Running to the Noise, Episode 18

[00:00:00] Soledad: I am Soledad O'Brien. Welcome to Matter of Fact. President Donald Trump says his administration will forge a society that's, quote, “colorblind and merit-based.” DEI experts say, yeah, creating a merit-based workplace is the goal of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[00:00:20] Television Narrator: There is a direct correlation between diversity—and business success.

[00:00:25] Soledad: I talked to the CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum about who actually benefits from DEI.

[00:00:30] Carmen: I'm Carmen Twillie Ambar, president of Oberlin College and Conservatory. Welcome to Running to the Noise, where I speak with all sorts of folks who are tackling our toughest problems and working to spark positive change around the world. Because here at Oberlin, we don't shy away from the challenging situations that threaten to divide us.

We run towards them.

At Oberlin, we believe one person can change the world. And this month, I'm speaking with someone who makes it her mission: Soledad O'Brien. An award-winning journalist, author, documentarian, philanthropist—and, I'm happy to say, Oberlin parent. O'Brien has built her career amplifying marginalized voices and tackling urgent societal issues like race, gender, and class.

With a legacy spanning CNN, PBS, CBS, and NBC, O'Brien has reported on critical topics such as environmental racism, the end of affirmative action, and veteran PTSD treatment.

[00:02:00] Carmen: Over a decade ago, she founded Soledad O'Brien Productions, earning Emmy Awards for projects like The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, Hungry to Learn—about college students too mired in debt to afford food—and Black and Missing, a documentary shedding light on neglected missing persons cases. But O'Brien doesn't just spotlight inequities. Through her powerful foundation, she's helping girls and young women from underserved communities graduate from top colleges like Stanford, Yale, and Princeton.

What I admire most about O'Brien is her unwavering commitment to both telling the stories that matter—and actively making a difference.

The audience may or may not know that Soledad has a son here at Oberlin. How’s Charlie doing? How is he faring?

[00:02:45] Soledad: Uh, he's doing well. They just canceled the lacrosse game this weekend because I guess it’s supposed to be one degree.

[00:02:55] Carmen: Yes.

[00:02:56] Soledad: It's Ohio, you know? So I feel like he's a little bit happy that he doesn't have to run around outside in the freezing cold. But he's doing great. He's doing great.

You know, one thing I didn’t calculate was that he’s a twin, and he misses his twin terribly. So they talk every day. They've been back to see each other. His twin’s at Wesleyan, so they go back and forth.

[00:03:20] Carmen: You may know that I have triplets.

[00:03:23] Soledad: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:24] Carmen: And the triplets are seniors in high school.

[00:03:27] Carmen: So we are in this process right now. I have one—Obie—who applied early decision. So Gabby is going to come to Oberlin. But we don’t know about the boys because they decided not to apply early decision. We’ll see in the next couple of weeks.

[00:03:43] Soledad: You know, my boys, I would say they’re close, but they've always had separate friends. They’re not identical, right? So people would say to me all the time, “How are they going to manage?” And I’d say, “They're going to manage just fine. They're not that dependent on each other.” Boy, was I wrong.

[00:03:58] Carmen: Yeah, no, I feel like, you know, at first it was kind of like, “Yeah, we’ll be fine, da-da-da-da.” And as Gabby selected, then the boys started to say, “Well, maybe we should go together,” because, you know… and I could feel that little twist of “Oh my gosh, we’re not going to be in the same room together,” and wondering how they’re going to manage without each other.

[00:04:20] Soledad: It's a thing, I’ll tell you. I would not have guessed it, but it is definitely a thing.

[00:04:26] Carmen: Mm-hmm. Well, I’m so excited to have Soledad O'Brien here on the podcast, Running to the Noise. You know, as you look at your career, you’ve spent your life as a journalist really amplifying marginalized voices and pressing societal issues around race and class and gender and identity.

And I guess I was wondering whether you had a specific moment in your life that you feel sparked this particular part of the passionate work you do?

[00:04:52] Soledad: It’s funny because you describe it that way—but of course, it’s that way looking in the rearview mirror, right?

