LS: What has surprised you about NPR?
VS: I didn’t appreciate the depth of feeling people had for NPR. It’s extraordinary, wherever I go, people talk about it like they own it. They’re protective of this relationship, their NPR, and I’ve thought about this a lot: What is it about NPR that makes people feel so passionate, so loyal? And it’s this connection to the heart. When I run into people at my kids’ school and I say, I work for NPR, the funny thing is—people go, I love that station. Well, it’s not a station, but I’ve given up explaining. I just say, thank you! Give to your local station, please.
LS: And then you had to make some tough decisions, some cuts.
VS: The unions conceded to make significant sacrifices: furlough days, unpaid holidays. I have taken a pay cut and a pay freeze. I’m working almost four weeks without pay.
LS: What was your childhood like?
VS: I grew up in Larchmont, New York, and went to Cornell because my sister went there and loved it. My father was a journalist and my mother was a homemaker. I was in 12th grade, I was asked what I wanted to do and I didn’t have a clue. Not even remotely. And I didn’t figure it out in college either.
I think in my 7th grade yearbook it asked where are you going to be in the year 2001—and I think I said, part-time veterinarian, part-time archaeologist, part-time president of the United States! I was all over the place. After college I worked as a tour guide in Russia. I have jokingly said that I learned a lot about business leadership from being a tour guide: It’s public speaking, it’s crisis management, it’s prioritizing….I can’t tell you how many situations where someone would say, “Excuse me, we passed a tree back there that was bushy, green, the bark was kind of yellowish. What kind of tree was it?” And you know, I would want to say, Are you an idiot? I have no idea. So at the beginning, I’d just say, I don’t know. And I don’t know what this says about me, but I finally learned, just give them an answer. They’ll be happy. Maybe that doesn’t speak very highly about me.
