Perimenopausal anxiety, the terrible feeling of impending doom, something awful happening to my children, writing deadlines. Apart from that, I’m quite chilled.
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A long-running fixed question in The Guardian's weekly Q&A questionnaire.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Kathleen J. McInnis, Smart Women, Smart Power podcast, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 28 August 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 198 →The third or fourth glass of wine.
Figuring out the best way to introduce the next version of myself.
The thought that I could be doing more: being more productive, doing more of the things that matter, and less of the things that don’t.
More from Mellody Hobson
View profile →I really appreciate the fact, and I constantly tell Reverend Jackson and Reverend Sharpton that I appreciate the fact that they're fighting for us, because I am an accident of birth.
Our business everyday is to make money for people. And I take it as seriously as doctors who are trying to cure cancer, because by giving people financial freedom, we allow them to do great things in their lives - from retire to send their kids to college, to buy their first house, to fund a business that they might want to start.
I literally said to them - all of our faces were on the - in the boxes on Zoom. And I welled up. And I said, oh my God, this is my dream. This is what I want - I've wanted to see my whole life of working at Ariel and all the things we've built, and making sure we all have a shot at this - narrowing this wealth gap, and putting our stamp on the industry and society.
You see, researchers have coined this term "color blindness" to describe a learned behavior where we pretend that we don't notice race. If you happen to be surrounded by a bunch of people who look like you, that's purely accidental. Now, color blindness, in my view, doesn't mean that there's no racial discrimination, and there's fairness. It doesn't mean that at all. It doesn't ensure it. In my view, color blindness is very dangerous because it means we're ignoring the problem.
I could be strong and not tough. I could be kind without being soft. ... But in that moment, that olive branch of kindness was actually one that became a physical hug, and I think it taught me and the room a lot. And I said: You know what? I think this is an advantage.
I told our Ariel team, we are not going to limp out of COVID. We're going to slingshot out of COVID. We're going to be pulling that rubber band back and back, and we're going to be warehousing ideas, and getting work done, and so when this is over we will pole vault ahead.
More on daily life
- What single thing would improve the quality of your life? 208 answers
- What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? 37 answers
- When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? 26 answers
- In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? 23 answers
- In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life? 21 answers
- What does the first sixty minutes of your day look like? 21 answers
Also answered this
Julien Macdonald, Nadiya Hussain, Angela Hartnett, Katharine Hamnett, Bobbi Brown, Bozoma Saint John
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All daily life questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject