The C-suite is messier than you think

2026-3-17 RR BANIKARIM (Clean Transcript)

MARYAM BANIKARIM: I remember when I took the job at NBCUniversal, and it was my dream job. 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, “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 another person said, “Well, you have the worst job outside of the janitor.”

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Maryam Banikarim, former CMO of Univision, Gannett, and 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 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.

[THEME MUSIC]

So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response. I’m here with Maryam Banikarim, host of the terrific podcast The Messy Parts, founder of the new community The Interval, which I’m eager to hear more about, and also founder of NYCNext 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.

BANIKARIM: I’m excited, Bob. Let’s go.

SAFIAN: 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?

BANIKARIM: The show is about interviewing successful people about the things that go wrong. I think that in the world we live in today, we see the highlight reel, whether it’s on Instagram or LinkedIn or anyplace else. It looks really easy to climb the ladder or become a founder and have a unicorn company. 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?

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SAFIAN: I love the word messy because I feel like creativity is messy, growth is messy. We have plans, but life is really what happens when your plan didn’t work out. Have you always been drawn to messy?

BANIKARIM: I think I never knew anything but messy. 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 3, which most people think is really traumatic, but what else did I know? I had a father who drowned windsurfing when I was a sophomore in college.
I only know messy. But what I also learned as a result is 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 that it’s going to be OK.

SAFIAN: And sometimes the mess is the opportunity, too. It’s finding the opportunity in the mess.

BANIKARIM: A hundred percent. Bloomberg talks about having started Bloomberg as a result of being fired. When people step away or pause, whether by choice or by somebody else’s choice, what ends up happening is that you have to decompress and deal and find a pathway. I had a job that I took at Ammirati Puris Lintas. It’s not even on my résumé.
I took that job, and a week in I knew, oh, things were not good here. And 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. It’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.

SAFIAN: Yeah, but it’s hard to walk away from things, especially if you’re someone who’s like, “No, I’m a successful person. I get things done. I solve problems. Why can’t I solve this one?”

BANIKARIM: I’m a professional problem solver. That’s generally what I say people in the world of business are. The hardest thing for me is sitting still. When that pause comes, it’s a real moment of identity shift, because I remember leaving Hyatt and taking a year and a half off, and literally, to a person, they would be like, “She’s the former global CMO of Hyatt,” as if somehow I had no value outside of that title.

I had headhunters who called me who said, “Don’t wait too long because you’re not going to be able to go back in.” 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 enough 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.

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SAFIAN: I know when I left Fast Company, where I had been for 11 years, it was a long time. And I did have this sense of, what is my relevance? Where do I go next? And you do feel a little lost.

BANIKARIM: 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. 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 throughline among all the people who’ve come on. Now, some of them will tell you, “Live your purpose.” Some of them tell you don’t live your purpose. 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, it somehow works itself out.

SAFIAN: You mentioned your upbringing in Iran. What do you make of it? Do you still have family there that you’re in touch with?

BANIKARIM: 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, because you were 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 movement broke out, there was this song called “Baraye,” which actually won a Grammy that year. When that song played for the first time, something in me broke and I cried. I don’t think I’d cried the entire time. 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 is 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.” But I think it’s hard not to look on. Obviously, there are a lot of civilians being impacted, not just in Iran, but also in all the other places where bombs are being dropped.

There’s no question that this has been a government that’s 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. I don’t think anybody who knows what’s happened in terms of the repression and really the aggression with which they’ve put down any kind of protest would be sad that things change, but I do think we’re going to experience a high cost in what you call unintended casualties.

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, cellphones aren’t working. Landlines are how parents are getting through to their children, or cousins to their cousins. People wake up and it’s pitch black from the fumes, 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 in other neighboring countries, and frankly, even here. I have kids who’ve never been to Iran. They were born outside of Iran. Would I like to be able to take them back and show them where I grew up, in this incredible rich-history country that’s been around for a very long time, with amazing sites and people? Of course. But 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. Do any of us know?

