Huddle

How Women Unlock Their Collective Power

Brooke Baldwin

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780063017443
• eBook ISBN: 9780063017450
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Finance
• Index: History

Wall Street Journal Bestseller

CNN news anchor Brooke Baldwin explores the phenomenon of “huddling,”
when women lean on one another—in politics, Hollywood, activism, the arts,
sports, and everyday friendships—to provide each other support, empowerment,
inspiration, and the strength to solve problems or enact meaningful change.
Whether they are facing adversity (like workplace inequity or a global
pandemic) or organizing to make the world a better place, women are a highly
potent resource for one another.


Through a mix of journalism and personal narrative, Baldwin
takes readers beyond the big headline-making huddles from recent years (such as
the Women’s March, #MeToo, Times Up, and the record number of women running for
public office) and embeds herself in groups of women of all ages, races,
religions and socio-economic backgrounds who are banding together in
America. HUDDLE explores several stories including:

• The benefits of all-girls learning environments, such as Karlie Kloss’s Kode with Klossy and Reese Witherspoon’s Filmmaker Lab for Girls in which young women are given the freedom to make mistakes, and find their confidence.
• The tactics employed by huddles of women who work in male-dominated industries including a group of US veterans/Democratic Congresswomen, a huddle of African-American judges in Harris County, Texas, and an all-female writers room in Hollywood.
• The wisdom of huddling from trusted pioneers such as Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King, and Madeleine Albright as well as contemporary trailblazers like Stacey Abrams and Ava DuVernay. 
• How professionals such as Chef Dominique Crenn and sports agent Lindsay Colas use their success to amplify other women in their fields. 
• The ways huddles of women are dedicated to making seismic change, including a look at Indigenous women saving the planet, the women who founded Black Lives Matter, the mothers fighting for sensible gun laws, America’s favorite female athletes (Megan Rapinoe, Hilary Knight, and Sue Bird to name a few) agitating for equal pay, and female teachers rallying to improve their working conditions.
• The bond between women who practice self-care and trauma healing together, including the women who courageously survived sexual abuse, and the women who heal together in The Class and GirlTrek.
• The ways women are becoming more intentional about the life-saving power of friendship, including the bonds between military wives, new moms, and nurses getting through the time of Covid.

Throughout her examination of this fascinating huddle phenomenon, Baldwin learns about the periods of huddle ‘droughts” in America, as well as the ways that Black women have been huddling for centuries. She also uncovers how huddling can be the “secret sauce” that makes many things possible for women: success in the workplace, effective grassroots change, confidence in girlhood, and a better physical and mental health profile in adulthood. Along the way, Baldwin takes readers through her own personal journey of growing up in the South and climbing the ladder of a male-dominated industry. Like so many women in her field, she encountered many sharp elbows on her career path, but became an early believer in adding more seats to the table and huddling with other women for strength and solidarity. In the process of writing HUDDLE, Baldwin learns that this seemingly new phenomenon is actually something women have been doing for generations—a quiet, collective power she learns to unlock in her transformation from journalist to champion for women. 

Four

From Scarcity to Abundance in a Man’s World

The voice. My whole life, I’ve had it. It was a gift given to me by either God or my Granddaddy Fulton, a Presbyterian minister who had a tone so astonishing and authoritative that when he opened his mouth, the whole room went quiet. I remember being a little girl and listening to him preach in his church, or hearing his voice echo through our house when my mom would play tapes of his sermons. And much like my granddaddy, I had a voice that commanded attention. Even as a young girl, the volume, resonance, and depth of my vocals always stood out. I recently listened to an old cassette tape in which I interviewed a few of my fifth-grade girlfriends, asking the searing question of the time: Would you rather marry Tom Cruise or Patrick Swayze? Even though I was discussing the eye candy in Top Gun and Dirty Dancing, the gravitas in my ten-year-old voice suggested otherwise.

In college, some of my female classmates took courses to help them better control the diction and pitch of their speaking voices, but I was lucky to be genetically blessed with a voice so well suited for journalism. Everything else about the profession appealed to me as well: the fast pace, the front-row seat to history, the pressure of live television, the writing and storytelling, the travel, and the people. Being from Atlanta, I had been aware of the CNN headquarters there my whole life, and my dream was to one day work there—or maybe the Today show. In my sophomore year of college, when my application to intern at CNN was denied, I immediately called the guy—named Willie—in charge and did some fast talking, ultimately convincing him my resume was worth another look.

