“Why Can’t Mom Sit Still?” Maryam Banikarim on Why Busy Is Her Drug & the Messy Parts Are the Point

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Messy Parts

Episode Title: “Why Can’t Mom Sit Still?” Maryam Banikarim on Why Busy Is Her Drug & the Messy Parts Are the Point
Host: Maryam Banikarim, interviewed by her sister, Susie Banikarim
Date: March 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

In a special twist on The Messy Parts, host Maryam Banikarim sits in the guest chair, interviewed by her younger sister, the acclaimed journalist Susie Banikarim. The episode dives deeply and candidly into Maryam’s life—from childhood upheavals during the Iranian Revolution, to navigating familial loss, a non-stop career across multiple industries, challenges in motherhood, and her more recent community-driven projects. Their honest, engaging conversation normalizes career breaks, failures, pivots, and the hidden costs behind success, while highlighting the value of embracing life’s “messy parts.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Childhood, Trauma, and Coping Mechanisms

(01:29 – 10:38)

• Early Years in Iran and Revolution:

  • Both sisters reflect on being shaped by the Iranian Revolution.
  • Maryam, then 10, "didn't process the fear," describing her experience as “exhilarating” due to the adrenaline as a child.
  • Processing trauma: Emotions were often suppressed in the family.
  • Notable Quote:
    • "As a kid, it just was like an adrenaline rush." – Maryam [01:51]
    • "There was sort of no room to process things in that way in our family. So it was kind of like, shove the emotion someplace else and just figure out how to keep moving." – Maryam [02:13]

• Loss and Displacement:

  • The move from Iran to Paris and then California was disorienting, but Maryam coped by “putting her head down.”
  • “I joined everything in junior high… there wasn’t a thing I didn’t join.” – Maryam [04:12]

• Family Loss and Grief:

  • Early exposure to death (uncle in second grade, then their father in college) shaped Maryam’s ability to cope by compartmentalizing emotions.
  • Vivid recollections about the immediate aftermath of their father's accidental death.
  • Coping with loss:
    • Humor, avoidance, and “addiction to motion.”
    • "I became addicted to motion because motion is actually the only constant. And stillness terrified me." – Maryam [25:42]
    • “I don’t know where I developed those coping mechanisms… I don’t know.” – Maryam [09:45]

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2. Education, Identity, and Embracing Possibility

(11:34–14:09)

• Adapting to New Environments:

  • Coming to New York and Barnard offered Maryam the diversity and acceptance she craved after growing up in a homogeneous Californian suburb.
  • Barnard played a formative role in her sense of belonging and support, especially after her father’s death:
    • "We remember people who are there for us not in the good times, but in the bad times, because that’s rare." – Maryam [12:32]

• Risk-taking and Pursuit of Passion:

  • Explains her habit of moving, traveling, and seeking opportunities: “I just become accustomed to motion.” [13:46]
  • Going abroad for her last semester and spontaneous move to Argentina exemplify seeking growth through discomfort and uncertainty.

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3. Career Journey: The ‘Messy Parts’ of Success

(16:09–29:39)

• Career Pivots and Restlessness:

  • Early career bounces between advertising, media, publishing—never staying put for long, and always pursuing her curiosity and drive.
  • Notable story: Her “Mickey Drexler story”—pitching ideas to industry leaders and having the confidence to pursue her ideas.
    • "I give people that advice, which is like, look for your Mickey Drexler story. Because that story said, she has ideas. She can make things happen." – Maryam [21:25]

• Embracing Uncertainty:

  • Willingness to move between jobs, start businesses, and embrace freelance/consulting, especially during times of motherhood and parenting.
  • Strong focus on relationships and honoring commitments: “If I’d given somebody my word that I was gonna do a project, I wasn’t gonna be like, you’re not politically important. I’m not gonna do it.” – Maryam [22:40]

• Motherhood as a High-Performing Executive:

  • Honest look at being a working mother—consulting until the day she gave birth, and returning to work a week after C-section.
  • Family jokes: “Why can’t mom sit still?”
  • "My drug is busy." – Maryam [24:05]
  • Not much guilt about “not being the present mom”—acknowledging her strengths lie elsewhere.

• The Toll of High-Achieving Roles:

  • The hustle required to reach the C-suite—especially as a woman and immigrant.
  • “You gotta have a hustle.” – Maryam [27:12]

• On Pausing, Rest, and Identity Loss:

  • Pausing after leaving Hyatt was hard and disorienting—struggling with identity when not tied to a title or job.
    • “You were the former, and people didn’t know how to introduce you at a party.” – Maryam [34:13]
  • Advice: Treat a career pause as a gap year; make goals for the interval, reconnect with old pursuits (writing, family, self).
    • “Relationships saved me.” [35:25]
  • On dark moments: “There are many times where I call you or you call me and say, like, am I a loser?” – Susie [35:44]

• Visibility & Returning to Work:

  • Urges people not to hide during pauses, but to keep engaging with networks and communities: “Hiding is not the answer.” [36:54]

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4. Failure, Criticism, and Reframing “Mistakes”

(43:10–46:14)

• Launching the “We Love NY” Campaign:
  • The campaign (intended as positive) was widely mocked for its logo—providing a public lesson in backlash.
    • “The hate on the logo just begins at an immense level. Immense, immense.” – Maryam [44:52]
  • Instead of hiding, her team “clapped back” with humor, releasing a “We Love Critics” ad.
    • “We embraced it. And I think the clap back, it was such a genius move.” [45:21]
  • The supposed “failure” became an opportunity, generating more exposure and turning the moment around.
    • “The failure was an opportunity.” [46:02]

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5. Building The Longest Table and Pursuing Meaning

(39:07–51:32)

• Creating New Community:

  • Pandemic-driven return to local community led Maryam to launch The Longest Table—communal street meals for neighbors.
  • Grew from a local idea to a replicated movement (50 tables in 2025), all volunteer-driven.
    • “It wasn’t like I had a business plan… it was just a ‘what if’ idea.” – Maryam [48:13]
  • The project draws a direct line back to early feelings of displacement and longing for belonging.

• Being Present in “Act Three”:

  • Now, Maryam centers purpose, connection, and self-agency over traditional achievement.
  • “I’m in charge of my own destiny to some degree.” – Maryam [49:24]
  • Acknowledges it's less stable and occasionally lonely, but also deeply fulfilling.