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SAFIAN: Out of all this, you have been a very creative person yourself, as a marketer and otherwise. I remember during the pandemic, you threw yourself into championing New York City at a time when the city seemed scary and at risk, and you rallied people in the arts and outdoor performances. And you put together The Longest Table, which was this sort of block-long dining table in Manhattan to fuel connection. Now you’ve started a community called The Interval for executives in transition. Is there something that you feel connects those things?

BANIKARIM: The throughline 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, 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. Nobody needs to repeat middle school, I say. I think we can all relate to that emotion. I think 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 that is willing to support you without judgment. I remember when I left Hyatt, my son said to me, “Mom, you’re the busiest unemployed person I know.” And I think 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 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. 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, and I have the privilege not to, so I’ve decided to move on.”

I think there are so many different ways to live your life. For me, The Longest Table, which is a nonprofit, has been a way to reinvent myself, 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 in fifth grade, but I was financially not in a place where I felt like I had that opportunity. So my mom used to say — and it was such a cringe moment for me — she’d be like, “It’s never too late. You can still be Oprah.” And I’d be like, “Ugh, Mom.”

SAFIAN: And here you are being Oprah.

BANIKARIM: I may not be Oprah, but I can be me. I can be messy me.

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SAFIAN: 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?

BANIKARIM: 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, this moment where my son said to me, “If you go back in, I’d miss you.” And that moment really stopped me in my tracks and made me decide not to go back in, which was terrifying, but then, as I said, amazing.

So Shelley Huff and I met — Shelley is my co-founder. We met at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women, a room that was a big thing to get invited into. She had 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.” 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 they’re like, “Oh my God, you have free time. You can go to yoga.” But you’re having all these existential moments.

And so I introduced Shelley to a couple people, and then over the course of 18 months, there were a hundred people in this group. Literally, there isn’t a week that goes by when somebody doesn’t say, “I have somebody else who should join.” So I think we’re going to see. Now, we know, having been parts of lots of communities, that size matters in terms of intimacy. And so I think we’re very intentional about how we’re going to evolve The Interval. If you reach this level and you find a group of people who are willing to be there for you — I joke, in their curlers, not in their best suit — just like, “Yeah, I see you.” So I think the intimacy matters. And can you do that and scale?

SAFIAN: The Interval grew out of Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women. Is it for women primarily?

BANIKARIM: Since we’ve announced, since we went public, we’ve actually gotten inbound from men who want to join. Men go through the same kind of 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. I talked to him maybe a couple weeks ago. He said, “For two months, I was super busy. Today is the first day I have nothing to do. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

I just think about this, my middle school analogy. It’s like, when you’re in a big job, everybody calls you. The minute you leave that big job, all of a sudden it’s like you have the plague. Nobody seems to remember you. 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 for the funeral.

SAFIAN: Maryam gives a great reminder about what true support and connection mean. 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.

[AD BREAK]

Before the break, founder of NYCNext and The Interval, Maryam Banikarim 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.

One of the throughlines I see in your life is that you are a terrific marketer. You get people excited in unexpected ways. You mentioned to me when we were talking yesterday that you were recently part of a flash mob?

BANIKARIM: The flash mob was organized for the Every Woman Biennial, which is a biennial for women and nonbinary 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. I don’t know — I’m not a great dancer, but I like to dance.

I 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 one of the things I think is, we don’t have enough joy in our lives these days. The world can be difficult.

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, experiencing music does for you — it really does change your mood. I will confess that I had to buy a bottle of Advil in order to survive a flash mob because my hips aren’t the same.

SAFIAN: You seem like you never get self-conscious to me, Maryam. I saw a video you posted recently walking through the subway while it was on fire. There was smoke everywhere. It’s not the time when I would tend to pull out my phone.

