Episode 66 | Spotlighting Huge Brands Making Huge Moves with Jennifer Leigh Parker

 Jennifer Leigh Parker  00:00

It’s a bit of a culture of urgency and it’s a pressure cooker. But it’s that kind of thing where well, it takes pressure to make a diamond. You know, like, it just takes a lot of that practice. So it was like, it was kind of like being on a sports team, a journalistic sports team. So I highly recommend to any young kids that just want a great internship, go into TV, go into a newsroom, it’s super intense, you’re going to be exhausted, but it’s such great training just to be a writer.

Voiceover  00:30

Welcome to the “Lead at the Top of Your Game” podcast, where we equip you to more effectively lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. Each week, we help you sharpen your leadership acumen by cracking open the playbooks of dynamic leaders who are doing big things in their professional endeavors. And now, your host, leadership tactics, and organizational development expert, Karan Ferrell-Rhodes.

Karan Rhodes  01:05

Hey there superstars, this is Karan and thanks for joining another episode designed to help you better lead at the top of your game. You know, as you know, for season three, each month we’re featuring leaders who have interested in roles in a particular industry. And today’s episode is part of our special series featuring the perspectives of journalists and editors in the media. And on today’s show, we’re going to give you a taste of an expert who covers the business news industry. We’re so proud to featured Jennifer Leigh Parker, former editor in chief at huge news magazine, which is owned by huge Incorporated, huge incorporate is groundbreaking, editorially independent tech and design magazine. So you definitely want to check that out. It was fascinating to hear how Jennifer transitioned her dreams of conquering Broadway, into becoming an extremely accomplished business journalist with the likes of outlets such as Forbes and CNBC listened to how she leads her staff at a company that only produces one publication a year on the biggest stories of our times. And I’m sure you can agree with me that that one publication must be guaranteed to be a doozy in order for them to be able to stay in business, right. But her story is absolutely fascinating. And I know you’re gonna enjoy it. And also remember to stay tuned for just two minutes after the episode to listen to my closing segment called Karan’s Take, where I share tips on how to use insights from today’s episode to further sharpen your leadership acumen. And now, enjoy the show. Hey there superstars. This is Karan and thanks for joining another episode of the leader the top of the year game podcast. Well, today’s episode is a another episode that is part of our special series featuring the perspectives of journalists and editors in the world of media. And so we’re so honored and fortunate to have on today’s show. Jennifer Lee Parker is the editor in chief at huge moves magazine, which is owned by Huge incorporated and they call themselves a very creative agency. Their magazine is a groundbreaking, editorially independent tech and Design Magazine. And she’s going to tell us all about it in just a second. And Jennifer is New York based and his her normal beat is focused on business journalism, which you all know is one of my faves. Her past work has been published in in media outlets such as Bloomberg, CNBC, Forbes, skift, surface magazine, and the Washington Post. So welcome to the podcast, Jennifer.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  03:51

Thank you, Karan. I’m so happy to be here. I appreciate it.

Karan Rhodes  03:54

Oh, we are so happy to get honored to have you. I can’t wait to delve into some of your stories and perspectives on great leaders in the world of business. And but before we do that, we’d love to learn just a little personal tidbits about you. So just as much as you feel comfortable. Would you mind giving us a sneak peek into maybe a bit of your personal life and passions?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  04:18

Oh, of course I’d love to. So yeah, I’m based in New York. I’ve got a husband and a baby girl, I’ve got a toddler. Her name is Grace. She’s the light of my life. Yeah, I guess I am. I’m a working mom first and foremost. But I actually I came to New York City with bright lights in my eyes and I wanted to study theater. And so I came up and I was you know, studying playwriting. And I took you know, a lot of acting classes and did that whole thing and just really kind of pounded the pavement and black box theaters and was, you know, unemployed and working in restaurants. But it’s funny when I look back on that time, it was all about learning about storytelling, and learning about narratives and how stories work and how theater works and, and I was just so nerdy. You know, I was in this acting school, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I was always like the first kid in the library and the last kid to leave. And I just was like consuming play after play after play, and I remember just sitting like my first Broadway shows, I mean, I saw Rent, and I was like, Oh, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. You know, and I grew up in Florida. So, you know, I came to the city thinking like, wow, this is where culture is. I mean, I’ve only seen the beach. And a movie theater like this, you know, in a mall basically is, so it felt like this explosion of culture and stories and sort of ambition and creativity. So I just had to be in New York City. I came in 2000, which makes me sound old. But anyway, I’ve been here sort of pounding the pavement ever since. But it’s funny, like, I didn’t intend really to get into business journalism. But the two things that sort of shaped New York for me are theater and Wall Street. Yeah. And so now I’m a business storyteller, which is sort of to me, it’s like, oh, that’s neat. That’s a combination of the two. I don’t know how that happened. But I guess I stayed here so long. I just absorbed New York. And here I am. So yeah,