• On Money, Security, and Motivation:

  • For both sisters, financial security was about safety—not accumulation.
    • “Money was security. It was fixing a thing that broke after dad died. It was being able not to be afraid. But it wasn’t about how could you make the most amount of money possible.” – Susie [50:02]

• Giving People Agency and Building Trust:

  • “I think that there’s an opportunity, given what’s happening in the world, to rebuild trust. And trust happens from the ground up.” – Maryam [50:07]
  • The Longest Table offers agency, belonging, and hope in a “depressing world.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

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• On Processing Trauma and Movement

  • “Stillness terrified me… I became addicted to motion because motion is actually the only constant.” – Maryam [25:42]

• On Belonging & Community

  • “I now understand, looking back right now, that I can take a minute, say, oh, that really mattered to me. Like, so much of what I now do is about that, because I want it not to feel like the middle school that it felt like for me, for other people.” – Maryam [38:29]

• On Career Pauses & Reinventing Identity

  • “You don’t owe anyone the truth, right? You don’t owe anyone exactly what you’re doing or why. But you do need an answer for those moments.” – Susie [34:47]
  • “Hiding is not the answer.” – Maryam [36:54]

• On Making Lemonade from Lemons

  • “The failure was an opportunity.” – Maryam [46:02]

• On Finding Meaning in the Messy Parts

  • "The idea of normalizing the messy parts, the pauses, the minute to be intentional... is really important." – Maryam [49:24]

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Important Timestamps

• Childhood and Revolution: 01:29–04:45
• Father’s Death and Coping: 04:45–10:47
• Finding Belonging at Barnard: 11:34–14:09
• Restlessness and Career Moves: 16:09–23:06
• Motherhood and Work Ethic: 23:04–25:24
• Addiction to Busy, Avoidance of Stillness: 25:24–26:52
• Leaving the Corporate World / Identity Struggles: 30:16–35:44
• Advice for Career Pauses: 33:17–36:54
• Launching We Love NY Campaign, Backlash: 43:10–46:14
• The Longest Table Project: 46:25–49:24
• Agency, Security, and Meaning: 49:24–51:32

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Episode Tone & Style

Conversational, deeply candid, vulnerable, and often wry—Susie elicits stories and reflection from Maryam with both sisterly affection and sharp journalistic insight. The tone is supportive, occasionally self-deprecating, and consistently real.

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Takeaways

• Everyone has “messy parts”—even the most accomplished.
• Career zigzags, pauses, and “failures” are not only normal, but inevitable and valuable.
• Motion, achievement, and constant busy-ness can be both a coping mechanism and a blessing/curse.
• True meaning is found in agency, service, and building community, especially after traditional measures of achievement dim.
• It’s powerful to talk honestly about shame, pivots, and rebuilding; no one is truly alone in the journey.

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For listeners seeking reassurance, practical advice, or simply the comfort of shared struggle, this episode opens a window on the unspoken costs and beauty of forging one’s own path—no matter how messy it gets.

Transcript

[A]

I think what's really hard in those moments is that you feel this kind of sense of shame. And so why we talk about it, why we're open about it, I think both of us, and why you sort of wanted to do this podcast is to make people realize there's nothing shameful about these sort of moments in your career.

[B]

It honestly, it happens to everyone. Everyone has bumps along the way. There's a sense that somehow it's on you, that it's personal and it's not. I think normalizing that is just something we need to do because it reminds us all that we're not alone. Today on the Messy Parts, we're trying something really different. Many of you have said you get bits and pieces of my story, but you don't have the whole thing. And there's a lot of messy parts to my story. So we decided to listen and we invited my sister, Susie Banakaram, she's seven years younger than me, an award winning journalist, Peabody's Emmys, Neiman, to come on and flip the script. So today we're going to have Susie interviewing me about the many messy parts. And let me just say, she wanted me to cry, but she didn't succeed. So get ready.

[A]

How does it feel to be on the other side?

[B]

A little frightening. Vulnerable? Yeah.

[A]

Are you worried I'm going to Barbara Walters you? I'm going to make you cry.

[B]

You know, I don't cry sometimes. Rarely. Rarely.

[A]

I'm the crier between the two of

[B]

us, so no, I'm not afraid.

[A]

Okay, well, I'll try not to cry. So let's start at the beginning. Obviously, you know, you and I were very much shaped by the fact that we were born in Iran and we went through the Iranian revolution that happened when I was 3, but you were 10, so it was in many ways more memorable for you. It shaped you more. What do you think it sort of did to you to have to go through something so traumatic so early?

[B]

Well, I mean, for me, it didn't feel traumatic when I was going through it. Honestly, as a kid, I found it exhilarating, which is just kind of an interesting thing to think about because I didn't process the fear. Now, when I think back of, you know, when people with armed guns broke into the house, I have to imagine that our parents, our grandmother, who was a very small lady, had to have been scared. But as a kid, it just was like an adrenaline rush. And interestingly, as you know, I went to an American school in Iran and, and my teacher had instituted a Current events, morning session. And I was the kid who always came in with an article. I was so interested in what was happening and wanted to talk about it. And I remember her saying to mom, our mother, that she thought I'd be a journalist. And my mom said that was a fate worse than death, because, as you know, all the journalists were being killed at the time. Awkward. It was awkward, but also kind of interesting. And I think there was sort of no room to process things in that way in our family. So it was kind of like, shove the emotion someplace else and just figure out how to keep moving.

[A]

Right. So you make it through the revolution, but I guess. And you find that sort of exhilarating. But then you do end up in Paris, right? Our parents first went to Paris, and then eventually we would end up in the US it still had to be somewhat traumatizing to suddenly be pulled out of your life, right? I mean, even at 3, I kind of remember being very disoriented by that. Did you not find those sort of, like, moves and the resetting disorienting?

[B]

You know, I mean, I must have, but I think that I was pretty disconnected from my feelings. That was a weird gift and a curse in some ways, because I think it has two sides to it. You know, they say your memories are held in your muscles. I think my muscles have a lot of memories waiting to come out, but I didn't really process it that way. I mean, of course, I remember showing up at, you know, in Lafayette for junior high, being dressed like a French schoolgirl when everybody else was wearing Izods and Calvin Klein jeans and feeling very much an outsider. You know, I was definitely a nerdy kid. I got bumped up from seventh grade to eighth grade. So there was all these moments where I didn't feel like I belonged, but I didn't process it kind of in that way. I just sort of put my head down and tried to figure out the puzzle, right. How do I fit in? How do I join bowling? Even though I was a terrible bowler and had never bowled before.

[A]

I didn't know you were on the bowling team.

[B]

I joined everything in junior high that

[A]

I didn't know, but I didn't know bowling.

[B]

There wasn't a thing I didn't join. It's true.

[A]

You grow up in California, right? You mentioned Lafayette. That's the small town where we ended up in California. And you spend most of your formative years there after the revolution. And, you know, I think for both of us, there's this second loss that's extremely Formative. Much later on, our dad dies in a very sudden windsurfing accident. If people who are listening can believe it, at that point, you're in college, you're at Barnard in New York. How does that sort of shape you?

