Amy Cohen:
Welcome, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. My name is Amy Cohen, a member of the Class of 1985. I'm a vice president of the Alumni Board and I am proud to say I am the co-chair of the Brandeis Women's Network. For those of you who don't know, the Brandeis Women's Network held our kickoff event in June 2019. Our mission is simple, to foster and build connections between Brandeis women. Since June of 2019, our network has grown tremendously. We have a vibrant Facebook group of over 800 Brandeis alumna and mothers of Brandeisans, which you can find by searching BrandeisWomen, one word, on Facebook, and we have been thrilled to offer a wide variety of programming to the entire Brandeis community, such as today's event with Christie Hefner.
Amy Cohen:
BrandeisWomen has many events planned for 2021, so I encourage you to check Brandeis' social media, and your email for news of these upcoming events, and be on the lookout for an invitation to our virtual holiday party. Before we hear from Christie, I have a few housekeeping matters to share. First, we will be reserving time at the end of the discussion for questions. If you have a question, please post it in the Q&A. As I'm sure you can imagine, we have limited time and expect many questions.
Amy Cohen:
We will do our best to get through as many as we can. Also, this event is being recorded and will be available shortly after today in Brandeis' Virtual Library found on the Alumni Association website. I would now like to turn the program over to Talee Potter, Class of 1997. Talee is a member of the Alumni Board, she is my co-chair of the Brandeis Women's Network and someone I am proud to call my friend. Talee.
Talee Potter:
Thank you, Amy for that warm introduction and thank you everyone for joining us here today. Christie, thank you so much for joining us today. So, although Christie Hefner requires no introduction to Brandeisans like us, thought I'd share a little bit about your background. Christie Hefner graduated in 1974 from Brandeis, majoring in English and American literature, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She's a former Brandeis trustee, who chaired the budget and finance committee.
Talee Potter:
She chaired as chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises for 20 years, the longest-serving female CEO of a publicly-traded company, where she oversaw the transformation of a domestic publishing-based business into a brand-driven, global multimedia company, including being the first national magazine to launch on the web. When she left, over 40% of her executives were women. For three years, she was named to Fortune's list of Most Powerful Women.
Talee Potter:
Presently, her portfolio includes advisory work for Newlight Technologies, which patented a technology to convert methane into ocean-biodegradable plastic, Public Good, which is an AI driven digital platform that allows brands to scalably engage with consumer, Belushi Farms, a cannabis company, and as chairman of the board of HatchBeauty Brands, a brand incubator. She also serves on the boards of Springboard Enterprises, a nonprofit accelerator for women tech entrepreneurs, and The Center for American Progress Action, the leading progressive public policy think tank.
Talee Potter:
Wow. So Christie, thank you so much. This is quite the background and quite the experience. So we look forward to hearing from you about all this experience. So as I just noted in the introduction, you were the longest-serving female CEO of a publicly-traded company, and you did so in the media sector, which is a male-dominated field. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience?
Christie Hefner:
Sure, and it's a pleasure to join you, although I regret that we can't be doing this in person. On the other hand, there are probably some people who are participating who wouldn't be there if we were in person. So that's the silver lining of these many webinars and Zoom calls that we've all been doing over the last many months. I think the bigger issue for me in going into the media business was going into business at all. When I was a student at Brandeis, I think very much of the times but also of the culture at Brandeis, I honestly don't remember anyone in my class who was planning to get an MBA or go to work for a corporation.
Christie Hefner:
People were going to law school or medical school or they wanted to be engineers or teachers or journalists, but I think there was still the residual feeling from the Vietnam War that business was not to be trusted, that businesses and particularly corporations didn't have the same values that our generation had. So I had never thought about working in any kind of corporation and my professional interests were journalism and law and public policy.
Christie Hefner:
So I was drawn to journalism. I actually worked for a year for the Boston Phoenix after Brandeis, and was planning to apply to Yale, which had, I think still does, a master's program that's a combination JD and Master's in Public Policy. Honestly, my ambition or dream when I was just out of Brandeis was to someday wind up either in the Senate or on the Supreme Court. So just winding up in business was unexpected, and even when my father made the suggestion, and it was his idea that I move back from Boston to Chicago and learn something about the company, which he had founded.
Christie Hefner:
I think of, in his mind, it was just a chance to spend some time together because my parents had divorced when I was very young and for me, it felt like it'd be a junior year abroad. Kind of a, I'll do this for a year or two. It'll be intellectually interesting. I've always loved Chicago, and then I will go to Yale, and then I will go down the path of my life. So the more surprising thing was honestly, that I wound up spending so many years at and then running a company.
Christie Hefner:
It is true, though, that like many businesses, there were not a lot of women in positions of power. I remember when I joined the board of the MPA, which is some years later, think there were like 40 people on the board. So this is the Magazine Publishers of America. So these are all the top magazines in the country, and there were only two women on the board. Pat Carbine who was the publisher of Ms. Magazine, and Gertrude Crain, who was the family CEO of Crain's publications around the country.
