May 8, 2024 • 46 mins
Christy Turlington was only 14 when she started her modeling career - a career that has cemented her as one of the most legendary supermodels in history. But a near-death experience during the birth of her daughter changed the course of her journey. On this special Mother’s Day episode of She Pivots, Christy talks about the influences of her mother’s El Salvadoran heritage, her close relationship with Naomi Campbell, the founding and mission of Every Mother Counts, and the decisions she has made around her daughter Grace’s entry into the modeling world.
Be sure to subscribe, leave us a rating, and share with your friends if you liked this episode!
She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Christy, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.
Support the show: https://www.shepivotsthepodcast.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to She Pivots.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Christy Turlington Burns.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Welcome to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
women who dared to pivot out of one career and
into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. I'm excited
to have none other than Christy Turlington on the pod today.
(00:35):
She's the CEO and founder of Every Mother Counts, a
nonprofit organization dedicated to making pregnancy and child worth safe
for everyone everywhere. A perfect way to ring in Mother's
Day this weekend. I first met Christy at dinner at
my friend Joey Wilfer's house. I was pretty starstruck to
be sitting next to Christy Turlington, but really quickly found
(00:59):
out that not only a she totally accessible, lovely and normal,
she's incredibly substantive. We all know Christy best for what
I like to call her pre pivot days. Her days
is a supermodel. In her heyday, Christy was walking for
the Top Designers alongside other iconic supermodels like Naomi Campbell,
Cindy Crawford, and Linda Evangelista. Christy is a big believer
(01:22):
in quote, right time, right place, and that theme has
helped her merge the personal and professional as she's navigated
her life. From her parents meeting serendipitously on an airplane
to being scoured at just fourteen, Christy has learned to
let the moment rise up to meet her She knew
this was true when she unexpectedly became pregnant with her
(01:42):
daughter and dealt with some scary health issues immediately following
her birth. Despite the frightening experience, Christie's eyes were open
to the lack of quality care around maternal health and
her life was changed forever. Having never thought of modeling
as her end all, be all career, In fact, she
went back to school in her late twenties, she found
(02:03):
her passion and ran with it, eventually starting Every Mother Counts.
Since its inception in twenty eleven, the organization has impacted
over one million lives and invested over forty two million
dollars in community local light organizations, and Christy shows no
sign of stopping, hoping this will be her legacy that
she's remembered for.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
My name is Christy Turlington Burns, and I am the
founder and president of Every mother counts.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
So can you tell us a little bit about growing up?
Tell us a little bit about your childhood.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I grew up in northern California, in the East Bay
area of San Francisco suburbs. I'm one of three girls
between my parents, and then I also have two siblings
from my father's first marriage who also grew up in
the same area. So I lived in that East area
suburban town was a town when I grew up, now
to the city, and then we moved to Miami, Florida,
(03:01):
actually also the suburbs of Miami, Florida, but we moved
there when my father moved for his job. He worked
for PanAm for thirty five years or so, but at
that time he had an opportunity to go to the
headquarters which were in Miami, to be the training captain
for seven forty seven. And that's when your parents met, right,
They met on a plane, but my dad didn't work
(03:22):
for PanAm at that point they met. My dad was
doing some kind of sales, some random like insurance salesman
or something, and he won a trip based on his
performance to go to Hawaii and my mom was a
flight attendant on that flight. So we tease her now.
My father's passed away a long time ago, but might
we tease her still to this day because she's very
passionate about her PanAm days and her flight attendant versus stewardess.
(03:44):
I don't know which is the correct one, but she
doesn't like one of them because she's like, it was
so much more glamorous back in the sixties when she
did it. But we always tease that she introduced herself
to my dad and was like coffee team or me.
I don't think it was quite that direct. But they
started dating, and he loved aviation and had flown recreationally,
(04:05):
like little planes are fun, and I think my mom
kind of opened up his eyes to a potential professional
career doing it, and I think in the sixties it
was sort of a big moment for commercial aviation, and
so he jumped in because of my mom, and then
he stuck with it for the rest of his career.
And she had to stop when she became pregnant with
my older sister.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Oh, that's so interesting, And your mom's El Salvadorian right exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
She immigrated to the United States late nineteen forties when
she was about eight or nine, years old. She grew
up in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
How much did her El Salvadorian culture and background have
an impact on you as a kid so much.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
My grandparents who lived in Los Angeles, they never spoke
great English, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
They lived in a part of I would say East La.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
My mom always corrects up, but it is East La
technically because it's a sprawl of a city, and their
neighborhood was very diverse. But I would say a lot
of more sort of South American or Central American communities
had sort of reconnected there in their house. It would
have felt very much like another place, Like I felt
like the music and the culture of El Salvador where
(05:13):
we grew up in the suburbs, not at all. But
my mom always spoke Spanish with her sibling and her parents,
and we spent a lot of time with her family
in Los Angeles but also in El Salvador as small kids.
So yeah, I mean my mom didn't. She's still to
this day. It's not a big cook like of bringing
those kind of cultures, but my grandmother very much was.
So when she would come and live with us for
(05:35):
long periods of time, she would always be making like
more traditional food, which I love. That's like my first
connection to that part of the world is through my
stomach in the most like visceral way, Like she just
like all the smells and all the tastes.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And I get to.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Travel around that part of the world quite a lot
through every Mother Counts now mostly in Guatemala, but sometimes
all Salvador. And there's just a smell when I'm in
that part, like the humidity, the climate, the trees, the
just everything about it is very i don't know, basic,
like all my senses kind of wake up in it.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Yeah, it like takes you back. Yeah, it's feeling because
like home. So what did you think even as you
were moving around? Like do you have thoughts about like
what you were going to be when you grew up?
Like you were pretty you're pretty intellectual as a kid.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I don't know that I knew what I wanted to be.
I knew that I wanted to travel because I loved
to travel. And I love that my parents both had
had these incredible experiences where they'd been everywhere, and they
each had independently photographs of them my dad in you know,
at the beach in Lebanon, or my mom my.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Mom did this. Pandem used to have this around the
World pass and so she took both of her parents
separately on these around the world while she was working,
but they could stop and spend time, and so she
has pictures from Egypt and you know, just like all
over the world.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And so I think growing up with that, and also
having my experiences going down to Fall Salvador, I felt like,
I definitely want to do more of that. I want
to see more of the world. I liked reading a
lot already by the time I was in middle school,
and so I had some fantasies about maybe being a writer.
I think also for the same reason I love travel.
I think reading was like that way to transport yourself
(07:14):
and experience something very different, and so I thought, wow,
that's something that I really enjoyed. So maybe that would
be a cool thing one day to be able to
do and transport someone else. I have written a bit
over the years, not the kind of writing that I imagine
probably then, but there's still time maybe.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
But Christy didn't have much time to dream big dreams
as a child. She was only fourteen when she started modeling.
After being scattered horseback riding.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
My sister and I we rode horses, not in the
way that my daughter eventually did. We rode western, which
most people are like, what is that so different saddle,
And there we did compete writing Western. I eventually even
did a little bit of what's called raining or barrel
racing kind of Western. We did that growing up. And
(08:01):
we had a teacher actually at our lower school when
we were young that had a little barn and her
daughter rode, and so we ended up spending time there
and we would clean stalls and get free lessons from
her and sometimes got to compete, and then fell in
love with it. And my dad was from a much
more rural place in northern California than we were from,
and he kind of loved that whole sort of Americana
(08:24):
Western like he loved the whole thing, like John Wayne,
like all of that stuff. And so I think vicariously
through us, he got kind of interested in it too.
So by the time we moved to Florida, I think
part of our moving across the country was we'll find
that for you to do again. So we both had
a horse, and we rode competitively, and we rode after school,
and so that was sort of my life, my everyday
(08:46):
life as much as possible. Even most of my friend
group was around that until I started modeling. So one
day we were at our barn and my mom was
a saint and would drive us kind of a far
away actually, like a hour both ways and sit and
wait for us, and so she was sort of waiting
for us to do our lesson. And while we were there,
there was a photographer who was taking photographs of these
(09:09):
twins who actually went to our school.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Coincidentally, it was completely a.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Fluke, but they were actors and had done like a
lot of TV commercials and stuff. So they were doing
just stock photos with this photographer and in between the shots,
he would come over to the ring and he'd watch
us go in circles. And at the end of it,
he came to our mom and he said, oh, you know,
I'd love to take photos of your daughters, And strangely,
my mom was like, okay, well you put it that.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Way, yeah, like it's kind of weird lurking.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And then he want to say pictures of us, but
I don't DIFFI But so we didn't do it that weekend,
but I think a few weeks or sometime not too
long after, we spent a Saturday afternoon with my mom again,
but my sister and we brought our own clothes and
we did a test shoot independently. We weren't together in
the photos, and the photographer had a wife who was
(09:58):
a makeup artist, so she made us up, and apart
from our own clothes, it felt glamorous of whatever I
would have known glamor to be at the time, because
I really was not I didn't even look at seventeen magazine,
let alone Vogue or something more substantial. And so those
photos were then sent to a local agent, and we
were invited to come in to meet this local agent,
(10:20):
and she looked at my sister and I and you
looked at our photos and kind of looked at us,
and she said to me that, oh, you can do this,
because I was taller, and I don't know, I was
just kind of lanky and awkward, and modeling seems to
love that type. And my sister was not as tall
and much more kind of athletic. And my sister was
so disappointed at the time because she actually was aware
(10:42):
of fashion and she actually did look at magazines. And
I think the difference of two years in those teenage
years was immense. So yeah, she was a little disappointed.