Confidence had never been a problem for me—at least up to that point in my life. I wasn’t afraid to be persuasive when I really wanted something, and thanks to my chat with Willie that day, I got to work for a whole summer on a (now-defunct) CNN show called Travel Now. The experience confirmed all my instincts: this was the path for me. During lunch breaks, I’d sneak into the big newsroom and press my face up against the glass wall of the set so I could watch the “big time” CNN anchors deliver the news live. There were more than a few accomplished women working around me, including the head of the unit, several travel correspondents, and the associate producer with whom I worked very closely every day. I felt fortunate to be joining an industry that appeared to place female journalists in the spotlight. As a little girl, I never imagined any sort of gender disparity existed within the profession. Between Jane Pauley, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Maria Shriver, and Katie Couric, I had been lucky to see a lot of representations of successful newswomen in my childhood. Not to mention, I grew up in the time of Oprah (Let’s be real, I am actually still growing up in the time of Oprah). So I never hurt for female role models. This perhaps gave me a false sense of security about the male-dominated world I was entering when I transitioned from college to my first job.

When I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001, I said goodbye to my sorority sisters and watched them move to big cities, where I imagined they would live out a thrilling Sex and the City existence. Meanwhile, I worked local news jobs in smaller towns in Virginia and West Virginia, where the nearest Starbucks might be an hour away and most of my new friends were the dudes I worked with. I hung out with Luke, a tough-as-nails, blue-eyed reporter who had a lot of law enforcement sources, and I wanted to learn how he nurtured them. My second-best friend was Lonnie, a retired soap star turned weatherman who regaled me with outrageous stories from his past life in Hollywood. I spent most of my workdays mere inches from an older male photographer in the live truck. We’d drive around covering floods, drug busts, murders, coal mine explosions, and snowstorms and then sit in that truck for hours reviewing the footage, writing the story, and editing the final piece—all in some random parking lot. I was barely drinking age and I was constantly shooting the shit with older men, some of whom would comment on other women’s anatomy or ask me too many questions about my sex life. Plenty of these photographers were also generous enough to take me under their wing and teach me how to write to their video, how to shoot compelling standups, and how to fight for my pitch in an editorial meeting. But I also had to put up with a certain amount of awkward sexual banter that I wanted no part of. This was nothing like my college journalism classes, where my female huddle had been strong.

Sometimes, I’d become friends with women at work, but soon enough one of us would get promoted and move on to the next TV station in another state. In one job in my mid-twenties, my shift was from 3:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. each day, so even if I’d had girlfriends, it wasn’t like I could meet them after work for drinks and commiseration. One year over the holidays, I was so lonely, my mom sent my brother Ryan to me for Christmas. The three of us (me, Ryan, and my pug) bought dinner from the 7-Eleven and spent the night making White Russians and laughing about our childhood. Even when I moved in with my first serious boyfriend, a nurse named Bart, there was still something missing without a group of girlfriends to anchor me. Bart was lovely and selfless, moving from city to city with me because of my career, but our paths weren’t exactly aligned. I remember being the ripe old age of twenty-four when he told me his definition of happiness was to get married, have kids, and live on a cul-de-sac. I think my exact response was, “Well, I want to work for CNN.” And that was the beginning of the end of us. (All these years later, Bart is kind enough to stay in touch with me despite how indelicate my younger self was with him in what feels like a lifetime ago.)

Even worse than the loneliness or the lack of female colleagues were the times when my male colleagues would underestimate my abilities. Egos are always on display in this business—even at the local news level. Male coanchors with more tenure and clout would sometimes speak over me at meetings. When we were live on air and it was my turn to read from the teleprompter, they’d kick me under the anchor desk. Maybe they thought I was too stupid to understand the concept of the red light signal I was given, or perhaps they liked feeling as if they were directing all my cues. I tried not to let them rattle my composure, but it didn’t take long to realize that some of the men I had looked up to were my equals, even if they didn’t see it that way (and even if they didn’t have to fool with hair and makeup nearly as long as I did).

It’s no wonder I would sometimes find myself in a competition with a female colleague I hadn’t even signed up for. We were all in a cutthroat environment where the men edged us out and there were very few prized positions for women—or at least that’s the way we perceived it at the time. We had to be ambitious and focused on landing those few spots available to us, but the path to ascending was never very clear. Although I wasn’t aware of the concept at the time, the “scarcity mentality” pervaded every aspect of those jobs. Contrary to what I’d thought as a little girl watching Jane, Diane, Maria, Katie, Barbara, and Oprah, few doors seemed to swing open to women in this profession. The culture wasn’t exactly hospitable to women either. Sometimes I was made to feel (by condescending men) that I was more of a mouthpiece than a journalist, even though I had earned every ounce of my success the same way they did. Other women likely felt the same way—and somehow this pitted us against each other. Enter the flawed logic of the scarcity mentality: if you want success, you must sharpen your elbows, push other women out of the way, and hoard whatever you can get for yourself—female solidarity be damned. This approach could lead otherwise kind and generous women to become jealous and hostile toward each other. I now can recognize that this scarcity mentality is one more example of how white women in white-collar jobs were only perpetuating the problem. Instead of collaborating with each other to skirt the systems created and run by men, we tried to beat the men at their own game. The problem with this strategy is that it caused us to compete with each other and leave women of color behind. Instead of fighting for one another, and for those women who were even more marginalized than us, we fell prey to the logic of a very flawed system.