Christie Hefner:
At the same time at Playboy, somewhat ironically, given that it was obviously a magazine targeting men, there were senior women editors on the masthead, even in that period in the 70s where the women of other magazines like Time and Newsweek were literally going to court to get out of the research copy pool where they'd been kind of ghettoized. So for me, the bigger journey, I think, was about just actually learning that ... Odd as it sounds, but I was young, that there are plenty of people who see business as a force for good and bring their values to their business lives, just as there are plenty of corrupt people in law and medicine.
Talee Potter:
Did you ... So the women who served on these boards, did you use them as mentors or did you rely on these women for support in jumping into your role?
Christie Hefner:
I never really had a mentor per se, but someone who was very gracious to me from very early on was Katharine Graham, and I was and remained a huge fan of her, particularly because as I'm sure many of the people on the call know, knowing her story, she was thrust into a position of leadership when her husband, who was the son-in-law of the owner of The Washington Post, and had been the publisher, took his own life. The presumption of the board was that the newspaper and the company would be sold and she, on her own, decided that that's not what she wanted, and that she would step into this role, with a little bit of background early in her career as a journalist, but really no business experience.
Christie Hefner:
I'm sure many of you guys have seen the movie based on her story that Meryl Streep plays her, which is a fantastic film. If anybody hasn't seen I highly recommend it, but she was very gracious to me and actually gave me a very good advice which I didn't take, which was to go work somewhere else first, which is actually good advice. I do give it also to other people who are thinking about going into a business that a father or mother founded, but I wound up in a situation where after being at Playboy for a handful of years in different jobs and actually going on the board, the company got into serious financial trouble.
Christie Hefner:
I went to the board and to my father and suggested instead of recruiting another president from outside the company, which is what they had done, that I could step in as president, form an office of the president with the then chief financial officer, and we wouldn't lose all the time that you would need to take to do a search, and then for the person to get acclimated enough to build trust, to start to make decisions and move forward. So I wound up in part through circumstances beyond anybody's control that sort of making my way at the company rather than having the benefit of working at another company as well.
Talee Potter:
It sounds like from what you're saying you actually did what many women are criticized for not taking the leap in jobs when they feel like they don't have all the requisite skills, it sounds like you took that leap and took that chance and it came off well.
Christie Hefner:
It's a super smart point. I do look back at it and think WTF, I mean, what was I thinking. I was 29 years old, I didn't even have an MBA. Yes, I'd been there seven years, but it was unquestionably an example of not knowing everything I didn't know but it also reinforces, Talee, your point that research has shown that women will wait until they've done ... I think the statistic is something like 70% of the job requirements before they will apply for a promotion. Whereas I think the average for men is somewhere around 30% and the consequences, of course, that women wind up not being able to be promoted as often as they should on their potential. They wait to get promoted on their accomplishments, and then you start to lose ground.
Talee Potter:
So on that point, I read that during your tenure at Playboy, 40% of your executives, over 40% of executives were women. That's a pretty incredible statistic. Was that an intentional move on your part? Was that something that just happened or how did that-
Christie Hefner:
Initially, it was not intentional. I was trying to build a team as we were turning the company around, and then developing the strategies for growth, the multimedia and licensing strategies, and I was really trying to attract the best people. I started to discover that there are these extraordinarily talented women who had hit a glass ceiling in larger corporations who I could pick off and bring to us because I would give them the top jobs. I did that with my chief financial officer and I did that with my head of investor relations, and a number of other jobs.
Christie Hefner:
Then it takes on a life of its own, because while it's really important for women or any group of people that have been underrepresented, for some of the people in that group to be willing to be the path trailblazer, and be the first in the room where it happens. It's also a lonely path. So if you can demonstrate to a candidate that in this case, she, will not be the only person who looks like her sitting around the table where decisions are made, that becomes a big positive. Of course, the fact that we had a female CEO only amplified that. So it became, frankly a competitive advantage in terms of attracting talent.
Talee Potter:
So what advice would you give to that young woman who's looking at that C suite role, that may feel like it's out of touch or out of reach? What advice would you give to that young woman on how to make it to the C suite or to rise the ranks in an organization?
Christie Hefner:
Well, I think one point is what we were just talking about, which is this willingness to put yourself forward, whether it's for a promotion or an overseas posting or a task force and to use the phrase that Sheryl Sandberg made famous, to lean in. Although I will say I think we need men to lean out sometimes too, but I also think that understanding, in lots of respects professionally and arguably personally too, that you don't get in life what necessarily you deserve. You get in life what you can negotiate for.
Christie Hefner:
So I am a big advocate of learning to negotiate effectively and that actually is a skill you can learn if you think that you're not very good at that. That's teachable and that's learnable and their books and courses and things. So I'm a big believer in that as a skill for women to develop, and I also I'm a big believer in networking more than searching for a mentor. Now maybe because I didn't have a mentor, I don't see that as the best path forward. Although I would say that there are many women I know who've been extraordinarily successful, who absolutely would say that part of their success was attributable to having a mentor.
Christie Hefner:
So I don't mean to suggest that I would advise against it. If someone is fortunate enough to find someone who is a mentor, and I have have and do mentor a number of younger women. I don't think that's always achievable, and it does, for me, feel a little bit like the search for Prince Charming. Like if I don't find this one perfect person to make me my one perfect self, I won't achieve what I can. So I just contrast it with networking, because all of us can network.
Christie Hefner:
We're talking to the Brandeis Women's Network, so you guys get it. I would say that research shows that men have more relationships, although they're less deep and women tend to have fewer relationships, but they're deeper and I advise, go broad and go deep. Don't give up the depth of relationship that I would say speaking personally, like my girlfriends, who are just like a rock for me, and when things have been difficult in my life have gotten me through it, and when things have been joyous in my life, have just made the joy that much greater.
Christie Hefner:
But do network broadly, because the person or people who will be there to help you decide whether you should take a job offer in another city may be different than the people that are there to help you when you're dealing with work-life balance issue, or an issue of a bad boss or whatever. So, constantly, I just think you can't know too many smart people and I never want to be at a point in my life where I stop wanting to be out there and engaging with more interesting people, and both helping them and learning from them.
Talee Potter:
Are there ... That's great insight. Are there any things that women should be mindful of what not to do? Things to... Pitfalls or things to just watch out for?
Christie Hefner:
Yeah. Well, I think effective leadership depends on finding your authentic self and different people have different styles. Obviously, there are guardrails for what is professional, but I think within that, even if you look around at people you admire, you can see different styles of management and leadership and that's fine. Actually, I would encourage you to watch even more closely the people who are failing or are doing poorly or are not admired because much in life, you learn more from them.
Christie Hefner:
I do think that there is ... I tend to avoid, in spite of my recounting certain research, gender-oriented research, I don't stereotype based on gender. I've known too many really nurturing male leaders, and I've known plenty of really tough dictatorial, female leaders. So I don't find it helpful to say this is how women lead, this is how men lead. What I would say is, if you want to call them prototypical male or female qualities for shorthand fine, that the most effective leaders are people who have actually cultivated all of those abilities, that have in their toolbox, that range of skills because you need to be able to interact with different people at different times in different ways.
Christie Hefner:
If you're the kind of person who's naturally super nurturing, then you probably need to work on when the situation requires it, are you going to be able to be more demanding and a little tougher? If you're conversely, someone who actually that's your default mode, you probably are going to need to work on the, how can you cultivate the kind of style that is more supportive and delegates and encourages because the truth is, you're going to need all of those skills.
Talee Potter:
So I'm hearing you that ... I'm hearing you say that networking is critical, and that women or people should use, or women particularly because this is a Brandeis Women's Event. Women should use the depth of their relationships and also broaden the scope of their network. Any suggestions around how to do that, or what's the best way of doing that? Particularly in the age of COVID.
Christie Hefner:
Sure. I mean, if you're talking about what's a good path for, let's say, women, to get on, say, for profit boards, and I'm a co-founder of the Chicago Chapter of Women Corporate Directors, which works to get ... And we have chapters all over the world works to get more women on boards and promote good governance through that. I would say that most people start their careers by serving on not-for-profit boards, and that is actually not only appropriate but useful. Not all not-for-profit boards are created equal.
Christie Hefner:
So if your objective is to benefit from that experience down the line, I would say you want to pay attention to what is the level of person on that board. Are they people in leadership at a range of businesses and professions, and is it a board that's not just a development board, but actually deals in matters of strategy? And will you have an opportunity to serve at some point in a leadership capacity, chairing a committee or something? I would also say if you're in a particular field, finding a way to build a reputation within your own industry.
Christie Hefner:
I mentioned that I'd served on ... Actually wound up serving on the executive committee for many years of the Magazine Publishers Association. I served on the Diversity Committee for the National Cable Association. So work within your industry also raises your profile and gives people a chance to see you in a setting that is a setting where you're presumably interacting with people in a way that is making a difference, and then finding what your own areas of competence are that are likely to attract a chair of a nominating and governance committee to you.
Christie Hefner:
So I do find that because I help a lot of women in this regard that sometimes the trap they fall into is, well, I'm smart, and I'm accomplished, and I want to be on a board. Okay. That's great, but that's sufficient ... That's necessary, but not sufficient. It also has to be well, what is it that I'm bringing you to a board? So am I cultivating my experience and expertise and therefore reputation for managing in disruptive times, for international experience, for being at tech-forward companies, for really understanding consumer behavior and marketing?