Karan Rhodes  06:09

What a great story about a combination of two your main passions, you might not have known that was going to be part of your career journey. But what an amazing use of both of them, because you’re right. It’s basically storytelling in business and understand the dramatic seven, I got to ask you, did you have sticker shock when you went to New York, from Florida?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  06:29

Oh,for sure. I remember, just remember being so grateful that there were those sort of nut carts on the street that you could get for two bucks, because that was protein and I could like get through the day, a banana and the candied nuts card, I’m telling you, it got me through my first three years on only American working in an Irish pub for a while, but that’s kind of another story…

Karan Rhodes  06:53

Another story, right? We had to do another whole emphasis on that one.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  06:58

But I definitely didn’t come here with a silver spoon. So I found a way to kind of journalism became my meal ticket. Gotcha. That’s, you know, and sort of, that’s how storytelling kind of saved me in a way.

Karan Rhodes  07:10

So can you start sharing it with us a little bit? Let’s go deeper about when you jumped into the world of journalism. Yeah. Where did you start? And how did your career progress?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  07:23

Yeah, so I got really, really lucky with some early internships. I went undergrad to Columbia, and you weren’t really supposed to go to the grad school courses, except for a few. And I remember just trying to get all the journalism classes I could. And that led to I knew I needed to get sort of great internships. And so that led to some really lucky breaks. It was a internnet, MSNBC, and then CNBC, the way that I got to CNBC, which is in New Jersey, I and that was my first real job as a cub reporter. So that was what I really got to test my mettle.

Karan Rhodes  07:56

Can you tell our audience what a cub reporter is?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  07:59

Oh, sure, just the bottom of the rung, you know, like you’re fresh out of school, they don’t know what to do with you, you don’t know what you’re doing. And they say, you know, why don’t you submit your copy to an editor, it’s going to be heavily edited, we’re going to tell you how to do it and what to do. And you need to be able to take feedback and do it on deadline, and quickly. So you’re really sort of thrown into, you know, the, the hot box of a television newsroom. So it’s an amazing learning curve, like you just learn how to write on deadline and you learn not to be wrong. Sometimes your copy is going to show up on television. And so it’s a bit of a culture of urgency, and it’s a pressure cooker. But it’s that kind of thing where well, it takes pressure to make a diamond, you know, like, it just takes a lot of that practice. So it was like, it was kind of like being on a sports team, a journalistic sports team. So I highly recommend to any young kids that just want a great internship, go into TV, go into a newsroom, it’s super intense, you’re going to be exhausted. But it’s it’s such great training just to be a writer. And one of the great sort of freedoms that comes from like, in my heart, I’m just a writer, and I’m no better or worse than any other writer out there. It’s just that the reporting gives you this kind of superpower. Because when you’re dealing with facts, or something that’s really happening in the world, it gives you this kind of, I don’t know like the the world is so crazy, you kind of can’t make this stuff up. Like it’s it the truth is sort of more exciting than fiction. Right? Right, is what I found sort of in that kind of training period in my life, but that led to, so that so CNBC sort of led to Bloomberg and Bloomberg I got I got interested in culture and travel writing. And then I was hired as an editor at a design magazine surface magazine where I learned so much about the design world. So to sort of bring you up to speed of how, you know, how do you become an editor in chief all of a sudden of a design and tech magazine, really I learned how to do that. Thanks to the editor at the time, Spencer Bailey really showed, I worked for him, he showed me the ropes of what it really means to tap into the design world and get into like the real zeitgeist of what our architects doing, what are digital designers doing? What are artists bringing to the world. And so it’s almost its own language. But it was a wonderful way to sort of learn surface magazine, I still have huge respect for. But yeah, that sort of taught me how to, to edit and to write in a way that was more sophisticated than I ever had to had to even conceive of so.

