee motioned me toward the door just as it opened. There stood Ted, looking like the framed magazine covers papering the walls: Time’s Man of the Year (twice!); Sports Illustrated featuring “Captain America,” as he was dubbed, after winning the America’s Cup yachting trophy; another photo showed him proudly wearing an Atlanta Braves cap, and others heralded the launch of TNT, the Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, and, of course, CNN.
Ted shook my hand and thundered, “So you’re a documentary producer from Hollywood.” Another head-to-toe assessment. “Tell me what you’ve done.”
I’d barely wedged in a couple of words before he started to pace the office, telling me what he had done, pointing to a long row of awards and plaques of every description covering the walls, talking fast and loud about the documentaries he’d funded: National Geographic specials, Jacques Cousteau’s series, David Attenborough’s nature series and others with environmental and conservation themes. I was surprised and impressed at the number and the scope of subjects, and Ted’s enthusiasm for this work was clear.
“I started this documentary unit to be a force for social change,” he told me. “That’s why I called it the Better World Society. Had to change it to TBS Productions, though, because that’s where most of the documentaries are seen. Have I seen any of yours?”
Finally, a question for me and a pause in what had been a nonstop monologue. I mumbled, “Some have been seen on Lifetime, A&E, and CBS.”
Before I could continue, he began pacing again as he told me about his plan to make a movie about the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War. “I’m a real history buff,” he said with a big smile, and I jumped into the pause.
“What about the history of women in America? That’s a story that hasn’t been told,” I said in a voice much louder than before. Ted stopped pacing, and I knew to keep talking.
“It’s almost the end of the twentieth century, and women in this country have done some amazing things, and yet there’s never been a documentary about their accomplishments. A lot of the stories aren’t even in the history books. Don’t you think this is important history to document?”
“How many hours? What’s the budget? Have you lined up any famous women to be in it?”
I answered in short spurts, trying to match his rhythm and volume (I later learned that Ted talks very loudly to compensate for a loss of hearing, caused by his love for duck and quail hunting and a few too many shotgun blasts).
I practically shouted my answers in short blasts—“Maybe ten hours… one for every decade… interviews with historians and yes, famous women… and, of course, a big name for the narrator.”
“What about Jane Fonda?” he asked with a big smile.
“Well, she would be our first choice… and I could certainly ask her,” I replied, trying not to look too pleased with how this was going.
“You know her? Did you tell her you were meeting with me?”
“No, I didn’t, Mr. Turner. But we know each other and please tell her I said hello.”
“Call me Ted,” he said.
For the first time, there was silence. He was clearly making a mental calculation. He went to his desk, where my resume was in clear view, right beside a large plaque that read, “Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way.” Clearly, Ted’s approach to life, and at this point, after ten minutes in his office, I wasn’t sure which approach was working best for me.
More questions came shooting from Ted. What was I doing now? What was VU Productions? Who were my partners? Had we won any awards?
Then: “How much money do you need?”
Was he asking about a salary for the job or the budget for the documentary? “Two million dollars,” I replied, hoping I’d chosen the right question to answer.
“Sounds about right,” he said. “Have you talked to my documentary team about this idea?”
I started to answer when Ted suddenly stood up and headed toward another door. “Just hitting the bathroom,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
A reprieve! This gave me some time to strategize, and when Ted returned, I addressed both issues—the job and the documentary. “I met with Scott Sassa this morning about the executive position at TBS productions, and I’m very interested,” I told him, “but I’m also passionate about producing A Century of Women—”
“Why not do both?” Ted cut in. “Why can’t you produce A Century of Women for Turner Broadcasting as the new head of the documentary team?” He gave me a wink and a Cheshire Cat grin, a look I soon learned meant “I win.” Ted was seemingly offering me a job and funding for a ten-hour documentary series my partners and I had been pitching for two years!
Before I could say another word, Ted flung open the door and shouted to Dee. “Pat Mitchell here is going to be the new VP of TBS Productions. Take her to meet the right people.”
One more handshake, one more head-to-toe appraisal, and “I’ll tell Jane you said hello.”
As the door closed behind him, Dee tried to suppress her amusement; this wasn’t the first time someone emerged from Ted’s office looking like they just got off the rocket-ship ride at Disneyland.