Partly because it’s so hard to get stories of marginalized people on TV. I would be the first to say—I would not set out to do that, because it’d be like, “I’d like a path that’s full of boulders and obstacles, really hard—but just give me the marginalized people so I have to literally sell my soul in order to get these stories on.”

I mean, you just wouldn’t do that.

But I do think I was successful when CNN used to cover a lot more live news, right? And so I—for a while, when I was there—really in 2005, it was just a year that was so full of breaking news stories. We had the tsunami, we had Hurricane Katrina, we had the Pope die—it was just back-to-back-to-back-to-back. I was traveling all the time. Just living on the road.

[00:05:45] Soledad: And one of the themes that was consistent was exactly that. The people—no surprise—who were affected by climate change, who were affected by catastrophe, who were affected by sudden shifts in policy, of course, were people who were marginalized. And so I ended up, de facto, covering marginalized people—although I was really out there just trying to do live reporting for CNN, right? I was an anchor of their morning show.

So it probably started with the tsunami. And then moved domestically, by the fall of that year, into Hurricane Katrina—and everything that was in between that year. So I think that's what sort of created this strategy. And probably more from my bosses than from me personally—of like, “Oh, she can go cover these communities, and we can think about covering them from a policy perspective.”

Not just: “We went in to talk to these people,” but: “Let’s actually analyze what we now call on the show that I do, Matter of Fact, how policy lands on people.”

[00:06:47] Carmen: Right. Well, I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about your family background. Because I’m imagining that was impactful as well. I know you were born to an Afro-Cuban mother and an Irish-Australian father, and you grew up on Long Island. I don’t know how diverse Long Island was at the time—but what I know about Long Island, it’s not particularly diverse. I’m wondering—

[00:07:09] Soledad: My high school was 93% white when I was there. And now it’s down to 90% white—that I’m not there.

So yeah, I do think the way I grew up definitely influenced a bunch of things. I have five brothers and sisters. We’re all very close. And my parents were both immigrants. My dad came to this country from Australia, and my mom came from Cuba. They got married at a time when interracial marriage was illegal in this country.

So when they were looking for a house to buy in the 1960s, no one would sell them a house. No one was going to sell a house to a Black woman and her husband. So my dad basically had to ditch my mom in order to go meet with people.

[00:07:55] Soledad: He was eventually able to buy property, and they built their house when I was born—so it was just finished right around 1966.

[00:08:02] Carmen: Yeah, that’s a common story for lots of interracial families. Leave the person of color at home, and go and get what your spouse couldn’t.

[00:08:11] Soledad: That’s right. My parents were pragmatists—like a lot of folks. You just do what you’ve gotta do to get it done.

But I do think there was real value in being a bit of an outsider. You’re both in and you’re outside. My Spanish is more like Spanglish, but I can certainly understand what people are saying. It was always very helpful to know what was happening around you. If someone was speaking in Spanish, I would sit in newsroom meetings and think, “They’re talking about them, but really it’s us.”

[00:08:42] Soledad: I mean—it’s us. And sometimes when we would do documentaries, I’d actually have to say that out loud. Like, “You guys keep saying ‘them’—who are ‘these people’ who come to America?” I’m like, “It’s actually us. These are my people.”

It was very hard to get people to, in their heads, make that turn.

[00:09:01] Carmen: That reminds me—I used to do this speech about “outsider’s integrity.” The point was: particularly for folks of color, or for folks with different identities, there’s something they bring to the table as outsiders that people who are inside the system don’t bring.

Sometimes, especially students, want to conform—to not be different. And I’ve always said to them, no—your outsider’s integrity is why you’re there. It’s what makes you special. It sounds like, over time, you were able to bring that kind of outsider’s integrity into your work.

[00:09:34] Soledad: Yeah, I think that’s really true. In some ways, people who are outsiders often feel like they’re less than—because they’re not on the inside. They think, “If I were on the inside, I’d have access, I’d have power.”

But there’s this superpower in being on the outside. You see things that other people—who are too close—just can’t.

