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NPR's accidental CEO
By Avis Thomas-Lester
Vivian Schiller describes her career as "a series of happy accidents," an odyssey that began with her work as a Russian translator and tour guide and led earlier this year to her ascension as chief executive officer of National Public Radio.
Schiller, 48, oversees a journalistic empire that reaches 26 million weekly listeners and includes 750 employees, 34 national and foreign bureaus and an operating budget of $160 million. Not bad for a woman who didn't set out to be a journalist, despite having a father who was a long-time writer and editor for Reader's Digest.
Schiller's own ambitions were far grander growing up outside New York City: "Someone asked me in the sixth grade yearbook what I wanted to be in the year 2000. I said, 'Part president, part veterinarian and part archaeologist.'"
How she got to where she is: She studied Russian at Cornell University and Middlebury College. "Being a Russian translator was a dream job. I got to travel around the world and got paid for it ... I think I made 58 trips to the Soviet Union." She parlayed that experience into a job as a fixer and translator for executives at Turner Broadcasting, where she eventually became an executive at CNN. She also had management stints at the Discovery Times Channel and at NYTimes.com. "My career makes more sense to me in hindsight than it did as it was developing. When I look back at all the various positions, they all sort of led me to journalism and media ... Now I can't imagine doing anything else. I grabbed the opportunities that came my way."
What she's had to overcome: "Self doubt. I've gotten over it over the years ... I feel so much more confident at 48 than I did in my 20s and 30s. I know what I'm capable of and what I'm not capable of ... This is the happiest time of my life. I wouldn't go back to being in my insecure 20s for anything."
Why she has succeeded: "I'm a sponge ... I never assume that I'm the smartest person in the room." She also considers herself a problem-solver by nature. "I don't mind problems and challenges, I welcome them. I don't dread them because they are like puzzles to solve and that's how I approach them. I don't panic."
What can't be solved: Balancing her work with the needs of her family, including her husband, documentary filmmaker Phil Frank, and her children Jared, 13, and Elizabeth, 15. "My kids are older now, but when they were little, and they called out in the middle of the night, they called for 'Daddy.' ... It's like a punch in the gut. I don't blame them. I understand, but it's painful. It flies in the face of what you think you are supposed to be as a mother ... There is no such thing as having it all. Anyone who says she has found the perfect balance, I want to talk to."
What she finds surprising: The small number of women and minorities in positions of power. "I have been in meetings where I looked around, and I was the only woman and you think, 'There's something wrong here.' I was at a conference [recently] where there were 20 speakers, and 19 of them were white men. That is pretty scary in 2009, I have to say."
Earliest management lesson: Her first day on the job as a teenage sandwich server at the Cheese Bazaar. "We had these huge vats of salad dressing that we used to refill the little things of salad dressing that we served. I was walking with one" and dropped it. "There was salad dressing everywhere. My boss, Sylvester Karagis, came over. He said, 'Come on, I'll help you clean this up.' You learn a lot about how to treat employees from the bosses you've had. He was so good about that. He didn't yell or make me feel awful."
Most intimidating boss: CNN founder Ted Turner. "I was very young, and he was at the height of his fame. I didn't want him to yell at me. I was in awe of him. I used to say, 'I'm so happy to work for you.' He would say, 'You don't work for me, you work with me.' "
Smartest move: "Coming to NPR ... There is a big audience, people trust us, it's an incredible brand, and there is the opportunity to do even more than we do now. We're in a great position of strength and opportunity."
What lies ahead: Years of work. "I really want to be [at NPR] for a long time ... And I can't fathom retiring. I'm not talking about the money. I can't imagine the concept!"
Advice to the aspiring: "This is the greatest time to go into the journalism business. Journalism is being reinvented before our very eyes. If I was a pup, I would want to come in and be part of the reinvention."
Avis Thomas-Lester
| November 30, 2009; 3:19 PM ET | Category: success stories Save & Share:
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Posted by: Itzajob | November 30, 2009 10:14 AM
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Why not a single woman in the NBA? Or the NFL and major league baseball for that matter.
Why there oughta be a law.
Posted by: patrick3 | November 29, 2009 11:21 PM
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Why so few female CEOs? Maybe because wemen don't like the male definition of success?
Posted by: AuntMuriel | November 29, 2009 1:05 PM
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Women have smaller brains.
Posted by: slowpoke132 | November 29, 2009 11:41 AM
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CRYMEARIVER2 (and NANCYJEANMAIL) -
Did you notice what she said in the paragraph headed "What Can't Be Solved"?
I suspect that all the affirmative-action programs she could possibly come up with as CEO of NPR would be mostly beside the point, unless she can come up with one to ensure her up-and-coming women executive candidates' husbands do the lion's share of the homemaking!
Just my opinion.
Posted by: karen2222 | November 29, 2009 10:49 AM
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Hmmm. I'm not convinced yet that Schiller really gets how important it is to be vigilant about ethnic diversity at NPR, both internally and in its coverage.
Sure, she has so far SAID it is a priority but the proof is in the pudding -- and so far she has served up a thin gruel indeed. Her comments above strike me as phony: Schiller led a recent retreat on "re-thinking" digital journalism w/in NPR, and sixty "new/digital media gurus" were inivited participate......only a couple of that sixty were women, one was Latino (he is a big shot at CPB, very clubby), and maybe an East Asian or two. There were no African Americans at all.
This is disgusting, not just "scary," as she says in this interview. It is shameful and unacceptable.
SO, until we see and hear at NPR:
-- Qualified black men in top Correspondent and Producer positions; qualified black, Latino and Asian men and women in the Directors, Producers, Hosts, and in Department Head chairs; until we see and hear that someone other than white, upper middle class men and women hold key positions of power on staffs at the marquee programs, Schiller is just another entitled white woman who talks the talk but doesn't bother to actually walk th walk. She will be a familiar object in corporate and publicly funded media -- a 40-50-something entitled white woman who is the beneficiary of Affirmative Action policies....and who has no problem overlooking talented people of color.
Posted by: CryMeARiver2 | November 25, 2009 7:00 PM
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well, glad a woman in power has the guts to note the few others around her. this despite the 2008 election year that featured savage attacks on both women on the two national tickets, which went noted by largely unchallenged in ways racist attacks would never be permitted.
so what specific programs is she implementing to make sure more women are attaining power? sounds like she might have been a token a time or two - that will not work as a strategy.
Posted by: nancyjeanmail | November 25, 2009 3:14 PM
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I admire Schiller. She 2 years younger than me and much more advanced in her career :-Q I have a career but have definitely played down my ambitions to be there for my family. A career was not possible without my husband taking a very big role - and his career has suffered a little as well. At this point, I'm ready to take off! I just hope that there isn't too much age discrimination. I have a lot to offer - parenting being the absolutely best experience for managing people that behave like little children rather than the adults that you would expect them to be. Balancing work and family - it's more a day to day thing. There is no path, just take it day to day and be prepared for lot of bumps.
Posted by: allie7 | November 25, 2009 3:00 PM
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How, then, have millions of women with precisely the same values and talents not advanced? Ms. Schiller's testimony speaks volumes as to the importance of being in the right place at the right time and shows once a gain that a rule is proved by its exceptions.