October 14, 2021 • 36 mins
In this episode, we sit down with Alicia Menendez, author of "The Likeability Trap" and anchor of MSNBC's "American Voices." Alicia's insights into why we want to be liked carry us through a conversation about how we shape our lives, how we raise our daughters, and how we can build a different world.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story with Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from Gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. This is
(00:24):
a very exciting episode of What's Her Story with Sam
and Amy because it is our second live mom two
point oh version of What's Your Story with Sam and
Amy and Mom to point o is. Amy and I
have a real passion for this conference. It's the number
one conference for moms. We have attended in person many
(00:46):
many times. It's run by the extraordinary Laura Mays, and
we're just both passionate about the audience and also just
the agenda and everything that the conference gives us, and
so we were so excit. I did to introduce everyone
today to Alicia Menendez, who was not just a TV anchor,
(01:09):
but she also has a best selling book. She's a
mom of two, and we know that you will have
a lot of things to glean from her wisdom. Yes,
I'm sure you've seen Alicia on American Voices on MSNBC
on the weekends and the evenings an incredible show that
I tune into every week. But we have a lot
(01:30):
of questions for you, Alicia. One of the things that's
tricky after reading your book The Likability Chap is that
I kind of like second guests all the things you say,
because I'm thinking, is she thinking about being likable in
this moment? Do a lot of people say that to you?
No one has said that to me. Do not inception
(01:52):
that into people's mind, Sam met Us. That's an interesting point, Sam,
it really is. But I mean well to that point,
though he wrote The Likability Chap, I care a lot
about being well liked. I think there are a lot
of reasons for that. I'm a sensitive person. I am
cancer for in July, so it's like real, real deep
(02:13):
cancer and on people pleaser, and you know, part of that,
I think has to do with the fact that I
am a woman who was raised in America and across cultures,
we socialize girls to think about themselves in relation to others.
I think that can be a superpower. I think when
that is empathy, um and consideration for others, there's nothing better.
I think where it becomes a challenge for women and
(02:35):
where it became a challenge for me was when everything
I did and said was dictated and influenced by how
other people would perceive it. And as I started to
get into my thirties, I began to realize what that
care for liability was costing me, both sort of emotionally,
when I would put my head down at night and
I would take through every social interaction I'd had during
(02:56):
the day and wonder what was awkward and what didn't
land the cost at work where I felt I wasn't
really showing up as the leader that I knew I
could be, And so I originally imagined writing like an Eat, Pray,
Love for Likability, which would have been a much more
fun book where I would have gotten to each a
lotto and do yoga and let it all go. And
instead I interviewed women because that is what I do,
(03:17):
and there were lots of women like myself who cared
a lot, but there were also women who didn't give
a damn. And what became interesting to me was that
even those women, especially if they were ambitious, especially if
they were in male dominated fields, felt they paid a
price for being so brazenly themselves. And so that question
like why, Why, whether a woman cares or doesn't care,
(03:40):
is she still running up against this expectation that she
should show up in a certain way. That became sort
of the core thing I wanted to grapple with. It
seems like it's not just the fact that you're a
woman and that we all deal with this, and I'm
sure so many of the mom's listening right now are
nodding their head vigorously. But also, you were the daughter
(04:02):
of a New Jersey political operative, so your whole life,
you grew up in politics. That must have also shaped
your perspective on likability. Yeah, I mean when you were
part of a public family. You know, I think there
are so many of us that are raised to believe
that when you go out into the world, you don't
just represent yourself, You represent your media family, you represent
(04:22):
your community, you represent so much more than yourself. That
is was particularly acute because I was literally part of
a public family. And as you know, because you have
both worked in politics, a candidate's favorability it determines whether
or not they get to keep their jobs every two years,
(04:42):
every four years, every six years, and so it was
very real to meet early on that being likable and
being perceived favorably had a direct correlation to stability and
job performance. And and that is also part of what
I wanted to grow up with because I think it's
really it would have been really easy to write a
(05:04):
book that was like just don't care, like just like
let it go. Well, that's not actually how politics or
business or the p t A. Works. People like doing
things with people who they like, and and that is real.
One question they had about what you just said, how
old were you when you figure this out, about the
(05:26):
fact that the correlation between favorability of a politician and
their job and being elected, Like, what did you take
from that? Does someone explain it to you? Yeah? I don't.
I don't know. I mean, it's so easy to look
at it retrospectively and make it seem as it was
always crystal clear. I don't think I pieced together my
personal attitudes about liability until I really started doing the
(05:46):
work of this book. But I think it shows up
in in really subtle ways, Like you know that your
parent is vying for their job every year and a half,
and you know that some of that is tied to
how not only they show up, but you show up
like you're in campaign ads, you are in little pamphlets,
like you know, you are part of a package, and
(06:09):
that package is being assessed and evaluated. And I think,
you know, especially if you become a teen and like
every teen's parents in America, I have a conversation, but like,
don't do this, don't do that. There is this added
layer of you could be jeopardizing something that is not
yours to jeopardize. And so I don't know that I
was piecing it all together then, but I think when
(06:31):
I look back at it now, that was definitely a
piece of the larger puzzle about wanting to be elect
I think I would have been like this if I had,
you know, a dad who was a school principal, Like,
I think so much of this is baked into who
I am, and so much of it is about being
female and being Latina, Like there is a huge cultural
piece to this, you know. One woman I interviewed says,
(06:53):
Latinas are raised with a PhD in graciousness that you know,
we are culturally suspected to tend to others. And so
I think there there was a lot at play, of
which that was one small piece. How do you communicate
this to your own children today. I think about this
all the time, and I'm not sure my children are
(07:14):
quite yet old enough there. I have two girls there
for and too, And so what I grapple with most
is there are people come to me and they'll say, well,
why didn't you make this a parenting book? That's could
be a great parenting book. And I understand that instinct,
but that presumes that there is something that we can
teach our children, that this is still an individual issue
(07:35):
rather than being a structural and a systemic issue. So
I do have especially with the older one, because I
have more of a sense of who she is. She
tells you exactly what she wants, She demands exactly what
she wants. She goes to the playground, climbs to the
highest heights, she doesn't care if she gets dirty. She
will tell you exactly what to do. And and so
(07:55):
my job is to preserve all of that. What I
apple with, and what I don't have a great answer for,
is the fact that one day I will send her
into a world that, as of this moment, does not
reward girls and women for showing up in that way,
or it rewards girls and women up to a certain point,
at which point they are told that they are too much,
(08:17):
that they have to round off their edges, that they
are too direct to assertive. And what really whigs me
out is that if she were the complete opposite, if
she were really nice, like really like sort of like
whatever you want, whatever's best for the group, she would
be told that she was lovely and everybody loved her,
but she didn't have what it takes to lead. And
(08:38):
so that is what explodes my brain. I think it's
really interesting, Like I personally have decided that I have
to not care what people think in order to have
a career, right because I'm never going to be I'm
never going to be nice enough or anything. But I
also amy feel like I've watched you evolve through that
(08:59):
in the past few years that I have known you, right, Like,
I think that finding where that sweet spot is for yourself,
especially when you're a public person, which increasingly so many
more of us are, that I think it is unrealistic
to imagine that women are going to be like, I
know exactly the type of leader that I want to be,
I know exactly the type of mother that i'd want
to be. I know exactly the type of wife that
(09:20):
I want to be, and I know how I want
to curate my Instagram so that I can communicate this
properly at all times to all people. It's impossible. It's impossible,
And I think that, Like, I mean, I've spent I
spent most of my life deeply caring what everybody thought,
to the point where it held me back in a
million different ways. And I just think that, like, you're not, like,
I don't think that in this country we know how
(09:42):
women should lead or who they should be. I think
it goes exactly what you're saying, like there's just no well,
I think that there's just so many options for men
right that they don't have to fit one mold. And
I think that's what it is. And I think this
actually leads me back to it's it's the whole focus
of a lot of my work. Just keep women in
the workforce by showing them that there's a real path
(10:03):
to having a successful professional and personal life. And only
by showing them and giving them that vision can we
keep more women in the workforce so that we do
have more role models, so that it's not just the
one woman at the top of the company that informs
what other people think a leader looks like. Right, So
I think part of it is that there are so
few female leaders to look to that we don't have
(10:25):
the opportunity to say that's, you know, one of thousands
and thousands of women leaders that you have seen, and
so I'm going to be one of those as opposed
to the one. Right you can say like I'm more
of a Rose than a Cheryl, Right that you would
like so many names at your disposal that you could
just pick them. I will say there was a profound
moment though, that happened during this past presidential election that
(10:47):
I think sort of speaks to the future that you're envisioning,
and that is that, as you both know, ordinarily, when
someone's name is in contention to be vice president or
to be considered as a running mate, people generally demure, right,
Like they go on the Sunday shows and people say
like Amy, like you know, it's being buzzed about that
you could be, you know, the vice president, and people
(11:09):
always be like no, no, no, no, no, I'm just
focused on and then they list their portfolio. And this
time you had all of these women, and all of
these women of color saying yes, I'm very interested in
that job. Yes, I think I would be great at it.