Christie Hefner:
Because ultimately, even as boards are moving to a much greater focus on diversity itself, it's still diversity married with skills and experiences that in the aggregate, represent diverse thinking. So you thinking about yourself from the point of view of how the board would see you is, I think, helpful.
Talee Potter:
So what I'm hearing you say is that individuals ... The first foray into not-for-profit and for-profit boards is find out what your professional strength is, what you're ... And pursue that or pursue what your strengths are, and make sure that there's a marriage between the skills that the board needs and your professional skills. Which brings me to ... I understand that the election of President Obama inspired you to retire from Playboy to pursue your areas of passion, which would be your charitable work.
Talee Potter:
So, currently, you serve an incredibly diverse field of both for-profit and not-for-profit boards. Can you tell us about ... And these include companies in the cannabis industry, the think tank, the progressive public policy think tank and incubator for female entrepreneurs. How do you select which ... I imagine you're asked all the time to join different organizations. How do you select which organization is right for you or where to spend your time?
Christie Hefner:
Well, leaving being CEO of a publicly-traded company, which only after I was out did I really come to appreciate how, at its essence, that job is worrying 24/7 about everybody else, gave me the luxury of control over my time and my schedule, and, frankly, who I chose to spend time with. One of my goals that you alluded to Talee, was to have more time to spend in the public policy arena, which as I had mentioned, was an early passion of mine and to engage ... Continue to engage, because I'd been on a number of not-for-profit boards before in the nonprofit arena, but also then to be selective about what I did to make a living in the for-profit arena.
Christie Hefner:
So on the for-profit side, my criteria is four questions I asked myself. The first is, I think about the people that I will be working with, and I ask, are these people I would want to have a long dinner with? Because if I don't really like being with the people, then there's nothing that's going to offset that. That is a luxury. When you're in an organization, especially running it, but even in it, you have to work with everybody that's there.
Christie Hefner:
Not just your colleagues, but your clients, your business partners, your shareholders. I now have that gift of being able to choose who I work with. So that's the first. The second is do I find the business interesting, and usually, that means that not only do I think that the business and the business model is viable, but also that it's disruptive in some way. I'm just more drawn to people that are more innovative in what they're trying to do than someone who's got the fifth largest company and some thing that they've been doing the same for many, many years.
Christie Hefner:
The third is do I believe I will have an impact on that, and that's a combination of the role that I'll have and the dynamic and the culture as well as the match of my experience and skills with the needs of the company. Then the last is, will I learn something new? I have become a deep believer in being a lifelong learner. I think it's part of the credo of Brandeis. I think it's, along with intellectual agility, maybe the most valuable skill that any person can have in the world that we live in, which is changing in ways we can even fathom.
Christie Hefner:
So I'm always looking to learn. So that's sort of my criteria on the for-profit side, and then on the not-for-profit side, the one thing I sought out when I left Playboy was the Center for American Progress. I knew John Podesta. I didn't know his co-founders, Neera Tanden and Sarah Wartell, but I had done some things with the CAP before, and I did feel that they were going to be kind of an ideas engine for the Obama administration. Because when John and Sarah and Neera had founded CAP coming out of the Clinton administration, it was out of that personal recognition that even when you have a really smart president, it's just hard not to be a captive of the crisis de jure your when you're in the White House, and that was the Clinton years before we had social media and kind of constant bombardment of incoming.
Christie Hefner:
So they had set up CAP to be kind of the progressive version of the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute. I just thought that not wanting to move to Washington, not wanting to look for a job in administration, this was a way to really engage, and I have remained committed to them. Then I choose not to do very much not-for-profit board work anymore, I choose instead, to just engage directly with leadership at not-for-profits. I just find that more satisfying and it lets me actually do more, because it doesn't require me to balance a schedule of a lot of board meetings, not-for-profit board meetings. So that's the way I look at it.
Talee Potter:
So in thinking about women on boards, there was a ... I don't know if you're familiar with this, but there was a not-for-profit organization called Women on boards 2020, which was an organization looking to make sure that women ... the amount of women who sit on corporate boards was below 20%. The goal was that by 2020, at least 20% of boards will be filled by women. Now it's 2020 and my understanding is it's 22% as of representation. California passed the state law a year ago, mandating that every publicly-traded company in California must have at least one woman serving on their boards. So I see this as a time of opportunity for women who are looking to pursue this. What advice would you give to women on how to identify these boards having it placed? Any thoughts about-
Christie Hefner:
Well, talked some about ... Some of the things that help in terms of the on ramp. I would say that a board resume is different than an executive resume. So if you are interested, you should reach out to people who are, in your circle who would be knowledgeable, and let them help you craft what a board resume should look like. You should not hesitate to get that in the hands of everyone you know, and who knows you and let them know of your interest. Again, back to something I said earlier, that should lead with what is this set of strengths and skills that you would bring into the boardroom.
Christie Hefner:
A board resume is not so much ticking off the jobs you've held, as the skills that you would bring into a boardroom. I do think that ... And certainly there are search firms that do board work, and certainly getting into their database is helpful. Often, the first opportunities are on non-public boards and candidly, it can be more satisfying to be on non-public boards than public boards. There's a lot of process on public boards.
Christie Hefner:
Some would say cover your ass process, but nevertheless, process. So I know the default mode, at least as I've seen it for a lot of women is, I'm looking to be at a big public board. That's fine to look to, but don't ignore the possibilities that might be available to you in a family-owned company or a private company, as well. I'm not personally a big fan of quotas, although I think it's great that Goldman has said that they won't take companies public. They don't have a woman and that BlackRock and some of the CalPERS and some of the large institutional investors have said that they're going to not invest in companies that don't have diverse boards.
Christie Hefner:
I think that kind of pressure is sensational, because I think it comes from the best place, which is something I strongly believe and that is that you don't get the best thinking, unless you have a diverse board room. You don't get the most innovative thinking. One of the things I'm proudest of in Playboy was that we really broke the mold of magazine companies growing simply by buying or starting other magazines, by reinventing the company as a multimedia company, as a brand-driven company with actually more women customers than men at the end and a larger audience.
Christie Hefner:
That kind of innovative thinking is hard to come by. You could argue, well, why didn't ... Why wasn't CNN the Time network when Time magazine was the dominant news magazine, and it was owned by Time Warner, which had cable systems. It started by an upstart Ted Turner in Atlanta and the same with, the difference between Blockbuster and Netflix. Either you're embracing and thinking differently about the world as it changes or you're following the same old, same old path and can find yourselves out of business.
Christie Hefner:
So I think the pressure for more diversity and gender diversity coming from that recognition is really helpful. The one structural change I've become a believer on is average term limits. One of the problems we have in this country is we have very little turnover on boards compared to European and other countries. I frankly just don't think it's good for boards, even beyond the diversity issue. So I've become a fan of what's sometimes called average 10-year term limits.
Christie Hefner:
I say it that way, because I've seen enough examples where actually, the most valuable director on a board maybe someone who served quite a long time, and that person's experiences is just what the board needs for the next period of time. So to have an across the board, term limit of whatever you want to say, say 12 years would cost you that person. If you say that the average term can't be more than 12 years on a board, then someone is going to have to leave the board sooner than 12 years to allow that person to stay and that's going to open up a lot more seats for diverse candidates.
Talee Potter:
That's really ... That's great insight. Thank you for that. So to transition to a little bit more of a personal part of your experience, can you tell us a little ... And you referenced a little bit early on. Can you tell us a little bit about your Brandeis experience and how Brandeis shaped your activism?
Christie Hefner:
Well, I have to confess that I was not a particularly diligent student of universities when I was applying. I went to a very good public high school, New Trier. We had a very active guidance counselor program. We all took the PSATs, our junior year. So by early in your senior year, the assumption was you would go meet with your guidance counselor, and they would look at your test scores and look at your grades and look at other things, whether you were played sports or whatever. Then they would say to you, "Talee, here are three schools we recommend you apply to," and I kind of assumed that that would happen.
Christie Hefner:
When I went for that meeting, the guidance counselor said, "You test very well," and I happened to. "You get very good grades. I honestly think Christie, you could probably get in wherever you apply. So you should apply the places you most want to go." Which sounds like a wonderful message, except I had no idea where I wanted to go to school. I did have criteria. I had visited Boston with my family in the late 60s.
Christie Hefner:
I just loved the idea of being in an area that had so many colleges and universities, and I also felt that part of college that seemed appealing to me was to live in a different part of the country. I wanted a coed school, I wanted a relatively small student body because I really was looking forward to more seminar classes than lectures. I've always loved music and theater, I spent six summers at the National Music Camp in Interlochen. So I wanted a school that was not only an academically-well respected liberal arts school, but that had some music and theater.
Christie Hefner:
I actually applied to Wesleyan, which I felt checked all those boxes, and got accepted and planned to go to Wesleyan. Then in the middle of my senior year, they sent an alum to Chicago, and I'm sure other major cities to just meet the students that we're going to be going in the fall. I remember going downtown with my mother and meeting in some tiny little office and he said, "Oh, how did you choose Wesleyan?" I said, what I just said about this is what I was looking for. I volunteered that, I love the fact that not only given that it was midway between New York and Boston, was it close to Boston, but that being close to New York, as someone who loved theater, I could imagine sometimes going to New York and standing in line for a cheap ticket to go see something in New York.
Christie Hefner:
This man who I would never see again in the rest of my life, said to me, "Well, Wesleyan is in a town called Middleton, in Connecticut and while it is midway between Boston and New York, it's not close to either Boston or New York. So if you're thinking you're going to have an experience that's rooted in being close to Boston, you're not and you're going to be quite a ways from New York and Middleton is an industrial town. There's some tension between the university and the town, and I'm not sure this is what you are looking for."