BANIKARIM: 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, “Are we moving toward the smoke?” So I decide, OK, I’m going to pivot and go the other way. And I had 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 it’s like I’m a millennial, or whatever that is, who knows how to make those videos. I will say, like anything, the more you do it, the better 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.

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SAFIAN: Is that one of the lessons that you’ve learned from the marketing world? Are there lessons about the marketing world that folks listening to this should get more of — what’s effective, what makes it work?

BANIKARIM: One of the things I’ve learned between NYCNext, The Longest Table, The Messy Parts, and The Interval is that a lot of these things were not baked business plans. They weren’t laid out with a strategy and a 10-year plan. They were just ideas. The Longest Table was an idea: 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. 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 have happened across the country. I didn’t set out to create a movement. I didn’t see my way to 50 tables when I started. I think one of the things 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 ROI? By that time, the creative idea has been shriveled up and thrown away. What I’ve discovered between NYCNext, where we did a moment for Broadway, and the Billy Joel video that won an Emmy, 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 by one person — real magic can be unlocked.

And in the end, marketing is about storytelling. I think The Longest Table has grown through other people’s storytelling. And in the end, it’s about connecting emotionally. 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, you’re leading from the top, directing from the top. I tell people, “You do The Longest Table — it’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 OK. Bob, you know what? All you.”

And if Bob doesn’t do it my way, it’s totally OK. 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.

SAFIAN: One of the things that businesses struggle with is the idea that there’s organic demand if you have a creative and a good enough idea, and then there’s marketing-driven demand as these two different levers. And how much do you put toward one versus how much you put toward the other? Do you have a philosophy about that?

BANIKARIM: In the end, great marketing is actually solving somebody’s need. That’s why marketers, by definition, are curious. You have to be interested. I remember when I was at NBCUniversal, I was not an Oxygen viewer, so 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. It’s not a one-way experience. So how do you invite them in?

So 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. You have to get the CFO on board, the CEO on board. That is part of the job in the C-suite. I will say, when you’re doing The Longest Table or whatever, you have to bring other people who are as crazy as you, who are willing to do things that may seem irrational to other people, but when they come together, boy, is there magic to be unlocked.

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SAFIAN: You’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, that people don’t understand about that experience or what’s happening in there?

BANIKARIM: What I would say is, it’s very political. 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 it needs. I will say, as somebody who did change and turnaround, I often was the outsider who was brought in.

SAFIAN: You were not shy about being the outsider. You didn’t mind that necessarily, right?

BANIKARIM: 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. 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, “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 another person said, “Well, you have the worst job outside of the janitor.” I was like, “Welcome.” And so we learn at every job.

We learn what we like, who we want to be. I think I’ve learned to be kinder over time and less focused on just getting the job done. You hire me, and I’m going to move mountains to get what you need done. Now I think I would push back a little bit more on that. Now I have a little bit more perspective. I remember so distinctly at NBC, I had two bosses.

There was a moment where one boss — I’d inherited a group — and she wanted me to just get rid of all of them. And I was like, “OK, I know a way to solve that. I could do that. I have a way that I could make that happen.” And the other one was like, “I’m not going to let you do that because politically that is a massacre, and that’s not going to be a good thing.”

So it was interesting having these two bosses — one who just wanted what she wanted at whatever cost, and the other one who had a political read. And I think you get better. But what is the corporate job like? Half of it is about doing the job. Half of it is just the politics.

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SAFIAN: You and I have talked privately about some of the CEOs you worked for. You had a lot of heart for some, others kind of less so. I’m not asking you to name names, but what makes a good CEO?

BANIKARIM: Oh, you want some messy parts, Bob?

SAFIAN: No, I don’t want to put you on the spot or make you uncomfortable, but what makes a good CEO? What makes a less-good CEO?

BANIKARIM: For me, I really cared deeply about purpose. I cared about working at a place where I believed in the product, where I thought we could make a difference beyond just making money. So I picked people who were purpose-driven. That was a thing that mattered for me. Sometimes they are purpose-driven. Sometimes they say they’re purpose-driven, as you know. People always say, “I want people who are going to tell me like it is.” Sometimes they mean that. Sometimes they don’t.