Let me tell you why I would be great at it.
And and part of what's interesting is that that happened
period that we were not accustomed to seeing that from anyone,
(11:30):
much less a woman of color. But that also they
all did it right, Like you watched all of them
make the case for themselves, and that then became normalizing.
It didn't. No one stood out because they did that.
And I think that that is where we want to
be headed towards. That is, at least the tiny piece
(11:51):
of the puzzle that I think women themselves can control.
One thing that you mentioned early on which really resonated
with me and I bet a lot of our listeners
right now, is when you described yourself as like after
a party or after a social interaction, you would lie
in bed and be like, oh, I wish I'd done
that differently, and kind of rethinking all of your interactions.
(12:12):
And I think that plagues so many of us. How
have you overcome that? I haven't, Sam, I'm gonna go
to sleep tonight, and they go about everything awkward and
I said today, but I think knowing that it has
that it has a name. It's called rumination. Right. It's
like you start with like a thought and all of
a sudden it becomes about a thing that happened in
the fourth grade and why I'm a terrible person, and
(12:33):
like everything is unwrappling. But for me, it's about knowing
that it happens and and catching myself and breaking that
pattern and saying do you know that to be true?
Or was that your perception of what happened? I am
not great at it, which is also why across the
board one of my easiest like you can do it
today number one recommendations so obvious. You should have a
(12:54):
WhatsApp chat group text like what signal whatever you feel
A group of people, in my case, a group of
women all happen to be Latina lateral to me, who
know what makes me great, who see my full potential,
who also see um where it is that I could improve,
who I can bring things back to and say, hey,
(13:15):
this thing happened. Am I'm making a big deal of it?
Or is there actually something that needs to fix her?
And I find having a core group to whom I
feel like it is totally normal that I go to
with those questions and who I can trust that they
won't just always be like no, no, no, you're the best,
You're the greatest, you didn't do anything wrong. People who
can be real with me. I think that is like
(13:35):
a very easy way to have a gut check. And
now for a quick break, talk to us about your
identity as a Latina woman. You had a white mother.
Do you ever feel or did you ever feel apologetic
for the fact that you were quote half Latina and
I know that you married a Latino man, And how
(13:56):
does all of this play out in terms of your
own sense of identity. Is part of what the term
Latin and Hispanic Latinacs as catch alls complicate, which is
both of my parents are white, right, My my father
is Cuban, is of Cuban descent, but racially we're white
across the board, which as a community, in the conversation
we're having with ourselves, there's privilege and hierarchy there. But
(14:18):
my mom and dad raised us in a place that
was overwhelmingly Latino. We grew up in Union City, New Jersey.
It was where the Cubans who didn't go to Miami
went um was called Havana on the Hudson by the
time I was growing up there, it was a lot
more Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, and so most of the
(14:38):
kids I went to school with, most of the people
I went to church with, most of the people who
lived in my neighborhood were Latino and so to me,
I was immersed in a way where I just thought
it was a majority experience until I went to high
school and I went to a private high school outside
of where I lived, and for the first times, like
(15:00):
where all the other kids who have this experience, and
was doing those translations that you do where you know
my friend I was dancing in my friends Kinsineta which
is her sweet fifteen and one of my girlfriends at
school very sweetly asshole, does she not expect to live
to sixteen? And it gave me the opportunity to explain, like,
we celebrated fifteen, it's a very similar celebration, but for
(15:23):
the first time, I was the one doing all of
that cultural translation for someone else, and yeah, it is.
It is important to me. It is how I see myself.
I feel very anchored in it. Both of my grandmother's
played a very large role in raising us. They were
with us all the time um, my paternal grandmother didn't
speak English for most of that time, but we would
(15:43):
like sit around and watch Spanish delan novellas together and
we would watch The Prices right and she would laugh
at things that I didn't think she understood the joke about.
So you know, it's like and it's there to me.
It is both a cultural identity, is a political idea
today and one that I feel very very grounded, and
one that now that I am a mother, I think
(16:05):
a lot about how I make sure that my girls
have that sense of pride, that sense of exposure, that
sense of a people and a police that they come from.
So tell us about raising your girls, like where will
they go to school? What's the community like that they're
growing up? And you were in Miami, now you're in
New Jersey. So of course, Amy, you ask all the
hard questions because the answer is I don't know. Like
(16:26):
this's I think. I think in some ways you and
I are probably in a in a similar spot on this,
which is we my husband and I had both been
pretty transitory as as people, and we love that. Like
my husband was a campaign person. I think you did
the Obama campaign and so like he lived in Iowa,
in Texas and Puerto Rico, and even over the course
(16:49):
of our relationship, we've lived Miami, d C. New York,
and now in New Jersey. And so we're confronting that
thing that you confront when you have been some semi nomadic,
which is what is fair for kids? How much of
that can you do with kids and call it an
adventure and know that they're adaptable. And you know, before
(17:12):
we had kids, we would talk about the fact that
we were like, you know, we weren't raised with very
much structure, and we want to give our girls structure,
and like, there's gonna be places for them to put
things in systems and processes. And then we realized, oh
my goodness, we don't know how to do that, Like
we would not be the right people to do that,
And it helped us really value what we had instead,
which was you can throw us into any situation and
(17:34):
we'll figure it out, you know, like we will make
it work. And I do value that and I'm happy
to give that to them, But I don't know the
answers to a lot of those questions. Like I've got
a four year old in pre K four. She's very
happy there, but like even when we talk about moving
or anything else, she says she wants to live in
this house forever, which we'll see. I had this like
(17:57):
a very arbitrary thing. So I grew up in one community,
went to one public school system my entire life, and
just always envisioned that for my kids. And they're actually
right now, they're in that public school system because we
just moved to Ohio. But like, do I think they'll
be there forever? No, Like I just realized my husband
and I are not those people like to your point,
like we're going to be moving probably, you know, and
(18:18):
my kids will get different bones than I had about
who they are and you know, their adventures and everything
like that. But it might also be partly the world
to like the world has made us has given us
an ability to be more mobile as well. I mean, Sam,
what would you say about all of that? I think
that kids require a certain level of stability, but that
that stability doesn't necessarily come from a physical place. It
(18:40):
comes from feeling safe with their family, right, and so
your family is home rather than the physical place being home.
