Audie Cornish ’01, former host of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, may be a household name today, but she achieved that status from the ground up, one step at a time. Cornish spoke to Elle about her first job in a bagel shop, how she discovered who she was and built her career, and the advice she has for other working women.
From “How Audie Cornish Went From Feeling Like Journalism’s ‘Last Dinosaur’ to Being One of NPR’s Top Hosts”:
How I got over imposter syndrome
I used to feel imposter syndrome so strongly. Then I turned 40 and thought, This isn’t cute anymore. How long can I pretend not to know what I’m doing? I actually really know what I’m doing. … If I told myself I didn’t belong in every room where I felt alone or alienated or misrepresented or didn’t see anyone who looked like me, I would never advance in this industry.
How I’ve navigated changes in media
There was a time where I really thought I’d miscalculated because I was this nerdy local reporter doing radio, and all my other young journalist friends were in New York writing for blogs. It was the Gawker crowd, and everyone was cooler. It was very like, we’re snappy. We’re ironic. Everyone else is doing meaningless trash because we’re sticking it to everyone. I’m like, I guess I’ll just cover 9/11. It felt like I was the last dinosaur. Now, over the last couple of years, everyone and their mother has a podcast. Everyone is basically just doing radio.
My identity crisis when I became a working mom
Because it took so long for me to have kids, you have people who love to comment and say, “You’re not going to want to travel and do all this crazy stuff, blah blah.” The truth is I still wanted to do those things, even when I couldn’t. It caused an identity crisis in a way, because I wasn’t ready to be stripped of those things. … I had to adjust my expectations about what success would look like and what I can still do to showcase my own talent.
A version of this article was originally published by the UMass Amherst Magazine.