“Why don’t you get back in touch with Scott Sassa and tell him Ted said to make a deal?” she prompted me. A loud “Dee, what’s next?” from the inner office ended our exchange, and soon I was standing in front of the Gone with the Wind poster once again, trying to regain my balance from the whirlwind encounter with a man who looked and acted a bit like that movie’s star—Clark Gable. (See the movie to fully appreciate the comparison!)
It took me fourteen floors on the elevator ride down to recover from what had just unfolded. I played it all over in my mind. What did Ted say and what did I say and what did it all mean?
My friend Glenda was waiting for me in the lobby. “Are you okay?” she asked. “What happened?” I stared at her, unsure how to reply. Had Ted Turner really offered me a job? Was he going to fund the documentary series? As I tried to reconstruct for Glenda what had happened, more questions floated in my mind: What would it be like to work for Ted? To live in Atlanta again? To tell my good friends and partners that I was leaving VU Productions? Was this a big opportunity that I couldn’t turn down—and what was the offer, really?
An answer to the last question came the next day, when Scott Sassa called to offer me the job of executive vice president of TBS Productions at a more than respectable salary.
I was thrilled, but money wasn’t the driver here; A Century of Women was. I was much more focused on getting that documentary series made than on becoming an executive at a dynamic and, as I was to discover, dysfunctional company that would upend my life just as surely as it was changing the media landscape.
BEFORE I BROKE the job news to Diana, Lynne, and Coby, I led with the good news that A Century of Women was going to be funded by TBS Productions. When I mentioned the job offer, their smiles faded quickly and the questions started coming fast and furious: What would happen to VU Productions, the commitment to each other?
I had a few sleepless nights and more than a little tension at home as I explained to the man I was living with and had talked about marrying that I would be commuting to Atlanta. “I will fly there every Sunday night,” I told him, “stay in Glenda’s guest room, then be back here by Friday night.” He was skeptical about the plan but tried to be supportive. After a few months of increasingly jet-lagged weekends, the relationship was too strained to continue.
As an executive, I had a lot to learn… fast. TBS Productions in 1992 was a small unit with big personalities and big projects in full form when I arrived. Vivian Schiller, the interim leader until I arrived, joked that “she’d hired her boss,” as she was the one who put my name forward to Scott Sassa for the open position that I’d accepted without knowing much about the team I would be leading or the company culture where I had a very high-profile position from day one. Vivian’s insights about the company, her knowledge of documentary making, and her impressive diplomatic skills got me through those challenging early days.
When I asked her why she didn’t pursue my position herself, she said, “I’m not ready to be the leader. But if I get to work with someone with your background and experience, I’ll get ready.” Her answer said everything about her self-awareness and strategic approach to her life and work. I had a trusted ally and she had a mentor, and we modeled another woman-to-woman working relationship that continued way past our days together at TBS Productions. She rose quickly to being ready for leadership, and when I left seven years later, she was promoted to lead the documentary unit, followed by executive positions at the New York Times and as president of NPR. She continues to be one of the industry’s most respected and innovative leaders and one of the best examples of what I talk about later in Chapter 15, “Playing It Forward.”
As I’d learned in that first pitch session, Ted responded quickly and positively to any opportunity to make history, document it, or change its course. He was a passionate student of history, and it didn’t take me long to realize that whatever the subject, Ted knew a lot—often more than the producers, researchers, or experts working on the individual films. And he could be counted on to watch every film, start to finish, and often he had corrections or suggestions—and in every instance where he questioned a historical reference or fact, he was right.
Ted was also an environmental visionary, among the first to commit millions of dollars to make documentaries about conservation, climate change, and to support National Geographic, Jacques Cousteau, and even the BBC Natural History Unit. During my time with Turner Productions, we produced more than a hundred hours of documentaries with these partners and others on clear-cutting, natural resource depletion, population growth, family planning, even the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). It didn’t matter to him that sponsors pulled out and critics took issue with what they called advocacy documentaries.
Ted waved those concerns aside. “We’re not making these documentaries to make money,” he’d remind me, “but to make change!”
