Embrace the multihyphenate career

ALISON MOORE: That metaphor of the ladder: Stay rung to rung to rung, and keep the course, and then something happens at the top. Everyone can see that’s not necessarily the case anymore. Women are building business, scheming, partnering, collaborating. I think the lid’s off. So you do feel the optimism. It is coming from disruption, but disruption does bring opportunity.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Alison Moore, CEO of Chief, the prestigious membership community for senior women business leaders. As an infamous New York Times headline about women in work reverberates across social media, have women ruined the workplace? Alison provides some critical fact-based perspective drawing from an exclusive nationwide survey of women leaders.

She challenges the notion breaking down how new career approaches are being misinterpreted and pointing to critical signals of optimism and opportunity among women leaders. Alison and I first met when she was at HBO helping to turn Game of Thrones into a cultural phenomenon, and her pulse on the zeitgeist remains as compelling as ever. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response. 

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I’m Bob Safian, I’m here with Alison Moore, the CEO of Chief. Alison, it’s great to see you again.

MOORE: Wonderful to see you again too. Thank you for having me.

SAFIAN: Yeah. You and I first met, I was thinking about this when you were at HBO and I was at Fast Company, and I remember it was the heyday of Game of Thrones, and I remember we ran a photo of you seated in the Iron Throne. Do you remember this? It was so fun.

MOORE: I absolutely remember this, and I will say it’s probably the pinnacle of my career and everything. Nothing will reach that height again. Those are great, interesting days to be at HBO for sure, and I was privileged to be in that seat.

Copy LinkThe evolving challenges of women in leadership

SAFIAN: Yeah, well, you’ve had many lives since then at NBCUniversal, at SoundCloud, Condé Nast, most recently CEO of Comic Relief addressing childhood poverty, taking over at Chief this year, early this year. It’s a different kind of challenge.

MOORE: It is, helping amplify and support women leaders, senior women leaders. I, certainly by age at least, have lifted to that level of rank, bringing people together, networking, the power of community, and certainly that relates to my Comic Relief work, that relates to bringing together community in terms of platforms of experience, whether it’s at SoundCloud or the brands at Condé Nast or HBO or DailyCandy, at NBCUniversal.

When our founders, Carolyn and Lindsay were ready to kind of hand the baton off, I saw it as a great confluence of all of these experiences I’ve had over all this time. I was a founding Chief member in 2019, so it felt resonant to me to come back and bring my list of ideas to the forefront there. And I think on a personal level, I have a 20-year-old daughter who is navigating all the things that one navigates at 20 years old and will be entering the workforce and thinking about that. And if I can have a little bit of a space around women’s leadership and what’s next and how to best build bridges and opportunity for them, that’s time well spent for me.

SAFIAN: In our early chats, I don’t remember us talking much about women’s leadership or the barriers facing women executives. Did I not ask you about obstacles you personally may have hit? Did you not want to talk about it?

MOORE: Every woman leader in a leadership position thinks about obstacles just like I think every leader, when you start to ascend into different ranks of wherever it is or different sorts of experiences, you have different leadership challenges. I think that holds well for women. Men across the board. I had great mentors, men and women for me, coming from, a ways back, Turner into HBO of course, NBCU, I really did. So I felt like that wasn’t a topic I was necessarily putting out there that I was having an issue with, but I recognize that there were certain things about a women’s leadership journey that were unique, that’s for sure.

Personal expectations in life are different for women, often kids, family support, bookending support. That sort of thing does affect women’s journeys, whether it’s in a small way or whether it’s in a large way. So I think the routes can be different, and that’s okay, but then where’s that place where you have support and community and recognition of that and then all to just kind of better and further your ability to do the work. For me, it’s always been about the work. How we need support during that work is a very important conversation to have.

SAFIAN: Your predecessor as Chief CEO, Carolyn Childers, she’s been a guest on the show. I’ve talked a bunch with her, with her co-founder, Lindsay Kaplan, who you mentioned. The environment that you’ve come into with the Trump White House is kind of heightened; discussions about diversity are heated. The term DEI has become kind of a negative. How do you frame what Chief is about in this kind of climate?

MOORE: There’s certainly more scrutiny on things today perhaps than there were in the past, but I think at the end of the day, there’s a desire for creating better, stronger leaders, better outcomes, better decision-making, more agile thinking. While there are different contexts being held and conversations being held around DEI and the nuances of that, the truth is when you cut through the big headlines, the realities remain the same, which is supporting leadership at a time of high velocity of change is always beneficial, and we happen to build that in a way that supports women leaders, and I think there’s a lot of support for that.

Copy LinkChanging definition of ambition for women

SAFIAN: Chief recently published a report in partnership with Harris surveying over a thousand senior level women, and it pointed to a sort of changing definition of maybe ambition and success, a shift away from playing it safe toward bolder career moves, which was in some ways more optimistic and more empowering than I’d expected.

MOORE: There had been a slew of articles that had come out focusing on changes in the workforce and finding the negative nugget in there to kind of put that on blast. And I’m not denying that there aren’t those factors at hand, but the she-cession is coming, women are being dumped out of the workforce. The return to office doesn’t work for all women in the polarity that we’re in today of big headlines being the only definition. We lose all nuance.

And so for us here, I come in February and I’m looking at this incredibly energetic Chief membership and thinking, “This is what I’m seeing. I’m seeing people reacting and responding to change in ways that are innovative and curious and thought-provoking, this level of optimism that’s sitting in Chief, that they’re communicating together.” This is not just Chief telling women to be optimistic, this is the energy that you’re feeling from conversation.

And so the genesis of this poll was how do we validate that? And so in the women that we surveyed, they’re citing that they’re more ambitious now than ever, and in fact they’re energized by the professional growth ahead because they feel like they can have more optionality and more of a hand on the wheel of their own career design than what they used to have. This is where that metaphor of the ladder and the stay rung to rung to rung and keep the course and stay the path and then something happens at the top. Everyone can see that’s not necessarily the case anymore.

SAFIAN: How much of the boldness do you think might be economy driven? I noticed that over 80% of the executives cited market disruption as a motivator. It’s almost like disruption is, I don’t know, forcing action?

MOORE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the economy is certainly always going to be a factor, but it’s also like, look at industry consolidation. You can look at what’s happening in the media business, you can look at what’s happening across retail. You can look at what’s happening in every vector and AI, which has a through line all the way across all of these industries, and a common thread of this duality of opportunity and threat of change.

Is that rung as a metaphor again, for just career direction, not necessarily the corporate ladder as much as it is just the up a ladder? Is that the right path for me? Do I want other options? Do I want different kinds of flexibility? Do I have the sort of tools at my fingertips to actually do that? And that is what happens at Chief and that’s what’s been very interesting for me to see and come back actually from a founding membership in 2019 to where we are today.

Women are building, scheming, meaning business is scheming, partnering, collaborating differently now. I think the lid’s off on a lot of that stuff for women. And so you do feel the optimism coming out in this survey, even though I think there’s a pragmatism and recognizing it is coming from disruption, but disruption does bring opportunity.

Copy LinkBalancing in-person community with digital connections

SAFIAN: So much of Chief is built around in-person connection and community, but in-person it’s so hard to scale. And I know when I was talking to your predecessor, Carolyn, she talked about the potential to have a LinkedIn-like product and a Masterclass-like product and a dating-app like product. How do you think about today’s digital tools for community versus the IRL experiences? Where do you balance those things?

MOORE: What I think about Chief today, and I think that was a very accurate description that Carolyn gave when that started. I think we’ve morphed into this space where there are a couple of different components. There are intimate experiences. By that, I mean small space experiences where you talk and see and share about leadership challenges that can be in a virtual experience, very rewarding, but in certain places and markets, we can make that happen in real life.

It doesn’t have to be either-or, coaching, one-to-one coaching, so that happens on a virtual piece sometimes, that can be very rewarding, but if I’m going to have a cocktail party around other senior marketers, that should be at the clubhouse in real life. I’m about to go to LA this week for my eighth and then San Francisco in two weeks for the ninth. Nine ChiefXs this year, and this is where nine locations across the country, we’ve had members come, and it’s in real life, and they’re like rallies, and I get so much energy out of these things.

It’s unbelievable. We have some speakers, some programming, but it’s really about this kind of connecting energy between Chiefs with other Chiefs, big corporate people talking to founders of small things, folks who are in transition, all senior leaders in various parts of their journey, and these large rallies are definitely IRL and then peppered between that are the right size virtual experiences.

My next tranche of focus is really on the digital experience, the Chief app, the Chief digital experience in terms of, how do we make that as best of a member companion? The networking piece, the connections piece, whether that was the LinkedIn analogy that Carolyn meant, that’s where that really comes to life, but it comes to life in service of a lot of in real life experiences across multiple use types.

Copy LinkRedefining ROI and personalization for women leaders

SAFIAN: You’ve talked about creating ROI for members, and as I’m listening to the range of things and ways that you’re trying to bring people together and the range that people are at in their careers, are there specific metrics that are an ROI for every member, or is that different depending on who you are and where you are?

