Girl Talk
September 22nd, 2006 by Lola
For all of us struggling young chickadees who have ever gotten down on ourselves, it may come as some surprise that Meredith Vieira was once told that she didn’t “have what it takes.” I found out this tidbit from Today’s newest “It” Lady at Newsweek’s second annual Women & Leadership Conference this past Tuesday. Vieira patted my shoulder as she told me, in the way that only a super-successful person can, to be true to myself day after day and not to give up on “the things that make you you.” Noted, Ms. Vieira. Noted indeed.
Only an hour before, Vieira, fresh from her morning broadcast, swooped into the American Museum of Natural History’s Kaufmann Theatre wearing a crisp maroon blazer, a knee-length ruffled skirt and some seriously high patent leather pumps. She was to moderate a panel called “How to Cultivate the Next Generation of Women Leaders,” which included five formidable panelists – Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University; Anne Stevens, recently retired executive at Ford; NASA Chief Financial Officer Gwen Sykes (who, ironically, nearly failed math in high school); Google bigwig Marissa Mayer, and Telemundo’s Maria Celeste Arraras.
Greeting all the panelists with the familiarity and cheerfulness that is ingrained in a woman who can coherently greet millions of viewers at 7 a.m., Vieira led a lively discussion encompassing all five women’s unique leadership styles, personal role models, lessons learned while climbing the corporate ladder—in a skirt, no less—and the fact that the feminist movement is, in fact, not yet finished.
While all of the panelists spoke from the heart, exhibiting why they have risen to the top, the admittedly outspoken and “odd” Simmons trumpeted the strongest call to action of the morning. “I am desperately seeking to be different than what came before,” she said, “We owe it to [the next generation] to show them what the options are. We’ve got to think of leadership as always changing in order for our country to thrive.”
Energized by the panel, I mingled with attendees, blue-haired and the pinstriped alike, from sponsor companies including A&E, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Wachovia. After a brief break, we all sat down for the lunchtime keynote speech by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Anna Quindlen. Quindlen immediately promoted a kinship among the entire 200-person, mostly female crowd, saying, “We are all ‘us,’” offering a laundry list of bonds we shared, including, “We all buy black pants,” which got a big cheer from the power suit-clad crowd.
In a masterful address, Quindlen carried on the post-feminist rhetoric that would define the day. The next generation, she said to us ladies who lunched, has “no doubt that you are as important as your male counterparts and they will be you one day. That’s 24-karat, down-to-the-ground progress.” Yet, with barely a pause, she puzzled, “Where does a movement go when it has been so successful but not wholly transformative?” Insisting that the new frontier for feminists is in the home, Quindlen advocated taking on old standards and antiquated social structures on a one-on-one basis.
Like the panelists, Quindlen proposed in her speech that the best approach for strong, powerful women is to avoid fitting in, to “ask new questions and fashion new paradigms.” True to form, when I spoke to Quindlen at the end of the conference, I asked her what advice she had for an aspiring writer. Crediting her mentors for putting up with her admittedly colloquial voice, Quindlen reiterated Vieira’s earlier advice to embrace your own quirks and eccentricities and run with them. So, if you don’t want to take it from a Glamourite, conjure the voice of a Pulitzer Prize winner or a super-rich anchorwoman when I tell you one thing - Go forth and be fabulous!
To check out interviews with all the panelists, a back-page essay by Quindlen and profiles of more powerful women who are leading the way for the next generation, Newsweek’s special “Women & Leadership” issue is on stands through Sunday.