The C-suite is messier than you think, with Maryam Banikarim

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0:54I remember when I took the job at NBCUniversal, and it was my dream job, right? Like, cheers, friends. That was my network. I show up, and the HR person says to me, you know that these are the mean kids in school, like the ones who won't let you sit at the cafeteria table. And I remember saying to her, like, maybe you should have said that to me before I signed my contract. And then I had my group meeting with my team, and somebody said to me, We fired all these people and hired you. And then a person said, well, you have the worst job outside of the janitor.

1:36That's Maryam Bannikaram, former CMO of Univision, Gannett & Hyatt, and host of the podcast The Messy Parts. Today we focus on career disruption, which is escalating across the economy. Maryam's stories and advice are illuminating from navigating the politics of the C-suite to embracing joy and betting on yourself. She grew up in Iran and so shares her personal insight into the current Middle East conflict, looking for hope amid the chaos. Maryam is funny, unpredictable, and inspirational in her commitment to the power of human connection and what we can all achieve. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

2:24I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Maryam Banikaram, host of the terrific podcast, The Messy Parts, founder of the new community, The Interval, which I'm eager to hear more about, also founder of NYC Next and The Longest Table, former chief marketing officer from Univision to Gannett to Hyatt and a longtime friend. Maryam, this is going to be fun. I'm excited, Bob. Let's go. Let's start with the messy parts, because first of all, I love that word messy. Can you describe what the messy parts is and what you mean by messy? The show is about interviewing successful people about the things that go wrong.

3:02I think that in a world like we live in today, we see the highlights real, whether it's on Instagram or LinkedIn or anyplace else. It looks really easy to sort of climb the ladder or become a founder and have a unicorn company, right? But the truth is, it's never easy. Everybody has messy parts. Those moments stay with you and you figure out how to pick yourself back up. They're never easy. But actually, that's where the growth is, right? I love the word messy because I feel like creativity is messy. Growth is messy. You know, we have plans, but life is really what happens when, you know, your plan didn't work out.

3:36Like, have you always been drawn to messy? Well, I think I never knew anything but messy. I mean, I'm a kid who grew up in a revolution. My mom and dad went to college in Boston and left me behind with my grandmother in Iran when I was three, which most people think is really traumatic. But what else did I know? You know, I had a father who drowned windsurfing when I was a sophomore in college. I mean, I only know messy. But what I also learned is as a result, how to pick myself back up pretty quickly. And I think the sooner you learn that, the easier it gets. Not that we want people to have complicated journeys, but I do think you develop this muscle memory that while it may be hard, you learn sort of that it's going to be OK.

4:20And sometimes the mess is is the opportunity to write. It's finding the opportunity in the mess. A hundred percent. Bloomberg talks about having started Bloomberg as a result of being fired, right? When people step away or pause, whether by choice or by, you know, somebody else's choice, what ends up happening is that you have to sort of decompress and deal and find a pathway. I had a job that I took at Amarati Pures Lintas. It's not even on my resume. I took that job and a weekend, I knew, oh, things were not good here. And, you know, that was terrifying. But if I hadn't walked away from that job, I wouldn't have had a pivot in that moment that really became transformative for my career after that.

5:10It's easy to see that in retrospect, but when it was happening and I was like, oh my effing God. Yeah, that didn't feel so good. Yeah, but it's hard to walk away from things, especially if you're someone who like, no, I'm a successful person. I get things done. I solve problems. Why can't I solve this one? I'm a professional problem solver. That's generally what I say people are in the world of business. The hardest thing for me is sitting still. When that pause comes, it's a real moment of identity shift because, you know, I remember leaving Hyatt and taking a year and a half off and literally to the person, they would be like, she's the former global CMO of Hyatt, as if somehow I had no value outside of that title.

5:52I had headhunters who called me who said, you know, don't wait too long because you're not going to be able to go back in. I mean, there's so much anxiety that's placed on you when you pause, again, whether it's by choice or not. And I think for people who are successful, you know, to get to that level, yeah, your identity is completely intertwined because you had to make sacrifices in order to be able to get there. I know when I left Fast Company, you know, which I had been there for 11 years. It was a long time. And I did have this sense of like, what is my relevance? You know, like, where do I go next?

6:28And you do feel a little lost. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to be when I grow up. I don't know where this journey is going to take me. But each thing leads you to the next thing, right? And so I think that belief that it will work out, even though it seems easy to say, is actually pretty much true. I would say that is the through line among all the people who've come on. Now, they have some of them will tell you, you know, live your purpose. Some of them tell you don't live your purpose. Like there's a lot of competing ideas. But the one thing I will say is grit, resilience. They work hard and they learn over time that even though they have these bumps, which are inevitable, that it somehow works itself out.

7:10You mentioned your upbringing in Iran. What do you make of it? Do you still have family that you're in touch with? Yes, I still have family there. My aunt and her husband are still there. I left when I was 11 in fifth grade at the end of fifth grade. And for sure, that was, I think, the beginning of a feeling of non-belonging in a way, right? Because you were sort of extracted in the middle of your life from the world that you knew. I have felt numb pretty much since then in some ways. I remember when the Women, Life, Freedom broke out, there was this song called Baraya, which is, which actually won a Grammy that year.

7:44When that song played for the first time, something in me broke and I cried. I don't think I'd cried the entire time, right? For me, I was a kid as the revolution heated up. We had more and more kids who were being pulled out of school. We had teachers who left. We had martial law. My father was under house arrest. but as a kid oddly I found it exciting and so I had an American teacher she did current events and I remember at the end of the year she said to my mom your daughter's going to become a journalist and as they were killing all the journalists my mom said to her that is a fate worse than death so you know but I think it's hard not to look on obviously there's a lot of civilians being impacted not just in Iran but in also all the other places where bombs are being dropped um there's no question that this has been a government that's sort of terrorized its own people i think there's a sense of we're going to burn it to the ground before we give up so you worry about where the end is um i don't think anybody you know who knows what's happened in terms of the repression and really the aggression which wish they've put down any kind of protest, you know, would be sad that things change.

9:05But I do think we're going to experience a high cost of what you call, you know, unintended casualties, right? And I think that's a hard thing to watch from afar. And I know people who check in on their family, and I should say the families check in on them because the internet isn't working, cell phones aren't working, landlines are how parents are getting through to their children or cousins to their cousins, you know, people wake up and it's pitch black from the fumes, right? There's a lot. And I think I'm worried about the water supply. There's all kinds of things. And that's not even talking about all the implications that could happen outside of Iran and other neighboring countries.

9:45And frankly, even here, you know, I have kids who've never been to Iran, right? They weren't born outside of Iran. Would I like to be able to take them back and show them where I grew up and sort of this incredible rich history, you know, a country that's been around for a very long time with amazing sites and people, of course. But the question becomes, the question becomes, at what price? And by the way, is there an end in sight? I don't know. It's hard to tell. I mean, do any of us know? I mean, out of all this, you have been yourself a very creative person as a marketer and otherwise. I mean, I remember during the pandemic, you sort of threw yourself into championing New York City at a time when cities seemed scary and at risk, and you rallied people in the arts and outdoor performances.

10:34And you put together the longest table, which was this sort of block-long dining table in Manhattan to kind of fuel connection. Now you've started a community called the interval for executives in transition. Is there something that you feel like connects those things? The through line is belonging. I think for me as a kid who lost her sense of belonging, not only creating belonging for myself, which I really did by joining and doing, like that's how I found belonging. I was like, I'm willing to help and get involved, but also helping others find belonging for themselves. Like nobody needs to repeat middle school, I say.

11:15Like I think we can all relate to that emotion. I think that that matters in the world of business. When you step away, again, by choice or not, there is this incredible moment of vulnerability. And I think what's amazing about the interval is that you find a group who is willing to support you without judgment. I mean, I remember when I left Hyatt, my son said to me, Mom, you're the most busy unemployed person I know. and I think you know motion was my default he was not wrong but I think one of the nice things about sitting with other members of the interval is that we we recognize each other I actually spoke to somebody who went back in for a job and she called me a couple months later and she said I've decided to leave this job that I went back in for and I was like wow you just took it like what happened she said being part of the interval made me realize that life is too short and I don't want to live my life that way.

12:11And I have the privilege of not. So I've decided to move on. I think there's so many different ways to live your life. For me, The Longest Table, which is a nonprofit, has been a way to reinvent myself, right? To just give back in a different way. And honestly, I'm in a place to be able to do that now, even doing the podcast. I always wanted to be a journalist. Apparently, that was seeded from fifth grade. But I was financially not in a place where I felt like I had that opportunity. So, you know, my mom used to say, and it was such a cringe moment for me, to be like, it's never too late. You can still be Oprah.