And I started modeling an hour after school here and there,
local department stores like bird Eyes. I did a Girl
Scout catalog photo shoot once, and so it went from
those kinds of jobs to starting to do like make
(11:05):
up for the department store ads or jewelry. So they
started to kind of mature me very quickly. But my
mom was always around and it was you know, it
was fun. I made extra money. Yeah, I didn't really
think of it as like a career. I just thought
this is kind of fun and I'm making some money.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
And at the time, her family was living in Miami.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
We lived there from seventy nine to eighty three, really
turbulent years, like really turbulent years. I think it really
formed me as a human actually those years in Miami.
But there was a huge sort of Cuban refugee influx
as well as a Haitian refugee influx, and then a
lot of just like danger. I mean like we were
from like such a provincial northern California town and then Miami,
(11:49):
even though we were in the suburbs, it just like
all of the world's issues suddenly were like right there.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Eventually, her family moved back to California, ready for a
slower pace of life and more elbow room for Christy
and her siblings.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
We moved back to California basically, you know, within the year,
my father actually had a heart attack and he couldn't
fly anymore, so we thought better to go back to
California to be closer to family and friends, et cetera
in that time. But he actually was able to fly
again after about five years. But anyway, so we moved
back to California. I went back to the same community,
(12:25):
went to the high school that we had sort of
skipped middle school there, but then went to the high school,
and I started to think, like, oh, maybe I still
want to try the modeling thing. Maybe I'll try locally
in San Francisco. So my mom brought me to the city.
We're about like forty five minutes out of the city,
and I met a local agency there as well, and
so I started doing the same kind of thing, like
you know, ads for Imporium Capwell and Macy's and things
(12:47):
like that.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I had met a scout.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
For an agency in Paris when I was in Miami
just before leaving, and I met a scout from New
York from the Ford Agency before I left Miami, so
we had like loosely talked about Paris maybe for the
following summer. So the following summer I did go to
Paris with my mom for about a month, and I
worked maybe twice. But we had the best time together.
I think, just quality time with my mom. You know
(13:11):
when you're when you have siblings that are within a
couple of years, like you never have your mom to yourself.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So actually we had like a really really.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Nice time and we would just kind of walk arm
in arm around Paris and go on my castings and
go to cafes and go to museums and it was great.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
On their way back from Paris, Christy made a pit
stop in New York.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And that's when I had to kind of, I would say,
kind of an aha experience of like I love New
York City, Like this is where I sat in. Paris
was great and beautiful, but new York, this is nineteen
eighty four, probably gritty New York. I loved it. I
was like, I need to find a way to come
back here. This is where I want to be.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
So the next summer she made sure to make her
way back. While she was there, she had what people
in the modeling world called a go see, basically a
meeting from models to meet with photographers and see their
work and their walk, but with none other than Vogue.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
But at sixteen, I had a go see up at
Vogue at connye Nast, and the sittings editor sent me
to see Arthur Elgret, whose studio is down still down
town in the same area on Grand Street, just outside
of Soho. And I went down there with my book
and met him, and then he booked me for a
week for Vogue. And I wouldn't say it was like
(14:26):
overnight amazing, but the experience was incredible. Was like sort
of went from like not very important stuff to Vogue.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
And Arthur is an incredible photographer.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
He's probably one of the photographers that has taught me
the most, who I've spent so much time over the
years working with and traveling with. And you know, his
whole family and he knows my whole family, and so
it was like a really great relationship and partnership or
collaboration that sort of started with he and I And
so then I would come back and forth all the time.
I would go to Paris for the collections. I would
go back to school for a little while. I actually
(15:00):
left a regular high school to go to a professional
children's school, but based in California, which made me keep
going back out there. And I missed my family too.
I couldn't wait to get away. But then when I
would be away, I would be like, oh, what are
they doing? Or I know exactly what they're doing right now.
They're doing it without me. Yeah, they're doing it without me,
and so it was nice to have something to pull
me back. But the moment I was eighteen, I had
(15:23):
my apartment set up, I was ready to go, and
I went on a trip, actually turned eighteen on that trip,
and then returned to New York and then I was like,
I'm not going back.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
So when you moved in, did you move in immediately
with Naomi or did that come a little bit after
because you were roommates pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Right, Well, I moved into the apartment and it was
basically one of those old warehouse buildings down in Soho
and my agent at that time was Eileen Ford, and
her daughter, Katie Ford was married to Andre Belas and
they were newly weds and bought the floor in the building,
so they made a smaller apartment. It was still a
(16:02):
really nice, open, kind of classic so hope, but it
was I had the back and they were in the front.
My parents liked it because they were adults compared to me.
Like there was no doorman. It was a little rough
down there at night, so like that gave them peace
of mind. But I also still felt independent and I
was living on my own. I met Naomi about a
year later. Oh okay, or maybe i'd met her just before,
(16:23):
but when I met her, we hit it off. We
met in London, and she's a year younger than me,
and I had said, when when you come to New York,
I come to New York, because you need to come
to New York, but also when you come to New York,
please come stay with me. So it took her a
little while before she moved. But then she did live
with me for I want to say, about a year.
But both of us at the time were working so
much and traveling so much. We barely were there at
(16:47):
the same time. But it still felt like I still
have like memories of us going to Conrad's no So
it's so funny. She was in the Astor Place. But
there is a designer, an English designer named Jasper Ran
and his father had a really well known I don't
know if it exists anymore, but called Conorance his father's business,
and they opened them in New York for a while
(17:08):
and they were kind of like housewares, homeware but kind
of accessible but also stylish kind of thing. So there
was one in that Astor Place area, and our apartment
was down on Grand Street, so we did, you know,
let's do our shopping where we got our shower curtains
and our you know, like we stocked up our kitchen together,
like we had those kind of roommate moments, which is nice.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Those are important moments.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, cause we didn't go to college at that age,
and so there was a few instances where we replicated
to the best of our ability without having that experience,
that kind of camaraderie and dorm sort of style living
and hanging out.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, but that's an important part of it.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Was there any point then that you felt like you
were missing out on a college experience and you were
just working so much that.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
You couldn't even think about it.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
As soon as I was living on my own and like,
I'm just a model that felt differently to me almost immediately,
but I'd say a good year after, I kind of like,
I'm living in New York, I'm on my own, but
now I'm not a student. Now I'm just a model
that just didn't ever sit right with me. And so
my sister would share some of her reading less or syllabus,
and then my mom also went back to school around
(18:13):
that time. She was in her early fifties and had
gone to school for two years when she graduated from
high school before she started working, but then she'd never finished,
and so she went back. So the two of them
were doing liberal arts degrees, and so it planted to see,
like that's the degree that I want to do, and
I will do it. I'll do it. It'll and then
probably a couple of years, like I probably how long.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Is this going to last? I'll do that in a
few years, And eventually I did do it. I think.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
I think I applied to NYU when I was twenty five,
almost twenty yeah, twenty five going into my twenty sixth year,
and I started there, so I was, yeah, I was
an adult in my mind, but I was still outside
of that. I mean, it's feels like a big difference
going to college at eighteen versus going at twenty five.
At that time, I felt like it's a world away.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Well, you had lived a full lifetime in those years,
Like how quickly did it start to feel not just like, Okay,
I'm a model, but I'm a huge model.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I mean, I guess, I guess being on covers of
magazines because at that time, right the world there's magazines
were different than they are today, and news stands were everywhere,
and so even in the grocery store checkout line, right
there would be Vogue or whatever. And so I think
when I started to be on covers of magazines that
first year. I think my first Vogue cover was when
I was seventeen, for Italian Vogue and British Vogue and
(19:32):
then American Vogue, and I think.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Those were like Vogue still still does.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I would say, has that if that's the world, Vogue
is kind of it, right, So I think sometimes those
things if I was in the world as a normal
person and then liking out there, but then there I
am want to cover you know that just kind of
do you remember that first time?
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah? Oh, that's me.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, and you know it's odd because obviously you don't
look I mean it was just a teenager, so you
look very different in the images, and that took a
little while to get used to, like, and then it
also kind of felt like a double life, like that's me,
but it's not me, and I can still be a
human in the world and nobody even knows about that,
like if I'm on the street or on the subway,
and that still is my life. Today, I feel very
(20:13):
much like I can just blend and that feels like
that's a persona. Almost the big, big turning point in
my career, I would say where I felt like I arrived,
And that was not that long after moving to New
York was working for Calvin Klein. So I did the
show for Calvin and all the other New York designers
here in New York around that time. And they were
(20:34):
very different in those years, like most shows were in
showrooms in like on what fashion Avenue, seventh Avenue, that
fashion district, which I don't even know if that exists,
that it's on the sign, yeah right, yeah, everything happened
there in the industry, and so you know, you would
do Ralph and Donna and Calvin all had offices in
(20:58):
the same building, and you kind of do Everyone did
like five shows back to back, and every show was
like an hour, and you had maybe six to eight
looks for everyone. So it was like a whole different
thing than today, which is so fascinating to me. But
I so I'd worked for him before, and actually one
day I went up there to have a fitting for
(21:19):
a show. And so I went to a fitting. They
were lovely and chatty and talking, you know, excited about
this and that. And then I went to the next
fitting down the road and the phone rang and it
is my agent, So Calvin would like to talk to you.
I was like, okay, So I'm at another fitting and
Calvin gets on the phone and he says, you know,
I'd really like you to come and work for me,
like work for me, like as under contract. And I
(21:43):
was like, well, that's cool. At the time, Calvin, he
kind of worked with people in that way where one
person would kind of embody the whole brand.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Before me.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
It was Josie Brain, South African, very kind of androgynous,
beautiful but short hair, and she had been that she'd
been all the early obsession commercials with avad On and
she was kind of the Calvin face. So he kind
of invited me into that world, and so I did
an exclusive contract. It's nineteen and at the time in
(22:13):
that industry, again thinking this is going to be a
couple of years, I was sort of like, Okay, well,
I guess this is a good way to get there
and then go out, you know, because it's like the
top of what you would want to do. And the
contract itself, I mean, I had to work I think
one hundred days. But the downside was, which I didn't realize,
was such a huge sacrifices. I couldn't work for anybody else.
