Yahoo Finance Mika Brzezinski and celebrity pals teach women how to negotiate
Hoda Kotb, Brooke Shields and Andre Leon Talley may seem like unlikely career advisers — they do have day jobs, after all — but they had plenty to give to more than 600 women who attended the launch of Mika Brzezinski's "Know Your Value" tour in Philadelphia earlier this month.
The five-city conference tour was the brainchild of Brzezinski, who co-hosts MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and wrote the New York Times bestselling book, “Knowing Your Value.” Attendees shelled out $225 a pop to see Brzezinski, her famous pals and a roster of career experts offer strategies on how to overcome common workplace roadblocks.
Brzezinski is not the first celebrity author to take her message on the road — Winfrey, Arianna Huffington and Sheryl Sandberg have all launched lucrative conference tours aimed at helping women manage their careers, personal life and health. Brzezinski’s tour is more narrow in its focus: helping women learn how to ask for more pay and better benefits at work.
“I think we really have to find our authentic voice and I think the key takeaway today will be that there are a lot of basics that women will learn [negotiating] so they can get it out of the way and not worry,” Brzezinski said.
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Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren delivered a keynote address to more than 600 attendees, recalling her days as a stay-at-home mom who defied her mother and husband to pursue a law degree. Shields coached female entrepreneurs on how to sell themselves. And at one point, “Today” show host Kotb shimmied on stage to “Uptown Funk” and then told a packed audience about her early career failures, including being turned down for more than a dozen news anchor jobs.
Former Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley was on hand to deliver tips on appropriate job interview attire (blazers or sweaters are a must; noisy jewelry is a no-no). Harvard professor Amy Cuddy delivered a shortened version of her popular TED Talk on the science of powerful body language. Brzezinski enlisted the help of her “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough to demonstrate negotiating strategies. Attendees were seen scribbling notes during speeches and snapping pictures of media personalities and celebrities, like Shields, Kotb and Talley, spotted throughout the day.
That many women have a harder time negotiating for higher pay is not news, but the issue has been a hot topic lately, especially in the wake of Reddit CEO Ellen Pao’s failed gender discrimination lawsuit against her former bosses at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
A 2006 study led by Carnegie Mellon University professor Linda Babcock found that when women negotiate, both men and women are less likely to want to work with them. In another study published in 2014, researchers found that female negotiators are perceived as more easily misled than male negotiators and are more likely than men to be lied to in negotiations.
Shields, who left her modeling career in the early 1980s to pursue a degree at Princeton University, said she struggled just as much as other women with speaking up for herself throughout her career. She said it was her time in college that changed everything.
“I had a certain professor who taught me to have faith in my own hypotheses and opinions,” Shields said. “To take that back into an industry that I had been in for so many decades, that does not predicate itself on wanting you to have an opinion — it was a really important lesson for me and I think I learned it only by going to college and being successful in my studies and channeling that into my personal and professional life.”
Kotb, who anchors the fourth hour of the “Today” show alongside Kathie Lee Gifford, said she thinks the answer to empowering women to ask for more is by finding support among one another. She’s often found support from her co-host.
“Kathie Lee is kicking my a-- in the salary department I’m sure,” she said. “But she has taught me that you could go in there and say you know that’s not good enough or I deserve more than that. And it doesn’t make you greedy, it makes you smart. It makes you have self-respect.”
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