So I think the most important thing is for the
kids to feel confident and stable so that's number one.
We moved our kids across the country when they were one, three,
and five, and now my kids are fifteen, fourteen and
a Evan. And when I even just talk about moving
(19:02):
to a different part of Los Angeles, my eleven year
old freaks out and says he wants to live in
this house forever. Alicia, There's two personal things I really
want to ask you about. The first is about how
you met your husband, because my understanding is that it
was not love at first sight. And then the second
thing as I want to ask you about, is your
parents marriage and how that impacted you. Well, let's see,
(19:25):
we met. He was he had worked on the Obama campaign,
and I was writing an article for a trade publication
about the election, and he agreed to be interviewed because
he was writing a mote Latino vote. And he just
clammed up, like he was giving me yes and no
answers to questions that were not yes and no questions.
(19:46):
And I was like, well, why did this guy agree
to this interview? This is useless to me. And meanwhile
he was like, why is this woman being so pushy
with me? Like she's writing for a trained publication? Calmed
out and then I went and worked at a think tank,
and he went and worked at the White House, and
he was my point of contact at the White House,
and I always on the phone found him very brusque
(20:07):
because he was working at the White House and he
was like moving from thing to thing to thing, and
I at that time was doing analysis spots on television.
He was like, who is this child? Who is you know,
giving political analysis? And then we met in person and
I was just very struck by him. We um had
a group dinner together that night. I learned a lot
(20:29):
about him and it provided so much more context for
me to who he was and why he was the
way he was. And I think about it a lot
in the context of it's name, as when we have
strong feelings about someone, those strong feelings can move in
either direction, and that very often, like that reaction is
(20:52):
about the fact that that person reveals something to us
about ourselves, Like in this case, I think it very
much was that where we are different, we're very different,
but where we are the same, we were very much
the same. And I was responding to the parts of
us that were actually very much the same right where
I'm like, why are you so loud, Why are you
so um direct? Why are you all of these things
(21:14):
that I am too? And yeah, and then you know,
we started dating. We lived in d C for a while. Um.
We had a period of time where he got offered
a job in Miami and he moved to Miami, and
I moved to New York and we stayed together, and
then I got offered a job in Miami, which when
you work in media, English language media, feels like a
thing that will never happen. Um. And so it really
(21:35):
felt like the universe was aligning to make all of
these very different things that we wanted actually line up.
And it was a real blessing because part of the
reason we wanted to move there was he had a
dad who was older. We got to spend six years
up with our babies in Miami, and and his dad
passed last year. And so I think about the fact that,
(21:55):
like we just we had so much time that that
wasn't a given, and that feels such a blessing. And
then when you were in college, your parents got divorced.
I think oftentimes when we think about divorce, we think
of the impact on young kids. What was the impact
on you as a college student. I think sometimes we
(22:16):
overframed divorce as just an ending, when you can look
at divorced with an incredible sense of accomplishment. My parents
were married for twenty seven years. That is a very
long period of time. And so I look at that
and they say, that's amazing. Like you built a life,
you built careers, you built a family, and we all
(22:39):
have gone on to be happy and okay. And like,
I think that that is one of the elements of
divorce that we don't talk about enough, which is I
think like it has worked out for everyone, and you know,
I think that is part of a lesson for me,
is like you work as hard as you can at it.
(23:00):
And also like there there is no shame in saying
like this no longer works, and this is no longer okay.
Speaking of parenting and parenthood and circling back to your
girls for a second, who is the primary parent for
your daughters? Is there one? I think like a lot
of a lot of people were both parents work. My
(23:20):
husband does like he is outside in the morning for
the school boss. He is um is often the one
making dinner at night. Where there is where there's a
shift is in the mental burden like I am still
the one who's like camp deadlines are coming up, got
to register them for camp, or you know, like, oh
(23:41):
no it's Tuesday, it's Blue and Orange day. We got
to remake all of the remembering. I think we would
both agree still falls to me. I'm part of that
is personality, right, and the fact that, like I said,
like I after I put my head down on the
pillow and think about all of the things that, um,
all of the strange social attractions I've had that day,
the secondary thing I think about is like, what are
(24:03):
the things? Who's the kid I'm gonna forget to bring
to school tomorrow? Like that that is all the stuff
that happens. But you know, when we lived in Miami,
I traveled a lot for work, and I really that
meant that he was the primary parent in terms of
if there is an emergency at school, who do you call?
And I really had to train up the school administrators
(24:25):
to understand, like, I know there was an emergency, and
I know you called me, but really there's a reason
I put him down as a parent. Ay And even
one time I went into the school and one of
the administrators like, you know, your daughter told on you
she says that Carlos cooks dinner every night. I was, like,
he does. It's like he does. He does, Like that
that should be totally normal. Yeah, I mean, I don't
(24:46):
know if you both feel this way. But I also
think it's like, I think there are people who decide
these are the types of people were going to be,
and then they are those people, and then there are
people who feel their ways through life's experiences in the
interest of figuring out who they will become on the
other side of that, And I think part of like,
it's not just moving, it's like our lives have been
in constant states of flux in multiple ways. As it
(25:08):
relates to our career, is that we do Neither of
us is the type of person who has been at
the same job for ten years and and so all
of these things are things that we constantly re evaluate.
And I would say, week to week, day to day,
do you feel like when you get to drop off
in the morning or pick up your kids, like your
code switching, Like now I am in mom mode and
(25:30):
I'm trying to make mom friends. What has that been
like for you? I feel like I have made a
real decision to show up as this person this and
by this person I mean a person who works and
a person who mothers all of the time. In part
that is because of the nature of my work, where
sometimes I will be at the bus stop being like,
(25:50):
hold on, hold on, I just gotta gotta take a call,
like I have to fuse both of those things, and
because I want to be friends with the type of
mom who's okay with that, even if she is not
living that life herself. And I also feel like there
is a unique privilege of the work that I do
in the position that I'm in, which is it's not
(26:13):
a normal job, right, It's not normal in the sense
it's not like in an organizational structure you can see
who manages me and who I manage, and like who
then is looking to me for leadership. I'm sort of
I'm a floating entity as it relates to to my
job at MSNBC. And so I think about the fact
that like being honest about the fact, like I'm not
going to put on my video for this call because
(26:35):
my kids are running around in the background, or I
am going to put on my video for this call
and you're going to see my kids running around in
the background, or I need to hold on for one second.
I have a child who's asking for something, like I
feel like that is um both a privilege, right Not
everyone gets to do that, depending on where you are
in your career and in your company hierarchy. But it
(26:56):
also is to me or responsibility, right like I have
the capacity to normalize that for other people and to say,
of course I get it that you have a kid,
or of course I get it that you have care
taking responsibilities and that that is going to happen alongside
all of the work that you do. And I do
think that that was one of the advantages of the
pandemic is that like for those of us who try
(27:18):
to keep things very neat and tidy and very separated,
it was no longer possible in ways that many ways
were detrimental to us. But where I look for a
silver lining, that silver lining was we had to face
the fact that that people were trying to do, do,
and be a lot of things all at once. And
now for a quick break, So I want to ask
(27:40):
a question about your career. How did you end up
in front of the camera? Was that your goal? Now?