Karan Rhodes  10:32

 interesting. And when you say, artists, are you talking about digital artists that have digital verges of their art, like NFTs? Are you talking about a different world? Or a different topic?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  10:45

Yeah, no, I think it’s funny. It’s top of mine, because our new cover artist is Rafa Nadal, who is a multimedia artist, so someone who can basically use more traditional platforms, and then someone who could, you know, take a bunch of different painting, you know, sort of photos, feed it, you know, create their own algorithm and actually generate something that’s never existed before. That’s sort of what I mean by modern digital artists right now, because he’s at the cutting edge of that. We’ve interviewed a few, a few sort of AI artists, I would say, they’re just top of mind right now, because they’re sort of blazing a trail into new realms.

Karan Rhodes  11:23

Wow, that is fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. And so is that the area that that Huge covers? Or can you tell us more about your publication?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  11:34

Yeah, of course. So it’s called the Huge Moves, the company is a creative consultancy. And so it’s just a great place to be as a creative because there’s so much intelligence that comes from from working there. I mean, they’re, they’re listening to their clients all the time about what challenges their clients face, you know, what, what problems they’re really grappling with. And it also has a large department, that’s data and insights. And so there’s this department is giving us, you know, insights into what’s coming ahead in the marketplace. And on top of that, we’ve just got these, like a whole team of executives that helped me stay on the cutting edge. So I guess where it dovetails with a cutting edge artists like someone like rific, and a doll is they it’s very forward looking and almost futuristic, because their clients need to be really at the cutting edge of their businesses and their industries to be able to remain competitive. But basically, the publication has to kind of capture that spirit of we’re at the cutting edge of design and technology, we’re not looking backwards. We’re not doing any historical kind of treatment stories, we’re really there’s a sort of energy of we need to be almost prescient so that our readers who are top business leaders can look ahead of the curve.

Karan Rhodes  12:47

Gotcha. You’re kind of a curator of what is cutting edge and edge around the world in this space. And they love to probably follow you all to stay on top of that, correct?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  13:00

Yeah, that’s really the idea of curation. I’m glad you picked up on that. So like, so we’re only I mean, we’re two years old. So our second issue is about to come out in October,

Karan Rhodes  13:10

Oh, congratulations!

Jennifer Leigh Parker  13:12

Thank you. Thank you. I’m super excited about it. Our first issue came out last year, we sort of declared what we thought we go through a long process of figuring out, you know, what are our 10 Huge Moves for the year ahead. So first issue was 10, Huge Moves for 2023. Next issue is 10 Huge Moves for 2024. We do an annual publication. And that’s like kind of a strong choice. You know, we’re in the media scan, it’s not really that separate from media, right? Somebody can go read New York Times or Fast Company, there’s a wealth of media out there that’s going to feel inspiring and informative. I think where we are unique is I really just have a fundamental belief in long form, storytelling and the power of that. And so we’re not in the game of high volume at the expense of quality. So it’s an annual publication, we have it once a year. It’s 10 features and 14 stories total. Most magazines that you read on a monthly basis have one or two features only, we have 10. And so it’s there’s kind of this gravitas to it and there’s a lot of and it takes us all year to produce this thing. Wow. And it’s a really a labor of love. But it just comes from this place of, you know, a lot of people ask us, Why are we even doing a print magazine? Honestly, it’s because I believe, I think it’s really a privilege to interview business leaders and artists and you know, just great thinkers at the top of their game. And just as you I’m sure are inspired by the people you interview all the time, all the time. I mean, to me, what’s exciting about it is when you set something down in print, it gives it permanence and honestly like our publication, we were obsessed with design and technology trends, and we really want to stay at the cutting edge of that. But there’s something there’s something else that makes it sophisticated which is it’s not really about egos, it’s about big ideas. And so the 10 Huge, we want the ideas to last all year, it’s not really about who it is or what they do or what their title is. These are the 10 Huge Moves, that we cover our ideas that are so big that you kind of can’t ignore them. So I’ll give you an example. One of our writers is covering like the the apple, you know, partnered up with Goldman to offer a new FinTech product, which is Apple savings, over $10 billion dollars has been invested in this almost as soon as this product hit the market. It’s the kind of move in FinTech that is so big in the retail banking industry, you just like you just can’t ignore it. It’s like, locked in and you’re just like, okay, so that kind of describes what a huge move is. But the other thing I want to say about I want to give you another example. So healthcare, for example, it’s something that’s like a super sensitive topic in America and I something that really I’ve struggled with, as just, you know, a working mom, right? What I would say is Amazon bought one medical for $4 billion, and our stories called the $4 billion bet. I saw that Yeah. And it’s like, that’s a tech company that’s coming into the pharmaceutical industry and disrupting things. It’s just another example of you can’t not cover that, you know, it’s so big, it has this ripple effect. And we’re…I’m fascinated as a business reporter, who’s behind it, what’s, who are the people, you know, who are the characters in that story that can help bring it to life. And so one of my like, really, people, when we’re talking about inspiration, one of the people I just I love his work so much. And I’ve always followed it, as a business reporter is Michael Lewis. So to me, people think of him Oh, he’s an author of books. But I see a business reporter he, you know, he wrote the money Bollywood, The Big Short, he’s written flash boys, you know, he’s written, he’s written about Wall Street and about business in a way that follows the character. So we feel like when we watch his movies, and we read his captivate you, you’re just in it, you know, and so that’s, that’s kind of my guiding light is I want to bring this sort of personal, the personal human life stories to, to the business world in a way that like, it’s these aren’t hot takes, it’s not really research. You know, research is not just research based analysis, although we use a lot of data from our data and insights team.