Christie Hefner:
Now, years later, when I was on the board of Brandeis and I learned a lot more about how financial aid works, and kind of how that whole model works, I really understood what I represented as a student who needed no financial aid, because when my parents divorced, one of the commitments my father had made was that whatever schools my brother and I got into, he would pay. So the student who needs no financial aid and is a really good student, is what schools need in order to be able to fund their financial aid programs and for this man to discourage me, because he thought it wouldn't be satisfying to me it was really an extraordinary kindness.
Christie Hefner:
However, I then went back to Wilmette with no college and a friend of mine who went to Harvard had ... I had no interest in Radcliffe for a variety of reasons, said, "Well, why don't you apply to Brandeis? Brandeis has all these qualities you want and it is close to Boston." Honestly, Talee, I knew Brandeis only a little bit. I did know it had this great academic reputation, that it had great faculty that really taught the undergraduates. I knew they'd put on a killer book sale every year in Edens Plaza, and that was about it.
Christie Hefner:
So I don't think ... And I knew who Justice Brandeis was, but I don't think I really appreciated the social justice side of Brandeis when I went. I'm now reading Stephen Whitfield's book, leaning left, I think it's called or Learning Left at Brandeis, which I highly recommend. I'm now learning even more than I knew when I was on campus. So the truth of the matter is that I wasn't attracted to Brandeis because of its social conscience, but I loved that aspect of it. I worked for Father Drinan in his congressional race. I got deeply involved with upward bound when I was there. Some of the professors, Larry Fuchs, and people like that became very special friends. So I treasure that part of my Brandeis experience, even though it isn't really what drew me there.
Talee Potter:
Well, it sounds like we owe ... We need to find this gentleman and send him a thank-you note. Because Wesleyan's loss was our gain. So that's a great story. So can you ... So now we're living through obviously a once in a ... Hopefully once in a lifetime experience through COVID. This is actually an extraordinary time in history in our lives. You're involved in a lot of organizations who do a lot of different things. Has COVID impacted ... First of all, those organizations in any way, and also, your own activism, or your own work, has it been impacted by COVID at all?
Christie Hefner:
Well, definitely every business that I work with has been impacted, whether it's on the level of, do we ask people to come back to an office on a less dense basis, or two days a week, or whether it's a supply chain interruption, or whether it's about the fact that retailer's closed, and there needs to be a kind of acceleration to E-commerce. So for sure, on that kind of strategic intellectual level, I think there's no business that hasn't been impacted by COVID. For sure.
Christie Hefner:
I do think, as has been noted, that to some extent, it was kind of a time machine to the future, or is a time machine the future and some of what it's accelerating, I actually think will put us in a position, let's say post a vaccine that will be better than we were before. I think that while I miss the interpersonal connections that business travel provided, and I don't think we will live in a Zoom-only world in the future, I also think it's true that there was a lot of business travel that was just a waste of people's time.
Christie Hefner:
More than not, a lot of sectors will wind up with more of a hybrid model. They'll be E-commerce and retail, they'll be more telehealth and in-person health. I think in the health space, I do sit on the board of Rush University Medical Center and they took almost 1,000 transfer patients during the first spike from safety-net hospitals, and demonstrated the ability with first class care to not have any racial disparity in outcome, which we know has been a huge problem nationally in terms of mortality rates.
Christie Hefner:
That experience, along with work that had been done previously, has led to the formation of a Health Equity Council at Rush, which I have been asked and I'm serving on and I'm looking forward to seeing how we can use the learnings from this experience to really formally address the health inequities that exist in our country. In Chicago, it's a matter of about four or five subway stations, and it represents about a 10 year death gap in terms of life expectancy and that is addressable if we want to.
Christie Hefner:
So that's one of I think, the outcomes. I suppose the most profound impact has actually been on the personal side in that, I almost lost my mother at the beginning of this year, not to COVID, to heart attack. She actually went cold blue, and I had to override her, Do Not Resuscitate to save her and all of this was happening just as we were learning about COVID. So she was in an ICU for five days right before the spike that I fear would have potentially kept her from getting intubated because she would have been seen as a 93-year-old person and therefore less the priority than younger people that were coming in with COVID, but fortunately, we were there right before that.
Christie Hefner:
Then when she came through that, and she's now the proud owner of a pacemaker defibrillator, and we had her discharged to a skilled nursing facility. She was there just before those places became the kind of Petri dishes that led to so many tragic deaths, both amongst staff and patients. Then we got her home, the end of March, and she's actually doing quite well but I am up and back to Northfield where she lives, almost every day going to doctors' appointments and dealing with that, and dealing with that in the middle of a pandemic.