One of the first assignments Ted gave me was to produce a documentary series on Native Americans; he was deeply committed to raising awareness of American Indian rights. “I don’t want the history of Native Americans to be told by white historians or filmmakers,” he told me. “I want you to put together a team of American Indian storytellers to tell their stories. Robert Redford is doing a Native American filmmakers lab at that new institute he’s running out there in Sundance. Go see him.”
“Sure thing, Ted. Good idea.” I practically flew to the Sundance Resort under my own power, fueled with fanciful imaginings about meeting one of the world’s most famous actors. I knew nothing about Sundance or the labs Ted referred to, and in the pre-Google days, did as much research as I could find. I’d read that Redford bought a small ski resort near Park City, Utah, property he’d discovered on a motorcycle ride up Provo Canyon after finishing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I was now being driven up that same canyon in a snowstorm.
“Mr. Redford will meet you tomorrow for lunch at the restaurant,” the woman greeting me at the small registration office said as she handed me a key. I could see nothing but the outline of the Wasatch Mountains as I was dropped off at a charming wood-framed cottage decorated with artifacts and Native American rugs. I fell in love with the whole place and I hadn’t even met the man who created it. I found out later that all the cottages at Sundance were designed by Redford to fit naturally into the environment and to honor the first people who lived on this land, the Ute nation.
Watching the snow fall from every window that night, I dreamed of calling a place like this home. In fact, a few years later, I did become a homeowner there, buying one of the small cottages like the one I slept in that first night.
THE NEXT MORNING, disoriented and in unfamiliar terrain, I flailed around in the snowstorm until someone redirected me to the only restaurant on the property at the time, the famous Tree Room, which Redford had built around a gigantic pine tree he didn’t want to cut down. (The tree died the week the restaurant opened.) It’s filled with Redford’s personal collection of Native American art, pottery, rugs, and kachina dolls, and as I waited for him in this beautiful space, I fell more deeply in love with this place called Sundance.
And I waited. And waited. The woman who had checked me in stopped by to reassure me that waiting for Redford was expected—and yes, I had already read that part of the many legends surrounding him. I didn’t mind waiting, of course, but I was getting more and more nervous. When he arrived, he gave me that heart-melting smile and said, “Call me Bob.” My head was spinning. In less than eighteen months, two of the world’s biggest names had shaken my hand and said, “Call me Ted” and now “Call me Bob.”
I struggled to stay present as one dreamy movie scene after another passed through my head. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience while Bob talked, sharing the story of Sundance, and in my head, scenes from The Way We Were had me longing to brush his hair off of his forehead and say, “Come back, Hubbell.” How many women in the world have had that dream? But no time for daydreaming here. I had an important mission and I told myself to stay present and focus on the purpose of being there.
Bob listened intently to Ted’s plans for a multiyear, Native American–focused initiative, one that would feature a documentary series as well as television movies from Native American authors and producers and CNN reports on current issues and challenges for American Indian communities—in total, a four-year project for which Ted had allocated $20 million.
Bob had some important questions, including one that Ted had asked too: How would we find and hire Native Americans to lead the creative teams for all these projects? After more conversation, he offered to introduce me to the person running the lab he had created to mentor, nurture, and support emerging writers and filmmakers from the Native communities in the United States and around the world. This Native lab continues today and has nurtured many successful projects and elevated the ideas and voices of many indigenous storytellers.
“Would you consider co–executive producing?” I asked, tentatively.
“I might,” he said. “I’d really like to see this done well.”
I couldn’t wait to share the good news with Ted, trying to refrain from gushing about “Bob.” “How much money is he gonna want to do this?” Ted asked. I hadn’t even thought to ask—so I called Bob’s office. “Oh, no, he doesn’t want any money,” I was told, “but he would appreciate a contribution to the Native American lab.” Done! Ted committed to three years of support.
I began to assemble the creative teams to tell the stories of more than five hundred American Indian nations in six hours of television. It wasn’t easy then to find experienced directors and producers in all the Native communities, but through the contacts from the Sundance lab, we did fulfill our promise that Native voices and filmmakers would tell their own stories.