Karan Rhodes  17:24

 But it’s probably different lenses, right? The story that you’re telling and pulling it all together for your readers. Yeah, like a piece of art within itself. That’s what I thought, oh, when you were describing it, and maybe I’m just, I’m an emotional person. So I love to see the beauty and things like that.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  17:41

But this was our first…I’ll share it with you. So this is an it brings sort of AI to the fore. So this was this was a generated image. And it has the 10 Huge Moves listed on the back that, like, here’s my magazine, but you know, for

Karan Rhodes  17:56

those of you that are just listening on the podcast, check out the link to the YouTubes ago to make sure you go to the show notes afterwards, you can see what Jennifer is showing as the cover of it. You know, you’ll be really impressed. Let me just tell you,

Jennifer Leigh Parker  18:12

Thank you. It’s a labor of love. But you know, I mean, I think it’s important to say also, when you make a publication that’s this long, and it really you know, you’re I hire a lot of journalists that are really leading business journalists as well. And so I feel like I need to protect their careers as well. And so it’s something that I hope gets better with every iteration, right? When we put out the first issue, I always think, well, I want to improve it the next issue and on and on, it’s about trying to make it better every time.

Karan Rhodes  18:44

Wow. Well, congratulations on your success thus far. We’re so excited. I don’t know, is it a prize? You have to be on a subscribe list to get them out of people? Or can the general public get a purchase a publication?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  18:59

Yeah, that’s a great question. So we’re not it’s kind of a luxury product. It’s a limited edition. And so we’re doing direct mailing to our network. So really, it’s just we’ve got our email address on the on the website, and we do and we really direct mail it to people that are interested, free for a reason, we want everyone to engage everyone who’s interested to engage with it. That is, that is kind of a big choice, too. I mean, we’re not selling ads into it. And we’re not we’re not in this subscription game. It’s really kind of a luxury kind of coffee table product to to bring our best ideas to the fore every year. So yeah, so it’s honestly email us and we’ll send you a copy.

Karan Rhodes  19:36

Okay, well, we’ll have information about that in the show notes everyone that you’ve targeted to examples of the ideas that they’re writing about which are applicable right this second and our could be world changing. So definitely if you’re interested don’t waste their art. If you’re interested add your name to their email list.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  19:56

It is limited edition though I should say we’re only printing 1500s That’s there is a limit to it. But

Karan Rhodes  20:01

Okay,

Jennifer Leigh Parker  20:02

I would love to have I would love to have more, more readers the better for sure.