12:46And I'd be like, oh, mom, you know, and I think like, why not? I may not be Oprah, but I can be me. I can be messy me. And the interval, is the scale of it designed to be small or is this something that you feel like over time will become a bigger community? The backstory of that is that when I left Hyatt, I took a year and a half off. It was such a moment of privilege to be able to stop working and not worry about paying my bills. And it led me to write this article, which the New York Times published. I talked about stepping away, right? This moment where my son said to me, if you go back in, I'd miss you.

13:25And that moment like really stopped me in my tracks and made me decide to not go back in, which was terrifying. But then, as I said, amazing. So Shelly Huff and I met, Shelly's my co-founder, we met at Fortune's Most Powerful Women, a room that was, you know, a big thing to get invited into. She just left as CEO of Serta Simmons. And she came to find me a couple months later in New York. And I said to her, this is a hard thing to go through. Like if you run at that pace, when you stop, it's like the earth moves beneath your feet. And it's hard for people around you to understand because, you know they're like oh my god you have free time you can go to yoga right but you're having all these existential moments and so i introduced shelly to a couple people and then over the course of 18 months there was like a hundred people in this group like literally there isn't a week that doesn't go by where somebody doesn't say i have somebody else who should join so i think we're going to see now we we know having been parts of lots of communities that size matters in terms of like intimacy right and so i think we're very intentional about how we're going to you know, of all the interval.

14:31If you reach this level and you find a group of people who are willing to be there for you, I joke like in their curlers, right? Not like in their best suit, like just like, yeah, I see you. So I think the intimacy matters. And can you do that and scale? The interval grew out of Fortune's Most Powerful Women. Is it for women primarily? Since we've announced, since we went public, we actually have gotten inbounds from men who want to join. Men go through the same kind of a thing when they step away. I talked to a friend who was a CEO at a very big company, and he left his job at the end of December.

15:06I talked to him maybe a couple weeks ago. He said, for two months, I was super busy. Today's the first day I have nothing to do. I don't know what to do with myself. I just think about this like, you know, my middle school analogy. It's like, you know, when you're in a big job, everybody calls you. The minute you leave that big job, like all of a sudden, it's like you hit the plague. Nobody seems to remember you, right? But the two people who call you, you remember them. You remember the people who were there for you, not on the high, but on the low, because guess what? It's easy to be there for the party, not so easy to be there, you know, for the funeral.

15:41Maryam gives a great reminder about what true support and connection means. Like most things, it can be easier said than done. So what does it take to dance in a flash mob or navigate the internal politics of the C-suite or host a community dinner across the length of the Brooklyn Bridge. Maryam shares stories about all three and more after the break. Stay with us.

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18:28Before the break, founder of NYC Next and The Interval, Maryam Banakaram, shared how her upbringing in Iran during the time of revolution has shaped her career. Now, Maryam talks about the politics of corporate life, how she hunts for joy in unpredictable places like flash mobs, and the value of embracing messy ideas big and small. Let's dive back in.

18:56One of the through lines I see in your life is that you are a terrific marketer. You get people excited in unexpected ways. I mean, you mentioned to me when we were talking yesterday that you were recently part of a flash mob. So the flash mob was organized for the Every Woman Biennial, which is a biennial that is for women and non-binary artists. And so they were organizing this flash mob as part of their opening, which was on International Women's Day on Sunday. But they had me at flash mob. I was like, I've always wanted to be in a flash mob, right? I mean, I don't know. I'm not a great dancer, but, you know, I like to dance.

19:35I went to one rehearsal. I kept saying to them, make it simple. I have no memory anymore. And then we showed up on Sunday. There we were on 22nd Street dancing in bright colors. And it was so fun. We danced to Lady Gaga. I have to say, I would definitely join a second Flash Mob. And, you know, one of the things I think is we don't have enough joy in our lives these days. I mean, the world can be difficult. Like, there's a lot going on, as you pointed out, in Iran, but even here. and just having a moment where you remember joy, where you actually get to feel joy, which dancing does for you. I think watching a sports game does for people, you know, experiencing music does for you.

20:16It really does change your mood. I will confess that I had to buy a bottle of Advil in order to be able to survive a flash mob. Yes, you know, like my hips aren't the same. You seem like you never get self-conscious to me, Miriam. I mean, I saw a video you posted recently walking through the subway while it was like on fire, like there was smoke everywhere. I mean, it's not the time that I would tend to pull out my phone. I get on the subway and I hear an alarm. So I'm like, wait a second, what's happening? And then I say to the person next to me, like, are we moving towards the smoke? So I decide, OK, I'm going to pivot and go the other way.