MOORE: I definitely think it’s different depending on who you are and where you are. And I think that’s one of the things in this latest kind of relaunch of our service is that we’re paying recognition to. What you need to get out of something like Chief may differ not only at the point in time in which you enter, but as you traverse through that experience.

SAFIAN: That’s complicated though, right? Because you have to have different things for different people at different times, sometimes it’s – 

MOORE: Yeah, yeah, I understand. But these are all women leaders, and there are a common set of components that folks are thinking about. So you talk about tariffs or you talk about RTO or you talk about Gen Zs or you talk about AI. There are big chunky things that everybody, I don’t care where they’re sitting, they’re thinking about, so there’s a commonality to that. It’s not everything.

We are not a one-to-one personalization service, and I think the thesis is, and it’s proven true, that there are a bucket of things that senior women leaders think through. What do I need as a corporate executive? I may be coming and joining Chief looking for: where can I learn about best practices from an industry sector that’s different than mine? Then that might be a goal for me to just expand my mind, so I can bring that back in a leadership position.

What is your business doing around RTO and with young people and resistance, et cetera? I can learn from that. What are you doing for best practices for AI? How are you leading your teams for all those things? How do I find investors? Where’s the right place to get a seed round? But identifying at the top end? Are you in a corporate seat? Are you in a founder seat? Are you looking to kind of go in between one of them is a good sort of clarifying, and those are really only three or four vectors that we have to flag somebody’s special interest.

Copy LinkThe impact of women-centered spaces on professional growth

SAFIAN: Many of the things that a woman leader is interested in are things that any leader is interested in. It doesn’t have to connect to the fact that it’s a woman, and then there are a tranche of things that may be more applicable to women than to men, although you could argue they’re applicable to everyone. I always struggled with this when we mentioned you being in Fast Company.

It was for a package we did on the most creative people in business and there were men and women on it, and we didn’t do a “most powerful women in business” like Fortune did. But there is something different when women get together without men there that maybe as a man I don’t quite appreciate or I want to, but I don’t really know.

MOORE: Listen, I think for women in leadership roles, there is a place and a time for being together and learning from each other that’s just different. It’s additive. The conversations are because a woman’s career journey is tied to that 360 view of who they are in life, it just makes those conversations different, but not necessarily better. I’ve been in multiple coworking environments where it’s male, female, that’s all great too. I’m a big believer in the both-and, I really am.

SAFIAN: Alison doesn’t negate the value of broader communities even as she champions what a women-focused network like Chief can offer. So what lessons is she learning from the Chief community, and how is she applying lessons of Game of Thrones to Chief? We’ll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us. 

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Before the break, we heard Chief CEO, Alison Moore talk about the unique value of women-centered spaces. Now she talks about the rise of the multihyphenate leader, keys to managing AI-driven volatility and how Chief is like HBO. Let’s jump back in. 

Copy LinkThe rise of the multihyphenate

You referred in a recent Fast Company piece to the multihyphenate career, which I guess comes out of that study also. I’d love you to explain that senior women hold multiple professional identities. What does that mean?

MOORE: Multihyphenate women terminology, which is clunky and maybe a better branding person would’ve said don’t even use that, but that is how I have described myself for years. I have experienced TV, music publishing platforms, small digital start-up companies, big corporate companies, now social impact. In the survey, which was really interesting, they hold two to three professional identities. This was me when I was sitting in a corporate seat. You’re in a corporate role.

You might be an investor, you might be sitting on a board. I think it sort of blows up the idea that women kind of track in and then that’s it. When we put out that language both in the survey, and we put it out in social and with our members, there are so many people who are like, I feel seen with that word as clunky as it is because they’ve had to explain like, “Well, why’d you move from this industry to that industry to this?” And it’s been additive to their career journey, but it always has to be explained.

SAFIAN: When you’re talking to the members at all these nine different ChiefXs around the country, what are the leadership themes and topics that you’re hearing back from them and is it different than you’re, whatever, reading about in the news about AI and tariffs and return to office, or are those really the places where people are focused?

MOORE: I think there’s some pragmatism in AI, tariffs, return to office that all women leaders have as a piece of topic, and by the way, there’s a dynamism to all three of those topics that, how are you doing? What are you doing? Just checking in on that from the fundamentals. So I feel like the conversations that the women at Chief are thinking about is like, “Okay, where are the pragmatics that we can learn and just sort of fortify my business? Whatever that happens to be across the things that we know are common things that we’re all facing, and AI is definitely of a huge interest for our Chief leaders for sure, but then I think there’s also kind of a personal response to all the volatility.”