Karan Rhodes  20:07

Oh, I bet. Wonderful. Well, Jennifer, because you have covered you know, I’m sure even throughout your career, so many great stories and great people, leaders, great company leaders, great nonprofit leaders, you know, just in the world of business, I’d love to ask you if there’s a leader and it can be any entity famous or not, that has really impressed you that you consider leading at the top of their game.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  20:34

Sure. Well, the top journalists I would say are for me are Kara Swisher but also Stephanie Rule and I listened to

Karan Rhodes  20:40

Oh, Yes. I do too.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  20:42

I love Pivot, Stephanie Rule is someone who I met personally when I worked at Bloomberg Television, and then she probably there’s no way she remembers my name because I was a bit of a a shy wallflower. Just you know, typing away at my computer all the time hunched over my desk, but um, she does something which I think is kind of miraculous. She speaks her mind. She’s not afraid to be provocative. But she’s also not afraid to like, share her family life and be a whole person. You know, when I was first coming up, I was so afraid to be myself in the office. I was intimidated. But I mean, I was surrounded by people at CNBC and Bloomberg Television are really titans in media. So I was nervous. And she’s somebody that really just captures this confidence in herself on camera on and off camera. And she just seems so fearless to me. And I guess that’s, she’s somebody who I think, you know, she doesn’t always do a easy interview, she asked us tough questions. She doesn’t get steamrolled. And she sort of lives out loud. She’s also by the way, I think there’s a cough. There’s something that’s common to Kara Swisher and Stephanie Rule,

Karan Rhodes  21:49

Cause they’re big brands.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  21:53

but they both work all the time. I think that’s the dirty little secret about like, they work all the time. And honestly, I do. I mean, I work nights and weekends sometimes. And that is the truth of it. And I just don’t want to sugarcoat that for anybody because this is a competitive space. And it is it takes a lot. And I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it so much. But Stephanie Rule is kind of is kind of like a guiding light.

Karan Rhodes  22:17

Well, I’ll, Hi Five you on that one. She’s one of my faves as well. But and so you have the insights, that you know that she works out. But it doesn’t surprise me that either she or Kara works so much because they are very passionate about what they do. And it seems like they made the choice to do that I might be wrong. I’m not a personal friend of either one of them. I just follow them. But it seems like they have made the personal choice to deeply intertwine the personal lives and work lives and try to prioritize what needs to be prioritized at the moment. That’s the story I tell in my head anyway. And then have you gotten that impression?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  22:58

You don’t hide the fact that it’s messy. And I mean,

Karan Rhodes  23:02

It’s a hard work industry really.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  23:04

Yeah, it’s It shocks me that both of them are able to do what they do, but they still have to, you know, do the dishes, I mean, but I love I love that about them. I love it when Kara talks about having to clean her kitchen and that she cleans her own kitchen and that her partner, you know, Scott goes on Scott free August but she works throughout. I mean, she’s working now I’m sure. I’m sure she is, I guess well, while the guy goes off and like, you know, travels the world, which I think that’s wonderful too, if you can do it, you know, but something special about both of them, because it feels like they make the juggling look kind of easy.

Karan Rhodes  23:39

Yeah, definitely. Well, let me pivot for just a second. One of the things we always love to ask our guests about is their impressions on the techniques that I talked about in my book, and I think you’re aware wrote a book, we commissioned a research study on leadership execution and came out with some of the top tactics that some of the most successful high performing leaders actually did. And you were kind enough to share with me that the one of the ones that jumped out for you was leading with courageous agility. And so for my newer listeners, leading with courageous agility is all about having the courage and the fortitude. Oops, the see for the hopefully you hear me, we had a little bit of technical glitch, but for those who have not read the book, yet, leading with courageous agility is all about having the courage and the fortitude to do what you think is right and stand up for what you believe in, even if the future is uncertain or unclear. And so we were just curious, Jennifer, why leading with courageous agility really resonated with you?