I thought I would uh graduate from college, go to
law school, even to the alsat I basically was going
to live your life Amy Nelson and um and then
run and then run for office. And I was working
on campaigns and working on press side of stuff, and
(28:02):
just realize, how like we we on the campaign, we're
trying to set a narrative every day, but really the
press was deciding what the narrative was that was set.
And as someone who had never had a plan B
like all of and and I had never thought about
the fact that there was more than one way to
influence people and had impact than the way that was
right in front of me. By virtue of growing up
(28:24):
in a house with two public servant parents and dad
Olson became fascinating to me. I was like, what are
they doing over there? How do you even do that?
What are jobs that would look like? And I got myself,
I think off of Craigslist. That's how old. I am.
A job at a television station in Westchester, booking gas
and I booked guests for a political talk show. I
learned what makes a great guest. I learned a lot
(28:46):
I know about producing by being in that newsroom and
asking questions like what is ms, it's man on the street,
what is s OT, it's uh, you know, it's sound
on tape. I learned. That's how I also learned. And
like I don't necessarily learn by sitting in a classroom
or reading a book, I learned by doing and so
it made a lot of sense. And then they let
me do a few on air things while I was there.
(29:08):
That gave me the confidence that I could do it.
And then as I want to do I was like, well,
I think I'll just go work at Rock the Vote
and you know, try to effect change there. And part
of what INSTEP happening was that because I had a
little bit of that grounding in production and television, then
when they needed someone to go on tv UM as
an analyst, as someone who could speak on behalf the
(29:29):
organization and started doing that and that led me down
this path and the biggest challenge of my career was
trying to to swing into not being an organizational person
or a political person or a policy person and instead
being a full time media person, meaning having a job
in media that paid me full time. And that came
(29:51):
in when having them Post launched their streaming network and
that was where UM I had my first hosting job.
So we're speak, ask you some fun, more lighthearted questions. Okay, Alicia,
what book are you reading right now? Uh? Phoebe Robinson's.
I believe it's called You May Not Sit on my
bed in your outdoor clothes. That approximates the title. Also
(30:15):
mento hearts right within. Highly recommend who leaves you star
stack Oprah. What is your morning routine? Okay? So the
two year old wakes up and comes and wakes me up,
and we go downstairs together and she asks for a yogurt,
and then I give her a yogurt and PLoP her
in front of the television, where I then check on
(30:37):
all of my emails that have come in from the
night before, read the news, get things ready for the
big girl, who I then have to because she's now
like a teenager. We have to go wake her up
in time for school and bringing upstairs, get her bed,
get her in her uniform, make sure she catches the bus,
and then I start thinking about what my morning routine.
(30:58):
Look My morning routine is very much dominated by other
people at this point. If I'm lucky, I washed my face,
brush my teeth somewhere in there. Who is your dream
person to interview? Well, I would say, Son is like,
is definitely up there. But I would also say that
part of what I've learned doing so many interviews is like,
a great interview is a person who shows up on
(31:19):
that day wanting to be interviewed, Like there is nothing
worse than You're when you're like, you have done this
under duress and I am now pulling everything out of you,
like and these people be like, that was a great interview,
And I'm like, that person showed up ready to talk,
and so as I'm like, wow, I really prepared for that,
and that was a nothing burger. So Lou is joining us.
(31:40):
He's our male perspective on the show. And Lou has
been listening to the entire conversation and now he's going
to ask a question. Being a public figure is something
that I know nothing about, you know. Um, And when
we interview people, sometimes we ask questions that they don't
want to answer, you know, because they don't want that
part of their life exposed or whatever. I don't I
don't know they maybe they just they just want to
(32:02):
keep it private. Um. Why do public figures do that?
Why do they not want to share that? Is? Is
this something that happened that you saw use like, I
don't want to be I don't want that to happen
to me. I think that even when we're public people,
there are things to us that are so precious, things
we love so much that we want them to be
our own, and we don't want to share them. And
(32:22):
I think we have gotten to a place where we
expect public people to bleed for us and in front
of us, and I don't think that that is a
fair expectation. And I think in general, we are all
rethinking our relationship to privacy. I think that is something
that sort of the proliferation of social media and the
fact that we all think we look into each other's
(32:43):
lives see each other's lives, has just fundamentally shifted. I
think about it a lot now, lou as a parent,
where I'm like, how much of my kid's life is
it fair for me to share? Um? And so inasmuch
as I'm grappling with these questions, I think We're all
living through a moment where we are increasingly all thinking
(33:04):
about how much of ourselves do we want to share,
how much of sharing ourselves serves us, and what of
our life is truly our own? And what is shared
and and what sharing is actually sharing a little too much.
Thank you so much, Alicia, Thank you, Alicia, thank you
so much. Thank you so much, thank you all. All
(33:27):
right bye? What do you think of that? I mean,
so I know Alicia a little bit, and she is
a brilliant, thoughtful voice and a leader. And I felt
like that podcast was a rumination on a lot of
really tough topics that impact all of us, and she's
just she's got a real voice. I mean, I feel
(33:50):
like I need to walk away and think about everything
we just talked about. How about you. I really loved
when she talked about how transient like she and her
husband are, but that they thought they should have these
really stable lives for their kids and that they realize
that's just not who they are. That was so fascinating.
Her husband, awesome, Carlos is like this brilliant, super fun guy.
(34:11):
I mean I knew him many years ago, but incredible person.
And you know he's also from a political family, right right.
His grandfather was the president of Cuba. Yeah, and so
I mean that's really interesting. Yeah. No, I mean I
would imagine that's something they had in common, is that
they're both from these wildly political families. Well, because interesting
reliciat you because she's both a journalist who needs to
(34:33):
be you know, hand like what she said not not
part of the news, but kind of you know, reflecting
on it, and and the daughter of a sitting U S. Senator.
And I think, I don't know, you know, like, who
else is that in America? Who else is in that? Well,
actually the only people who are like that are the
cuomos because if you think about it, like there's a
politician in office and then a media person who's covering it.
(34:55):
So you know, that's probably the only comparable I can
think of right now where you've a media personality that's
direct kin with a politician. Well, Marie Shiber and when
Arnold Swartzaiger as governor. Yeah that's true. But yeah, I
mean but I think it's it's a very rare position
to be in. That's true. I also really found the
(35:15):
likability thing fascinating because you know, especially as moms, we're
so aware of ourselves and our personalities in relation to
other moms, to colleagues, Like I feel like there's this
this added layer of complexity when you're a mom, right,
especially as your kids get older, Like sometimes your kids
(35:36):
are best friends with someone, and so you become friends
with our parents and then maybe that friendship dissolves into
the friendship between you and the mom survived, like, there's
so much going on in the mom world in terms
of friendships and interactions, and so I really enjoyed hearing
about the likability as it pertained to that, and I
appreciated what what Alicia said about how she doesn't code
(35:58):
switch at all. She's kind of like, this is who
I am, Take me or leave me, like I'm the
mom was going to be on a call at the
bus stop, and that that if you like that, then
let's be friends. Yeah. I think that's awesome. I think
that's really great. I love it. Thanks for listening to
What's Her Story with Sam and Amy. We would so
appreciate if you would leave a review wherever you get
(36:19):
your podcasts, and of course, connect with us on social
media at What's Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with
Sam and Amy is powered by my company, The Riveter
at the Riveter dot c o in Sam's company, park
Place Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks to
our producer Stacy Para, our social media manager Phoebe crane
Fest and our male perspective. Lou Burns
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story with Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from Gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. This is
(00:24):
a very exciting episode of What's Her Story with Sam
and Amy because it is our second live mom two
point oh version of What's Your Story with Sam and
Amy and Mom to point o is. Amy and I
have a real passion for this conference. It's the number
one conference for moms. We have attended in person many
(00:46):
many times. It's run by the extraordinary Laura Mays, and
we're just both passionate about the audience and also just
the agenda and everything that the conference gives us, and
so we were so excit. I did to introduce everyone
today to Alicia Menendez, who was not just a TV anchor,
(01:09):
but she also has a best selling book. She's a
mom of two, and we know that you will have
a lot of things to glean from her wisdom. Yes,
I'm sure you've seen Alicia on American Voices on MSNBC
on the weekends and the evenings an incredible show that
I tune into every week. But we have a lot
(01:30):
of questions for you, Alicia. One of the things that's
tricky after reading your book The Likability Chap is that
I kind of like second guests all the things you say,
because I'm thinking, is she thinking about being likable in
this moment? Do a lot of people say that to you?