[00:09:55] Soledad: I’m not sure I’d call it “integrity,” but I did feel like I always had this point of view—having a foot inside and a foot outside. So when people would say things, I’d think, “That’s not really true of the community.” You’d hear from people very clearly about the myths they’re living with—the stories they tell themselves.

And when you're doing documentaries, those myths often turn into the actual stories.

[00:10:20] Carmen: Right.

[00:10:21] Soledad: And it’s a lot of work to run around saying, “That’s not true. That’s not true.” I actually had to shut down a segment when we were doing Latino in America—this is what gives you a bad reputation for being “a pain.”

I remember during our first meeting—

[00:10:35] Carmen: Just so the audience knows: you’ve done Black in America, Latino in America, Gay in America, Muslim in America...

[00:10:42] Soledad: Yes—we were doing all of them. (I didn’t name them, I’d just like to say for the record, because I feel like I’d be a little bit more creative.)

[00:10:48] Carmen: But it created a theme—and we all remember them.

[00:10:50] Soledad: Exactly. So we were doing Latino in America, and the guy who was producing it basically told me, “This is what we’re doing,” and one of the segments was going to be about me.

And listen—I’m a TV anchor. Nobody loves me more than me. I love me. But this was going to be the first documentary CNN was doing on Latinos. It just felt... not okay.

[00:11:13] Soledad: I remember leaving that meeting—it was a meeting where everybody kept saying “they” and “them.” And I walked up CNN’s old spiral staircase to the president’s office and said, “We’ve got to kill this. This isn’t going to work. I’m not going to be part of what’s going to be a giant embarrassment.”

He killed it. We brought in a new team. One of the new producers said, “I think the theme should be: Garcia is the eighth most popular name in America. Let’s look at a bunch of different Garcias and tell the American story—the Latino American story—through that lens.”

[00:11:45] Soledad: That is genius. I’d love to do a segment all about me—but not for this. That would’ve been embarrassing. It shouldn’t be a vanity play—it should be a real look at real journalism.

At the time, CNN had very low numbers of Latino viewers. I think we were at something like 7%.

[00:12:03] Carmen: So it wasn’t an audience that was naturally gravitating to CNN at the time?

[00:12:06] Soledad: No—and they could have been. If you build it, they’ll come.

[00:12:09] Carmen: That’s right.

[00:12:10] Carmen: Well, I want to return to something you said earlier about the challenge of getting these stories on the air. In retrospect, yes—you could look at your career through that lens. But you might not have picked it if you’d known how many boulders would be in the way, and how often you'd have to move things around.

I wanted to talk a little bit about a particular story you’ve shared in the past, around doing Black in America, and the experience that so many Black families have—talking to their children about interactions with the police. Those of us who have Black children—this is a pretty common thing. We talk to our kids about how to interact with police.

And there was someone—sort of higher up—who had a different perspective. I’m hoping you can share that story with the audience, and speak to what it means to try to get these difficult stories on the air while having people in the room question you.

[00:13:01] Soledad: Yeah. He was my boss—and he was a great guy. I mean, he literally funded Black in America for nine years. That series was very expensive.

But I remember the very first Black in America was a big deal—six hours over three nights on CNN. We got great reviews. And people, to this day, still come up to me and say, “I remember where I was when I saw it.”

[00:13:24] Carmen: It’s one of those signature pieces. People absolutely understand that it said something important about what was happening in the country.

[00:13:29] Soledad: Yeah. So we were doing something called the TCA—the Television Critics Association event—where you sit on stage and answer questions about a project.

At some point, someone asked, “So what was your big takeaway?” And I said, “One of the things I took away was just how Black families, regardless of socioeconomic status, talked to their kids about policing. It was like they were reading off the same script.”

[00:13:56] Soledad: Whether it was a woman being evicted while I interviewed her… or a middle-class family sending their kid to college… or wealthy Black families in the Hollywood Hills—they all said the same thing:

“When my son”—occasionally daughter, but almost always son—“turned 13, I sat him down and said, ‘If you’re ever interacting with police, here’s what you need to do...’”

That was my answer to the journalist’s question.

[00:14:22] Soledad: We left the stage, and my boss—who was actually the head of CNN Worldwide—came up to me and said, “That’s just not true.”

And I was like, “I just spent 18 months on this documentary. What?”

He said, “White people have the same conversations with their kids.”

And I said, “I grew up in a 93% white neighborhood. I think the conversations in white communities are much more like, ‘Be respectful to the police.’ The conversations in Black communities were, ‘I want you to live through an interaction with the police.’”

[00:14:53] Carmen: That’s right.

[00:14:54] Soledad: And he said, “It’s just not true. Don’t tell that story again.”

And because I liked my job—and wanted to keep it—I was like, “Okay.”

[00:15:03] Carmen: It’s an incredible story to me. I assume this person was not Black.

[00:15:06] Soledad: No.

[00:15:07] Carmen: To try to speak to those stories as if they would be the same... You’d have to know something about the Black experience to appreciate the difference.

Even just from an evidentiary standpoint—what happens when Black men interact with police is demonstrably different. So the idea that the conversation wouldn’t be different? I was flabbergasted when I read that.

I imagine that, for you, it wasn’t just about getting the newsroom to pay attention to the story—it was also about how the story was created and framed. That’s part of the challenge too, right?

[00:15:39] Soledad: Yeah, I was flabbergasted too. Each of these families weren’t saying, “Be respectful.” They were saying, “I want my child to survive this encounter.”

And at 13, they felt their kids were old enough to have that serious conversation.

Again, I always tell people—this guy, my boss, was what you would consider a “good guy.” It’s not like, “Here’s a guy who’s racist.” He funded Black in America. He was there for several years while I was there, and he kept funding it after that.

[00:16:09] Soledad: But it made me recognize the depth of the challenge. Everybody comes to these stories with their own point of view—and sometimes, that point of view is one they have no business having.

That’s really what you're battling when you’re telling stories about people who live in the margins.

[00:16:25] Soledad: Everyone thinks, “Well, I used to take the train with homeless people—so I know.” Or, “I used to work with people recovering from addiction—so I know.” Or, “I used to ride the bus with Asian women—so I know.”

Everybody is blessed with the courage of their wrong opinion about things they do not know. And no one seems to have any embarrassment about it. No pause. No sense of, “Maybe this isn’t my place.”

[00:16:53] Soledad: That was the challenge. And our documentaries were rooted in data and research. We weren’t just saying, “Hey, I feel strongly about this, so let’s talk about it.”

But it didn’t matter. He was the president of the news division. He just felt like, “That’s not a story we should tell.”

So I didn’t. Because, again—if you want to keep your job, you keep your mouth shut.

[00:17:15] Carmen: Yeah. I think it also speaks to this moment—why you might care about inclusion and diversity, and why you might think it adds value. It’s because of the different perspectives that can help us be better as a society. That’s what’s so powerful about that story.

[00:17:30] Soledad: Listen, when we started having stories on both the West Coast and East Coast about little old Asian ladies getting clocked and beaten up in the street—the number of newsrooms that discovered they had no people, in a metropolitan area with lots of Asians, who could go out and have a conversation with someone who was an immigrant, who had been attacked?

They couldn’t talk to them in their own language.

That’s a massive miss. That is a massive problem.

[00:17:56] Soledad: And you saw newsrooms suddenly scramble—I've seen it happen in every newsroom I've ever been in—someone goes, “Oh, you speak this? We’re elevating you to producer tonight. Congratulations.”

But that’s just a reactive move.

[00:18:10] Soledad: It’s a really good example of why we need diverse voices already around the table—because if you want to speak to someone about a horrific experience they’ve just had, you need to be able to connect with them. In their language. In their context. That’s how you do the best kind of coverage.

[00:18:26] Carmen: It’s not just about what happens in the newsroom. I’d offer that this value plays out in boardrooms across America. In local nonprofits. Wherever you are.

This idea that diversity and inclusion are some kind of drain on our ability to do good work—my experience has been the exact opposite.

[00:18:44] Soledad: Yeah. The classic example people use is Chevy launching the Chevy Nova in Spanish-speaking countries—where “no va” literally means “doesn’t go.”

[00:18:52] Carmen: Right.

