While visiting Iran recently, Carol Giacomo got her nails done in order to see a different side to the country’s women.
The New York Times columnist, editorial board member and foreign policy expert believes women’s stories are important and integral to every part of life. But you need to go beyond the stereotype to determine what’s really going on.
Finding her own way to add value to a story has helped build her high-profile media career and seen her engaging and travelling with some of the most powerful people in the world – including a time when she regularly travelled with secretaries of state, often as the only woman on the plane.
In conversation with Helen Dalley at a Women In Media event in Sydney this morning, Giacomo revealed a number of tips that have helped her drive her media career and seen her become one of the New York Times‘ most prominent columnists and now editorial board member – with a say over such matters as who to endorse for president and what position to take on major issues like the death penalty and abortion.
Giacomo decided she wanted to be a journalist at the age of just 12, and used the ambition to drive her major career and life decisions and support some necessary sacrifices.
Having children in her late 30s she decided she wasn’t prepared to compromise on the career she’d already established, nor on the life goals she had. “I got to 39 and realised if I am going to do this kid thing I will have to act,” she said.
Giacomo took three months maternity leave following the birth of her son, continued to travel extensively and hired a nanny who stayed with her for twenty years. She said she didn’t give much thought to how difficult it was managing work and family, always preferring to focus on the solutions rather than the challenges she had.
Her inspiration for editorials at the NY Times, where she writes a number of times a week, comes from her wide reading list, both online, offline and Twitter.
While she couldn’t name a specific male sponsor who’s helped her career, she did note it was a man who gave her a significant career break at Washington Reuters.
She added the New York Times has a strong culture of supporting women and a number of women in key leadership roles, particularly now with executive editor Jill Abramson at the helm.