Christie Hefner:
So, we do eat at restaurants, but only outdoors and we did that last night. I am the person that has to remind her and my stepfather that we wear our masks when the waiter comes back to the table, and then we can take the mask down. It's a very constraining world we're living in, especially for an older person who's come through what she's come through, but she's a super smart woman. She, as I've said many times, gets the credit for everything that is best about me, from my interest in politics, and giving back to my love of reading to my love of entertaining, and my good manners and all of that.
Christie Hefner:
I am eternally grateful to have her in my life in this period of time, but it's a hard time for older people who are feeling ... Because I don't want her in stores, and I don't want her places and so that's probably been the most profound aspect of the whole thing.
Talee Potter:
Well, that was a beautiful tribute to your mother and we'll have to send her a copy of this recording so she could hear it herself.
Christie Hefner:
Fair enough. I actually ... I got her set up on Zoom, so she could occasionally listen in on things.
Talee Potter:
Excellent. That's great. So I'm hearing a theme throughout this conversation and I have to ask. You've had such an incredibly rich career and I'm curious on what's next for you. The thing that I keep hearing is your interest in politics. Can we announce it here first? Running for office?
Christie Hefner:
I think that ship has sailed. As I shared, I did early in my life think that's what I wanted to do. I've had the good fortune to get to work for candidates for many decades, and some of them didn't win, but were remarkable people who put themselves in the arena and put themselves out there. In this last cycle, I worked on a number of House and Senate races. I envision continuing to do that, not ever running myself. I do think that among the ways the world has profoundly changed from say, my parents or grandparents' generation is that that old structure of life being basically three chapters, first you learned, then you worked, then you retired, has been permanently upended, and all aspects of that.
Christie Hefner:
So we talked earlier, Talee, about being lifelong learners and I think everybody understands that now. So I don't know anybody who thinks, okay, I've finished school. That's it with learning. Similarly, though, I think that the idea of retirement as it used to be thought of, like I'm not engaged in anything, beyond my golf game, and taking a cruise. I just don't know anyone who aspires to that. Maybe there are some people, I don't know them.
Christie Hefner:
Conversely, the idea that people should defer until that chapter the things that really give them joy, and recharge their batteries, whether that's travel or volunteering or time with family and friends, people, even generations younger than mine, I'm a baby boomer, are demanding that much earlier. A different balance in their lives, much earlier in their careers.
Christie Hefner:
So everything is kind of a tapestry. With those three components being a part of it, the things that are joyful, and that give us pleasure, the sense of work as being defined as making a difference and engaged and impactful and relevant, and the learning. Then it's many different chapters. So when I left running Playboy, as I mentioned, I didn't know what I was going to do, other than I did go to the CAP people and talk to them about how I felt I could help them and work with them, but I really had no idea where the proverbial next trapeze was coming from.
Christie Hefner:
I actually thought if you'd talk to me, back then the beginning of 2009, end of 2008, I would have said, "Well, I'll probably serve on public boards. I've done that. I like it. I'm good at it. There are an infinite number of former female CEOs of New York Stock Exchange companies that are well respected. So, I'm on a shortlist." As it happened, the public companies that approached me for different reasons in different situations did not appeal to me, and other things presented themselves.
Christie Hefner:
I worked for four years with the founders of Canyon Ranch, building the strategies to extend their content, their healthy weight loss programs and their brain health programs, through mechanisms that didn't require people to be on their properties, and then a speakers bureau approached me about speaking and CNN approached me about doing on-air commentary, which led me doing Morning Joe, which I did for a period of time, and then non-public boards presented themselves.
Christie Hefner:
So I've loved this chapter. I don't see any reason why I won't be loving it in a year or two or three years. So I guess the thing I most look forward to that's different, like probably everybody on this call, is a world that is again, safe enough for us to travel, so that we can be more connected with both the organizations we're working with, but also with people. I personally find leisure travel the greatest joy in my life. I had, as I'm sure everybody on this call did, a number of trips planned for this last year that I was really, really looking forward to, that all got canceled. So I'm crossing my fingers that somewhere, not longer than a year from now and maybe shorter, I can add that back into my life.
Talee Potter:
Amen to that. On that note, we have some questions coming in. So I'm just going to take a few questions that have been brought to us. As a male-tech entrepreneur and software engineer, what can I do ... Or stop doing to help promote a more gender-balanced workplace?
Christie Hefner:
Yeah, it's a great question, and I really applaud you for caring enough to ask it. I think, obviously, I don't know you, but from my experience, in working in, especially in the tech space, the challenge is that often male entrepreneurs only know other men in the tech space. So they mistakenly think that whether it's for hiring, or for an advisory board, or a fiduciary board, that there aren't women out there, and there are and you need to find the places to fish.
Christie Hefner:
So, Talee mentioned that I work with this nonprofit called Springboard, which is an accelerator for women tech entrepreneurs and we've been doing that for 20 years. In Chicago, we have a tech accelerator called 1871 and we have the highest percentage of female-led tech companies. It's only 30%, but still. There are places to go when you're looking to recruit talent into your company or onto your board and you need to overtly go and do that. Then the trick with the culture that is successful is once you get past the tokenism, that is never ideal or productive for even the organization, never mind the token, you'll find the right balance so that there'll be an environment where people will feel comfortable speaking their mind.