I couldn't work for any other designer, but I couldn't
(22:33):
work with other photographers either. In Calvin at that time
only worked with Bruce Weber, and you know, again it's
Calvin brand world and everything. You know, you were sort
of stepping into his universe. And I realized only like
a year in or so that what I liked about
the industry was all the mix and the people and
the fun and the you know, you're with Irving Penn
(22:54):
one day, and you're with you know, Stephen Maisel, and
you know, you're it's just like so much every couple
of days, you're on to the next thing. And at
eighteen and nineteen years old, that was really fun and
that was creative and exciting. But then I learned, you know,
a year later or so, like that's not I'm not
ready for that. It's too limiting. It's not fun so much.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I feel like it's so cliche, so like so much
as timing, but like you had a great end of
career opportunity at like the beginning of your career, and
like if it's not a fit, it doesn't mean it's bad,
it's just not a fit. So you've referenced a couple
of times. Did you keep saying that you just thought
it was for a couple of years. Yeah, it was
that always your mindset that you were like, oh, just
kind of get in, get out, and then I'll do Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, I mean there really was a sense that like
it's a young it's a thing for I mean, like
it shouldn't be, but that's really where it's at. It's
a young girls world. And you know, like by the
time you're in your early twenties, like you kind of
move on, not that you feel old at that point,
but that the focus and emphasis is really on youth. Yeah,
so not conscious, but I just kind of was like, well,
(23:59):
that's what this is, what this industry is. It's everything
I know about it is that. And there were a
few exceptions, of course, but I just again, I never
I never called it a career. I still hesitate to
call that a career. But now that I have a
different career, I often will be like, well, my first career,
so it's different now. But yeah, I always was thinking
this is gonna it will end fast and it will
(24:19):
end quickly. So yeah, Actually it took me going back
to school full time to really like start to really
think through what I might want to do in a
more focused way. And I kind of had these opportunities
throughout my adult life where it's like, oh, this is
an opportunity for reinvention, not like starting over, but like, ooh,
this is another part of myself that I want to explore,
(24:42):
and so I think that was exciting. I also gone
back to school, so I think the school also really
helped prepare me. I was becoming more and more confident
all the time, like being a return student as an adult,
like that first test or that first paper.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
It's scary.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
I've been out of school for eight years. It's not
been my focus self conscious and I didn't feel smart
in that way. I wasn't a great student before I
left school in the first place. And then I surprised
myself because I became like a great student. I graduated
with honors from Menoyu and I was like straight a's
and pand raised in front row and missed, didn't miss
a single assignment, and like I was so into it.
(25:18):
So that kind of surprised myself.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
I'm like, who.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
She She's been in there this whole time.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Christy found a different kind of confidence while she was
at school, but it was something that she had always
had with her. While she was modeling, Christy was known
for speaking up for other models. When we come back,
Christie talks about another time she made sure to advocate
for other women in the industry. Now back to the show.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
But one scenario kind of like the Naomi scenario where
I actually did this a couple of times with like
my Norma Ray moments where like fighting for my peers.
The model Yasmin Labon, he has been part of it. Leavon,
she was a peer and a friend, and she was
a mom in those years when we were all working
all the time. She was a couple of years older
(26:08):
than me, but she had a couple of kids. And
I remember we were in Milan. It's just different. None
of us had kids at that time and doing that job.
I think that's changed a little bit over the years too.
But I remember going to Milan and we did all
of our normal ghosties in our normal shows. And I
remember she didn't get booked for Versace, and like I
was friends with Versace's at that time, friends enough to
(26:30):
be able to say, like, you know that she just
had a baby, like you don't, don't don't make her
feel bad or if you don't want to book her
for whatever reasons, send her flowers and say see you
next season, or just be kind. And I said that
to Donna Tella Versace, and that's exactly what she did.
She send her some flowers and she but I and
I hadn't even been there myself yet, but I just thought, like,
(26:53):
that's not the feeling and the message for her to
like lose weight faster, or like she's a mom and
she's a she was married to a musician, but she
was kind of a breadwinner too at that time, because
his career in those years was up and down. And
I think for her, like she was the hard working,
like going to do it all, and I just that
didn't feel right, It didn't feel fair, and I thought
(27:14):
that the longer term damage to her, especially because I
knew that they loved her and I knew that, you know,
they valued her, they just weren't even conscious of like
the impact of something like that.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
It feels like that you mentioned this, you know, you
were sort of like being aware of your platform and
being aware of the power that you potentially had. I
feel like that laid the groundwork a little bit for
in your later years to say, like, yes, I actually
I can see a direct impact of using my voice.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Amusing I think so, I mean, I think I think
most of us want to do good, right, We want
to be better, we want to be our best selves,
right most of us. I think it's a human thing
to want to. But I don't know that we always
have the examples around us, or the opportunity or the
question like sometimes I mean, again, a lot of the
(28:02):
ones I spend time with now and I work and
travel around the world, like the question of like how
is your experience or how did that feel? Those are
questions that women aren't asked. And so if you're not
ever asked that, and you don't suddenly just ask yourself that,
you know what I mean, It's almost like it's like
a practice, like anything. And so I think I started
to test in little ways, and maybe some of these
(28:23):
are examples of that, like me put my voice out there.
Oh something changed in a positive way because I did
do that, So I have a little bit more confidence
to do that again.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Or it starts to become like a habit.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
And then in a good way, a good habit that
whenever you see something, you say something, or whenever you
see an opportunity to actually change the tone or just
the conversation, do it.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
When we come back, Christy talks about how meeting her
husband Eddie and having her daughter led to the more
permanent advocacy work she still does to this day. Christy
had just graduated from NYU when she met her now husband,
Edward Burns.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
So we met very quickly, got engaged within like a
few months, which was interesting because I had been in
like two six year relationships without marriage really being that likely.
And then we started planning our wedding, and then nine
to eleven happened, and so our wedding was supposed to
be right after nine to eleven, then like maybe early October.
I can't remember their original date, and we were going
(29:27):
to get married in Europe, and suddenly that couldn't happen,
and we broke up actually for about six months because
I think just it's hard to be going at that pace.
It was probably moving too fast anyway, and then stop
and then reset. And then also the world was like
turned over for all of us for the most part.
So we eventually got back together like six months later,
(29:49):
and then got pregnant and then got married. But our
plan had everything gone as we planned it originally.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Our daughter basically was born right on.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Time, like she kept to her schedule, and we just
had these other kind of ins and outs, ups and downs.
She knew better than us, which I think she likes
to hear now. So then it was her birth really
that changed my life to where I am today.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
But I was ready.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I was at a stage in my life I think
because I had worked and traveled and gone back to
school and after college, I even started a couple of
businesses like I kind of felt like I'm really ready now,
which is why I think we were moving so quickly,
because I think we both were at that same place
at the same time, and like, let's go, so lots.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Of options, lots of choices.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I felt very healthy and supported, and he was really
into it and really a great partner in all of it,
and I felt like so well supported and so yeah,
like I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted an
unmedicated birth, and also probably because of the yoga, like
I just felt very confident in my body, and yeah,
everything was just as I wanted it to be and perfect.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
And everything it's perfect. She gave birth to a beautiful
baby girl, a total surprise for them, and just when
she was feeling so lucky and blessed, the complication started.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And then I just didn't advance to the four stage
of labor, which can happen for a number of reasons,
but in my scenario, I had to retain a placenta,
which is very common, but there's no way to know
that during pregnancy or with any tests or scams or
anything like that. So it was actively managed. Like at
a certain point you kind of have to encourage it
to happen like it's just not you know, you can
(31:32):
get sepsis or other things if the placenta staysn't too long.
And so they actively managed and extracted the placenta and
were very vascular in our uterus and so there was
a lot of blood and I hemorrhaged. I didn't need
it like some people need a hysterectomy blood transfusion. For me,
I had probably the best case scenario of that. I
lost blood, but it was manageable and then like the
(31:55):
team worked together. It was painful because I had opted
for a medicated there wasn't time to do anything different
once things started moving, but I felt safe in the
care and the company of the people that were in
the room, and my husband was still in the room,
and our daughter was still in the room. And so
painful be as good as it could have been, I think.
But as I was trying to kind of put the
(32:18):
pieces together and understand the why and the how, and
I was so prepared and so educated, how did I
not know and how was I not expecting this scenario?
My first place that my heart went in my head
went also was what about everybody else that doesn't have
access to this kind of care, this quality of care,
at this level of care, and it turns out that
(32:40):
millions and millions and millions of girls and women do not.
And so it just was like a natural kind of
asking the question, feeling that sense of like what about
that my story and my experience again the right time,
right place, right moment, even for the issue because it
sort of becoming a bigger subject on this sort of
(33:03):
global development stage, but also here in the US around
maternal health and women and girls die every year, and
hundreds of thousands of them die every year, and you know,
millions more have lifelong disabilities or complications or can't have
other pregnancies because of it. So it just grew and grew,
and the more I learned, the more I felt like
(33:24):
I wanted to do and I felt pulled to do.