No one has said that to me. Do not inception
(01:52):
that into people's mind, Sam met Us. That's an interesting point, Sam,
it really is. But I mean well to that point,
though he wrote The Likability Chap, I care a lot
about being well liked. I think there are a lot
of reasons for that. I'm a sensitive person. I am
cancer for in July, so it's like real, real deep
(02:13):
cancer and on people pleaser, and you know, part of that,
I think has to do with the fact that I
am a woman who was raised in America and across cultures,
we socialize girls to think about themselves in relation to others.
I think that can be a superpower. I think when
that is empathy, um and consideration for others, there's nothing better.
I think where it becomes a challenge for women and
(02:35):
where it became a challenge for me was when everything
I did and said was dictated and influenced by how
other people would perceive it. And as I started to
get into my thirties, I began to realize what that
care for liability was costing me, both sort of emotionally,
when I would put my head down at night and
I would take through every social interaction I'd had during
(02:56):
the day and wonder what was awkward and what didn't
land the cost at work where I felt I wasn't
really showing up as the leader that I knew I
could be, And so I originally imagined writing like an Eat, Pray,
Love for Likability, which would have been a much more
fun book where I would have gotten to each a
lotto and do yoga and let it all go. And
instead I interviewed women because that is what I do,
(03:17):
and there were lots of women like myself who cared
a lot, but there were also women who didn't give
a damn. And what became interesting to me was that
even those women, especially if they were ambitious, especially if
they were in male dominated fields, felt they paid a
price for being so brazenly themselves. And so that question
like why, Why, whether a woman cares or doesn't care,
(03:40):
is she still running up against this expectation that she
should show up in a certain way. That became sort
of the core thing I wanted to grapple with. It
seems like it's not just the fact that you're a
woman and that we all deal with this, and I'm
sure so many of the mom's listening right now are
nodding their head vigorously. But also, you were the daughter
(04:02):
of a New Jersey political operative, so your whole life,
you grew up in politics. That must have also shaped
your perspective on likability. Yeah, I mean when you were
part of a public family. You know, I think there
are so many of us that are raised to believe
that when you go out into the world, you don't
just represent yourself, You represent your media family, you represent
(04:22):
your community, you represent so much more than yourself. That
is was particularly acute because I was literally part of
a public family. And as you know, because you have
both worked in politics, a candidate's favorability it determines whether
or not they get to keep their jobs every two years,
(04:42):
every four years, every six years, and so it was
very real to meet early on that being likable and
being perceived favorably had a direct correlation to stability and
job performance. And and that is also part of what
I wanted to grow up with because I think it's
really it would have been really easy to write a
(05:04):
book that was like just don't care, like just like
let it go. Well, that's not actually how politics or
business or the p t A. Works. People like doing
things with people who they like, and and that is real.
One question they had about what you just said, how
old were you when you figure this out, about the
(05:26):
fact that the correlation between favorability of a politician and
their job and being elected, Like, what did you take
from that? Does someone explain it to you? Yeah? I don't.
I don't know. I mean, it's so easy to look
at it retrospectively and make it seem as it was
always crystal clear. I don't think I pieced together my
personal attitudes about liability until I really started doing the
(05:46):
work of this book. But I think it shows up
in in really subtle ways, Like you know that your
parent is vying for their job every year and a half,
and you know that some of that is tied to
how not only they show up, but you show up
like you're in campaign ads, you are in little pamphlets,
like you know, you are part of a package, and
(06:09):
that package is being assessed and evaluated. And I think,
you know, especially if you become a teen and like
every teen's parents in America, I have a conversation, but like,
don't do this, don't do that. There is this added
layer of you could be jeopardizing something that is not
yours to jeopardize. And so I don't know that I
was piecing it all together then, but I think when
(06:31):
I look back at it now, that was definitely a
piece of the larger puzzle about wanting to be elect
I think I would have been like this if I had,
you know, a dad who was a school principal, Like,
I think so much of this is baked into who
I am, and so much of it is about being
female and being Latina, Like there is a huge cultural
piece to this, you know. One woman I interviewed says,
(06:53):
Latinas are raised with a PhD in graciousness that you know,
we are culturally suspected to tend to others. And so
I think there there was a lot at play, of
which that was one small piece. How do you communicate
this to your own children today. I think about this
all the time, and I'm not sure my children are
(07:14):
quite yet old enough there. I have two girls there
for and too, And so what I grapple with most
is there are people come to me and they'll say, well,
why didn't you make this a parenting book? That's could
be a great parenting book. And I understand that instinct,
but that presumes that there is something that we can
teach our children, that this is still an individual issue
(07:35):
rather than being a structural and a systemic issue. So
I do have especially with the older one, because I
have more of a sense of who she is. She
tells you exactly what she wants, She demands exactly what
she wants. She goes to the playground, climbs to the
highest heights, she doesn't care if she gets dirty. She
will tell you exactly what to do. And and so
(07:55):
my job is to preserve all of that. What I
apple with, and what I don't have a great answer for,
is the fact that one day I will send her
into a world that, as of this moment, does not
reward girls and women for showing up in that way,
or it rewards girls and women up to a certain point,
at which point they are told that they are too much,
(08:17):
that they have to round off their edges, that they
are too direct to assertive. And what really whigs me
out is that if she were the complete opposite, if
she were really nice, like really like sort of like
whatever you want, whatever's best for the group, she would
be told that she was lovely and everybody loved her,
but she didn't have what it takes to lead. And
(08:38):
so that is what explodes my brain. I think it's
really interesting, Like I personally have decided that I have
to not care what people think in order to have
a career, right because I'm never going to be I'm
never going to be nice enough or anything. But I
also amy feel like I've watched you evolve through that
(08:59):
in the past few years that I have known you, right, Like,
I think that finding where that sweet spot is for yourself,
especially when you're a public person, which increasingly so many
more of us are, that I think it is unrealistic
to imagine that women are going to be like, I
know exactly the type of leader that I want to be,
I know exactly the type of mother that i'd want
to be. I know exactly the type of wife that
(09:20):
I want to be, and I know how I want
to curate my Instagram so that I can communicate this
properly at all times to all people. It's impossible. It's impossible,
And I think that, Like, I mean, I've spent I
spent most of my life deeply caring what everybody thought,
to the point where it held me back in a
million different ways. And I just think that, like, you're not, like,
I don't think that in this country we know how
(09:42):
women should lead or who they should be. I think
it goes exactly what you're saying, like there's just no well,
I think that there's just so many options for men
right that they don't have to fit one mold. And
I think that's what it is. And I think this
actually leads me back to it's it's the whole focus
of a lot of my work. Just keep women in
the workforce by showing them that there's a real path
(10:03):
to having a successful professional and personal life. And only
by showing them and giving them that vision can we
keep more women in the workforce so that we do
have more role models, so that it's not just the
one woman at the top of the company that informs
what other people think a leader looks like. Right, So
I think part of it is that there are so
few female leaders to look to that we don't have
(10:25):
the opportunity to say that's, you know, one of thousands
and thousands of women leaders that you have seen, and
so I'm going to be one of those as opposed
to the one. Right you can say like I'm more
of a Rose than a Cheryl, Right that you would
like so many names at your disposal that you could
just pick them. I will say there was a profound
moment though, that happened during this past presidential election that
(10:47):
I think sort of speaks to the future that you're envisioning,
and that is that, as you both know, ordinarily, when
someone's name is in contention to be vice president or
to be considered as a running mate, people generally demure, right,
Like they go on the Sunday shows and people say
like Amy, like you know, it's being buzzed about that
you could be, you know, the vice president, and people
(11:09):
always be like no, no, no, no, no, I'm just
focused on and then they list their portfolio. And this
time you had all of these women, and all of
these women of color saying yes, I'm very interested in
that job. Yes, I think I would be great at it.