[B]

I would say that for me, that was the third thing, because before the Iranian revolution, we had an uncle who you didn't really know. And he died when I was in second grade in a car accident. And he was my favorite uncle in that he was the one who would buy me flowers that were called Miriam's. And I was very close to him, and he died. I was at Grandma's, and I heard the news first, and then mom came over. This was before a cell phone. So, you know, she came to the house, and I just blurted out that he was dead. And I remember her just, like, sitting down. And it was a very traumatic event. Now I think back, and I wonder, how did our grandmother just continue on at the loss of a child like that? So I would say dad was the third one. So it just feels like there was a lot of bumps along the way. I was very much a daddy's girl, as you know. And when dad passed away suddenly, he had actually gone back to Iran the year before, Right. So we had grown up in California. I come to Barnard, and they move to London, and Dad says he's going to go back to Iran. And he knew he was blacklisted, so most people would think that would be traumatic. You know, he came to see me. He said he was leaving if something happened to him. You know, I was in charge. I mean, it was a lot to put on somebody who was, like, 17. He goes back to Iran. His passport's confiscated. He stays there for a year. He gets smuggled out through the border because he couldn't get out. So he comes out and we meet him in Switzerland and Geneva to give him his green card so that he can come back to the States and I could go back to college. And he said, you know what? I'm not going to see you again for a couple of months because you're going to go back to college. Let's just take a couple days between us as a family and go on vacation. And as you described, we stop at Interlaken. I go into town with mom to buy a bathing suit, and we come back and he's drowned. So highly sudden. But in that moment, mom did the thing that she started doing, really from when her brother died, which was completely fall apart. And I have this vivid memory of being at this Point Quaint hotel at the lake. You know, you're totally not processing anything.

[A]

I think I went to sleep right away.

[B]

You went to sleep right away. You know, she's freaking out, yelling, right? And it's just. It was incomprehensible. And they gave her some valium and then a bill for the valium.

[A]

Yeah, they wanted us out of there. They were like, we do not want a grieving family on the grounds.

[B]

And you know, I had to drive the car. I was like, I had to get us to Geneva then I had to get us from Geneva back. I mean, somebody had to be like the functioning one that wasn't gonna be mom in that moment. And you were too young. So I think like anything, it wasn't really processed. I remember coming back to barnard and dad had come to visit and he was definitely like a larger than life character. And people were like, how's your dad? And I was like, he drowned. And somebody pulled me aside and said, you really can't say it like that. And I was like, well, what's the right way to say it? They were like, you can say he passed away. And so then the next person shows up and they say, how's your dad? I said, well, he passed away. And they said, well, what happened? And I say, he drowned. And they're like, is he okay? I was like, okay, I'm never gonna get this. I'm never gonn.

[A]

No, once you drown, you're not okay. It's over.

[B]

So I think I didn't even process it then. Right. So we went back. You went back to california. And a couple weeks later, I came home for what was his funeral. And I still hadn't cried. But I remember walking into our family friend saurabh's house and they had these blown up pictures of him. Oh, my God.

[A]

I remember those pictures. They were like poster size.

[B]

They were like poster size. And I remember walking in with all these people and I really didn't want to feel my emotions. And I walked in and I was so traumatized by walking in that I went right into the bathroom and just like took a moment and asked to go home.

[A]

You know, I think the shock of it partially was that once we got to Switzerland, right. Once he had, we knew he was escaping through the border. We were waiting for that to happen. We got the news that he'd actually gotten out safely. And we got to Switzerland, we thought it was like we could breathe a sigh of relief. And then to suddenly have this thing happen out of the blue was just really. I Mean, I don't think there's another word for it, but traumatic. Right? Like, I remember that as an extremely traumatic thing. I was waiting at the shore for him to come get me. He was supposed to give me a windsurfing lesson that day. So when you think back on that, I mean, I think we all kind of went numb initially, right? And then we had the two funerals, like, one in San Francisco, one in la. I mean, it was just a process. But then at what point did you realize, okay, this is, you know, really happening and I need to, like, figure out a way to pick myself up and keep going? Or did you just automatically.

[B]

I don't think I. I don't know that I've still processed that. I mean, to be honest, I don't know. You know, Natasha, my daughter, often says, you don't feel things, Mom. And I think there was no room to process that. What I remember is mom not just crying, wailing the entire drive to Geneva, and then we had to sleep in the airport because there were no flights.

[A]

I remember that.

[B]

And I remember she just wouldn't stop crying. I have this vivid memory, for some reason, we had, like, a souvenir spoon, and I remember picking up the souvenir spoon, and I started talking to the souvenir spoon, like, as if it was my dad. And I think that jarred her out of just not stopping.

[A]

You were telling jokes. I remember you had the spoon and you were, like, telling jokes.

[B]

And I don't know where I developed those coping mechanisms. Do you know what I mean? I don't know.

[A]

Well, I mean, I think they're coping mechanisms, but they're also somewhat maladaptive, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, I don't think it's true that you don't feel things. I know Natasha makes that joke, but, I mean, I know better than anyone that you feel things very deeply, but you do tend to try and move through the. You're sort of trying to dance around the feeling as much.

[B]

I just have a way to push it aside. I don't know. You know, sometimes I think that's not the healthiest thing, but it definitely. Nikki says it's a very good coping mechanism. Right. Which, you know, I don't think that's actually true.

[A]

Well, it's a lucky one, I guess. Like, it has its benefits where some coping mechanisms are all bad. Yours has some. Some benefits, pros and some cons, but it does catch up with you.

[B]

Right. It's like being a comedian, right? Like, they make jokes about things that are actually Based on very painful things. Even to this day I can just say, oh, what's when your messy part? Oh, when my dad drowned. Like as if I'm doing a comedy bit.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But the truth is it was a, that was a very life altering moment for us because really we lost both parents in that moment. Yes.

[A]

So I think that that is something that took me many years of therapy to understand that it was like, you know, the sort of thing that I thought was the most traumatic thing in my life, which was losing my father was only partially the most traumatic thing because it was also many years before mom was, was really functioning again. And so there was this incredible period of time where you were in college but coming home pretty regularly. And I was 11 when he passed, so I was still at home. And you know, it was a rough time. So you go back to college and you're young, right? You had gone to college a year younger than most people. You've gone through this kind of terrible thing. But in many ways you talk about Barnard as having saved you. So what is it about Barnard that is so meaningful for you? Why does that become such a safe space for you?

[B]

Well, I mean, first of all, I think that, you know, the move from Paris to Lafayette, we went to a very WASPy suburb of California's where everybody was very homogeneous. I was very much focused on fitting in. I think by the time I came to New York and, you know, it was a gift ending up in New York City and at Barnard. And I got into Barnard off the waitlist, I was like sort of a last minute thing. I forgot about that. In New York there's six or eight of every single person. So there is no homogeneity. So you have the opportunity to be who you are. And so I think for me, slowly that began to happen. Right. And so sort of in a similar way that I sort of moved through things my freshman year, somebody said in the hallway, you should run for class president. And I did. And I won. Right. Like all these things began to happen and I began to sort of feel the weight of possibility. And I had an internship every semester from Style with Elsa Clench to working for a photography agent in the East Village to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It was like being a kid in a candy shop. And there was something about New York that just fit and the possibilities in New York were endless. And I think the moment dad died, the thing that I really appreciate and I think my connection to Barnard deepened is at that moment we entered financial insecurity. And I came Back and the school called and they said, we're here for you. And they really were. And I think that we remember people who are there for us not in the good times, but in the bad times, because that's rare. So I think my connection to Barnard is really, like, cemented by that experience. Not just all the great memories I have, but at the moment of need where they just told me that they were there for me.

[A]

You're on the board now?