And I'm still feeling pulled and doing as much as
I can.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Not knowing where to start, Christie started with storytelling while
she was pregnant with her son. She was invited by
an aid organization called Care to visit Elsalbador to see
the work they were doing so she could potentially act
as an ambassador.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
And I think just all the pieces came together.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
I mean, like my mom's birth country, I'm pregnant, it
had the first pregnancy experience or complication postpartum, and suddenly,
like everything that we visited during the week that I
was there with CARE just fell differently. You know. I
was like, I like to say, through a mother's eyes,
because it really was I think every bumpy road, every like,
(34:10):
I just noted how few cars there were, like paved roads,
non paved roads, Like it just was like exit strategy,
you know, like what's going on? And I think that
was really the beginning of the what will I do?
So when he was a little over one, I reached
out to CARE and I said, I want to do
more on maternal health, Like let's let's I want to
(34:31):
see more work. So we went down to Peru in
South America and they showed me a project that really
sticks with me to this day because it was an
area that had had really high rates of maternal mortality
but they have those rates in like five years, which
at the time I didn't know how big of a
deal that was, but it's a huge deal. But I
wanted to go see it, and so I got to
(34:52):
see like how they were able to do that and
go into the communities, visit the clinics, see the very
kind of simple solutions that they implemented, but really like
effective and human centered and just kind and respectful and
treating people with dignity, and like simple simple things, but
just making people feel welcome in the health setting, and
(35:13):
like respecting and allowing for traditional practices to happen if
it made women feel more comfortable. Simple things. And I
came back from that experience and thought, I know what
I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I'm wanna make it. I'm make a documentary. I'm want
to make a film.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
And I've always loved documentary films. I thought one day
I'll learn how to make one. But I didn't take
the time to learn how to make one. I just
was like, I'm gonna do it. I came home and
I said to my husband, I know the thing I'm
going to make a film about. And he's like what,
And I told him.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
He was like, go for it. Do it.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
That I thought, I'll just this will be my contribution.
Let the other organizations take it from here. But of course,
when it was finished with a social issue film, it's
like this is the beginning.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
It's not the end.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
And so we launched a website to go with the film,
and rather and call the website or the campaign to
go with the film, No No Cry, we called it
Every Mother Counts. And I think that Every Mother Counts
campaign it just became what it needed to become because
people's interest and their ability to share their stories and
(37:17):
help advocate and engage in a deep way but in
a very personal way, it just became like, that's what's needed,
and that's what we're going to be. And so, like
fourteen years in now, we've we've made a lot of impact.
We've invested more than forty two million dollars in community
led organizations around the world, made lots of films highlighting
(37:39):
and amplifying models of care and individuals who are working
in the communities that they serve, like just really showing
how it should be done, how it's done well, what
should be scaled, what should be invested in, and then
using those stories and those models of care to help
make the case for policy change. So our special Spock
(38:00):
Sauces is really that it's the amplification of the stories
and the individuals and the advocating for policy change that's
going to improve not just the experience for marginalized mothers, families, communities,
but really everyone. I think even when it goes really well,
even in New York City or in the best hospitals
(38:21):
that we have, it could be better.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
It could be better, and it can be better. Maternal
mortality is on the rise, with Black women three times
more likely to die from pregnancy related causes. The World
Health Organization reported that two hundred and eighty seven thousand
women died during and following childbirth in twenty twenty. The
numbers are staggering, and organizations like Every Mother Counts are
(38:45):
vital to the worldwide effort to improve maternal health outcomes.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I want to talk about this. I want to talk
about it with as many women as I can. Because
I started talking about my experience and learning from so
many other people that they'd had similar experiences, It's like,
why are we not talking about that's why are we
not sharing our stories that could help better prepare us
for motherhood, for a parenthood.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
And you said that you've had points of reinvention in
your life, like points of renewal in your life. Do
you think you'll renew again?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I don't think it would be such a like I
think like these have all been moving in the same direction.
I see myself as being an advocate on this issue
for the rest of my days because I don't see
it being solved in my lifetime, sadly, so as long
as it takes. But I still have a lot of curiosity,
a lot of interests, are still places I want to get,
(39:35):
Like my husband's like, haven't you been everywhere?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Like Nope, I have not.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I still have experiences I want to have, and I
think I'm in that phase of parenting that like my
youngest is going to college next year, so it's not
like the empty nests or the launching or any of
those things in I hate cliches, to be honest, so
if I see when I.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Go the other way.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
But I do see myself and have been working to
it's a different phase of like what's my life look
like now? And if I'm not tied to a school schedule,
I guess the temptation would be just to dig in
and work more, which isn't healthy. But there are aspects
of the work that I do that I love to
do that I have been a little bit harder to
do because I still you know, I still am a
(40:19):
mom first, and so I come back and is everybody okay?
And then I can go off and do things. But
I think just having a little bit of more flexibility,
a little bit more space to be spontaneous. Well, speaking
of being a mom first, your daughter is now going
into modeling, like into the same fields that you had
been in. She turns her knife into her own heart.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yes, she is.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
It's hard for me and I think about this a
lot because I don't love that she's doing it.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
But I'm like, why don't I love it? Why don't
I love it?
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Early on, I would never have encouraged it because I
don't think that young people need to be out there
in the world selling clothes and products to grown people.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I just don't.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
As much as I loved my own freedom at the time,
I was kind of escaping a very different like my
I don't know what my path would have been if
I hadn't done it, and it really did give me
like a direction.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
My daughter doesn't need that same thing, but I get.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
That she wants it, and I get that she's also
interested in being more independent. She's a student first, which
I'm happy about. Like I got that through when she
told me like, I don't know, maybe four years ago.
She's like, I want to tell you something, but I
know you're not going to like it. You're not going
to approve. And I was like, what, Like, I want
a model. I was like, oh, she always hated her
picture taken as a kid. And I was like, I'm
(41:37):
never gonna have to worry about this. I'm so glad
she hates it.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I love it. I love it, she hates it.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
And suddenly you probably like sixteen or as a teenager,
like all of a sudden, cared about fashion all of
a sudden, like has the people in her universe that
are influencers that she thinks are cool or interesting or
exciting to watch. So I said to her when she
told me that, I was like, okay, okay, okay, but
when you are eighteen and when you are already in college,
(42:05):
those are my and a third one it has to
be with my agent because I don't trust anybody. I
don't trust them, any of them. And there are plenty
of great people in the industry and people that I
can be friendly with and like, I can appreciate them,
but I wouldn't want I wouldn't trust my daughter with them. Anyway,
under those conditions, she has been like dabbling. She's in
her second year, almost at the end of her second
(42:26):
year at NYU. It's in the same program that I
went to at NYU, which I didn't plan for, but
was a good fit for her also, and she's thriving
as a student. And she's a great group of girlfriends
and a great roommates, and like, they travel and they
are interesting, and they are creative, and they photograph each
other and they write poetry. I mean, they're so cool
(42:47):
and interesting. So who am I to say that, like
it's a bad thing. There's lots of good things. But
I think I've set her on a path, and I
think she understands why I was a little bit reluctant,
or why it's protection and it's love, I think with
both of my children, or I think I would be
with anyone who I love. Like the possibilities, all the
(43:07):
scenarios they flash through your mind, right, and all I
can think of is those.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
And also I grew up.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
With people in the industry who had some horrible things happen,
and so just the knowledge and my daughter is smart
and she's self possessed and all the things. But she's
still a human, she's still a young woman, she's still
vulnerable in our world today.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Sadly, what is something that at the time you thought, oh,
this is such a low point, I'm really not chuerman
to make myself. I'm going to get my way out
of this, And now in retrospect you see it as
having really launched you to who you are now, to
where you are now.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I think one of the lowest points I've had is
like when I almost didn't marry my husband. I think
I started to question, like I mentioned the nine to
eleven and like we were moving really fast, and then
we had this breakup. In that time, I was like,
wait a minute, Like this is a good guy who's
like a real person, who actually truly does love me,
(44:05):
like he's treating me well, Like what's wrong with me
that I'm like pushing this person away? And I give
this advice to a lot of women, honestly, Like sometimes
and it's common, I feel like when like the real
one or the right one comes up, you like create
all this stuff to be like that's not the right one,
you know what I mean? I really I was like
really poking holes, he's not the right one, and he was,
(44:26):
so I tell people often like especially if you're getting
that reaction, like listen to that reaction almost like why.
And I did a lot of self work during that time,
Like when we broke up. At first, I was like, oh,
I knew it wasn't the right one. I'm so relieved,
like I can't believe I let that happened. And then
like I sort of started being like, wait a minute,
wait a minute, like.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
No, I did that.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I sabotage that I just created this reason for us
to break up, and what if he is the right one?
And so I just spent time thinking about that, like
is it me? Like what's going on? And then when
I had a sense of no, I mean, I'm not
one hundred percent sure, but I think that he could
be really the right one. But let me go back
in with that awareness and that sense of responsibility on
(45:09):
my side and what I'm going to bring to the
table to figure out if it really is. And that's
what I did, and that's what's happened, and yeah, I
feel really really lucky and I could have easily blown that.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Well.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Thank you so much, Christie's so so wonderful to have
you on. Thank you so much than you.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
So nice talking to you.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Christy still works tirelessly to improve maternal health outcomes around
the world. In honor of Mother's Day, Every Mother Counts
is matching all gifts made between May ninth and May twelfth,
so be sure to donate at Everymothercounts dot org or
visit our causes page on the sheephivots website, and of
course be sure to follow them at every mother Counts
(45:51):
on Instagram. You can also find Christy there too, at
see Turlington. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots.
If you made it this far, you're a true pivoter,
so thanks for being part of this community. I hope
you enjoyed this episode, and if you did leave us
a rating, please be nice. Tell your friends about us.
