Knowing Your Value

ALSO BY MIKA BRZEZINSKI:

 

 

 

 

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

F
irst, a heartfelt thank-you to the extraordinary women (and men) whom I interviewed for sharing their invaluable time and insights with me.

I’d like to thank Janet Klein for being my writing partner on this book, for collaborating on the entire concept and content. This project was exactly what we needed as women who struggle to know our value.

Putting it together has been a learning experience for everyone involved. Special thanks to Amanda Murray, Dana Haller, and Lauren Skowronski for their editorial assistance in getting this project to the finish line. You are amazing women, and the world will know your value only if you tell it. Don’t hold back.

To Mel Berger and Judy Hottensen, this has been the most joyful challenge. Thank you for getting behind me once again.

My deepest gratitude and appreciation to my husband for putting up with me every day. This is an understatement. Jim, you have the patience of a saint, and the girls are lucky to have you as their father and mentor.

And now for the two biggest reasons I wrote this book: my girls. I thank my daughters for inspiring me every day to share this message with other women. Emilie and Carlie, I want the sky to be the limit for both of you in life. Know your value. Mommy truly does.

J
oe Scarborough sat across from me in the windowed café at the bottom of Rockefeller Center. Outside, the rink was filled with bundled-up skaters enjoying the winter chill. Joe and I, along with the rest of the
Morning Joe
staff, had just returned from a grueling three-week cross-country trek covering the historic 2008 presidential primaries. It was an exhilarating time to be working on a political talk show.

After months of hard work,
Morning Joe
was becoming the place for candidates to be seen and heard. The buzz was growing, our ratings were improving, and the show was making news. We should have been ecstatic. Instead Joe sat silently and listened as I explained why I needed to resign.

It was a painful decision. But after nearly twenty years of scrambling up, down, and back up the television-news ladder several times over, I was done. I was demoralized—and not because I didn’t like my job. In fact, I loved it. No other show I’d ever worked on had such energy and so much excitement. But as I explained to Joe on that sad, cold winter morning, I could no longer work for a network that refused to recognize my value. It may have taken me forty years, but I’d finally realized it was time to do things right or not at all.

Despite my professional experience, the fifteen-hour workdays, and a successful new show that I had helped build, MSNBC was still refusing to pay me what I was worth. Not only was my salary lower than my colleagues’, each month was a financial scramble to make ends meet. After child care, on-air wardrobe, makeup, travel, and the other ridiculous expenses that women in this business end up taking on, the job was actually costing me more than I was being paid. Checks were bouncing, and worse, I could barely face myself in the mirror when I thought of the example I was setting for my twelve- and fourteen-year-old daughters. Every morning I sat with a group of male colleagues, all of whom made much more than I did. In fact, our salaries weren’t even close.

Let me be clear: there is no question that Joe was worth more to the show’s success than anyone. But was he really fourteen times more valuable than me?

To be fair, Joe and I started out at
Morning Joe
on very different footing. The show was Joe’s creation, and his sheer determination got it on the air. He had been hosting his own prime time talk show at the network, and his salary was on
par with other prime time hosts. MSNBC was in the middle of a massive financial restructuring, making difficult staff cuts in an effort to keep the network productive during tough times.

When Joe recruited me as his cohost, I had been doing a low-level, part-time job at MSNBC, just to get back in the game after losing my anchor position at
CBS Evening News
the year before. I had worked my tail off to help
Morning Joe
become the success it was, and my career was again on the upswing—so really, why was I jeopardizing it? Because I was not getting paid my value. And because ultimately I had only myself to blame.

I sat across from Joe over breakfast to tell him that I had reached the breaking point. I owed it to Joe to tell him in person and to thank him for his heroic efforts to revive my career. But the inequity was killing me, and I believed it would ultimately poison the show. I was ready to walk away.

Before I could finish, he said, “No, you can’t leave.”

Joe knew I wasn’t being paid what I was worth and had been fighting for me all along, but so far his efforts had been in vain. He asked for a few more days. As always, Joe had a plan.

The former congressman knew we had created something that was unlike anything else on television; how the on-air chemistry among Joe, myself, and Willie Geist was just right; how our lively debates were making waves and grabbing the attention of policy makers, politicians, and the media. Joe knew that as much as anyone, I was responsible for our on-air success. He had told anyone who would listen that his
vision for his new show would succeed only if I were his cohost. He was as angry at the NBC brass as I was. But what made matters worse was that I—me, myself—was to blame for this. I had allowed this to happen. I had asked repeatedly for a raise, but I had repeatedly been denied. The truth is, like most women, I didn’t know my value, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have known how to get it.

Looking back, I realize that every time I sat at the negotiating table, my greatest enemy was myself. The words I chose and the strategies I put in play actually undermined my goals. No manager and no network executive was responsible for my plight. The failure to effectively communicate rested solely on me, every time.

My meeting with Joe that February morning was the culmination of a problem that had been brewing for decades. I had spent my career moving from job to job, accepting pay that I knew wasn’t competitive because I always felt lucky to be there. I figured if I just worked hard, took on more hours, more assignments, and more stories, I could prove myself, and eventually my bosses would reward me with a raise and promotion. Often while I was hustling and hoping for more money, I would discover that my male colleagues were making more than I was. I wouldn’t get angry at the men for this—I’d be angry at myself for not earning more respect (and compensation) from management. Then I’d start feeling underappreciated, talk to other networks, and then move on and repeat the pattern somewhere else. Clearly the pattern wasn’t getting me anywhere.

Why was I continually underpaid and undervalued? Was
it because I was a woman? No. There are women in this business who rake in huge salaries. Like me, they are commodities. But these women know their value, and they get it. So what were they doing that I wasn’t?

I had spent months watching Joe get what he wanted from management with ease and determination. I, too, was capable of doing great things for the show, but when it came to fighting for myself, I always struck out. I began asking myself whether I was the biggest idiot on the face of the earth. Here I was, playing the role of a strong, successful woman on the set who takes on the political hotshots and keeps the guys in check. And yet my salary was where it might have been fifteen years ago, or twenty years ago. This wasn’t where I should have been at my age and level of experience.

I started to think about what was keeping me back, and what was keeping all women back. I kept seeing headlines about how far women have come. They have broken glass ceilings. Hillary Clinton has run for president. And yet women’s salaries still don’t equal men’s salaries—women everywhere still make less.

I thought to myself, “Is it possible? Is it possible that I’m not alone? Have other successful women had some of the same problems? Or
am
I alone?” I started talking to the incredibly impressive women on the set, and they all told me, “Oh, no, no. You’re not alone.” One of these women actually came to me for advice when she was changing jobs, and I realized she was doing the same thing I was. Undermining herself. Undercutting herself. Undervaluing herself.

And then about a year ago, on a beautiful spring day, I was in the White House and dropped by presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett’s office to say hello. We started talking about work-life balance. We discussed the excitement and challenges of having so many opportunities as women. For Valerie, the challenges were raising an incredible daughter on her own, navigating the worlds of business and politics at the top level, and helping to propel the first African-American president into office. For me, they were trying to maintain a marriage, raising two extraordinary girls while traveling the country, and covering the Obama presidency.