[B]

I am.

[A]

And your daughter went there, I went

[B]

there, and our cousin.

[A]

Our cousin Nisha. So you're very much a Barnard girl.

[B]

They call it a Barnard woman.

[A]

A Barnard woman.

[B]

It's one of the first things you learn. Not a girl woman. Okay.

[A]

So your last semester, though, you end up going abroad. I mean, for all that you love Barnard, you sort of have this desire to strike out on your own. And we were kind of a traveling family. Like, we were always traveling, which I think has made me slightly less obsessed with traveling, but I think made you much more interested because I think I found it disorienting. Like, I felt like we were always moving.

[B]

It was disorienting. Even in Lafayette, we kept moving homes. It was like they had ants in their pants. And I joke that, you know, when they stopped, I couldn't stop all of a sudden. Right. Like, I definitely wanted the safety and security, but on the flip side, I just become accustomed to motion. I now look back and I think, what was I thinking? That I decided to do my second semester senior year abroad.

[A]

Right? Because your last semester of college is supposed to be just, like, chill.

[B]

And that's when you're supposed to be looking for a job. And I think for me, there was sort of a sense that if I went abroad, I wouldn't be on campus and tempted by the jobs that came recruiting. And so then I would go pursue my passion. I really bought into that, like, pursue your passion thing. I came back from Paris, which is where I was abroad in August. I applied to graduate school because I had won a Truman Scholarship, which I was surprised by myself, and I thought I had to use it in a certain amount of time, which turns out not to have been true. I decided I would go to international affairs school because I thought that I could then be a foreign correspondent and write about what I was studying. Somebody said, you don't make any money in international affairs school tech on a business degree. So I listened. You know, it's so amazing that I just listened to people. And while I was waiting to see if I got in, I picked up and moved to Argentina where I knew no one. And I think again, I'd taken this class at Barnard called Personality and Politics. And what I had discovered is that sometimes the environment shapes you. So Nelson Mandela gets jailed and he becomes a leader. He is. And I thought, oh, I was going to manufacture that for myself. Argentina was having political turmoil and I thought, like, again, I thought I'd be a journalist. I was like, if I go put myself in that pathway, I thought I was going to go down there and write for the Buenos Aires Herald. And I get there and I sneak my way onto a movie set because I thought if I then got a story, then the Buenos Aires Herald would hire me. They were shooting Highlander 2 with Sean Connery and Christopher Lampert. I sneak on the set trying to get a story. I said, oh, I heard you were hiring people. And they said, sit here. And I brought a woman with me who I just met, who was nervous, but I was like, don't worry, I'll do the talking. And as I'm writing down people's phone numbers, because in those old days, they put them on the production wall, they said, come with us. They had just happened to fire the entire production team, which almost never happens on a movie. Not only did I get fired on the film, so did the woman who came with me. So all of a sudden I went from trying to have this revolutionary experience to having a job on an American film, getting paid in dollars and having a driver that would take me from my little apart hotel to the studios in Virus. It was crazy.

[A]

Why business school then?

[B]

I didn't want to go to business school. I really tried hard to avoid business, right? I added the business degree because somebody said if I added one more year, I would be able to pay for myself. So I think part of the reason I didn't go end up becoming a journalist was I was the eldest and I got anxiety from having debt. So I made the choice to go into basically the lowest paying job coming out of business school, which was advertising. You know, it was a creative side of business. I did a summer in investment banking and I definitely needed the money and I got paid a lot of money that summer, but I was like, I just couldn't do it.

[A]

I was miserable. I remember you being miserable.

[B]

I just, it was just not for me. So I just made a choice to go into a different side of the business world. And I worked in media, which was close, right? I like, I got close, but I. I didn't feel like I had financial freedom to go do that. Which, you know, years later, I come around full circle. Mom used to say, it's never too late to be Oprah. And I used to like, roll my eyes and cringe and I'm like, maybe she's right.

[A]

So, okay, so now you do have these two degrees. You have these two graduate degrees. You start out in advertising. And, and you know, you're still kind of deciding what to do with your life. You don't stay in advertising very long. What's the kind of path not, you know, we don't have to go into every detail. Yeah.

[B]

Because, I mean, I've had like 800 jobs.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I started advertising. It was in the early days of the Internet, and I had boundless energies, kind of like our grandmother. And so I would go to every session I could in the evenings or lectures that were happening at Y and R. And I tried to convince Y and R that they needed to get ready for the future with the Internet. And this was in the early days, like CD Roms, you know, Prodigy, CompuServe. I offered to organize an agency wide conference, which is crazy. They'd never had an agency wide conference. And in doing that event, which was really to talk about whether in fact advertising was dead, I learned something about Y and R, which is that they weren't ready to actually progress. They had mentors for us there. And she pulled, my mentor pulled me aside and said, organizing this conference is very political. You should just stop doing it. There's other people who want to be in charge. And I was so thrown by that. I thought, well, if this company doesn't respond to my just doing something that I'm interested in, that just benefits everyone, like, why would I stay here? Long story short, I ended up going to work at Turner Broadcasting for a guy named Steve Heyer, who was a very smart, strategic thinker. I thought, like, I would be a documentary filmmaker, a journalist of some kind. This was my closest next move was working in this first ever integrated sales marketing group at Turner. I go there, but the pathway to more creative jobs wasn't in New York, which is where sales was. And I get recruited to go work at City Search. In the very early days of the

[A]

Internet, you have to explain what City Search is.

[B]

So City Search is like timeout, basically online. It was like a searchable engine.

[A]

It was like a very early website when there were not a lot of websites.

[B]

It was part of IndyNet, which were like the first seven Internet companies in New York. And I go work at citysearch, and it was amazing. It was really like the Wild West. But they had done San Francisco, then they'd done Charlotte, and they were very wary of New York. And so they decided to put the New York market on hold. And I was like, whoa, I can't just put my career on hold. They said, well, you can join rollout, where you like every three months go to open up another market. And I was just getting married and I was like, it's not going to work for me. When I'd been offered that job, I'd also been offered a job at macmillan. And they kept calling. And so I was like, I'm going to go take this other job because I can't be on pause. And so I end up going to be a book publisher. And I was like the youngest book publisher by like 40 years. I tried a lot of different things. I was willing to move when most people were not. Sometimes the moves worked and sometimes like I take a job at Amarati. Cause they were paying me when McMillan wasn't willing to pay. And I get there and he was totally nuts. And so they offered me a package and I left and he. They shut down that department. But all of a sudden now I've had like 20 jobs when most people had one job. So. And I was now pregnant. So I was like, oh my God, now what's going to happen to me? So it was kind of a terrifying moment of like, what the heck? But I had always wanted to have a bag business, so I met a woman, I started a bag business. You know, there's a lot of these stories in my background, but end up starting to do consulting. And five years of that, I end up going back into corporate America at Univision, where it was the first place I became cmo.