Let me tell you why I would be great at it.
And and part of what's interesting is that that happened
period that we were not accustomed to seeing that from anyone,
(11:30):
much less a woman of color. But that also they
all did it right, Like you watched all of them
make the case for themselves, and that then became normalizing.
It didn't. No one stood out because they did that.
And I think that that is where we want to
be headed towards. That is, at least the tiny piece
(11:51):
of the puzzle that I think women themselves can control.
One thing that you mentioned early on which really resonated
with me and I bet a lot of our listeners
right now, is when you described yourself as like after
a party or after a social interaction, you would lie
in bed and be like, oh, I wish I'd done
that differently, and kind of rethinking all of your interactions.
(12:12):
And I think that plagues so many of us. How
have you overcome that? I haven't, Sam, I'm gonna go
to sleep tonight, and they go about everything awkward and
I said today, but I think knowing that it has
that it has a name. It's called rumination. Right. It's
like you start with like a thought and all of
a sudden it becomes about a thing that happened in
the fourth grade and why I'm a terrible person, and
(12:33):
like everything is unwrappling. But for me, it's about knowing
that it happens and and catching myself and breaking that
pattern and saying do you know that to be true?
Or was that your perception of what happened? I am
not great at it, which is also why across the
board one of my easiest like you can do it
today number one recommendations so obvious. You should have a
(12:54):
WhatsApp chat group text like what signal whatever you feel
A group of people, in my case, a group of
women all happen to be Latina lateral to me, who
know what makes me great, who see my full potential,
who also see um where it is that I could improve,
who I can bring things back to and say, hey,
(13:15):
this thing happened. Am I'm making a big deal of it?
Or is there actually something that needs to fix her?
And I find having a core group to whom I
feel like it is totally normal that I go to
with those questions and who I can trust that they
won't just always be like no, no, no, you're the best,
You're the greatest, you didn't do anything wrong. People who
can be real with me. I think that is like
(13:35):
a very easy way to have a gut check. And
now for a quick break, talk to us about your
identity as a Latina woman. You had a white mother.
Do you ever feel or did you ever feel apologetic
for the fact that you were quote half Latina and
I know that you married a Latino man, And how
(13:56):
does all of this play out in terms of your
own sense of identity. Is part of what the term
Latin and Hispanic Latinacs as catch alls complicate, which is
both of my parents are white, right, My my father
is Cuban, is of Cuban descent, but racially we're white
across the board, which as a community, in the conversation
we're having with ourselves, there's privilege and hierarchy there. But
(14:18):
my mom and dad raised us in a place that
was overwhelmingly Latino. We grew up in Union City, New Jersey.
It was where the Cubans who didn't go to Miami
went um was called Havana on the Hudson by the
time I was growing up there, it was a lot
more Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, and so most of the
(14:38):
kids I went to school with, most of the people
I went to church with, most of the people who
lived in my neighborhood were Latino and so to me,
I was immersed in a way where I just thought
it was a majority experience until I went to high
school and I went to a private high school outside
of where I lived, and for the first times, like
(15:00):
where all the other kids who have this experience, and
was doing those translations that you do where you know
my friend I was dancing in my friends Kinsineta which
is her sweet fifteen and one of my girlfriends at
school very sweetly asshole, does she not expect to live
to sixteen? And it gave me the opportunity to explain, like,
we celebrated fifteen, it's a very similar celebration, but for
(15:23):
the first time, I was the one doing all of
that cultural translation for someone else, and yeah, it is.
It is important to me. It is how I see myself.
I feel very anchored in it. Both of my grandmother's
played a very large role in raising us. They were
with us all the time um, my paternal grandmother didn't
speak English for most of that time, but we would
(15:43):
like sit around and watch Spanish delan novellas together and
we would watch The Prices right and she would laugh
at things that I didn't think she understood the joke about.
So you know, it's like and it's there to me.
It is both a cultural identity, is a political idea
today and one that I feel very very grounded, and
one that now that I am a mother, I think
(16:05):
a lot about how I make sure that my girls
have that sense of pride, that sense of exposure, that
sense of a people and a police that they come from.
So tell us about raising your girls, like where will
they go to school? What's the community like that they're
growing up? And you were in Miami, now you're in
New Jersey. So of course, Amy, you ask all the
hard questions because the answer is I don't know. Like
(16:26):
this's I think. I think in some ways you and
I are probably in a in a similar spot on this,
which is we my husband and I had both been
pretty transitory as as people, and we love that. Like
my husband was a campaign person. I think you did
the Obama campaign and so like he lived in Iowa,
in Texas and Puerto Rico, and even over the course
(16:49):
of our relationship, we've lived Miami, d C. New York,
and now in New Jersey. And so we're confronting that
thing that you confront when you have been some semi nomadic,
which is what is fair for kids? How much of
that can you do with kids and call it an
adventure and know that they're adaptable. And you know, before
(17:12):
we had kids, we would talk about the fact that
we were like, you know, we weren't raised with very
much structure, and we want to give our girls structure,
and like, there's gonna be places for them to put
things in systems and processes. And then we realized, oh
my goodness, we don't know how to do that, Like
we would not be the right people to do that,
And it helped us really value what we had instead,
which was you can throw us into any situation and
(17:34):
we'll figure it out, you know, like we will make
it work. And I do value that and I'm happy
to give that to them, But I don't know the
answers to a lot of those questions. Like I've got
a four year old in pre K four. She's very
happy there, but like even when we talk about moving
or anything else, she says she wants to live in
this house forever, which we'll see. I had this like
(17:57):
a very arbitrary thing. So I grew up in one community,
went to one public school system my entire life, and
just always envisioned that for my kids. And they're actually
right now, they're in that public school system because we
just moved to Ohio. But like, do I think they'll
be there forever? No, Like I just realized my husband
and I are not those people like to your point,
like we're going to be moving probably, you know, and
(18:18):
my kids will get different bones than I had about
who they are and you know, their adventures and everything
like that. But it might also be partly the world
to like the world has made us has given us
an ability to be more mobile as well. I mean, Sam,
what would you say about all of that? I think
that kids require a certain level of stability, but that
that stability doesn't necessarily come from a physical place. It
(18:40):
comes from feeling safe with their family, right, and so
your family is home rather than the physical place being home.