Jennifer Leigh Parker  24:46

Yeah, no, thank you. I find it inspiring because I feel like it’s something I have to that I’m kind of called to do all the time. To be able to see it have an editor means you do have some responsibility to other people. You know, I’m caring for other writers who Whew, you know, their lives aren’t easy. And I want to sort of protect their artistry. I think in America, we live in a place. I mean, you see it right now with the writer strike. America, this kind of turbo capitalism can really feel like a hostile to the creative arts. And I guess I see myself as someone who’s trying to protect writers that are putting themselves out there. Despite that kind of challenge, I would say creative, courageous agility. Here’s, here’s what I think of what kind of resonates with me, is the ability to put yourself last who and when I when I say that? I mean, that’s part of the wonderful thing that’s, that comes with working in our larger company that can support a creative enterprise like a magazine, I step back, and I, I listen to other people’s perspectives, and those perspectives are diverse. The Courage comes in because I get shaken. Sometimes I get rocked, right, because I have strong opinions about what journalism is, I have a journalism background, I have strong opinions about what’s a good story, what isn’t. And we have creative differences. I work at a company where there’s a lot of designers and there’s there’s people in Colombia, there’s people in Canada, there’s people in the UK, we don’t always agree with each other. However, I think that’s a major asset, because I’m challenged by my colleagues all the time. And it takes courage from me, I think, to go ahead and not just immediately say, No, you’re wrong, but to absorb the sort of collective wisdom that comes from the process of hashing things out, and then really coming together and cooperating and finding alignment on how we move forward together. So it sounds kind of corny, like it’s a team mentality. But it’s really, I honestly what it is, this is kind of the theme of this next issue is alignment. I honestly don’t believe in anyone can make a huge move, unless you’re cooperating unless you find ways to align together. I can’t do any of this without the support of my company, and this and top down support as well as sort of equal support of my colleagues and I need them to be sort of it’s kind of like a Ray Dalio concept that you need to be radically honest with each other.

Karan Rhodes  27:12

Yes, radical candor. Yep.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  27:14

Yeah, like this. And I was really inspired by that, too. I mean, I’ve never worked for Bridgewater, and I’m sure I wouldn’t make it. But there’s really something to that. And I’m finding on a daily basis that Hugers do not mince words, they share their opinion, they have you know, they and they’re, they’re super smart people. So it’s wonderful to be able to kind of hash that out. But to me, it takes courageous agility to do that, oh, well, I don’t always do it well, frankly. But

Karan Rhodes  27:40

We all don’t always do it well. But it’s the intent when you’re trying. And I always when we teach our workshops, and we talk to people about it, we always say courageous agility does not mean combative. It means exactly what you said, you know, having the courage to share your perspective, even whether or not you know that someone’s gonna agree with it or not, but start the conversation, see where there’s agreement or not see if you can convince them, they can convince you and see where there’s a win win middle ground and said, but you got to speak up, right to be able to do that.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  28:16

On a daily basis, what I find is Slack and email doesn’t cut it. I mean, you can definitely have a disagreement, you know, get on the phone, get on a video call, I just find that I get much further with leadership and just with camaraderie, just having these kinds of meetings, you know, and it’s hard, and it’s hard and when we’re all working remotely.

Karan Rhodes  28:35

It is. So I have two quick final questions for you. If we can squeeze them in the first I’d love to get your perspective, Jennifer on on how you think AI is going to eventually impact the whole media space.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  28:48

Super interesting question very timely. At Huge that they actually consult on this topic are very large companies that are trying to navigate their way through this sort of era. We see it as additive, not dilutive. So I do really look at it as a robots not not going to take my job. But somebody who knows how to use AI will so I very much feel strongly about it. Because I’ve started to play with it. I use it to record interviews and to do transcripts. And you know, it’s really kind of basic right now. I mean, it’s not writing any of my stories for me, for sure. But if there are ways to sharpen an idea, or an outline or a format, or test an idea, I think we need to be using it. I kind of am the stance the point of view that we are embracing AI and it’s all about especially in media, there’s another sort of wrinkle that I want to share, which is if you’re just talking to writers you need, I need to say do something with your life that AI can’t do. And I very much feel that journalism is part of that because I’m speaking to people live about their actual real life experience. There’s so much human intelligence that a source can give to me in real time. The internet doesn’t know it yet, right AI can scrape the internet all day. But what if I have new information that someone has told me verbally or slapped or, you know, sent a smoke signal? Right. But the point is like it is very, very valuable to bring new ideas to the fore or new information to the fore that the Internet doesn’t know yet. And that is basically I feel like I’ve sort of been put on notice that I need to start chasing that in my storytelling. Absolutely. Internet already knows this. Well, well, what am I bringing to the table. So it’s challenging, for sure. But it’s also kind of exciting. And I know that I have a lot of faith in my team that we can kind of stay at the cutting edge of it. If we work really hard.