(46:12):
To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram
at she pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our
newsletter where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content,
or on our website she Pivots the Podcast Talk to
You Next Week special thanks to the she Pivots team,
Executive producer Emily eda Velosic, Associate producer and social media connoisseur,
(46:35):
Hannah Cousins, Research Director, Christine Dickinson, Events and logistics coordinator
Madeline Snovak, and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock I
endorse she Pivots.
Welcome back to She Pivots.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Christy Turlington Burns.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Welcome to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
women who dared to pivot out of one career and
into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. I'm excited
to have none other than Christy Turlington on the pod today.
(00:35):
She's the CEO and founder of Every Mother Counts, a
nonprofit organization dedicated to making pregnancy and child worth safe
for everyone everywhere. A perfect way to ring in Mother's
Day this weekend. I first met Christy at dinner at
my friend Joey Wilfer's house. I was pretty starstruck to
be sitting next to Christy Turlington, but really quickly found
(00:59):
out that not only a she totally accessible, lovely and normal,
she's incredibly substantive. We all know Christy best for what
I like to call her pre pivot days. Her days
is a supermodel. In her heyday, Christy was walking for
the Top Designers alongside other iconic supermodels like Naomi Campbell,
Cindy Crawford, and Linda Evangelista. Christy is a big believer
(01:22):
in quote, right time, right place, and that theme has
helped her merge the personal and professional as she's navigated
her life. From her parents meeting serendipitously on an airplane
to being scoured at just fourteen, Christy has learned to
let the moment rise up to meet her She knew
this was true when she unexpectedly became pregnant with her
(01:42):
daughter and dealt with some scary health issues immediately following
her birth. Despite the frightening experience, Christie's eyes were open
to the lack of quality care around maternal health and
her life was changed forever. Having never thought of modeling
as her end all, be all career, In fact, she
went back to school in her late twenties, she found
(02:03):
her passion and ran with it, eventually starting Every Mother Counts.
Since its inception in twenty eleven, the organization has impacted
over one million lives and invested over forty two million
dollars in community local light organizations, and Christy shows no
sign of stopping, hoping this will be her legacy that
she's remembered for.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
My name is Christy Turlington Burns, and I am the
founder and president of Every mother counts.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
So can you tell us a little bit about growing up?
Tell us a little bit about your childhood.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I grew up in northern California, in the East Bay
area of San Francisco suburbs. I'm one of three girls
between my parents, and then I also have two siblings
from my father's first marriage who also grew up in
the same area. So I lived in that East area
suburban town was a town when I grew up, now
to the city, and then we moved to Miami, Florida,
(03:01):
actually also the suburbs of Miami, Florida, but we moved
there when my father moved for his job. He worked
for PanAm for thirty five years or so, but at
that time he had an opportunity to go to the
headquarters which were in Miami, to be the training captain
for seven forty seven. And that's when your parents met, right,
They met on a plane, but my dad didn't work
(03:22):
for PanAm at that point they met. My dad was
doing some kind of sales, some random like insurance salesman
or something, and he won a trip based on his
performance to go to Hawaii and my mom was a
flight attendant on that flight. So we tease her now.
My father's passed away a long time ago, but might
we tease her still to this day because she's very
passionate about her PanAm days and her flight attendant versus stewardess.
(03:44):
I don't know which is the correct one, but she
doesn't like one of them because she's like, it was
so much more glamorous back in the sixties when she
did it. But we always tease that she introduced herself
to my dad and was like coffee team or me.
I don't think it was quite that direct. But they
started dating, and he loved aviation and had flown recreationally,
(04:05):
like little planes are fun, and I think my mom
kind of opened up his eyes to a potential professional
career doing it, and I think in the sixties it
was sort of a big moment for commercial aviation, and
so he jumped in because of my mom, and then
he stuck with it for the rest of his career.
And she had to stop when she became pregnant with
my older sister.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Oh, that's so interesting, And your mom's El Salvadorian right exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
She immigrated to the United States late nineteen forties when
she was about eight or nine, years old. She grew
up in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
How much did her El Salvadorian culture and background have
an impact on you as a kid so much.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
My grandparents who lived in Los Angeles, they never spoke
great English, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
They lived in a part of I would say East La.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
My mom always corrects up, but it is East La
technically because it's a sprawl of a city, and their
neighborhood was very diverse. But I would say a lot
of more sort of South American or Central American communities
had sort of reconnected there in their house. It would
have felt very much like another place, Like I felt
like the music and the culture of El Salvador where
(05:13):
we grew up in the suburbs, not at all. But
my mom always spoke Spanish with her sibling and her parents,
and we spent a lot of time with her family
in Los Angeles but also in El Salvador as small kids.
So yeah, I mean my mom didn't. She's still to
this day. It's not a big cook like of bringing
those kind of cultures, but my grandmother very much was.
So when she would come and live with us for
(05:35):
long periods of time, she would always be making like
more traditional food, which I love. That's like my first
connection to that part of the world is through my
stomach in the most like visceral way, Like she just
like all the smells and all the tastes.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And I get to.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Travel around that part of the world quite a lot
through every Mother Counts now mostly in Guatemala, but sometimes
all Salvador. And there's just a smell when I'm in
that part, like the humidity, the climate, the trees, the
just everything about it is very i don't know, basic,
like all my senses kind of wake up in it.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Yeah, it like takes you back. Yeah, it's feeling because
like home. So what did you think even as you
were moving around? Like do you have thoughts about like
what you were going to be when you grew up?
Like you were pretty you're pretty intellectual as a kid.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I don't know that I knew what I wanted to be.
I knew that I wanted to travel because I loved
to travel. And I love that my parents both had
had these incredible experiences where they'd been everywhere, and they
each had independently photographs of them my dad in you know,
at the beach in Lebanon, or my mom my.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Mom did this. Pandem used to have this around the
World pass and so she took both of her parents
separately on these around the world while she was working,
but they could stop and spend time, and so she
has pictures from Egypt and you know, just like all
over the world.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And so I think growing up with that, and also
having my experiences going down to Fall Salvador, I felt like,
I definitely want to do more of that. I want
to see more of the world. I liked reading a
lot already by the time I was in middle school,
and so I had some fantasies about maybe being a writer.
I think also for the same reason I love travel.
I think reading was like that way to transport yourself
(07:14):
and experience something very different, and so I thought, wow,
that's something that I really enjoyed. So maybe that would
be a cool thing one day to be able to
do and transport someone else. I have written a bit
over the years, not the kind of writing that I imagine
probably then, but there's still time maybe.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
But Christy didn't have much time to dream big dreams
as a child. She was only fourteen when she started modeling.
After being scattered horseback riding.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
My sister and I we rode horses, not in the
way that my daughter eventually did. We rode western, which
most people are like, what is that so different saddle,
And there we did compete writing Western. I eventually even
did a little bit of what's called raining or barrel
racing kind of Western. We did that growing up. And
(08:01):
we had a teacher actually at our lower school when
we were young that had a little barn and her
daughter rode, and so we ended up spending time there
and we would clean stalls and get free lessons from
her and sometimes got to compete, and then fell in
love with it. And my dad was from a much
more rural place in northern California than we were from,
and he kind of loved that whole sort of Americana
(08:24):
Western like he loved the whole thing, like John Wayne,
like all of that stuff. And so I think vicariously
through us, he got kind of interested in it too.
So by the time we moved to Florida, I think
part of our moving across the country was we'll find
that for you to do again. So we both had
a horse, and we rode competitively, and we rode after school,
and so that was sort of my life, my everyday
(08:46):
life as much as possible. Even most of my friend
group was around that until I started modeling. So one
day we were at our barn and my mom was
a saint and would drive us kind of a far
away actually, like a hour both ways and sit and
wait for us, and so she was sort of waiting
for us to do our lesson. And while we were there,
there was a photographer who was taking photographs of these
(09:09):
twins who actually went to our school.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Coincidentally, it was completely a.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Fluke, but they were actors and had done like a
lot of TV commercials and stuff. So they were doing
just stock photos with this photographer and in between the shots,
he would come over to the ring and he'd watch
us go in circles. And at the end of it,
he came to our mom and he said, oh, you know,
I'd love to take photos of your daughters, And strangely,
my mom was like, okay, well you put it that.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Way, yeah, like it's kind of weird lurking.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And then he want to say pictures of us, but
I don't DIFFI But so we didn't do it that weekend,
but I think a few weeks or sometime not too
long after, we spent a Saturday afternoon with my mom again,
but my sister and we brought our own clothes and
we did a test shoot independently. We weren't together in
the photos, and the photographer had a wife who was
(09:58):
a makeup artist, so she made us up, and apart
from our own clothes, it felt glamorous of whatever I
would have known glamor to be at the time, because
I really was not I didn't even look at seventeen magazine,
let alone Vogue or something more substantial. And so those
photos were then sent to a local agent, and we
were invited to come in to meet this local agent,
(10:20):
and she looked at my sister and I and you
looked at our photos and kind of looked at us,
and she said to me that, oh, you can do this,
because I was taller, and I don't know, I was
just kind of lanky and awkward, and modeling seems to
love that type. And my sister was not as tall
and much more kind of athletic. And my sister was
so disappointed at the time because she actually was aware
(10:42):
of fashion and she actually did look at magazines. And
I think the difference of two years in those teenage
years was immense. So yeah, she was a little disappointed.
And I started modeling an hour after school here and there,
local department stores like bird Eyes. I did a Girl
Scout catalog photo shoot once, and so it went from
those kinds of jobs to starting to do like make
(11:05):
up for the department store ads or jewelry. So they
started to kind of mature me very quickly. But my
mom was always around and it was you know, it
was fun. I made extra money. Yeah, I didn't really
think of it as like a career. I just thought
this is kind of fun and I'm making some money.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
And at the time, her family was living in Miami.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
We lived there from seventy nine to eighty three, really
turbulent years, like really turbulent years. I think it really
formed me as a human actually those years in Miami.