20:53And so I just found out that the messy parts had been written up really nicely by somebody on Medium. I just wanted to talk about that. So, you know, it's like I'm a millennial or whatever that is that knows how to make those videos. I will say, like anything, the more you do it, the better that you get. Now, definitely my daughter does the eye roll like, oh, my God, mom. But yeah, you're right. I probably it's a good thing I was never worried about being cool because I definitely am not. Is that one of the lessons that you've learned from the marketing world? I mean, like, are there lessons about the marketing world that folks listening to this that you feel like people don't get or should get more about what's effective, what makes it work?

21:37One of the things I've learned between the New York City Next, the longest table, the messy parts interval, is like a lot of these things were not baked business plans. You know, they weren't like laid out with a strategy and a 10-year plan. They were just ideas. You know, the longest table was an idea. Like, what if we did this? and then I tried it. I had no idea if it was going to work or not. It was a low investment thing to do other than being embarrassed if it didn't work out, right? And so we just tried it and now we have over 2 ,000 people who come to Chelsea for a long table on the street and 50 of these that have happened across the country.

22:12I didn't set out to create a movement. You know, I didn't see my way to 50 tables when I started. I think one of the things, you know, that I highly encourage everybody to do is just to be willing to try things. And oftentimes what happens when you're in these big jobs, you have to convince people, right? You have to present big proposals and convince them, do brands matter? How much is it going to cost? What's the art? By that time, like the creative idea has been, you know, shriveled up and thrown away. What I've discovered between New York City Next, where we did a moment for Broadway and the Billy Joel video that won an Emmy, right?

22:48Like totally out of my regular box is that sometimes if you really believe in something and you invite others in, because none of these things were done as one person, real magic can be unlocked. And in the end, marketing is about storytelling, right? I think the longest table has grown through other people's storytelling. And in the end, it's about connecting emotionally, right? So people want to feel things. When you're a CMO, it's so much command and control. When you're in the C-suite in general, right? You're leading from the top, directing from the top. I tell people, you do the longest table.

23:24It's about grace and trust. Somebody shows up for a volunteer meeting and says they're going to organize the day of volunteers. You don't know them. And you're like, all right, Bob looks okay. Like Bob, you know what? All you. And if Bob doesn't do it my way, it's totally okay. Actually, it's kind of amazing. And so when you do that, everybody, it's like an orchestra. They all get to have their own piece. They all get to be individuals, but part of a collective. I think that is a huge lesson for marketing because in today's day and age, you don't control things. You think you control things, but you don't.

23:58One of the things that businesses sort of struggle with is the idea that, you know, there's sort of, there's organic demand if you have a creative and a good enough idea. And then there's sort of marketing driven demand as these two different levers. And, And, you know, how much do you put towards one versus how much you put towards the other? Do you have a philosophy about that? In the end, great marketing is actually solving somebody's need, right? That's why marketers by definition are curious. Like, you have to be interested. I remember when I was at NBCUniversal, I was not an Oxygen viewer.

24:33So it didn't matter whether I liked the show or not. It was about who the Oxygen viewer was and did the show actually connect with them. In today's world, it's very, very two-way, right? It's not a one-way experience. So how do you invite them in? So, I mean, I don't know. In the end, I have less of a framework, and I think I've developed more of an instinct over time. But you do have to bring other people along in a big organization, right? You have to get the CFO on board, the CEO on board. I mean, that is part of the job in the C-suite. I will say when you're doing a longest table or whatever, you have to bring other people who are as crazy as you who are willing to do things that, You know, may seem irrational to other people, but when they come together, boy, is there magic to be unlocked.

25:21You've been inside the C-suite at a bunch of different places. Are there things that people don't share about what it's really like to be in the C-suite, like that people don't understand what that experience is or what's happening in there? Well, I mean, what I would say is it's very political, right? And I don't know, do people really understand that? You go in gung-ho trying to make all this change, and the company may reject the organ that they need, right? I will say as somebody who did change and turn around, I often was the outsider who was brought in. You were not shy about being the outsider.

25:55You didn't mind that necessarily, right? Well, I was always the outsider in my life, so it was kind of a perfect fit for me. I will say that you do have this bravado or this ability to put fear aside, which I think is definitely true for me. I remember when I took the job at NBCUniversal and it was my dream job, right? Like cheers, friends. That was my network. And I get the job and I'm so excited. It was after Univision and I signed a contract. I show up and the HR person says to me, you know that these are the mean kids in school, like the ones who won't let you sit at the cafeteria table. And I remember saying to her like, maybe you should have said that to me before I signed my contract.