So I think the most important thing is for the
kids to feel confident and stable so that's number one.
We moved our kids across the country when they were one, three,
and five, and now my kids are fifteen, fourteen and
a Evan. And when I even just talk about moving
(19:02):
to a different part of Los Angeles, my eleven year
old freaks out and says he wants to live in
this house forever. Alicia, There's two personal things I really
want to ask you about. The first is about how
you met your husband, because my understanding is that it
was not love at first sight. And then the second
thing as I want to ask you about, is your
parents marriage and how that impacted you. Well, let's see,
(19:25):
we met. He was he had worked on the Obama campaign,
and I was writing an article for a trade publication
about the election, and he agreed to be interviewed because
he was writing a mote Latino vote. And he just
clammed up, like he was giving me yes and no
answers to questions that were not yes and no questions.
(19:46):
And I was like, well, why did this guy agree
to this interview? This is useless to me. And meanwhile
he was like, why is this woman being so pushy
with me? Like she's writing for a trained publication? Calmed
out and then I went and worked at a think tank,
and he went and worked at the White House, and
he was my point of contact at the White House,
and I always on the phone found him very brusque
(20:07):
because he was working at the White House and he
was like moving from thing to thing to thing, and
I at that time was doing analysis spots on television.
He was like, who is this child? Who is you know,
giving political analysis? And then we met in person and
I was just very struck by him. We um had
a group dinner together that night. I learned a lot
(20:29):
about him and it provided so much more context for
me to who he was and why he was the
way he was. And I think about it a lot
in the context of it's name, as when we have
strong feelings about someone, those strong feelings can move in
either direction, and that very often, like that reaction is
(20:52):
about the fact that that person reveals something to us
about ourselves, Like in this case, I think it very
much was that where we are different, we're very different,
but where we are the same, we were very much
the same. And I was responding to the parts of
us that were actually very much the same right where
I'm like, why are you so loud, Why are you
so um direct? Why are you all of these things
(21:14):
that I am too? And yeah, and then you know,
we started dating. We lived in d C for a while. Um.
We had a period of time where he got offered
a job in Miami and he moved to Miami, and
I moved to New York and we stayed together, and
then I got offered a job in Miami, which when
you work in media, English language media, feels like a
thing that will never happen. Um. And so it really
(21:35):
felt like the universe was aligning to make all of
these very different things that we wanted actually line up.
And it was a real blessing because part of the
reason we wanted to move there was he had a
dad who was older. We got to spend six years
up with our babies in Miami, and and his dad
passed last year. And so I think about the fact that,
(21:55):
like we just we had so much time that that
wasn't a given, and that feels such a blessing. And
then when you were in college, your parents got divorced.
I think oftentimes when we think about divorce, we think
of the impact on young kids. What was the impact
on you as a college student. I think sometimes we
(22:16):
overframed divorce as just an ending, when you can look
at divorced with an incredible sense of accomplishment. My parents
were married for twenty seven years. That is a very
long period of time. And so I look at that
and they say, that's amazing. Like you built a life,
you built careers, you built a family, and we all
(22:39):
have gone on to be happy and okay. And like,
I think that that is one of the elements of
divorce that we don't talk about enough, which is I
think like it has worked out for everyone, and you know,
I think that is part of a lesson for me,
is like you work as hard as you can at it.
(23:00):
And also like there there is no shame in saying
like this no longer works, and this is no longer okay.
Speaking of parenting and parenthood and circling back to your
girls for a second, who is the primary parent for
your daughters? Is there one? I think like a lot
of a lot of people were both parents work. My
(23:20):
husband does like he is outside in the morning for
the school boss. He is um is often the one
making dinner at night. Where there is where there's a
shift is in the mental burden like I am still
the one who's like camp deadlines are coming up, got
to register them for camp, or you know, like, oh
(23:41):
no it's Tuesday, it's Blue and Orange day. We got
to remake all of the remembering. I think we would
both agree still falls to me. I'm part of that
is personality, right, and the fact that, like I said,
like I after I put my head down on the
pillow and think about all of the things that, um,
all of the strange social attractions I've had that day,
the secondary thing I think about is like, what are
(24:03):
the things? Who's the kid I'm gonna forget to bring
to school tomorrow? Like that that is all the stuff
that happens. But you know, when we lived in Miami,
I traveled a lot for work, and I really that
meant that he was the primary parent in terms of
if there is an emergency at school, who do you call?
And I really had to train up the school administrators
(24:25):
to understand, like, I know there was an emergency, and
I know you called me, but really there's a reason
I put him down as a parent. Ay And even
one time I went into the school and one of
the administrators like, you know, your daughter told on you
she says that Carlos cooks dinner every night. I was, like,
he does. It's like he does. He does, Like that
that should be totally normal. Yeah, I mean, I don't
(24:46):
know if you both feel this way. But I also
think it's like, I think there are people who decide
these are the types of people were going to be,
and then they are those people, and then there are
people who feel their ways through life's experiences in the
interest of figuring out who they will become on the
other side of that, And I think part of like,
it's not just moving, it's like our lives have been
in constant states of flux in multiple ways. As it
(25:08):
relates to our career, is that we do Neither of
us is the type of person who has been at
the same job for ten years and and so all
of these things are things that we constantly re evaluate.
And I would say, week to week, day to day,
do you feel like when you get to drop off
in the morning or pick up your kids, like your
code switching, Like now I am in mom mode and
(25:30):
I'm trying to make mom friends. What has that been
like for you? I feel like I have made a
real decision to show up as this person this and
by this person I mean a person who works and
a person who mothers all of the time. In part
that is because of the nature of my work, where
sometimes I will be at the bus stop being like,
(25:50):
hold on, hold on, I just gotta gotta take a call,
like I have to fuse both of those things, and
because I want to be friends with the type of
mom who's okay with that, even if she is not
living that life herself. And I also feel like there
is a unique privilege of the work that I do
in the position that I'm in, which is it's not
(26:13):
a normal job, right, It's not normal in the sense
it's not like in an organizational structure you can see
who manages me and who I manage, and like who
then is looking to me for leadership. I'm sort of
I'm a floating entity as it relates to to my
job at MSNBC. And so I think about the fact
that like being honest about the fact, like I'm not
going to put on my video for this call because
(26:35):
my kids are running around in the background, or I
am going to put on my video for this call
and you're going to see my kids running around in
the background, or I need to hold on for one second.
I have a child who's asking for something, like I
feel like that is um both a privilege, right Not
everyone gets to do that, depending on where you are
in your career and in your company hierarchy. But it
(26:56):
also is to me or responsibility, right like I have
the capacity to normalize that for other people and to say,
of course I get it that you have a kid,
or of course I get it that you have care
taking responsibilities and that that is going to happen alongside
all of the work that you do. And I do
think that that was one of the advantages of the
pandemic is that like for those of us who try
(27:18):
to keep things very neat and tidy and very separated,
it was no longer possible in ways that many ways
were detrimental to us. But where I look for a
silver lining, that silver lining was we had to face
the fact that that people were trying to do, do,
and be a lot of things all at once. And
now for a quick break, So I want to ask
(27:40):
a question about your career. How did you end up
in front of the camera? Was that your goal? Now?