Bob and I would meet every few months to view the rough cuts. Every time I sat in that editing room with him, I was amazed by how incisive Bob’s insights were; he’d make one small suggestion for an edit or a script change, and the impact was transformative. Always careful to listen and to honor our creative teams, he also used every opportunity to mentor, to share what he knew or had experienced.
It was a master class in documentary filmmaking and in observing close-up the model of creative mentorship that Redford initiated in all the lab programs of the Sundance Institute, the nonprofit he’d established in 1983 to lead this work for emerging screenwriters, directors, and producers at the Sundance resort. I learned so much from these occasional sessions with Redford, a consummate storyteller, and from working with these creative collaborators as the stories of The Native Americans were told by and with them in this six-hour documentary series that was broadcast on TBS and is still shown from time to time around the world.
For me, the learning journey of documenting this history with teams of American Indian historians and filmmakers and spending time with many of the diverse and resilient communities across the country deepened my personal advocacy for righting the many wrongs perpetuated against America’s indigenous people. As tribal attorney and leading activist, Tara Houska (Couchiching First Nation) reminds us in her powerful TED Talk that I invited her to give at TEDWomen 2015, “We’re still here!”
The documentary series also yielded a lasting friendship with Robert Redford… yes, “Bob” to me and all his friends. Two years after the documentary aired, he invited me to join the board of Sundance Institute, which I did with true joy. I’ve been a trustee since, and for the past several years, I have served as chair of the board. Bob and his talented artist wife, Bylle Szaggars Redford, are beloved and much valued friends.
I often reflect upon the fact that Redford could have turned this property into a beautiful private reserve for himself and his family, but from his initial purchase of the land until now, he has sustained his commitment to protect the land and its natural beauty, assigning much of the property to a conservation trust and using the facilities that he personally funded to be built to create a home for the Sundance Institute’s programs. Today, nearly forty years after he held the first director’s lab at the Sundance resort, artists from nearly every country in the world find inspiration for their work in the natural surroundings and in the lab programs now designed for writers, producers, screenwriters, playwrights, and film composers as well as directors. Stories from Sundance continue to benefit from the creative alchemy of nature and art, inspired by the artist-founder who saw the need and responded.
OVER THE YEARS, I’ve also seen up close the difference Bob has made in the lives of so many independent storytellers who might not have told their stories without all the mentoring, nurturing, and personal support that they received in the institute’s lab programs. In the early years, Bob financed the institute’s labs with very little funding from other sources. Even after the Sundance Film Festival became recognized as the most important festival for independent films and Hollywood studios benefitted greatly from the movies and talent they discovered there, very little financial support for the institute’s work has come from that community. But Bob, like Ted, stays the course of his passions and convictions; both men’s lives are great examples of what it means to engage with passion and purpose, to embrace great risk, to go against the mainstream, to achieve measurable change. It’s no surprise that these two men, so different in styles and approaches to their work, share a deep passion for nature and are lifetime advocates for the environment and conservation of our natural resources, and that both of them have used their personal resources to impact the lives of so many other people all over the world. How lucky am I to have worked with them and to know and admire them as friends and mentors.
Working for Ted gave me the opportunity to tell so many important stories that I wouldn’t have been able to without his total commitment to the issues that mattered. The first documentary, Avoiding Armageddon, was on the nuclear threat. One of the first series we produced was about epidemics, The Virus Hunters, and it presciently documented the six CDC doctors who went to Africa to track the Ebola crisis. We made Moon Shot, featuring the astronauts who walked on the moon, and Chasing the Dream, a biopic on Hank Aaron, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Another nomination followed for a collaboration with Steven Spielberg called Survivors of the Shoah and ultimately, a twenty-four-hour documentary series on the Cold War.
We won lots of awards for all the documentary work, but we didn’t get big ratings, and I still had to remind people from time to time that the National Geographic series and many other historical series they loved were on TBS, not PBS. I had a big budget, and once Ted believed in an idea or the value of an untold story, we were never questioned about how much we spent—only whether we got it right!
Working for Ted Turner in the 1990s, when he was shaking up the media world, was being in the game with the big boys—and yes, with one exception, executives whose offices lined the fourteenth floor at Turner Broadcasting in those days were men. Luckily, I was a fast learner. I needed to be. We were working for the ultimate entrepreneur who had a big new idea every day, and there were no barriers to his implementing them.