[00:18:53] Soledad: If you’d had some folks in the room, they might’ve caught that.

But how many times have you seen an ad and thought, “Wow, there were no Black people in this room—because they would’ve stopped you from this mess.” It happens a lot. You think, “How did this picture, this concept, this story get approved?”

It’s clear: no one in the room felt empowered to say, “Let me save you all from the PR nightmare that’s coming down the pike.”

[00:19:20] Carmen: Right. And I think it’s been great to see some organizations start to understand that even from a financial bottom line, diversity and equity matter.

I’ve said to people, “Even if you don’t believe in it from a moral standpoint—just look at it from a mercenary perspective.”

That’s what Costco did so well. They said, “Hey, this is important. Shareholders—we’re worse off if we don’t prioritize DEI.”

[00:19:44] Soledad: Yeah. Our job is to make money for shareholders. That means we need to speak to the people who come shopping in our aisles.

There’s a bunch of people who—during Black History Month—want to buy some stuff. There’s a bunch of LGBTQ+ folks who—during Pride—want to buy some stuff.

[00:20:00] Soledad: And yet the idea that we’re not going to think about or even allow people to talk about the value of diversity? It’s so crazy. It’s just a huge miss.

[00:20:10] Carmen: A huge miss. We've talked about, in retrospect, looking at these marginalized communities and the fact that maybe that wouldn't have been your choice at the beginning—but now, looking back at this body of work, it’s so powerful.

You’ve done Black and Missing. You’ve done Hungry to Learn. You did Rosa Parks. I’m wondering, now that you look back, do you see patterns—elements you look for in a story where you say, “Okay, this is it”?

[00:20:39] Soledad: Yeah. We have a new doc that premiered at Sundance. I was an executive producer on it, and our director, Geeta Gandbhir, won Best Director for it. The doc is called A Perfect Neighbor.

Right now, we’re in the process of selling it. And one of the biggest lessons has been this: you have to understand what the market wants, while also sticking to what you think is important.

[00:21:00] Soledad: I’ve always found social issues interesting—on our show Matter of Fact, we focus on how policy lands on people. That’s our lens.

This particular doc is about a Stand Your Ground case in Florida. A Black woman was shot through her neighbor’s door. She’d knocked, and the neighbor shot her. Our director knew the family very well—they were almost like family to her—so she wanted to figure out how to tell this story.

But I promise you: if we had pitched a big streamer and said, “We want to do an important documentary about Stand Your Ground laws in Florida,” they would’ve said, “Mmm… we love diversity, but…”

[00:21:35] Carmen: Right. “We all know about Trayvon already... so, it’s been done.”

[00:21:38] Soledad: Exactly. So instead, we told 90% of the story using body cam footage—because the police had visited the dispute between the white woman and her neighbors so many times.

That footage tells the whole story. It makes the documentary feel like true crime—but in real time. You’re watching it unfold.

[00:21:59] Carmen: That’s fascinating. Because everyone’s obsessed with true crime right now—and when it’s authentic, it draws people in.

[00:22:00] Soledad: Right. And I think that’s something everyone’s investing in right now. And listen—I love true crime too. I’m in the middle of watching White Lotus on HBO, which starts with a crime and then backtracks through the story.

So I get it. But you have to figure out: how do we take a project with meaning and importance, and make sure it’s wrapped in a package a streamer can actually sell?

You can’t just say, “Here’s a plate of broccoli.” You have to say, “This is delicious—and by the way, we pureed the broccoli into the pasta sauce.”

[00:22:32] Soledad: That’s what I spend a lot of my time doing—figuring out what people are buying, and how we can make it smart, thoughtful, and great. It doesn’t have to be garbage.

[00:22:42] Carmen: I’m wondering—many folks recognize you from your time in cable news and network news. I’m curious: was launching your own production company about gaining independence? Was it about having control over your stories?

[00:22:54] Soledad: Not really—because you’re still selling to somebody.

If “independence” means I now have to take 10,000 meetings to convince buyers to purchase something... sure. But when I was at CNN, I had a built-in platform. I only had to convince my boss—or the news director.