Karan Rhodes  30:38

I definitely think you can and especially for the niche topics that you will talk about and your publication, I think your your me personally, I think you’re uniquely positioned to be able to do that. So that’s good. So thank you so much for your perspective. And my final question for you, Miss Jennifer is, what does it take for you to lead at the top of your game? How do you keep it together, day in and day out? And look as fabulous as you do? Oh, my goodness, was such a cool question.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  31:07

I think it’s coffee in the morning and a glass of red wine at night. No, I’m kidding. It’s,

Karan Rhodes  31:12

it sounds good to me.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  31:13

It’s a lot of coffee. No. It’s just a passion for storytelling. I guess I just love I love reporting. I love being out in the field. I love talking to people. If when I think back, it’s to 2000. When I first came in to New York, I’ve been doing some version of that all these years. And I think it’s just kind of working the the love I have for writing and editing. As long as I stay true to that. I think this I have this challenge I this is my guiding light as an editor, can you stay true to yourself as a storyteller, and also be commercially viable? I think that’s a question that that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning and keeps me going. Because it’s it’s not a given. You know, you don’t know the end of that story when you wake up. So I think that’s the challenge. I need to stay true to myself as a storyteller. And I know what that means internally. But the challenge is just try and share it with the world and professionally and have that actually make a difference in the marketplace.

Karan Rhodes  32:13

Wow. Well, if we could clone you, we definitely sure should, Jennifer because we need more of that energy and in our the world in which we live. But thank you so much from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of our listeners for being part of this special feature series and joining us on the podcast.

Jennifer Leigh Parker  32:32

Karan, thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure.

Karan Rhodes  32:34

Oh, wonderful. And thank you to listeners for tuning in to another episode. We are so honored that you came to spend some time with us because we know there’s a million other podcasts out there. And as you know, there’s only one thing we always ask is that you share our podcasts and our episodes with just one friend so that we can spread the word and help others just like you to lead at the top of their game. Thank you so much and see you next week. Well, I hope you enjoyed our conversation today with Jennifer Leigh Parker, former editor in chief at huge news magazine. Links to her bio her entry into our leadership playbook. And additional resources can be found in the show notes both on your favorite podcast platform of choice and on the web at lead your game podcast.com. And now precarious take on today’s topic of business journalism, from the companies that we work for to the ones we purchase from business impacts our daily lives and business journalism is critical in keeping corporations accountable, exposing them when they aren’t, and providing consumers with the information they need to make great economic decisions. There are so many business journalism outlets out there, but I thought it may be helpful to share a few of my favorites that do a pretty good job of writing, curating, or teaching business journalism and business news stories that you definitely need to know about. So the first resource is the rental Center for Business Journalism, who has the goal of improving the quality of media coverage of the businessman of business and the economy, and I love their curation of the top business news stories from around the globe. Definitely check them out and we’ll have links in our show notes. Next, if you are dreaming about becoming a Business Journal, journalist, Wharton has some great seminars to fast track your knowledge on topics like the financial markets, accounting principles, corporate strategy in the global economy. So if you’re not wanting a full degree yet, but want to get a deeper dive into what business journalism is all about, definitely check this resource out. And then lastly, check out this society for advancing business editing and writing. It’s called as a Bew that’s their acronym. M which is the Professional Association for Business journalists. It has has a ton of information and profiles, some of the top business journalists in the industry definitely a valuable rate. Well, that’s all for today. But please remember to subscribe to the podcast, and share the podcast with just one friend because by doing so, you will empower them to also lead at the top of their game. Thanks so much for listening and see you next week. And that’s our show for today. Thank you for listening to the lead at the top of your game podcast, where we help you lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. You can check out the show notes, additional episodes, and bonus resources, and also submit guest recommendations on our website at leadyourgamepodcast.com. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn by searching for the name Karan Rhodes with Karan being spelled K a r a n. And if you like the show, the greatest gift you can give would be to subscribe and leave a rating on your podcast platform of choice. This podcast has been a production of Shockingly Different Leadership, a global consultancy which helps organizations execute their people, talent development, and organizational effectiveness initiatives on an on-demand, project, or contract basis. Huge thanks to our production and editing team for a job well done. Goodbye for now.