But there was a huge sort of Cuban refugee influx
as well as a Haitian refugee influx, and then a
lot of just like danger. I mean like we were
from like such a provincial northern California town and then Miami,
(11:49):
even though we were in the suburbs, it just like
all of the world's issues suddenly were like right there.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Eventually, her family moved back to California, ready for a
slower pace of life and more elbow room for Christy
and her siblings.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
We moved back to California basically, you know, within the year,
my father actually had a heart attack and he couldn't
fly anymore, so we thought better to go back to
California to be closer to family and friends, et cetera
in that time. But he actually was able to fly
again after about five years. But anyway, so we moved
back to California. I went back to the same community,
(12:25):
went to the high school that we had sort of
skipped middle school there, but then went to the high school,
and I started to think, like, oh, maybe I still
want to try the modeling thing. Maybe I'll try locally
in San Francisco. So my mom brought me to the city.
We're about like forty five minutes out of the city,
and I met a local agency there as well, and
so I started doing the same kind of thing, like
you know, ads for Imporium Capwell and Macy's and things
(12:47):
like that.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I had met a scout.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
For an agency in Paris when I was in Miami
just before leaving, and I met a scout from New
York from the Ford Agency before I left Miami, so
we had like loosely talked about Paris maybe for the
following summer. So the following summer I did go to
Paris with my mom for about a month, and I
worked maybe twice. But we had the best time together.
I think, just quality time with my mom. You know
(13:11):
when you're when you have siblings that are within a
couple of years, like you never have your mom to yourself.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So actually we had like a really really.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Nice time and we would just kind of walk arm
in arm around Paris and go on my castings and
go to cafes and go to museums and it was great.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
On their way back from Paris, Christy made a pit
stop in New York.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And that's when I had to kind of, I would say,
kind of an aha experience of like I love New
York City, Like this is where I sat in. Paris
was great and beautiful, but new York, this is nineteen
eighty four, probably gritty New York. I loved it. I
was like, I need to find a way to come
back here. This is where I want to be.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
So the next summer she made sure to make her
way back. While she was there, she had what people
in the modeling world called a go see, basically a
meeting from models to meet with photographers and see their
work and their walk, but with none other than Vogue.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
But at sixteen, I had a go see up at
Vogue at connye Nast, and the sittings editor sent me
to see Arthur Elgret, whose studio is down still down
town in the same area on Grand Street, just outside
of Soho. And I went down there with my book
and met him, and then he booked me for a
week for Vogue. And I wouldn't say it was like
(14:26):
overnight amazing, but the experience was incredible. Was like sort
of went from like not very important stuff to Vogue.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
And Arthur is an incredible photographer.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
He's probably one of the photographers that has taught me
the most, who I've spent so much time over the
years working with and traveling with. And you know, his
whole family and he knows my whole family, and so
it was like a really great relationship and partnership or
collaboration that sort of started with he and I And
so then I would come back and forth all the time.
I would go to Paris for the collections. I would
go back to school for a little while. I actually
(15:00):
left a regular high school to go to a professional
children's school, but based in California, which made me keep
going back out there. And I missed my family too.
I couldn't wait to get away. But then when I
would be away, I would be like, oh, what are
they doing? Or I know exactly what they're doing right now.
They're doing it without me. Yeah, they're doing it without me,
and so it was nice to have something to pull
me back. But the moment I was eighteen, I had
(15:23):
my apartment set up, I was ready to go, and
I went on a trip, actually turned eighteen on that trip,
and then returned to New York and then I was like,
I'm not going back.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
So when you moved in, did you move in immediately
with Naomi or did that come a little bit after
because you were roommates pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Right, Well, I moved into the apartment and it was
basically one of those old warehouse buildings down in Soho
and my agent at that time was Eileen Ford, and
her daughter, Katie Ford was married to Andre Belas and
they were newly weds and bought the floor in the building,
so they made a smaller apartment. It was still a
(16:02):
really nice, open, kind of classic so hope, but it
was I had the back and they were in the front.
My parents liked it because they were adults compared to me.
Like there was no doorman. It was a little rough
down there at night, so like that gave them peace
of mind. But I also still felt independent and I
was living on my own. I met Naomi about a
year later. Oh okay, or maybe i'd met her just before,
(16:23):
but when I met her, we hit it off. We
met in London, and she's a year younger than me,
and I had said, when when you come to New York,
I come to New York, because you need to come
to New York, but also when you come to New York,
please come stay with me. So it took her a
little while before she moved. But then she did live
with me for I want to say, about a year.
But both of us at the time were working so
much and traveling so much. We barely were there at
(16:47):
the same time. But it still felt like I still
have like memories of us going to Conrad's no So
it's so funny. She was in the Astor Place. But
there is a designer, an English designer named Jasper Ran
and his father had a really well known I don't
know if it exists anymore, but called Conorance his father's business,
and they opened them in New York for a while
(17:08):
and they were kind of like housewares, homeware but kind
of accessible but also stylish kind of thing. So there
was one in that Astor Place area, and our apartment
was down on Grand Street, so we did, you know,
let's do our shopping where we got our shower curtains
and our you know, like we stocked up our kitchen together,
like we had those kind of roommate moments, which is nice.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Those are important moments.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, cause we didn't go to college at that age,
and so there was a few instances where we replicated
to the best of our ability without having that experience,
that kind of camaraderie and dorm sort of style living
and hanging out.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, but that's an important part of it.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Was there any point then that you felt like you
were missing out on a college experience and you were
just working so much that.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
You couldn't even think about it.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
As soon as I was living on my own and like,
I'm just a model that felt differently to me almost immediately,
but I'd say a good year after, I kind of like,
I'm living in New York, I'm on my own, but
now I'm not a student. Now I'm just a model
that just didn't ever sit right with me. And so
my sister would share some of her reading less or syllabus,
and then my mom also went back to school around
(18:13):
that time. She was in her early fifties and had
gone to school for two years when she graduated from
high school before she started working, but then she'd never finished,
and so she went back. So the two of them
were doing liberal arts degrees, and so it planted to see,
like that's the degree that I want to do, and
I will do it. I'll do it. It'll and then
probably a couple of years, like I probably how long.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Is this going to last? I'll do that in a
few years, And eventually I did do it. I think.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
I think I applied to NYU when I was twenty five,
almost twenty yeah, twenty five going into my twenty sixth year,
and I started there, so I was, yeah, I was
an adult in my mind, but I was still outside
of that. I mean, it's feels like a big difference
going to college at eighteen versus going at twenty five.
At that time, I felt like it's a world away.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Well, you had lived a full lifetime in those years,
Like how quickly did it start to feel not just like, Okay,
I'm a model, but I'm a huge model.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I mean, I guess, I guess being on covers of
magazines because at that time, right the world there's magazines
were different than they are today, and news stands were everywhere,
and so even in the grocery store checkout line, right
there would be Vogue or whatever. And so I think
when I started to be on covers of magazines that
first year. I think my first Vogue cover was when
I was seventeen, for Italian Vogue and British Vogue and
(19:32):
then American Vogue, and I think.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Those were like Vogue still still does.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I would say, has that if that's the world, Vogue
is kind of it, right, So I think sometimes those
things if I was in the world as a normal
person and then liking out there, but then there I
am want to cover you know that just kind of
do you remember that first time?
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah? Oh, that's me.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, and you know it's odd because obviously you don't
look I mean it was just a teenager, so you
look very different in the images, and that took a
little while to get used to, like, and then it
also kind of felt like a double life, like that's me,
but it's not me, and I can still be a
human in the world and nobody even knows about that,
like if I'm on the street or on the subway,
and that still is my life. Today, I feel very
(20:13):
much like I can just blend and that feels like
that's a persona. Almost the big, big turning point in
my career, I would say where I felt like I arrived,
And that was not that long after moving to New
York was working for Calvin Klein. So I did the
show for Calvin and all the other New York designers
here in New York around that time. And they were
(20:34):
very different in those years, like most shows were in
showrooms in like on what fashion Avenue, seventh Avenue, that
fashion district, which I don't even know if that exists,
that it's on the sign, yeah right, yeah, everything happened
there in the industry, and so you know, you would
do Ralph and Donna and Calvin all had offices in
(20:58):
the same building, and you kind of do Everyone did
like five shows back to back, and every show was
like an hour, and you had maybe six to eight
looks for everyone. So it was like a whole different
thing than today, which is so fascinating to me. But
I so I'd worked for him before, and actually one
day I went up there to have a fitting for
(21:19):
a show. And so I went to a fitting. They
were lovely and chatty and talking, you know, excited about
this and that. And then I went to the next
fitting down the road and the phone rang and it
is my agent, So Calvin would like to talk to you.
I was like, okay, So I'm at another fitting and
Calvin gets on the phone and he says, you know,
I'd really like you to come and work for me,
like work for me, like as under contract. And I
(21:43):
was like, well, that's cool. At the time, Calvin, he
kind of worked with people in that way where one
person would kind of embody the whole brand.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Before me.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
It was Josie Brain, South African, very kind of androgynous,
beautiful but short hair, and she had been that she'd
been all the early obsession commercials with avad On and
she was kind of the Calvin face. So he kind
of invited me into that world, and so I did
an exclusive contract. It's nineteen and at the time in
(22:13):
that industry, again thinking this is going to be a
couple of years, I was sort of like, Okay, well,
I guess this is a good way to get there
and then go out, you know, because it's like the
top of what you would want to do. And the
contract itself, I mean, I had to work I think
one hundred days. But the downside was, which I didn't realize,
was such a huge sacrifices. I couldn't work for anybody else.