Christie Hefner:
I did find, and this is not just a gender thing, but one small tip. I did find ... Because different people are more ... The lean in versus the lean back person. I was one of those students that like I just always had my hand up. That just is who I am, but not everybody is that way. So when I was running a meeting, whether it was a board meeting or Executive Committee meeting, I made a point of going around the table and asking everyone to speak about the issue at hand and not relying just on the people who leaned in.
Christie Hefner:
I think that can particularly help in an environment where, let's say, you have a minority of women or a minority of people of color. So that's something that can help create a culture and will give you frankly, the best thinking.
Talee Potter:
That's really great concrete advice. Thank you. Is there any hope for print media? Aside from transitioning to new media, will we ever return to print?
Christie Hefner:
Well, it's near and dear to my heart. One of the companies I work with is a fifth generation newspaper company. They're based in Fargo. They have about 20 newspapers. They also have four TV stations and they're a company that in the main, the newspaper they own which is mostly in what I'll call like secondary markets like Fargo or Duluth or Rochester, Minnesota, it's the newspaper. So if they don't survive, there's no one covering the school board or the zoning board or for that matter, a high school basketball team.
Christie Hefner:
So I've been working with the fifth generation CEO to try and find the path to the next generation, but I would say embedded in your question is the solution, which is that it is a path that has to have a robust digital forward strategy to it, but that's not bad. If we remember that the newspaper business is about delivering independent journalism and reporting in the news, it's not beholden to a particular vehicle for disseminating that. So the honest answer is, I think there'll be print as long as that can be viable but I would tell you, for example, in the case of Forum Communications, a company I work with, we almost are not printing seven days a week in any markets anymore.
Christie Hefner:
We're probably printing more three days, four days a week, but we have a really robust digital offering that is delivering the news in those communities. On the book side, from what I see, while the ebook business is robust, the print book business has actually been holding its own. So the honest answer to your question is, the print business will survive as long as there are enough print buyers to support it.
Talee Potter:
That's true. One more. What broad changes do you see in the workplace 10 years from now? If at all?
Christie Hefner:
Well, I think the things that are early now that have the potential to be profoundly impactful, but we don't really understand them, like artificial intelligence, and data analytics, and even robotics. I don't know enough, and I try and be a pretty good reader, but I don't know enough to know fast forward to 10 years out, what does that look like. I've become hooked on this new series Next, which is about kind of a dystopian view of what would have happened if a tech company had created and then lost control of a generation of artificial intelligence beyond a Siri-type interface that could educate and upgrade itself.
Christie Hefner:
So if you want to see the dark side of what might be the future, watch it. If you don't need any more darkness, don't. I think there's a lot to be hopeful about. Tom Friedman is a friend, although we did not know each other at Brandeis, but we met through Brandeis when the International School of Finance was being formed and we both were helpful in working with Petri on that. I do think the themes of Tom's book, the interconnectedness, the flatness of the world, I think those are accelerating and they're positive.
Christie Hefner:
That bodes well for the exchange of progress, whether it's a vaccine, or whether it's around E-learning. So I'm fundamentally an optimist. I am about politics, even when I'm disappointed, I am about relationships and I'm divorced. So that doesn't always work, and I am about the world. So I'm an optimist about where we'll be in 10 years.
Talee Potter:
Wow. Christie, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much. So what I'm hearing you say and what I've heard in the past hour is, have confidence to step outside and ask the ask or negotiate yourself, don't be afraid to reach out, network, network, network, network, pursue the areas, know thyself and know what you're good at, what your strengths are and market those. Both in the corporate arena and also on the nonprofit arena, and reserve time for passion. Does that sum up-
Christie Hefner:
That's an excellent summary, Talee. Thank you. I've enjoyed the conversation.
Talee Potter:
Thank you so much for taking your time and happy belated birthday.
Christie Hefner:
Thank you. Be safe and be well.
Talee Potter:
You too. Thank you for everything. Now, to Amy who's going to close off. Some closing remarks.
Amy Cohen:
Thank you, Christie. This was so interesting, and thank you to everyone for attending. I hope you all found it as engaging as I did. Just a reminder this event is being re ... Hold on. Just a reminder, this event is being recorded. If you signed up for the event, you'll receive a email with a link to the recording and for others, it will be available on the virtual library located on the Brandeis Alumni Association. So please, if you know people who want to hear it, let them know where to find it.
Amy Cohen:
As I mentioned earlier, the Brandeis Women's Network as well as the Brandeis Alumni Association has many events coming up, and we look forward to seeing you at them. So please, please, please check your social media, and check your emails and most importantly, be well and be safe. We wish you a good rest of the day. Thank you.