[A]

Right. So you've kind of made your way up the corporate ladder, but this is like sort of a very uncertain time. Right. I mean, I remember there were lots of sort of moments of doubt and it was difficult. And I think for a lot of people, those 20s and early 30s are very uncertain time. What made it possible for you to keep making these changes? I think most people are much more risk averse than you and I are. Right. So what is it you think that makes it possible for you to take these kind of big swings?

[B]

Well, I mean, I clearly have the ability to push past fear and put it in a little box on the side because it was terrifying. I mean, being pregnant without a job when people wanted you to have worked at one job, not 20 jobs, made you a little bit unhirable, right? At the beginning, I was sort of. I was eminently hireable in the world of advertising because I'd gotten to Mickey Drexler, and he, you know, returned my phone call. So that story just would make people offer you a job. But by the time to tell the

[A]

story, if you're gonna mention it.

[B]

Well, I mean, when I was in college, I had this travel column. There was an advertising campaign called Individuals of Styles. I sort of mocked it up. Why I thought to mock it up, I don't know. I send it to somebody at the Gap. Nothing happened. But then in business school, somebody had heard Mickey Drexler speak. He convinces me to send it to Mickey Drexler pre interview. And I do. When he calls me and he's like, do you want a job at the Gap? I'm like, no, I just want to make the book. Because, again, I wasn't focused on the job thing. And they say to me, this is really a marketing idea. You should go into marketing, right? So that. That made me, like, if I told that story and I give people that advice, which is like, look for your Mickey Drexler story. Because that story said, she has ideas. She can make things happen. It made you eminently hireable, and it made you come off the page, right? But once you've done eight jobs, when most people say one job, they're like, oh, you're a career switcher, right? You get labeled. So I was worried. I would say I was fortunate that I prioritized relationships. So the first consulting job I got was from somebody that I'd worked with. Early on, if somebody asked me to do something, I never dropped the ball. That was, like, one of my things. I remember I had a boss who once said to me, why are you working late? I said, I was doing a project for somebody. And she said, oh, he's unimportant. And she flicked and said, don't bother. And I just thought, like, that was the craziest thing. If I'd given somebody my word that I was gonna do a project, I wasn't gonna be like, you're not politically important. I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. Those relationships then came to bear. So people would call me for projects, for work. And I think that also helped. Cause a lot of my moves came from relationships, right?

[A]

So you've kind of gone through this period of uncertainty. You end up at Univision. You've had a kid at this point. You've had Natasha at this point.

[B]

I think by the time I went to Univision, I had two kids.

[A]

You had both Natasha and Nikki. What was that like? What was introducing motherhood into the mix like?

[B]

Well, it's funny, I remember we had a friend who was a magnum photographer, and he came to stay with us when I just had Natasha. And he started taking pictures of me pushing Natasha with the stroller. And Andy, my husband, said, why is he taking pictures? And he said, I never thought I would see the day where Marian would be a mother. I just wasn't focused on that. And so I just barreled through. I mean, I was pregnant and I had. I was doing consulting and the bags. So three days a week I would fly around doing this consulting project because it was paying me cash. And then two days a week, I was shipping bags from the house and I literally was running through the streets of New York with, like skins of leather on my back. Because that's when the garment district still actually was in the garment district. So I was busy and my drug is busy, so I wasn't really processing it. I think, like, I finally said to them, I'm too big to come in. They said, we'll send a car. So my literally, my last day of working on the consulting project was the day I gave birth. Okay. So, you know, it's the truth. It's the truth. I mean, not things you recommend now to people. Also.

[A]

You did, in fairness, you had an emergency delivery.

[B]

Car was a week away.

[A]

Right. You are a week away.

[B]

And the second child, same thing. I literally had an emergency C section and I had committed to a project of Time Warner. And a week after having an emergency C section, I was hobbling through. I don't recommend this to people. I'm just saying I was hobbling through the halls of Time Warner because I had committed to being in a meeting because don't drop a deadline.

[A]

It's so crazy. I remember it was hard to, like, keep you still. Like, I remember after the first one, after Natasha, you'd had the C section also, and it was impossible to keep you from, like, trying to do things like lift things even. Like, you were just.

[B]

To this day, they're like the family jokes, why can't mom sit still? So Natasha was a week early. And, you know, so I go in, you get an epidural, and you're. For those who don't know, my husband's in the room and I'm giving birth. You know, they bring the baby out of my cut up stomach and at that point I try to sit up because you're with an epidural. You're conscious, you're not totally out.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I try to sit up, everybody freaks out, and they give me a shot so that I pass out. Because even in that situation, I was like, oh, the baby's out. I'm good, let's go.

[A]

Right. Well, this sort of gets back to this idea that you're always bobbing and weaving. You're always trying to, like, not sit still. Because in the stillness you have to really process everything that you're sort of going.

[B]

I think there's an adage like, nothing sticks to Rolling Stone or something like that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I became addicted to motion because motion is actually the only constant. And stillness terrified me. I mean, when dad died, Barnard sent me to therapy and I went to therapy and I. I couldn't even understand what was happening. Therapy wasn't a thing when we grew up. And I remember she said to me, why don't you come back when you're actually ready to talk about it? Which, you know, was actually probably terrible advice.

[A]

Yeah. You're like, never. I will never be ready.

[B]

I was like, oh, okay. Well, I never went back. I didn't go back to therapy for years. Right. So sitting still and processing, that wasn't a thing. Do you think you're still like that? Yes.

[A]

And you've been to therapy now? Do you think you've slowed down in any ways?

[B]

You know, when I go to therapy, I'm almost like, okay, what's the solution? And I think like, he's like, no, that's not really what that's about.

[A]

Right. That's not how it works.

[B]

But I'm looking to, you know, I'm like, I need to get to the goal. I mean, I think I've mellowed some. I think I. When you're in these high power jobs, you can barely breathe at the job, much less juggling your personal life, your kids. You know, I joke with women who have had those kinds of jobs. Like, all of a sudden you're like, I used to be an interesting person. What happened to my friends? I had no friends. You didn't have time.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I was like, there's not so much room. And by the way, it's not like it's always hunky dory on the home front. There's things that happen with your children, with your parents, with your spouse. Like, it's a lot. But I think I was determined to push through.

[A]

Did you have mom guilt? Like, did you struggle with sort of not being able to be there as much as you wanted to be?

[B]

I Mean, a little. But I just knew I was never that person. And when I was around and present, I made everybody crazy. So, you know, I remember being like, the swing was my worst nightmare. Repetitive continuous motion. I was like, I will take you to any event. Let's go conquer the world. But, like, repeating something just was never who I was gonna be. There were times. There was definitely in middle school when Natasha struggled. There was a moment I thought, like, should I stop? But I was very fortunate. I was fortunate in that I worked with people over and over again. Even though I switched jobs, we moved jobs together. And so I had a support system at work where I knew I could count on them. You know, people say you have to have boundaries and, you know, don't give the job what it won't give you back. And those are all true things because you will get pushed out when it's convenient. That is definitely a thing in the world. But on the flip side, you don't get to the C suite, particularly as a woman and an immigrant woman or whatever, if you don't have that kind of hustle. There's not a person who doesn't come on this podcast where I think to myself, wow, they did not have incredible drive, and they did not work incredibly hard. And those are choices. You know what I mean? And I look at the younger generation and the ones who are content creators, they work 24 7. It's not like they have no drive, Right? If you want to accomplish that, whatever it is, being a writer, being an actor, whatever, you gotta have a hustle.