I couldn't work for any other designer, but I couldn't
(22:33):
work with other photographers either. In Calvin at that time
only worked with Bruce Weber, and you know, again it's
Calvin brand world and everything. You know, you were sort
of stepping into his universe. And I realized only like
a year in or so that what I liked about
the industry was all the mix and the people and
the fun and the you know, you're with Irving Penn
(22:54):
one day, and you're with you know, Stephen Maisel, and
you know, you're it's just like so much every couple
of days, you're on to the next thing. And at
eighteen and nineteen years old, that was really fun and
that was creative and exciting. But then I learned, you know,
a year later or so, like that's not I'm not
ready for that. It's too limiting. It's not fun so much.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I feel like it's so cliche, so like so much
as timing, but like you had a great end of
career opportunity at like the beginning of your career, and
like if it's not a fit, it doesn't mean it's bad,
it's just not a fit. So you've referenced a couple
of times. Did you keep saying that you just thought
it was for a couple of years. Yeah, it was
that always your mindset that you were like, oh, just
kind of get in, get out, and then I'll do Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, I mean there really was a sense that like
it's a young it's a thing for I mean, like
it shouldn't be, but that's really where it's at. It's
a young girls world. And you know, like by the
time you're in your early twenties, like you kind of
move on, not that you feel old at that point,
but that the focus and emphasis is really on youth. Yeah,
so not conscious, but I just kind of was like, well,
(23:59):
that's what this is, what this industry is. It's everything
I know about it is that. And there were a
few exceptions, of course, but I just again, I never
I never called it a career. I still hesitate to
call that a career. But now that I have a
different career, I often will be like, well, my first career,
so it's different now. But yeah, I always was thinking
this is gonna it will end fast and it will
(24:19):
end quickly. So yeah, Actually it took me going back
to school full time to really like start to really
think through what I might want to do in a
more focused way. And I kind of had these opportunities
throughout my adult life where it's like, oh, this is
an opportunity for reinvention, not like starting over, but like, ooh,
this is another part of myself that I want to explore,
(24:42):
and so I think that was exciting. I also gone
back to school, so I think the school also really
helped prepare me. I was becoming more and more confident
all the time, like being a return student as an adult,
like that first test or that first paper.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
It's scary.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
I've been out of school for eight years. It's not
been my focus self conscious and I didn't feel smart
in that way. I wasn't a great student before I
left school in the first place. And then I surprised
myself because I became like a great student. I graduated
with honors from Menoyu and I was like straight a's
and pand raised in front row and missed, didn't miss
a single assignment, and like I was so into it.
(25:18):
So that kind of surprised myself.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
I'm like, who.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
She She's been in there this whole time.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Christy found a different kind of confidence while she was
at school, but it was something that she had always
had with her. While she was modeling, Christy was known
for speaking up for other models. When we come back,
Christie talks about another time she made sure to advocate
for other women in the industry. Now back to the show.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
But one scenario kind of like the Naomi scenario where
I actually did this a couple of times with like
my Norma Ray moments where like fighting for my peers.
The model Yasmin Labon, he has been part of it. Leavon,
she was a peer and a friend, and she was
a mom in those years when we were all working
all the time. She was a couple of years older
(26:08):
than me, but she had a couple of kids. And
I remember we were in Milan. It's just different. None
of us had kids at that time and doing that job.
I think that's changed a little bit over the years too.
But I remember going to Milan and we did all
of our normal ghosties in our normal shows. And I
remember she didn't get booked for Versace, and like I
was friends with Versace's at that time, friends enough to
(26:30):
be able to say, like, you know that she just
had a baby, like you don't, don't don't make her
feel bad or if you don't want to book her
for whatever reasons, send her flowers and say see you
next season, or just be kind. And I said that
to Donna Tella Versace, and that's exactly what she did.
She send her some flowers and she but I and
I hadn't even been there myself yet, but I just thought, like,
(26:53):
that's not the feeling and the message for her to
like lose weight faster, or like she's a mom and
she's a she was married to a musician, but she
was kind of a breadwinner too at that time, because
his career in those years was up and down. And
I think for her, like she was the hard working,
like going to do it all, and I just that
didn't feel right, It didn't feel fair, and I thought
(27:14):
that the longer term damage to her, especially because I
knew that they loved her and I knew that, you know,
they valued her, they just weren't even conscious of like
the impact of something like that.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
It feels like that you mentioned this, you know, you
were sort of like being aware of your platform and
being aware of the power that you potentially had. I
feel like that laid the groundwork a little bit for
in your later years to say, like, yes, I actually
I can see a direct impact of using my voice.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Amusing I think so, I mean, I think I think
most of us want to do good, right, We want
to be better, we want to be our best selves,
right most of us. I think it's a human thing
to want to. But I don't know that we always
have the examples around us, or the opportunity or the
question like sometimes I mean, again, a lot of the
(28:02):
ones I spend time with now and I work and
travel around the world, like the question of like how
is your experience or how did that feel? Those are
questions that women aren't asked. And so if you're not
ever asked that, and you don't suddenly just ask yourself that,
you know what I mean, It's almost like it's like
a practice, like anything. And so I think I started
to test in little ways, and maybe some of these
(28:23):
are examples of that, like me put my voice out there.
Oh something changed in a positive way because I did
do that, So I have a little bit more confidence
to do that again.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Or it starts to become like a habit.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
And then in a good way, a good habit that
whenever you see something, you say something, or whenever you
see an opportunity to actually change the tone or just
the conversation, do it.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
When we come back, Christy talks about how meeting her
husband Eddie and having her daughter led to the more
permanent advocacy work she still does to this day. Christy
had just graduated from NYU when she met her now husband,
Edward Burns.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
So we met very quickly, got engaged within like a
few months, which was interesting because I had been in
like two six year relationships without marriage really being that likely.
And then we started planning our wedding, and then nine
to eleven happened, and so our wedding was supposed to
be right after nine to eleven, then like maybe early October.
I can't remember their original date, and we were going
(29:27):
to get married in Europe, and suddenly that couldn't happen,
and we broke up actually for about six months because
I think just it's hard to be going at that pace.
It was probably moving too fast anyway, and then stop
and then reset. And then also the world was like
turned over for all of us for the most part.
So we eventually got back together like six months later,
(29:49):
and then got pregnant and then got married. But our
plan had everything gone as we planned it originally.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Our daughter basically was born right on.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Time, like she kept to her schedule, and we just
had these other kind of ins and outs, ups and downs.
She knew better than us, which I think she likes
to hear now. So then it was her birth really
that changed my life to where I am today.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
But I was ready.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I was at a stage in my life I think
because I had worked and traveled and gone back to
school and after college, I even started a couple of
businesses like I kind of felt like I'm really ready now,
which is why I think we were moving so quickly,
because I think we both were at that same place
at the same time, and like, let's go, so lots.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Of options, lots of choices.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I felt very healthy and supported, and he was really
into it and really a great partner in all of it,
and I felt like so well supported and so yeah,
like I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted an
unmedicated birth, and also probably because of the yoga, like
I just felt very confident in my body, and yeah,
everything was just as I wanted it to be and perfect.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
And everything it's perfect. She gave birth to a beautiful
baby girl, a total surprise for them, and just when
she was feeling so lucky and blessed, the complication started.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And then I just didn't advance to the four stage
of labor, which can happen for a number of reasons,
but in my scenario, I had to retain a placenta,
which is very common, but there's no way to know
that during pregnancy or with any tests or scams or
anything like that. So it was actively managed. Like at
a certain point you kind of have to encourage it
to happen like it's just not you know, you can
(31:32):
get sepsis or other things if the placenta staysn't too long.
And so they actively managed and extracted the placenta and
were very vascular in our uterus and so there was
a lot of blood and I hemorrhaged. I didn't need
it like some people need a hysterectomy blood transfusion. For me,
I had probably the best case scenario of that. I
lost blood, but it was manageable and then like the
(31:55):
team worked together. It was painful because I had opted
for a medicated there wasn't time to do anything different
once things started moving, but I felt safe in the
care and the company of the people that were in
the room, and my husband was still in the room,
and our daughter was still in the room. And so
painful be as good as it could have been, I think.
But as I was trying to kind of put the
(32:18):
pieces together and understand the why and the how, and
I was so prepared and so educated, how did I
not know and how was I not expecting this scenario?
My first place that my heart went in my head
went also was what about everybody else that doesn't have
access to this kind of care, this quality of care,
at this level of care, and it turns out that
(32:40):
millions and millions and millions of girls and women do not.
And so it just was like a natural kind of
asking the question, feeling that sense of like what about
that my story and my experience again the right time,
right place, right moment, even for the issue because it
sort of becoming a bigger subject on this sort of
(33:03):
global development stage, but also here in the US around
maternal health and women and girls die every year, and
hundreds of thousands of them die every year, and you know,
millions more have lifelong disabilities or complications or can't have
other pregnancies because of it. So it just grew and grew,
and the more I learned, the more I felt like
(33:24):
I wanted to do and I felt pulled to do.
And I'm still feeling pulled and doing as much as
I can.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Not knowing where to start, Christie started with storytelling while
she was pregnant with her son. She was invited by
an aid organization called Care to visit Elsalbador to see
the work they were doing so she could potentially act
as an ambassador.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
And I think just all the pieces came together.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
I mean, like my mom's birth country, I'm pregnant, it
had the first pregnancy experience or complication postpartum, and suddenly,
like everything that we visited during the week that I
was there with CARE just fell differently. You know. I
was like, I like to say, through a mother's eyes,
because it really was I think every bumpy road, every like,
(34:10):
I just noted how few cars there were, like paved roads,
non paved roads, Like it just was like exit strategy,
you know, like what's going on? And I think that
was really the beginning of the what will I do?
