Mixed Race Studies

Soledad O’Brien: Seek Out the Curious and the Fastidious

Corner Office
The New York Times
2016-06-10

Adam Bryant

This interview with Soledad O’Brien, chief executive of the Starfish Media Group, a production company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What were your early years like?

A. I grew up on Long Island, in a small town that was somewhat rural back then. I have five brothers and sisters, and I’m No. 5, and my parents were both immigrants. My dad’s Australian and my mom is Cuban, and my mom’s black and my dad’s white. That framed a lot of my thinking about the work that I would do in my career, and also how I think about big American issues.

I did a lot of after-school activities: student council, Rotary Club, track, the badminton team. We didn’t have a lot that you could do otherwise, so if you didn’t push yourself to go do something, you just couldn’t do it. There was no sitter who schlepped you to ballet classes and then made sure that your interest in art was being nurtured.

Because we were middle class, there was not a ton of money. So if there was something I wanted, then I’d have to be able to pay for it. When I was about 13, I wanted to ride horses, and I got a job mucking stalls so I could pay for riding lessons…

Read the entire interview here.

Amber Guild of Collins: Call Out the Elephant in the Room

The New York Times
2015-11-14

Adam Bryant, Corner Office Columnist and Deputy Science Editor

This interview with Amber Guild, president of Collins, a brand consultancy, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What were some early influences for you?

A. I grew up in two different homes. I had my father’s home in New Jersey and my mother’s home in New York City.

Tell me more about your parents.

They never married. They became good friends, had me and then they separated. My dad later moved out to New Jersey with my stepmom, and my mother was in New York. Both were very politically active. I probably went to my first demonstration before I could walk. We were always protesting something or other at a rally.

And I grew up in these two different cultural households. My dad’s household was all white, and my mother and my two older sisters are black. I’m the only one who’s biracial. So I found myself always being a bridge in terms of culture and different classes.

In my home in the city, we were poor. My dad’s household was working-class, but there was always food on the table. Growing up with those two very distinct experiences started to form my relationship with the world and with people in different communities, and seeing both differences and similarities.

Then, to top it all off, I ended up getting a scholarship to boarding school in Connecticut when I was 14, which was another radically different culture and experience…

Read the entire interview here.