Since Ted owned the Atlanta Braves, and later the Atlanta Hawks basketball team, going to games was almost as important as showing up for staff meetings. I became a big baseball fan and admit to loving the executive privilege of sitting in the owner’s box next to another big Braves fan, former president Jimmy Carter. Along with the other Turner executives, I learned how to use a well-placed sports metaphor in nearly every sentence, especially when pitching a project to Ted. “It’s our turn up to bat.” “Well, we’re only on second base with this one.” “This one was nothing but net.” No touchdowns, only home runs, because Ted didn’t own a football team.
TWO LESSONS ABOUT how to win the game with Ted—or with any hard-charging boss—came early on.
The first was in my first week. There was a regular Monday morning 8 a.m. staff meeting for senior executives. Glenda drove me to work that morning in her son’s stick shift Mustang. About a half mile from CNN headquarters, the car began to smoke and stall. We pulled into a gas station. I jumped out of the Mustang, grabbed the arm of a pickup driver about to pull out, and asked for a ride to CNN. “I’m going to be late for a meeting with Ted!”
We arrived at the CNN door at 7:55, and I flew toward the elevators, pushing aside a few people to get into the first door that opened. Stepping out on the fourteenth floor, I practically collided with Ted coming into the elevator. “You’re late. Meeting is over.”
It was 8:05.
That’s when I learned that an 8 a.m. meeting for Ted was really ten minutes to eight, and that the meetings rarely lasted longer than five minutes.
That was true of the pitch meetings, too. I’d go in with my suggestions for documentaries, and if I couldn’t convince Ted with one or two sentences that this was a good idea, the answer was always no.
“If you can’t tell me in less than ninety seconds what the film is about and why we should make it, then you haven’t figured it out yet, and I’m not wasting my money while you do,” he said, and he was right.
Early on, every single idea I presented got a quick no and at the end of four or five of them, Ted got up, announced, “Meeting over,” and left the room.
I shook with anger as I strode past Dee (whose knowing smile made me all the madder) and slammed my office door like a child. A second later my assistant called out, “Mr. Turner is on the phone.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Ted bellowed.
“Nothing’s wrong, Ted, but no one since my father has ever said no to me so many times without an explanation.”
“Well, I’m not your father,” Ted replied, “and I will tell you no until you are prepared for a yes and that’s your job.”
With that, he hung up, and I started thinking about packing up and heading back to California and partners who never said no.
I calmed down, of course, and took the instruction seriously. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been prepared to answer any and all questions about the project; I just wasn’t prepared to condense all I knew into three sentences or fewer.
But I learned to do just that, and the yeses started to come. This ability to be brief and clear has served me well. It’s essentially composing a compelling theme sentence. I encourage everyone to develop this skill. If you can’t figure out how to say it in under thirty seconds, go edit yourself until you can. I’m a far more effective change-maker because I’ve followed that advice!
HAVING COME FROM nearly a decade of working mostly with women—women producers and partners and with Woman to Woman, an entire production team of women—it was strange and slightly disorienting to be back in a big company where most of the people in charge were men. The only woman on the executive floor was the EVP of communications and community relations, Julia Sprunt. Everything about her communicated efficiency and effectiveness.
I asked Julia to have breakfast a few months after my arrival, hoping for some insights about how to navigate this highly charged, macho-driven corporate structure. I’d already figured out that whoever got to Ted last would win the point, whatever the point was, and that Ted played the power game by the Machiavellian rules of survival of the fittest.
Julia was wary at first, but pretty soon we were sharing war stories, and by the end, we committed to creating a more supportive environment for women at the company. We both had one powerful ally and advocate for this idea, Gail Evans, already a force at CNN, and who, later, wrote a best-selling book, Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman. The three of us decided to host a breakfast and invite all the women.
About two hundred showed up at a club named after some pioneer women pilots. For the first few minutes, it felt like any other company gathering, with polite chitchat. But when Julia, Gail, and I spoke about our careers, focusing on the failures, mistakes, and times we could have used more friends and allies, the mood quickly shifted.
