Soledad O’Brien: Seek Out the Curious and the FastidiousPosted in Articles, Interviews, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2016-06-11 20:57Z by Steven |
Soledad O’Brien: Seek Out the Curious and the Fastidious
Corner Office
The New York Times
2016-06-10
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.