So when he was a little over one, I reached
out to CARE and I said, I want to do
more on maternal health, Like let's let's I want to
(34:31):
see more work. So we went down to Peru in
South America and they showed me a project that really
sticks with me to this day because it was an
area that had had really high rates of maternal mortality
but they have those rates in like five years, which
at the time I didn't know how big of a
deal that was, but it's a huge deal. But I
wanted to go see it, and so I got to
(34:52):
see like how they were able to do that and
go into the communities, visit the clinics, see the very
kind of simple solutions that they implemented, but really like
effective and human centered and just kind and respectful and
treating people with dignity, and like simple simple things, but
just making people feel welcome in the health setting, and
(35:13):
like respecting and allowing for traditional practices to happen if
it made women feel more comfortable. Simple things. And I
came back from that experience and thought, I know what
I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I'm wanna make it. I'm make a documentary. I'm want
to make a film.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
And I've always loved documentary films. I thought one day
I'll learn how to make one. But I didn't take
the time to learn how to make one. I just
was like, I'm gonna do it. I came home and
I said to my husband, I know the thing I'm
going to make a film about. And he's like what,
And I told him.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
He was like, go for it. Do it.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
That I thought, I'll just this will be my contribution.
Let the other organizations take it from here. But of course,
when it was finished with a social issue film, it's
like this is the beginning.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
It's not the end.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
And so we launched a website to go with the film,
and rather and call the website or the campaign to
go with the film, No No Cry, we called it
Every Mother Counts. And I think that Every Mother Counts
campaign it just became what it needed to become because
people's interest and their ability to share their stories and
(37:17):
help advocate and engage in a deep way but in
a very personal way, it just became like, that's what's needed,
and that's what we're going to be. And so, like
fourteen years in now, we've we've made a lot of impact.
We've invested more than forty two million dollars in community
led organizations around the world, made lots of films highlighting
(37:39):
and amplifying models of care and individuals who are working
in the communities that they serve, like just really showing
how it should be done, how it's done well, what
should be scaled, what should be invested in, and then
using those stories and those models of care to help
make the case for policy change. So our special Spock
(38:00):
Sauces is really that it's the amplification of the stories
and the individuals and the advocating for policy change that's
going to improve not just the experience for marginalized mothers, families, communities,
but really everyone. I think even when it goes really well,
even in New York City or in the best hospitals
(38:21):
that we have, it could be better.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
It could be better, and it can be better. Maternal
mortality is on the rise, with Black women three times
more likely to die from pregnancy related causes. The World
Health Organization reported that two hundred and eighty seven thousand
women died during and following childbirth in twenty twenty. The
numbers are staggering, and organizations like Every Mother Counts are
(38:45):
vital to the worldwide effort to improve maternal health outcomes.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I want to talk about this. I want to talk
about it with as many women as I can. Because
I started talking about my experience and learning from so
many other people that they'd had similar experiences, It's like,
why are we not talking about that's why are we
not sharing our stories that could help better prepare us
for motherhood, for a parenthood.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
And you said that you've had points of reinvention in
your life, like points of renewal in your life. Do
you think you'll renew again?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I don't think it would be such a like I
think like these have all been moving in the same direction.
I see myself as being an advocate on this issue
for the rest of my days because I don't see
it being solved in my lifetime, sadly, so as long
as it takes. But I still have a lot of curiosity,
a lot of interests, are still places I want to get,
(39:35):
Like my husband's like, haven't you been everywhere?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Like Nope, I have not.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I still have experiences I want to have, and I
think I'm in that phase of parenting that like my
youngest is going to college next year, so it's not
like the empty nests or the launching or any of
those things in I hate cliches, to be honest, so
if I see when I.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Go the other way.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
But I do see myself and have been working to
it's a different phase of like what's my life look
like now? And if I'm not tied to a school schedule,
I guess the temptation would be just to dig in
and work more, which isn't healthy. But there are aspects
of the work that I do that I love to
do that I have been a little bit harder to
do because I still you know, I still am a
(40:19):
mom first, and so I come back and is everybody okay?
And then I can go off and do things. But
I think just having a little bit of more flexibility,
a little bit more space to be spontaneous. Well, speaking
of being a mom first, your daughter is now going
into modeling, like into the same fields that you had
been in. She turns her knife into her own heart.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yes, she is.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
It's hard for me and I think about this a
lot because I don't love that she's doing it.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
But I'm like, why don't I love it? Why don't
I love it?
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Early on, I would never have encouraged it because I
don't think that young people need to be out there
in the world selling clothes and products to grown people.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I just don't.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
As much as I loved my own freedom at the time,
I was kind of escaping a very different like my
I don't know what my path would have been if
I hadn't done it, and it really did give me
like a direction.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
My daughter doesn't need that same thing, but I get.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
That she wants it, and I get that she's also
interested in being more independent. She's a student first, which
I'm happy about. Like I got that through when she
told me like, I don't know, maybe four years ago.
She's like, I want to tell you something, but I
know you're not going to like it. You're not going
to approve. And I was like, what, Like, I want
a model. I was like, oh, she always hated her
picture taken as a kid. And I was like, I'm
(41:37):
never gonna have to worry about this. I'm so glad
she hates it.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I love it. I love it, she hates it.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
And suddenly you probably like sixteen or as a teenager,
like all of a sudden, cared about fashion all of
a sudden, like has the people in her universe that
are influencers that she thinks are cool or interesting or
exciting to watch. So I said to her when she
told me that, I was like, okay, okay, okay, but
when you are eighteen and when you are already in college,
(42:05):
those are my and a third one it has to
be with my agent because I don't trust anybody. I
don't trust them, any of them. And there are plenty
of great people in the industry and people that I
can be friendly with and like, I can appreciate them,
but I wouldn't want I wouldn't trust my daughter with them. Anyway,
under those conditions, she has been like dabbling. She's in
her second year, almost at the end of her second
(42:26):
year at NYU. It's in the same program that I
went to at NYU, which I didn't plan for, but
was a good fit for her also, and she's thriving
as a student. And she's a great group of girlfriends
and a great roommates, and like, they travel and they
are interesting, and they are creative, and they photograph each
other and they write poetry. I mean, they're so cool
(42:47):
and interesting. So who am I to say that, like
it's a bad thing. There's lots of good things. But
I think I've set her on a path, and I
think she understands why I was a little bit reluctant,
or why it's protection and it's love, I think with
both of my children, or I think I would be
with anyone who I love. Like the possibilities, all the
(43:07):
scenarios they flash through your mind, right, and all I
can think of is those.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
And also I grew up.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
With people in the industry who had some horrible things happen,
and so just the knowledge and my daughter is smart
and she's self possessed and all the things. But she's
still a human, she's still a young woman, she's still
vulnerable in our world today.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Sadly, what is something that at the time you thought, oh,
this is such a low point, I'm really not chuerman
to make myself. I'm going to get my way out
of this, And now in retrospect you see it as
having really launched you to who you are now, to
where you are now.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I think one of the lowest points I've had is
like when I almost didn't marry my husband. I think
I started to question, like I mentioned the nine to
eleven and like we were moving really fast, and then
we had this breakup. In that time, I was like,
wait a minute, Like this is a good guy who's
like a real person, who actually truly does love me,
(44:05):
like he's treating me well, Like what's wrong with me
that I'm like pushing this person away? And I give
this advice to a lot of women, honestly, Like sometimes
and it's common, I feel like when like the real
one or the right one comes up, you like create
all this stuff to be like that's not the right one,
you know what I mean? I really I was like
really poking holes, he's not the right one, and he was,
(44:26):
so I tell people often like especially if you're getting
that reaction, like listen to that reaction almost like why.
And I did a lot of self work during that time,
Like when we broke up. At first, I was like, oh,
I knew it wasn't the right one. I'm so relieved,
like I can't believe I let that happened. And then
like I sort of started being like, wait a minute,
wait a minute, like.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
No, I did that.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I sabotage that I just created this reason for us
to break up, and what if he is the right one?
And so I just spent time thinking about that, like
is it me? Like what's going on? And then when
I had a sense of no, I mean, I'm not
one hundred percent sure, but I think that he could
be really the right one. But let me go back
in with that awareness and that sense of responsibility on
(45:09):
my side and what I'm going to bring to the
table to figure out if it really is. And that's
what I did, and that's what's happened, and yeah, I
feel really really lucky and I could have easily blown that.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Well.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Thank you so much, Christie's so so wonderful to have
you on. Thank you so much than you.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
So nice talking to you.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Christy still works tirelessly to improve maternal health outcomes around
the world. In honor of Mother's Day, Every Mother Counts
is matching all gifts made between May ninth and May twelfth,
so be sure to donate at Everymothercounts dot org or
visit our causes page on the sheephivots website, and of
course be sure to follow them at every mother Counts
(45:51):
on Instagram. You can also find Christy there too, at
see Turlington. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots.
If you made it this far, you're a true pivoter,
so thanks for being part of this community. I hope
you enjoyed this episode, and if you did leave us
a rating, please be nice. Tell your friends about us.
(46:12):
To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram
at she pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our
newsletter where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content,
or on our website she Pivots the Podcast Talk to
You Next Week special thanks to the she Pivots team,
Executive producer Emily eda Velosic, Associate producer and social media connoisseur,
(46:35):
Hannah Cousins, Research Director, Christine Dickinson, Events and logistics coordinator
Madeline Snovak, and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock I
endorse she Pivots.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.