I thought I would uh graduate from college, go to
law school, even to the alsat I basically was going
to live your life Amy Nelson and um and then
run and then run for office. And I was working
on campaigns and working on press side of stuff, and
(28:02):
just realize, how like we we on the campaign, we're
trying to set a narrative every day, but really the
press was deciding what the narrative was that was set.
And as someone who had never had a plan B
like all of and and I had never thought about
the fact that there was more than one way to
influence people and had impact than the way that was
right in front of me. By virtue of growing up
(28:24):
in a house with two public servant parents and dad
Olson became fascinating to me. I was like, what are
they doing over there? How do you even do that?
What are jobs that would look like? And I got myself,
I think off of Craigslist. That's how old. I am.
A job at a television station in Westchester, booking gas
and I booked guests for a political talk show. I
learned what makes a great guest. I learned a lot
(28:46):
I know about producing by being in that newsroom and
asking questions like what is ms, it's man on the street,
what is s OT, it's uh, you know, it's sound
on tape. I learned. That's how I also learned. And
like I don't necessarily learn by sitting in a classroom
or reading a book, I learned by doing and so
it made a lot of sense. And then they let
me do a few on air things while I was there.
(29:08):
That gave me the confidence that I could do it.
And then as I want to do I was like, well,
I think I'll just go work at Rock the Vote
and you know, try to effect change there. And part
of what INSTEP happening was that because I had a
little bit of that grounding in production and television, then
when they needed someone to go on tv UM as
an analyst, as someone who could speak on behalf the
(29:29):
organization and started doing that and that led me down
this path and the biggest challenge of my career was
trying to to swing into not being an organizational person
or a political person or a policy person and instead
being a full time media person, meaning having a job
in media that paid me full time. And that came
(29:51):
in when having them Post launched their streaming network and
that was where UM I had my first hosting job.
So we're speak, ask you some fun, more lighthearted questions. Okay, Alicia,
what book are you reading right now? Uh? Phoebe Robinson's.
I believe it's called You May Not Sit on my
bed in your outdoor clothes. That approximates the title. Also
(30:15):
mento hearts right within. Highly recommend who leaves you star
stack Oprah. What is your morning routine? Okay? So the
two year old wakes up and comes and wakes me up,
and we go downstairs together and she asks for a yogurt,
and then I give her a yogurt and PLoP her
in front of the television, where I then check on
(30:37):
all of my emails that have come in from the
night before, read the news, get things ready for the
big girl, who I then have to because she's now
like a teenager. We have to go wake her up
in time for school and bringing upstairs, get her bed,
get her in her uniform, make sure she catches the bus,
and then I start thinking about what my morning routine.
(30:58):
Look My morning routine is very much dominated by other
people at this point. If I'm lucky, I washed my face,
brush my teeth somewhere in there. Who is your dream
person to interview? Well, I would say, Son is like,
is definitely up there. But I would also say that
part of what I've learned doing so many interviews is like,
a great interview is a person who shows up on
(31:19):
that day wanting to be interviewed, Like there is nothing
worse than You're when you're like, you have done this
under duress and I am now pulling everything out of you,
like and these people be like, that was a great interview,
And I'm like, that person showed up ready to talk,
and so as I'm like, wow, I really prepared for that,
and that was a nothing burger. So Lou is joining us.
(31:40):
He's our male perspective on the show. And Lou has
been listening to the entire conversation and now he's going
to ask a question. Being a public figure is something
that I know nothing about, you know. Um, And when
we interview people, sometimes we ask questions that they don't
want to answer, you know, because they don't want that
part of their life exposed or whatever. I don't I
don't know they maybe they just they just want to
(32:02):
keep it private. Um. Why do public figures do that?
Why do they not want to share that? Is? Is
this something that happened that you saw use like, I
don't want to be I don't want that to happen
to me. I think that even when we're public people,
there are things to us that are so precious, things
we love so much that we want them to be
our own, and we don't want to share them. And
(32:22):
I think we have gotten to a place where we
expect public people to bleed for us and in front
of us, and I don't think that that is a
fair expectation. And I think in general, we are all
rethinking our relationship to privacy. I think that is something
that sort of the proliferation of social media and the
fact that we all think we look into each other's
(32:43):
lives see each other's lives, has just fundamentally shifted. I
think about it a lot now, lou as a parent,
where I'm like, how much of my kid's life is
it fair for me to share? Um? And so inasmuch
as I'm grappling with these questions, I think We're all
living through a moment where we are increasingly all thinking
(33:04):
about how much of ourselves do we want to share,
how much of sharing ourselves serves us, and what of
our life is truly our own? And what is shared
and and what sharing is actually sharing a little too much.
Thank you so much, Alicia, Thank you, Alicia, thank you
so much. Thank you so much, thank you all. All
(33:27):
right bye? What do you think of that? I mean,
so I know Alicia a little bit, and she is
a brilliant, thoughtful voice and a leader. And I felt
like that podcast was a rumination on a lot of
really tough topics that impact all of us, and she's
just she's got a real voice. I mean, I feel
(33:50):
like I need to walk away and think about everything
we just talked about. How about you. I really loved
when she talked about how transient like she and her
husband are, but that they thought they should have these
really stable lives for their kids and that they realize
that's just not who they are. That was so fascinating.
Her husband, awesome, Carlos is like this brilliant, super fun guy.
(34:11):
I mean I knew him many years ago, but incredible person.
And you know he's also from a political family, right right.
His grandfather was the president of Cuba. Yeah, and so
I mean that's really interesting. Yeah. No, I mean I
would imagine that's something they had in common, is that
they're both from these wildly political families. Well, because interesting
reliciat you because she's both a journalist who needs to
(34:33):
be you know, hand like what she said not not
part of the news, but kind of you know, reflecting
on it, and and the daughter of a sitting U S. Senator.
And I think, I don't know, you know, like, who
else is that in America? Who else is in that? Well,
actually the only people who are like that are the
cuomos because if you think about it, like there's a
politician in office and then a media person who's covering it.
(34:55):
So you know, that's probably the only comparable I can
think of right now where you've a media personality that's
direct kin with a politician. Well, Marie Shiber and when
Arnold Swartzaiger as governor. Yeah that's true. But yeah, I
mean but I think it's it's a very rare position
to be in. That's true. I also really found the
(35:15):
likability thing fascinating because you know, especially as moms, we're
so aware of ourselves and our personalities in relation to
other moms, to colleagues, Like I feel like there's this
this added layer of complexity when you're a mom, right,
especially as your kids get older, Like sometimes your kids
(35:36):
are best friends with someone, and so you become friends
with our parents and then maybe that friendship dissolves into
the friendship between you and the mom survived, like, there's
so much going on in the mom world in terms
of friendships and interactions, and so I really enjoyed hearing
about the likability as it pertained to that, and I
appreciated what what Alicia said about how she doesn't code
(35:58):
switch at all. She's kind of like, this is who
I am, Take me or leave me, like I'm the
mom was going to be on a call at the
bus stop, and that that if you like that, then
let's be friends. Yeah. I think that's awesome. I think
that's really great. I love it. Thanks for listening to
What's Her Story with Sam and Amy. We would so
appreciate if you would leave a review wherever you get
(36:19):
your podcasts, and of course, connect with us on social
media at What's Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with
Sam and Amy is powered by my company, The Riveter
at the Riveter dot c o in Sam's company, park
Place Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks to
our producer Stacy Para, our social media manager Phoebe crane
Fest and our male perspective. Lou Burns
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
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