[A]

You know, there were times, I think, especially you know, with the kids, where they asked you to slow down or be more present or get off your phone.

[B]

A lot of get off your phone.

[A]

A lot of get off your phone. How did you handle that?

[B]

Well, I mean, sometimes I would get mad or I was defensive for sure. I mean, when I paused between Hyatt and Nextdoor was because, you know, I was always moving, right? You know, when some job's not working out, I was always a plan A, plan B, plan C person. So I was gonna get another job, and I was about to take another job, and I remember Nikki, who was, I say, not my most verbal child at the time. He's verbal now. He said to me, mom, I understand if you take this job and reverse commute to New York for my last year of high school. I just want you to know I would miss you. And honestly, Nikki wasn't the one to say that. And it really made me pause, and I addicted to Motion was like, already onto the next thing, but I paused, and that was a hard time.

[A]

So let's get there. So you end up at Univision. You're the youngest or first cmo.

[B]

First cmo.

[A]

First CMO ever. Youngest by default. And you end up doing a few other jobs in between. NBC, Gannett, et cetera. You end up at Hyatt. You move to Chicago. It's the only time you've not lived New York for this job at Hyatt. And after the Hyatt job, you did take this break that you just described. But I think that period was also difficult because you didn't feel like you got to leave Hyatt in the way that you wanted. Right. Like, having achieved all the things that you wanted. What was that like?

[B]

It was difficult. That job was great until it wasn't, which is often the case now. I had never moved for a job before, and I remember being anxious about the idea of moving for a job. And I moved a 9th grader and an 11th grader, and that was a thing. I felt an incredible sense of responsibility for having moved them across, you know, the country to Chicago and my husband, right. Who, you know, had sort of a whole life here. And I take this job, and it's a global job and I'm never home. So it was hard on Andy, and it wasn't smooth sailing with the kids in high school. And I was always on a plane. It was like, I need you in Tokyo for 48 hours. And like I said, I'm not the person who lets you down. So I was everywhere and nowhere. The job was great until we didn't get the Starwood deal. And then all of a sudden, the job wasn't so great. And I knew that. And I definitely was your girl Friday. I was not just the cmo. I also did the strategy work with the CEO and all those things. And at the time, I remember we moved offices and I sat with the team, and I remember being like, this is going to be a decision. I can keep going at this pace and not really be present, and it can have implications for my family. Or I can just say, like, I'm just not going to be available in the same way. And there may be a cost to that. Also, we were moving mountains at a pace that was really unprecedented. I mean, honestly, we redid the loyalty program in a year. I didn't realize that redoing an entire loyalty program in a year was unprecedented. And, you know, people say, you know, fail, but it's okay. But they don't really mean it. And so when things went wrong, you just knew. You knew that there was gonna be a consequence. And so you make the best decisions you can, but it's like you can see the train coming. It was amazing. And then it wasn't. And so I knew that before they knew that. I mean, frankly, many people on the executive team started exiting, and I remember one of them left and said, when are you coming? And I was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. What is happening? What is happening to me? By the way, I've now moved people like there's no other job I'm gonna get in Chicago. I was not planning on staying in Chicago, so I was close on another job, but Nikki really made me stop. And it was difficult. You know, it was. All these jobs are difficult. I mean, there were so many moments in every single job that was difficult. But.

[A]

But the quiet was also difficult.

[B]

But the quiet was difficult. I remember taking a lot of walks with the dog around the lake. You know, I was moving, physically moving. I got to see what Chicago was like. I'd actually never. I couldn't even tell you where anything was. Cause I was home. So it was really a gift to reconnect with myself, with my husband, with my children. I mean, you know, one day Nikki said to me, mom, you're the busiest unemployed person I know. Because that's true. I was an executive in residence. I wrote an article for the New York Times. I got asked to be on podcasts. So you're not good at slowing down, I think advice.

[A]

You're not good at slowing down.

[B]

I'm not good.

[A]

I'm great at slowing down.

[B]

I know everybody. I know everybody in the family makes fun of me. But somebody gave me advice early on, which I give to anyone who's going through sort of this, like, interval pause moment, which is. He said, you're type A. You should treat your time off as a gap year. Make a list of three things you're going to accomplish, because the time will go by. And it was really a great piece of advice. So I was like, okay, I'd like to spend time by the water where my grandmother is so I can get to know her. I'm going to go back to writing. So I started doing what all type A people do is I looked for the perfect writing class. Like, as if that existed. Finally, I was like, what am I doing? And. And I just signed up for a memoir writing class at Second City. It was me and eight strangers. And the first day she gave us an assignment, I came in, and I'd written 60 pages, and my husband said to me, oh, this woman doesn't know what's coming her way. She looked at the 60 pages and she said, let's chunk it out. You don't need to write anymore. We'll just break this out for the next six weeks. That's hilarious. But it got me to writing, and then when people started calling me and saying things like, are you sure you're not going to take another job? It's so brave. You're not going to get back in. I ended up finding myself writing a story that then led to the piece that the New York Times published that's was about, what are you, if not employed? Because you would go to parties, and the thing that happens to all of us is, like, it's not that the phone totally stopped ringing, but you would go to a party and they'd be like, well, she was the former global CMO at Hyatt Hotels. Like, as if your identity doesn't exist without that. And all of a sudden, you were the former, and people didn't know how to introduce you to a party.

[A]

Yeah, well, you and I talk about this a lot, right? Because we've both taken all these pauses. And the advice I give anyone who's taking a pause is to sort of figure out what that story is, how they answer questions like that. Because I think once you don't owe anyone the truth, right? You don't owe anyone exactly what you're doing or why. But you do need an answer for those moments. And the longer you wait to figure out what the answer is, the more difficult it feels. When you're in those moments, you feel sort of, like, very put on the spot. So I kind of feel like that's one of the most important pieces. But, you know, I think there are these moments, right? So you end up writing this article for the New York Times that sort of explores this idea of, how do I define myself if not through my career? And this is something you talk about a lot on the podcast. Very shiny. From the outside. From the outside, it seems like you've just had this amazing career and everything kind of just went your way. And, you know, your adaptive behavior is doing more things like how lucky for you. But you do have dark moments, you know, And I think you and I both have those. And there's many times where I think I call you or you call me and say, like, am I a loser? Like, am I a loser now? And I want you to sort of talk about that, like, what Those moments feel like. And how you figure out a way to get through those, I don't know.