I remember I met a CEO and he wanted to hire me literally after an hour meeting, and I was a little thrown. And I said, “You don’t know me. I’m actually going to tell you bad news even when you don’t want to hear it. Are you sure you’re up for that?” And people think they’re up for that. And then you do that, and guess what? There’s a price to pay.
I think for me, choosing a CEO is like choosing a friend in the sense that I have to be values-aligned. I have to know that you’re not just going to pivot on a dime and be like, “Oh, flavor of the month.” You have to actually be able to make hard decisions that you can stand by. This is something I learned early on, actually, as a child in a revolution, where it was easy for people to move expeditiously to save their skin. I wanted to be on the boat with other people who were rowing in the same direction for a cause that was bigger than themselves.

Really, there was something magical about that. And honestly, when we started doing NYCNext and The Longest Table, I really felt that. In that moment when the city was at its worst, when really there was nobody out on the streets, when everybody came together to make a moment for Broadway happen, to sing one song on the steps of Times Square when nobody was being given permits, where Bernadette Peters showed up and 24 other people, and Clear Channel gave us free boards and Gary Vaynerchuk did free PR and Andrew Gillum did free ads that we put up —

It wasn’t about any one person. And by the way, who better than marketers to do that kind of thing? Who better than marketers to create community and create a long table? Seriously, that is what we’re built for, not just making a marketing campaign. So yeah, I can get on a soapbox.

SAFIAN: You and I texted earlier this week about the environment we’re in and the changes going on in Iran and the economy, and we were encouraging each other to focus on what’s closest at hand and the things we can control. When you’re looking at projects that you’re going to do, new ideas, new initiatives, new marketing things, how much do you say, “Oh, here’s low-hanging fruit that I know has momentum that I can play off of,” versus, “Oh, here’s a big bet, something that may never work out, but I’m going to go for it anyway”?

BANIKARIM: I was always a Plan A, B, and C kid. I never thought something was going to work out, so I was always having different things. In my head, it’s a bit of a mess. I think AI could really organize my end. So I try lots of different things, not really necessarily always knowing if it’s going to work out or not. With The Longest Table, I had no idea if that was going to work.
It was just an idea. But when we started doing it and just putting up the flyers, every night when I walked the dog at 11 o’clock, I re-flyered the street. I didn’t leave it to chance. It wasn’t going to not work because I didn’t put in the elbow grease. So then when that worked the first year, I was like, “Wow, there’s something here.” So I could have that moment of, “OK, there’s something here. Maybe we should do it again.” But I also dream of doing one across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Now, that’s not easy, but it could be really amazingly glorious, literally and figuratively connecting people over a body of water for a shared meal. So I’ve been chasing that for three years. I’d literally chase the head of the DOT under the Adams administration to have a conversation with them about it. No stone unturned. That won’t be the reason it won’t happen. I’m always optimistic.

SAFIAN: So in this world where so much is uncertain, is there a lesson of messiness that we should all take with us?

BANIKARIM: I would say embrace the mess. It’s actually difficult, but the thing that will be most rewarding, if you can somehow let go and just be, and remember the things that gave you joy when you were younger, you begin to connect with things you didn’t know about for a while. And I think that’s what the flash mob was about. I was like, “Why not? Let’s see what that opens up.”

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

BANIKARIM: Thank you so much for having me.

SAFIAN: I just find Maryam a total breath of fresh air. I always have. She brings an energy I think we all sorely need — her truly entrepreneurial spirit, her wisdom about bold ideas, her sense of experimentation and community, and most importantly, optimism. She’s emblematic of what I call generation flux, those who are ready for whatever the world sends our way. The fear of embarrassment shouldn’t stop us.

Whether for our professional aspirations or more broadly in society, the willingness to embrace the mess, as Maryam puts it, is the key to true progress. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.