What do I need in my toolbox to kind of best fortify my ability to handle whatever is coming? One of the things we talk about a lot, this sort of artificial intelligence and human intelligence in the center of duality between the two. There’s a lot of that desire for Chief leaders to make sure they’re having conversations with human beings. As we think about what’s next, it’s amazing how much more value is being put into the real roots of community to do business and further business, but also to touch base and find balance in a sea of business chaos.

Copy LinkLessons from HBO

SAFIAN: The Chief brand and membership, you had to be accepted to be part of Chief. There’s a certain amount of exclusivity in the membership, which I guess is part of the appeal that you’re getting a vetted group, but how do you balance that with sort of scale and access?

MOORE: We are not exclusive as much as we’re intentional. The conversations that senior women leaders hold, there’s a baseline of entry to make sure that the membership is connected across navigating the complexities of modern leadership. There’s a benchmark of leadership experience, and then now we’ve actually opened our model to have a broader range of experiences, I think not just only the corporate seat, but the corporate seat and the founder, the builder, the solopreneur seat, and as long as the person’s of a leadership level, those who have found themselves recently in transition to be able to kind of rebuild or rejoin another corporate piece.

SAFIAN: Yeah, no, but it’s more like HBO though than it is like a network TV, right?

MOORE: I never thought about that like that. Yeah. Yeah. Curated, yeah.

SAFIAN: Curated?

MOORE: I would say that. Yeah, so I guess in the HBO analogy, it’s sort of like original content, sports documentaries, comedy, whatever, variations of original content that always had to be original content.

SAFIAN: It’s been now nine months that you’ve been there at Chief. In that time, do you find yourself thinking back to any specific lessons or episodes, whether it’s from HBO or Comic Relief or anything in between?

MOORE: Yeah, I do actually, and it’s really funny when we’ve been thinking about some changes to the service structure and what that looked like and the communication of it and adding more value back to sort of your investment in Chief. That was right straight out of the cable packaging mindset or HBO, which we and certainly in the point that I was there and on the digital side, thinking about the idea of consumer experience like that we centered in consumer experience.

You think about what folks want to see and those diehard people that love the HBO experience and you do everything you can to deliver it, that’s a service worth paying for.  A membership should be something worth paying for that, every couple ways along the way, oh, I got some value out of that or I look ahead. This is a classic HBO example where Game of Thrones is launching in September. We start talking about it in February because instead of churning out in March or April because your Game of Thrones is on, you’ll stick around.

That’s sort of building things anticipatory for people to remind them of their value in their today experience, their past experience, and then what’s on the path for the future. I think of all these experiences as a tapestry of things that I can pull from periodically.

Copy LinkWhat’s at stake for senior level women at work?

SAFIAN: So what’s at stake for senior level women in work right now?

MOORE: I think having a space in place of calm, planning, connectedness, recognition of the journey. I think reminding women of resilience, resilience in the face of change. If you sit around and listen to headlines all the time, you certainly would feel like there are not those stories of resilience and innovation and creativity and every day I hear that at Chief about women who are like, “Well, I left a corporate job. I tried to find something. I looked for two years, and then through an experience and a couple of collaborations at Chief, I decided to start something on my own, and now I’ve got a known business. I have my first investor.”

Those kinds of stories of resilience, renewal, and rethinking and reframing and not losing your juice in the process. I think it’s good for women to be in spaces where that is celebrated and heard because it just is like a shot in the arm and then you’re out to continue your work. I do think that networks are the new power source and in the future of work, whatever that is going to look like, networks are going to come even more and more important in helping define that.

There are some stats that we had from that survey. 93% of women believe they have the collective power to build new tables and center of influence and opportunity, and then 94% of the women say being around other ambitious women fuels their own ambition and their work, I love that too. So Chief’s experience is being a nexus for network. I think it’s a very exciting direction for us.

SAFIAN: Well, Alison, this has been great. Thank you so much for doing it.

MOORE: Thank you so much. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

SAFIAN: Yeah. Those stats about women’s confidence and optimism feel almost counterintuitive given some of our larger cultural dialogues about gender and diversity in the workplace, but that is exactly Alison’s point and the point of Chief as a space for undiluted insight and support. I keep coming back to Alison’s both-and philosophy that creating a community tailored to one group of people doesn’t mean it’s the only community those people belong to or should belong to.

There’s an openness in her perspective that really stands apart from today’s cultural correctness. The reality is we’re all both in so many ways, not tied to a single litmus test or demographic group or any set in stone career definition is Alison’s emphasis on multi hyphenate careers illustrates as any Game of Thrones fan would know, the real winner isn’t who sits on the throne, but the broad network that supports them. After all, we can’t all tame dragons and we all need to stay open to the possibilities around us. What connects us may not always be visible to the naked eye, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. I’m Bob Safian, thanks for listening.