by Edwina Dunn
Mentorship is one of the greatest opportunities for anyone, especially when you are young. When I started working with Charlie Rose, I was 27 and he was 49, two years younger than I am now. The timing was perfect. I was doing a lot of freelance work, maternity-leave cover and temp positions. Charlie was at a crossroads. We met at the right moment. He needed to staff his new programme. I liked fixing things, getting things done, the mechanics of TV. At first I was thinking, ‘Someone’s assistant? What does that mean? Is this what I went through four years of university for?’ But then I met him and we hit the ground running. It was a startup and he shared everything with me. We were really building something, and I got in on the ground floor. There was so much to do, I ended up having all this responsibility from the get-go – ‘Call the White House? OK!’ I never had a desire for one specific role and doing everything – research, shooting, editing – was perfect. It’s a partnership.
I don’t know that a work/life balance exists. I look at the high achievers and they’ve enveloped work into their lives – there’s a continuum. There’s a very big dilemma here. You get a job offer and you should be able to say, ‘Yes, I want to do this, but I also want other things in my life.’ People – men and women both – don’t really talk about this, and until we have that discussion, we’re fooling ourselves if we think there is a work/life balance. It’s the responsibility of those who are hiring to say, ‘Put that work aside now.’ Until that happens, it’s not going to change. You can be productive all you want, but if you’re not happy in your whole life, the economy and society will suffer. I used to do all-nighters, we never took any vacation, I sometimes thought I was drowning. Had I already been a parent, it wouldn’t have worked out – but someone had to do that work. Younger people these days are more willing to say, ‘I don’t have to take that fast track right now,’ and that’s healthy. Equally, the person who doesn’t have a family shouldn’t end up doing all the work.
Some people team-build so that, as a whole, we learn from each other along the path.
I consider myself a collaborator, and I think that is a type of leader. Some people’s nature drives them to the front and centre, but that doesn’t always denote leading. Some people team-build so that, as a whole, we learn from each other along the path. That is the kind of leader I believe myself to be. Good leaders listen, and good leaders adapt. As situations change, you need to be able to adjust, listen to someone else’s way or solution, and that helps you grow as a leader. We all lead in our own lives, or at least that is the goal.
I would say the following to my teenaged self. ‘Take chances and listen to yourself. Laugh a lot, smile a lot, talk to strangers and experience the new as much as you can. Do not be afraid about what others think. Don’t ever sell yourself short. Believe in yourself and have confidence to make the right choices. It’s also important to listen to those around you whom you trust. It’s OK to make mistakes. Even if they are big ones, they’re just lessons, so learn from them. You never want to go back down the road that has too many thorns or the road that is so dark you cannot see in front of you. Take a buddy along on your adventures – a friend, a romantic interest, a relative – so that you can have shared experiences. Ask opinions of those you admire. They will tell you something you might already sense in yourself but have yet to discover.
Give yourself a break once in a while. Allow yourself to embrace imperfection. Know that you are beautiful inside and out. That knowledge doesn’t need to come from anyone other than yourself.
Yvette’s Object
A Yashica Electro 35mm film camera. I picked it up when I was about 17 and I loved this camera. It was so simple to use. It became part of me, an extension of what I wanted to say when I could not find the words. I took pictures of things and people I cared for – family, close friends, my pets, landscapes, nature, buildings, city life. I’ve treasured many objects throughout my life, but the camera defines my passion. The camera is an eye. It’s a viewfinder into life. It can also be a safety shield when you do not feel confident. It’s a tool that helps guide you. It’s also a companion. You are never alone or lonely with a camera.
YVETTE VEGA
Television producer and co-creator, Charlie Rose
JUDE KELLY
As artistic director of Britain’s largest cultural institution – Southbank Centre – since 2006, Jude Kelly is a significant figure in the arts. She grew up in Liverpool, one of four daughters, and studied drama at Birmingham University. At 22 she founded Solent People’s Theatre and Battersea Arts Centre, and in 1990 she became founding director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where she spent 12 years. In 1997 she was awarded an OBE, and in 2015 she was made a CBE for services to the Arts. She created the annual WOW – Women of the World – festival, which takes place at the Southbank, in other parts of the UK and in countries all over the world.
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When I look in the mirror, I am searching to see if I am content and excited, because whatever you think you are, your eyes will tell you the truth. I’m not looking for obvious things of the ‘do I look tired?’ variety, but more ‘am I being the me that I want to be?’ If I see something different from what I’ve been telling myself, I think about it.
I wanted to be creative but other than through occasional school plays, I didn’t have a way to control and shape ideas.
People do tend to paste on to me assumptions about confidence, assertion and determination, because I am a woman working at a senior level. Most of us develop a convenient personality that reassures others we are capable and everything’s fine. As I’ve got older, I’ve realised that friendship and intimacy, and not just with those closest to us, is helped if you reveal more of your inner landscape, so there is less difference between what’s going on inside and what you’re showing the world. Vulnerability is a good thing.