“You’re not going to make this a feminist thing, are you?” one of the more junior staff asked. “Because if that’s the agenda, I’m out of here.” Here we were, twenty years after the women’s movement, seventy years after women died getting that young woman the right to vote, and we were still being challenged about a “feminist” agenda!
It was disheartening but not unexpected, so Julia, Gail, and I put on our widest smiles and explained patiently that a feminist agenda was at its core a belief that women and men deserved equal protections, rights, and opportunities. Not special attention or favors—not women win; men lose—a win-win, full equality for all.
Suddenly Ted bounded into the room.
“Good morning!” he shouted. “Just thought I’d drop by and see what you girls were up to.” Ted was staring at me; clearly I was the most likely instigator of this rebellion.
“Just getting to know each other a little better, Ted,” Julia said smoothly. “What a great group of women work at this company!” She made a sweeping gesture to the room as we all smiled for the boss.
“Okay, that’s good,” Ted said, “but next time, invite a few men. We have good men working here, too!” And then, flashing that Cheshire Cat grin, he added, “And I’m the best, so invite me!”
What could we do but laugh, knowing that underneath the calculated charm was the challenge of finding our way to influence and power in a company that was run by an alpha male, albeit one committed to doing good work. How would we, as women with big jobs but little influence in the big decisions, get the respect that was directly linked to power and, in this case, to Ted? How could we become truly influential?
We started slowly with the monthly breakfasts, executing a mentoring strategy to help our colleagues find the support they needed. One that was particularly effective, in a company where the loudest voices tended to get heard and promoted, was to train our younger, less experienced colleagues to speak up in staff meetings, to ask the first question, to get used to hearing their own voices, getting their opinions heard and their talents recognized. I told everybody how empowered I’d felt at the White House press briefings when I challenged myself to ask questions early and often.
How to encourage what felt like risky behavior? In the beginning, we offered to buy a drink for the first woman to ask a question in a big meeting. A small step with a silly reward, perhaps, but it worked—and slowly, more women spoke up, their ideas were heard and adopted and, yes, during those years, more women were promoted too. Think about it: How many times has your hand been the first to go up at a meeting? What kind of encouragement do you need to change that?
And as more women became managers, the rule was play it forward, an adaptation of the pay it forward I’d heard before. Play it forward meant that if you’ve got the ball, pass it to someone else on the court and open the opportunities for them to score. Each step up the corporate ladder came with an opportunity, indeed a responsibility, to drop the ladder behind you and offer a hand to the women coming behind you. And to use Ted’s sports lingo: take your shot, and then make sure you make it easier for other women to take theirs.
That’s my number one rule for changing the power dynamic: one woman at a time, helping another take a step up. We’ve got to advocate for each other, support and promote each other, replacing ourselves with other women as we move up. It was the single best strategy for achieving greater equity, and at Turner, I watched it in real time, including my own succession.
When I chose to leave my job, I advocated for the promotion of Vivian Schiller, the young woman who had first recommended me to get the job. When I left, there was a woman running the news operation of CNN International and one running The Cartoon Network—and women all through the ranks, standing up for themselves, using their voices. You could see the difference in the newsroom and at staff meetings.
You have to be intentional and strategic about it, and I have been in every position and with every board appointment since my Turner tenure—playing it forward, preparing for succession by preparing another woman to take my place—passing the ball because it’s going to take more women leading to level the playing field so that all women can take their shot.
DANGEROUS TIMES CALL FOR DANGEROUS WOMEN
In Conversation with Kimberlé Crenshaw
Kimberlé Crenshaw has been making a difference as a lawyer, professor, author, and activist. She is perhaps best known for putting forward the theory of intersectionality—a construct that cuts across the many divides of gender, race, sexual orientation, physical abilities, and economic status to view through a broader lens all the ways those differences impact social-justice issues of oppression or discrimination. Kim has built connections across these divides to make the often invisible, more visible—through her Say Her Name initiative, which reminds us of the many black women dying from violence whose stories and names are often not known and through her leadership of the African American Policy Institute.
I have worked closely with Kimberlé as a colleague on the V-Day board, and I know her to have a bold, brave voice. But did she think of herself as dangerous? I wanted to know.
Do you describe yourself as a dangerous woman?