[B]

I have them every day. It's not like it's a once in an occasion kind of a moment. I just have the ability to just then put one foot in front of the other, which I think is a coping mechanism. But I think it's a good one because when it becomes insurmountable, then you freeze. That period was hard. It seems shiny because, you know, I wrote the New York Times article, and it, like, opened up all kinds of pathways, but it was incredibly, incredibly difficult. I'm a marketer, and I'm less afraid of, I guess, putting myself out there. So, you know, I think I quickly was like, I'm living a portfolio life. I had a name for it, and, you know, you branded it. I branded it. And again, I mean, relationships saved me. Right. People called me and asked me to be an executive in residence at Columbia or, you know, to work on a consulting project. So things come your way. If you build relationships along the way, it's not like overnight you have no skills. But I think that there were definitely low points. I got busy pretty quickly. I'm good at keeping myself busy. But there were definitely days where you were like, is it over? Am I not gonna find another job? Cause I wasn't thinking. I was done. It really matters to not recede. It's so hard for people. It was hard for me. But you have to push yourself to still go to things when you're invited. And in one of those evenings where I was invited to a Fast company event, I sat next to Jana Rich, who at the time was a headhunter, and she's the one who said, would you consider the next door job? Which is what led me to the next job. Yeah. Sometimes you go to that cocktail party and they say former or whatever, they don't engage with you, and you feel bad, but you have to push yourself to keep going. And I think that's just like anything. It's like you got to get back on the bike. Right. I think people's instinct is to over explain or to disappear. And I say that's exactly the wrong now. Yes, there are days where you don't feel good, and, yeah, you should take a minute, but hiding is not the answer. Right. And I think also it's a gift to pause. I mean, I just want to be clear, as a kid who had student loans, I would not have been able to do that. Right.

[A]

It's a privilege.

[B]

It was a total privilege. You know, I got to spend time with my grandmother that I would never get back. It allowed me to be introspective and think about things a little bit more

[A]

than I had before. Well, and I think part of the podcast, right. Part of talking about this stuff is to remove some of the shame. Right. I think what's really hard in those moments is that you feel this kind of sense of shame. And so why we talk about it, why we're open about it, I think both of us, and why you sort of wanted to do this podcast is to make people realize there's nothing shameful about these sort of moments in your career.

[B]

It honestly, it happens to everyone. Everyone has bumps along the way. There's a sense that somehow it's on you, that it's personal and it's not. I think normalizing that is just something we need to do because it reminds us all that we're not alone. And I don't know why. Maybe because as a child, we got sort of removed from our community, this idea of creating, belonging. Now I understand, looking back right now, that I can take a minute, say, oh, that really mattered to me. Like, so much of what I now do is about that, because I want it not to feel like the middle school that it felt like for me, for other people.

[A]

So that kind of gets us to today, what you're doing now, that this project you're doing now, that's incredibly focused on community. The longest table. So in addition to doing this podcast, you have this nonprofit that you launched during the pandemic. Talk about how that came to be and how that ties to your sort of need for community.

[B]

Yeah. So I went back into the job at Nextdoor. I took the job three weeks before the pandemic. My first week was in San Francisco. Second week was in London because I ran international. Third week was in New York, shutting down. There was a moment where I was taking a phone call in the pantry, hiding from my family, who used to not see my crazy work schedule because I was in a hotel or, like, in an office. Now, like, the world is ending and mom has no boundaries, and it's on full display because she's hiding in the pantry, taking a phone call from Australia. That moment of being needed by your neighbors. Right. Was basically the cornerstone of what nextdoor was built for. That first month, our Traffic went up 80%. Cause you needed neighbors to check in on people or find Lysol wipes. And I think by that summer, people started saying New York was dead and we'd moved back. We were Living back in the house in Chelsea. And I remember this house in Chelsea where we're shooting the podcast. And I said to my husband, we need to try and figure out how to help New York. Because I had proposed doing a campaign including New York to the board. And they were like, new York is dead. I was like, so these aren't just articles. Like my who's who board is saying things like New York is dead. So Andy went to the store where we come back with groceries that we were going to Lysol Wipe. I sent an email to 20 people. I said, I don't know what to do, but I'm game to get on a call to figure it out. By the time he came back, all 20 people had said yes. And we got on the call. We really didn't know what to do. But, you know, it's the power of community. We thought about a lot of things and sort of honed in on trying to change the narrative of New York because there was a lot of marketers in the group and we basically raised little money as a side hustle. We paid artists a stipend and would have them perform outside as a way to remind themselves and us and the world that we weren't dead.

[A]

Right. You had these pop up events, one on Broadway.

[B]

Yeah. MoMA for Broadway. And then we did 14 of those. And then we were able to get Billy Joel to grant us the rights to New York State of Mind. And we made this music video. I was still at next door.

[A]

I know I used to joke that you're the only person I know who had a full time job during the pandemic who started a full nonprofit as a side hustle.

[B]

Yeah. So I was still at next door. Now. I mean, there were 700 volunteers. So it's not like it was a. It wasn't just you. Andy was very instrumental, very instrumental, as were the 700 volunteers. But I think in doing that work, it unlocks something for me. So I have this vivid memory of a moment for Broadway which was Bernadette Peters and 24 Broadway performers on that red steps of Times Square at the height of the pandemic. Right. We had Covid producers and mass and they were crying because it was the first time they'd been together. And I remember being like, how did an immigrant girl get here? Like that sense that I could be there for the city that had given me so much that I could with a community of people come together to make that moment happen. It really was a powerful, very purpose driven, not about money, like Moment of art.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I think that unlocks something for me. And so when I was asked if I would leave next door and, you know, try and come up with a campaign for New York City, which led to the We Love New York City campaign, I was fortunate enough that I was able to walk away from, like a paying job to do something that was much more, you know, purpose driven, passion driven. And so I stepped off the wheel again.

[A]

Right. I mean, you didn't really step off the wheel. Cause you did the Wheel of New York campaign. It was a big campaign.

[B]

It was a big campaign on a shoestring.

[A]

Right. It's not like you were making.

[B]

Right. I wasn't making CMO money.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I stepped off. As in, I stepped off the corporate game.

[A]

Yes. Right, right.

[B]

I don't know how to step off. We've already, I think, yeah. Established that. But, you know, with a group of people for not a lot of money. Right. So for the passion of it, we basically launched that We Love New York City campaign for the Partnership for New York and ran at that for about a year and a half.

[A]

Okay, let's talk about that for a second because here is one of your most notorious, sort of like, well established. I think some people would call it a failure. I don't actually think it was a failure, but I think.

[B]

I don't think it's a failure.

[A]

That was like very publicly panned.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You launched this We Love New York campaign. There is this logo that people just have this terrible reaction to hate the logo. And like the New Yorker writes a piece. I mean, it is just widely mocked everywhere.

[B]

It was everywhere. Right.

[A]

So I don't think the campaign was a failure either. But I think a lot of people, if they had launched something and like unveiled the logo and become like a running joke in the city for some period of time. I mean, not you personally, but this thing.

[B]

It was only a short period of time.

[A]

It was a short period of time, but it was a couple weeks. I mean, I think I would have found that actually much more difficult than you did. I mean, you sort of saw it.

[B]

It's so funny.

[A]

As an opportunity.