My ambitions when I was young are the same as they are now. When I was six, I started making up shows and persuading the neighbourhood children to take part. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
I knew that I wanted to direct from the age of 14, but I didn’t come from a background where anybody knew how to get into the arts. I wanted to be creative but other than through occasional school plays, I didn’t have a way to control and shape ideas.
The turning point came when my inspirational headmaster, Bill Pobjoy, gave me permission to take over the school hall at lunchtime. I formed a theatre company and, by the time I went to university at 18 to study drama, I was already thinking how I was going to operate professionally. It made me realise that if young people say they want to do something, they probably mean it, and helping them to get on with it is really important.
My father made me feel that I should do whatever I believed I could do. A civil servant, he was committed to the idea of training and education for himself and his daughters. Later on, architect Cedric Price influenced my sense of courage. He was interested in using buildings to maximise their potential in society and my work has been not just creating art and giving rein to cultural ideas, but forming a sense of place that’s relevant. When I take over buildings, such as the Southbank Centre, I challenge the space to speak about what’s happening now.
It’s hubris to imagine that you can organise your life as if you are in charge, because fate will play a part.
When you are a leader, being a good storyteller is helpful, because you can describe future ideas in a way that will excite people. You have to imagine the place you’re aiming for and work backwards in order to chart the path. You can’t just fling an idea forward.
But doing all the talking isn’t leadership – you have to listen, share your vision and be pleased when people do different as well as complementary things. I am good at spotting those who have potential and then giving them space to get going. You don’t want people cloned in your image or who tell you that everything you are doing is right. Leadership needs to be stimulated through challenge.
The project I am most proud of is a pl
ay that I did with Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. He had to flee from the Abacha regime and asked if I would go to Nigeria while he was in exile, work with actors and bring them to the UK to put on a play that he’d written. It was a demanding assignment, bordering on the dangerous, but I put on The Beatification of Area Boy at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1995, and it was one of those rare moments when art provides a platform for conversations around the world.
In this country, there is more acknowledgement now that women direct, design and produce. On the other hand, there is less money and less obvious opportunity. Oxbridge and the public-school route still count inordinately, because of the massive distortion in our education system with regard to boys and girls from different backgrounds.
There is also still an issue of confidence among women. You inherit confidence over generations of leadership role models and women haven’t had that, so there is further to go. I mentor women to have the confidence to become leaders of organisations or to remain in leadership. Women can lose courage, partly because of practical pressure, if they are juggling with childcare problems for instance.
You inherit confidence over generations of leadership role models and women haven’t had that, so there is further to go.
I have two children who are now 27 and 25, and are, respectively, a poet and a choreographer. Being a parent adjusts your priorities and your sense of self, and that is a wonderful thing. It’s hubris to imagine that you can organise your life as if you are in charge, because fate will play a part. The loss of my son Johnny when he was three months old was terrible, but it made me much more accepting of not being able to control everything and more loving of the things I had.
Jude’s Object
A simple white porcelain pot, which I purchased on a trip to Japan eight years ago. A close friend took me to see a potter who had spent his whole life throwing fine white porcelain, which is a difficult thing to do. Each pot is an extraordinarily pure luminous white and totally individual, and I bought one. It’s ornamental, the size of a medium vase, but so beautiful, it doesn’t need a flower.
The potter isn’t throwing pots to be world famous. His endeavour is philosophical. We talked about the challenge of throwing over and over again, knowing you would never get a perfect pot because there is no such thing, and if there was, it wouldn’t necessarily be interesting. He had experimented with colour and different glazes but kept taking them off, thinking, ‘This in itself is enough.’
My pot is so simple but the result of years of work, and it encapsulates many of the things that I believe in. In my work, I attempt over and over again to give individual recognition to a person or a moment, and each has its own meaning and beauty just because of what it is. In life we have to hold on to things lightly. It’s just possible that, somewhere along the line, I might lose my white porcelain pot, but whether or not I have it physically, what it represents will always be with me.
JUDE KELLY
Artistic director, Southbank Centre
MAJORA CARTER
Majora Carter is an urban revitalisation strategy consultant, real-estate developer and Peabody Award-winning broadcaster. She gained a film studies degree at Wesleyan University and a Master of Fine Arts at New York University. After returning to her native South Bronx, she worked for the Point Community Development Corporation and ran a successful campaign to stop 40 per cent of New York’s municipal waste being deposited at a planned facility in the area. She also transformed a rubbish dump into Hunts Point Riverside Park. In 2001 she founded the non-profit organisation Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx) to champion green job training, community greening programmes and social enterprise. Since leaving SSBx in 2008, Carter has formed the economic consulting and planning firm Majora Carter Group to bring her pioneering approach to other communities.