[00:23:09] Soledad: What shifted was that I got to spend time doing the things I was actually interested in. And I got to work with people I liked.

One of my first experiences as a CEO was working with someone who was just terrible—rude and mean to me. We’d hired him, and at one point he said, “I don’t even know why you’re on this project.”

[00:23:28] Carmen: But you hired him!

[00:23:30] Soledad: Yes! And I didn’t even have a good answer. I was so upset—I told a friend, “He’s right. Why am I on this project?”

And she said, “Because CNN paid you to be. Because you hired him. You run the company.”

[00:23:44] Soledad: Our production company was a company in name only at that point—we hadn’t built teams yet. I learned so much on that gig. And we did a great doc. But I said to myself, “Never again.”

That’s what freedom means to me—working with great people who are interesting and who help you solve problems.

[00:24:02] Soledad: But you’re still selling. Still figuring out the best way to tell the story. Still trying to convince someone to buy it in a crazy marketplace.

[00:24:10] Carmen: You know, we have a new major in business here at Oberlin. We also have entrepreneurship programming. And a lot of our conservatory students already have to think of themselves as independent operators. They’ll be working in a gig economy.

I’m wondering—what were your nerves like when launching on your own? No safety net. Were you afraid?

[00:24:29] Soledad: A little bit of both.

Once you lose your platform, it’s harder to get people on TV or get stories out there. But I’d been doing this a long time. I had a big enough name and following. I also had decent savings from working in cable news, so I was able to get an office space in New York and take that risk.

[00:24:48] Soledad: The thing I regret most? I didn’t know how to do a budget. I’d been a TV anchor—I never ran a P&L. Never built a real budget.

So I always advise people—especially entrepreneurs: take accounting.

[00:25:01] Soledad: Because when it’s your own money, every mistake hurts. I once let someone else do our budget—they said they were great at it. And it turned out to be the worst budget I’ve ever worked with.

I was making 98 cents a day, working 12 hours a day. That’s when I realized—actually, I do know about budgets. I know how much hair and makeup costs. I know how much travel costs.

[00:25:21] Soledad: So if you’re thinking about becoming an entrepreneur—understanding your finances is critical.

[00:25:27] Carmen: The other thing I love is that people sometimes question why we have business at a small liberal arts college. But they don’t realize—you can make change in the world through so many different paths.

You’re an entrepreneur, a CEO, running your own production company—and making the kind of stories that change lives.

[00:25:45] Soledad: Yeah—and it’s a business. All we do is make content and try to sell it.

People think, “Oh, you’re independent now, must be nice.” No—I do meetings all day. I call Netflix and beg them to talk to me so I can pitch the next project.

[00:26:00] Soledad: So yes—students need to understand what business means. It’s crucial.

[00:26:02] Carmen: Let’s talk a bit about your foundation—The PowHerful Foundation. You’ve helped more than 60 girls graduate from top colleges across the country. You’ve talked about their stories: a woman who was on a college campus with a baby. Another whose family was living in a car.

Can you talk about why that became a priority for you?

[00:26:20] Soledad: It was one of those things that evolved organically. When I was doing Black in America, I’d meet these amazing young women. And I’d think, “She’s incredible—what does she need?” And often it was money. Or support. Or a couch to sleep on.

[00:26:36] Soledad: I’d come home and tell my husband, “Okay, we have a new kid in the house for a while.”

And he’s like, “Okay.” Because I felt so strongly that if someone had just stepped in for me—just once—it could have changed everything.

[00:26:49] Soledad: So I started helping informally. Then I realized—I need a structure. I can’t keep doing this out of my own checking account. We eventually built it into a real foundation. We provide scholarships, mentorship, emergency funds, and support all the way through graduation.

We don’t care where you go to school—we just want you to finish.

[00:27:10] Carmen: That’s amazing. And it’s exactly the kind of impact we want to highlight on this podcast—Running to the Noise—because we believe real change doesn’t come from avoiding difficult things. It comes from running toward them.

Soledad, thank you for running toward the noise. And thank you for joining us.

[00:27:26] Soledad: Thank you so much for having me. And thanks for sending your kid to Oberlin—he’s going to love it.