[B]

I think it was an opportunity. I mean. Okay, so I mean, basically we run up this idea to do an effort for the city. What came out into the market was not what we presented. But, you know, you're not in charge. You have a client. Kathy Wilde said she was going to raise money. I told her it was going to be at least $10 million. Really, we need 30 is what the guys at Bloomberg said, and we raised $1,500,000. I remember saying to the team, like, we have a million five. We can go with a million five, which is nothing. And it's already not the idea that we had initially had. We launched the logo. So basically we take the Milton Glazier mark that's I love New York. And we iterate it to become we love New York because it's a moment for we and not me. And we animate the heart. So the article comes out, we do the press conference, and hate on the logo just begins at an immense level. Immense, immense. Nobody reads, nobody reads, nobody reads.

[A]

What would the reading have done for them?

[B]

Because they thought we were getting rid of I Love New York.

[A]

Oh, I see. They thought it was replacing.

[B]

Was we were replacing I Love New York. Like, who would replace Milton Glazer's iconic mark? I don't know. We gathered at the house to just have a moment as a team, and founders said we should go back at the campaign, like, let's clap back. And they came up with an ad that said, we love critics. That was the pivotal turning point on the campaign. Because we clapped back instead of sort of cowering and instead of getting defensive,

[A]

you sort of embraced it.

[B]

We embraced it. And I think the clap back, it was such a genius move. And by the way, I give Kathy Wilde a lot of credit because she was the client and she could have at that moment done what a lot of brands do, which is go hide with their tail. But she was like, let's go. And so we put that out there. And then things slowly began to change. And I think the campaign had so many good lines, many of which were written by Mark Katz. Like, we get more done by 8am than Boston does, you know, in a day, all of a sudden, the mayor of Boston is on TV talking about the campaign. You know, we don't hate. Except for the Red Sox. The controversy generated two times the exposure of a Super bowl in 24 hours.

[A]

Right. So it's like in this case, the failure is an opportunity.

[B]

The failure was an opportunity.

[A]

And after the LA fires, they used we love LA as a. I know.

[B]

And the mark continues to live on and show up in a lot of different ways.

[A]

So that's a good sort of moment to make lemonade out of lemons. What that leads you to, though, is the longest table, which is kind of your primary project now. So tell people what that is, who may not know and why that is so important to you.

[B]

Well, coming out of COVID all Of a sudden, I'd been in place for much longer, right? Like I described, I was always on a train, plane or automobile or subway, because I love the subway. All of a sudden I was in place, right? And I got to know my neighbors because we were helping each other with Lysol wipes and whatever else. And I saw a picture of what I now know to be neighbors in Egypt having a meal together. It must have been iftar, but for me it was just a picture of people having a meal down a long table. And I posted it in my personal next door and said, what if we did this? What if we got to know our neighbors not just in Covid, but otherwise. And it led me to meet eight neighbors I didn't know with Jim who had been working on the open street here in Chelsea. And we decided to try it. Literally it was just a let's try it idea. I met the eight neighbors, I said, I'll start a Google Doc. They said, what is that? I said, don't worry, I'll teach you.

[A]

You were the startup girl now.

[B]

I was always the startup girl. Remember I had city search in me

[A]

from the get go.

[B]

And so we tried it. We literally had no idea if it was going to work. We rented the tables and chairs, put them down the street, opened up an eventbrite for a free event. And that first year 500 people showed up and then the next year 700. And this past year we had over 2,000 people. But what's amazing about the longest table is that it wasn't like I had a business plan and I, you know, I thought I was starting a movement. It was just a what if idea. And pretty quickly, just like with New York City next, we were always willing to share the IP and have other people do it because it was never about us again. I would occasionally get asked to speak. I spoke once, somebody said I'd love to do one. We created a toolkit so now somebody else could replicate it with the toolkit and some coaching. This past year, 50 happened across the country. We only throw the one in Chelsea. Other people find us organically through a Squarespace website or an Instagram that usually I'm the one updating. So that's terrifying. You know, we had an operating budget of $15,000 because everything else was volunteers. But 50 tables happened last year, 15 of them just in New York, thrown by other people with help and a toolkit. But theirs done in their way. And it's been this incredible gift, honestly, that keeps on giving.

[A]

So it's kind of full circle. Right. We started with what happened to us, with us sort of being dislodged from community. Right. Going through this revolution. And now you find yourself kind of in this third act where you have actively decided that what you really seek is that community that you lost. How does that feel to be in this place now, to sort of be focused on this?

[B]

Yeah. Some days hard. I mean, some days I joke, like, it was easier being the global CM of Hyatt, which was not an easy job because you had teams and resources and systems. This is a much lonelier experience. It's like favors and friends and freelancers. Someday somebody shows up, someday somebody gets a new job. You know, there's a lot of unknowns. And I joke. I'm juggling six jobs, not one. It would be easier to focus on one. Right. But I'm in charge of my own destiny to some degree.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And some days I get anxious about not making money the way I used to. Right. Oh, my God. What about healthcare? Like, these are real things. But I think the other thing that's been a real gift is that over the last 18 months, I now am also part of a community of C suite executives or founders who are all going through gap sabbatical transition. Right. And so there's just a lot of us going through that. And I think this idea of normalizing the messy parts, the pauses, the minute to be intentional. And I think I was never motivated by money.

[A]

Well, I think for both of us, money was security. Right.

[B]

It was like security. Money was security.

[A]

It was fixing a thing that broke after dad died.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It was being able not to be afraid. But it wasn't about how could you make the most amount of money possible.

[B]

Yeah. And so, you know, there's a lot of people who are like, you should take the longest table and commercialize it. Hockey stick it to the right. And for me, it's really about rebuilding trust. And I think that there's an opportunity, given what's happening in the world, to rebuild trust. And trust happens from the ground up. And I learn things in doing the longest table that I would never have learned at Hyatt. And part of the other thing that motivates me is learning and trying new things. Right. And so I also love working with Andy. And I think that's also been a gift of that process. I'm just much more present on a different level than I was before. So I think there are trade offs, but there are days where I'm like, should I get another job? Or somebody gets a job. I mean, there are very few jobs that tempt me, but somebody will get a job. I'm like, maybe I should have applied for that. So it's there that doesn't go away. But this idea of trying to do the little thing that you can in a world that feels on most days like we're in chaos, it gives me a sense of agency. And what I love about the longest table is that it gives everyone who steps in, from the people who bring the food to the people who organize, who volunteer, a sense of agency. And I think we all need to find a way to feel like we can play a part, because, yeah, we're individuals, but we also want to be part of something bigger. And the something bigger these days can be very depressing. So, I don't know, maybe it all comes back to Iran and the sofre that we all sat around. I don't know.

[A]

Well, I think that's a good place to end it. Maybe you can stop bobbing and weaving for a bit now.

[B]

I don't think so. Well, you've made it to this end of the episode where, you know, we changed seats. My sister Suzy asked the questions, and I got to answer them. By the way, I much prefer asking the questions. So thanks for making it to the end. I hope you learned something new. Got some lessons. Make sure to tell friends, Listen, like, you know, that's how this game is played. We need more people to follow us so that we can do more episodes. Because in the end, it's about you and not us. Thanks again.

[A]

It.