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I am the youngest of ten and all my siblings had huge presence. They were athletes and performers, and they were popular. I wasn’t. I was funny looking and I liked to read and be alone. I looked at them and thought, ‘Oh, that’s what you’re supposed to be,’ not this weird kid who likes to play with rocks and dig up bugs in the backyard. So, as a teenager, I wanted to be popular, I wanted to be an extrovert and I wanted to be an actress because I wanted to be seen. But when I was in college, I realised I was an introvert and I didn’t want any of that any more.
As a teenager, I wanted to be popular, I wanted to be an extrovert and I wanted to be an actress because I wanted to be seen. But when I was in college, I realised I was an introvert and I didn’t want any of that any more.
My mother was a homemaker. My father was 21 years older than my mom and, by the time I was five, he was retiring from his job as janitor at the juvenile detention facility around the corner from our house. That place is now vacant – no children there any more, thank God – and I’m on a team competing to redevelop it into a mixed-income housing and mixed-use commercial site. I think my father would be proud that his daughter is trying to dismantle something that he knew was a terrible place.
The site is one of the largest redevelopments in New York City and the language that the city has used to guide developers in terms of their work is all about ‘transformation’ and ‘social cohesion’ and ‘environmental equality’. That was language that I used and they incorporated in order to make sure that whatever development happened would happen in a wonderful way. Of course I want my team to win, but if we don’t, I know that I’ve set the standard for what excellence can be in a low-income community of colour, and that makes me delighted.
When you’re a leader, you have to know when to get out in front and when to fall behind. I go out in front when I know a project is going to work, even though it might seem crazy or I am not getting support. An example is StartUp Box, a social enterprise that involves people in low-status communities in the tech economy. One of the things we do is develop software services for the tech industry. This project has been incubated under an NGO [non-governmental organisation], so there is a philanthropic part, but otherwise it is straight business development and that is what folks in the investment world had absolutely no faith in. None whatsoever! And I said, ‘We’ve done the market research, we know this is a great idea and we’ve got to do it.’ And we did.
As a leader, the time to fall behind is when you are trying to raise others up and give them the courage to make mistakes so that they can step up their game. It’s what the late activist Yolanda Garcia did for me, and I still consider her a guiding light. I was working at the Point, she for the organisation that she founded, but we were working for the community together. I considered myself Tonto to her Lone Ranger. I would research for her; I would go over briefs with her; she would say something and I would back it up. She was the leader and I was fine with that, I didn’t want to be out in front. But she pushed me and said, ‘This is your community, too. Speak for it.’
People don’t know that I am often not comfortable in the place that I’m in. I do it because I have no choice – I can’t be a shrinking violet and do this work. I’ve got to step out and I know that my example inspires people, particularly women. My teenaged self would have loved that – maybe she was more in touch with me than I gave her credit for!
My husband, James [Chase], has been the kind of supporter whom I didn’t know existed. He is president of StartUp Box, vice president of communications in my consulting firm and my best friend. He lifts me up when I can’t move any more. He describes his role as that of coach to a boxer who is getting beaten up. He gives me a pep talk and makes me go right back out into the ring.
When you’re a leader, you have to know when to get out in front and when to fall behind. I go out in front when I know a project is going to work, even though it might seem crazy or I am not getting support.
We married in Hunts Point Riverside Park on 7 October 2006. The first time I saw the place was in 1998, when my dog pulled me into a horrible dump by the river. By 2000 there was no garbage and no more dumping and we had
some trees and nice rock formations, and by 2004 we’d got the full amount – $3 million – to transform the park totally. In 2006 it was done and we got married there on the first day it was open. It was beautiful.
I am almost 50 years old and I am working harder than at any other point in my life. I want to be able to take a break and enjoy all these beautiful things that I’ve built. But the idea of using real-estate development as a transformational tool for social, environmental and economic equality is not normal, so I have to continue until it is. Then I can take a break.
Majora’s Object
Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street. The great American television series dominated my childhood. I loved it more than anything and my favourite character was Oscar the Grouch, who lived in a trash can. He didn’t like people but there was something about him and I loved him more than any of the characters that were warm and fuzzy. I was drawn to this curmudgeon of a person, who actually wasn’t a bad guy. He was honest and good and he taught me that you can’t judge a book by its cover.
Recently, StartUp Box made a client out of Sesame Workshop, the folks who run the show. They have a gift shop and James bought me an Oscar the Grouch plush toy and I love it. James has tried to analyse me about my love of Oscar and I think there is something in it. Oscar has beauty underneath. I feel that you just have to uncover beauty, or help it along, but it is always there and, when you find it, it helps you to see yourself in that way. For me that is a big deal.