Kimberlé: Well I certainly want to be dangerous—I want to be a threat to a status quo that is savagely unequal and to a feminism that doesn’t include antiracism or to an antiracism that doesn’t value feminism. But having named a concept that disrupts conventional thinking about a lot of things, I’ve been called dangerous by people who probably don’t agree about a lot beyond that. I’ve read critics who report that intersectionality is a dangerous idea that undermines our ability to find common cause with each other. I’ve also read the opposite claim—that intersectionality is dangerous because it conflates what ought to be seen as distinct movements and populations into one unruly mass of grievance. If merely uttering a word can leave so many ordinarily confident people apoplectically discombobulated and breathless, then yes, I suppose I am discovering that I’m dangerous in a way that I’ve not fully appreciated.
Was there an age at which you began to feel more dangerous?
Kimberlé: During my twenties and thirties, my goal was to explain the many injustices that were created by overlapping inequalities like sexism and racism. I thought I could make my case with better analysis, more facts, or a more persuasively articulated moral imperative. Years of playing out this script have clarified for me that my dangerousness can’t be mediated through softer, gentler discourse. I’ve come to realize that I am seeking to disrupt habits of thought and action that are in fact dangerous to those invested in keeping things pretty much the way they are. With maturity comes acceptance that being true to who we are will inevitably mean that we all are dangerous as against the proscribed ways of being a woman—either by choice or by birth.
Was there a specific incident or a person who inspired you to become more dangerous?
Kimberlé: The first time I felt dangerous was probably in my late twenties. I was hitting my stride career-wise, and dating one of those guys your mom likes—one who looks good on paper but you’ve got to lower your expectations to make it work. I came to visit him once—we lived in different cities—and he told me over dinner that he had something very serious to discuss with me. He’d heard something about me from one of his buddies that was very upsetting. He was sure it wasn’t true, but he needed to bring it to me so I could set the record straight. I leaned in to hear what this disturbing allegation might be. After a few false starts, he finally came out with it: “I heard you were a feminist!” he said, pain breaking out across his face. I paused a second to hit instant replay—did he say what I thought he did? Then I guffawed, which turned his hurt to fear, which made me laugh even more. Holding my sides, I said “Boo!” since he had clearly just seen a ghost. Dabbing my eyes with the napkin, I’m like, “You have no idea who I am!” He’d never taken any interest in my work—my intersectionality article had been published by then—but only after a friend’s complaint did he really see me. And what he saw felt threatening to him. Once he finally realized that who and what I was had a name—one that he and his friends didn’t approve of—I became a dangerous woman. I thought it was hilarious. I was still laughing when the cab arrived to take me to a hotel. And that was certainly the end of that. I still chuckle about that one.
How does being dangerous play out in your life and work?
Kimberlé: A dangerous woman gives up the starring role in fairy tales, the happily-ever-after endings, and all the accoutrements of being valued for “best performance inside the patriarchal box.” It’s not always easy, since so much of what we learned growing up teaches us how to perform the role of “girl” in a way that ensures we will be liked, valued, and loved unconditionally. I was disabused of those notions when I was only in kindergarten and it was made clear to me that I couldn’t be the princess in a Cinderella–Snow White kind of game. Being dangerous isn’t just accepting that you won’t be part of that precious girl club, but challenging the idea that anyone should be valued for these things in the first place.
The way men and women who are dangerous are framed is often different, and that makes a difference. Men with committed agendas are celebrated as determined and focused; women are disciplined as stubborn and inflexible. Men fight hard for their vision; women are argumentative. Men who are uncompromising are great leaders; women who stay the course are obsessed. The very concept of danger plays out differently for men and women. Male leadership that endangers the status quo is bold, creative, a breath of fresh air. Women who become captured by that label are borderline characters, admired but conditionally so; the support they receive almost always is subject to renegotiation. I live unapologetically within that contradiction. I work transgressively, push boundaries, question assumptions, expose gaps in our coalitional commitments, and refuse to go to the back of any bus, whether it is bound for a feminist, antiracist, or some other destination. I don’t do trickle down, we’ll-get-to-you-later kind of politics. I don’t settle and I don’t give up. And for some, this is a kind of danger that courts trouble. I’m good with that.