One of my first experiences with the destructive scarcity dynamic was during my first job in Virginia when I’d scored an assignment to be the beat reporter for Albemarle County, which was the biggest county in our TV market. Translation: this was a BFD. Taking on this role meant that anything that happened in the massive area surrounding Charlottesville—crimes, court cases, property disputes, waterskiing squirrels—would be my responsibility. I eagerly took my first lunch with the head of Albemarle County, only to be called into my boss’s office the very next day and informed that I wouldn’t be taking over this beat after all. My bosses had decided to give it to another female colleague, who I’ll call Amanda. The rumor was that Amanda had gone behind my back to our bosses and convinced them the spot should be hers since she’d had her eye on it and had six months more tenure than I did. I was blindsided and furious. Why hadn’t she come to me first? We could have worked something out—maybe split the beat as partners or rotated on and off.

I can’t think of a time in my entire career when I intentionally railroaded another woman like that, but I can also understand why Amanda did what she did. She was a talented young woman who deserved a good spot, and her method was right out of the Scarcity Playbook. Not that I sanction that kind of behavior, but it was an understandable response to the environment in which we were both struggling to be seen and heard.

I was seeking a dynamic that was quite the opposite of scarcity. I was looking for fellow women with an abundance mentality. An abundance mindset rejects the notion that there are only so many seats at the table for women in a male-dominated industry. Instead of elbowing your coworkers out of the way, you open your arms, maybe even actually huddle with one another. You pull up as many folding chairs as you need or build a bigger table. You create more resources and options for the benefit of everyone in the huddle. When I entered the workplace, abundance mentality wasn’t exactly circulating among women. There weren’t even that many women in the industry to begin with.

Today, in an era when women are leaning on each other more intentionally and frequently, Madeleine Albright’s famous quote (“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women”) comes to mind. But in those days, ladies who huddle were outliers, and when I found them, they became my lifeboats. I felt so privileged when Beth Duffy, Linda Thomas, and Stephanie Cornwell—anchors who had more than a decade of experience—would periodically allow my twenty-two-year-old self to tag along and drink wine with them while I was in my first TV job in Charlottesville. I admired them deeply, and they offered incredible advice: how to handle newsroom egos and perverts; how to pitch yourself to the boss as a fill-in anchor; why it matters to have a confident boyfriend who isn’t threatened by female ambition; and even how old is too old to start trying to have babies. Stephanie took me under her wing and helped nurture my loud-and-proud aspirations. This was a pivotal relationship for me, showing me that mentorship and community among women in the workplace are possible and powerful.

As it turns out, this practice was actually beneficial to us professionally. The Harvard Business Review published a study confirming that women benefit uniquely from leaning on each other at work. According to the 2019 study, “In order to achieve the executive positions with the highest levels of authority and pay,” extremely qualified women must also have “an inner circle of close female contacts.” Because we face several “cultural and political hurdles” in the workplace (e.g., we aren’t admitted entrance to the boys’ club), our fellow female contacts and “work wives” often serve as crucial resources to us. We can provide each other with critical inside information that elevates our job searches, interview opportunities, and salary negotiations. One of my proud moments in recent years was telling a female colleague my salary—a simple action I could take to arm her with information as she entered into pay negotiations with her boss. Later, I discussed the decision on my show, telling my viewers that even though it can feel taboo or uncomfortable to talk about money, revealing our “worth” can be revolutionary. I wanted women watching my show that day to know how easily we women can become a powerful resource to each other—simply by being real with each other.

Women with the abundance mentality don’t just huddle, they also intentionally seed each other’s success through a concept known as sponsorship. According to another study, by Catalyst, a global nonprofit dedicated to women in the workplace, when women use their influence to catapult other women to success, this sponsorship can have an incredible impact on closing the advancement gap that persists between women and men on the job. Although many of us grew up seeking the counsel of mentors, the Catalyst study says mentorship isn’t enough: “Sponsors go beyond the traditional social, emotional, and personal growth development provided by many mentors.” Instead, “sponsorship is focused on advancement and predicated on power.” The priority of a sponsorship is for a woman in a leadership position to help fast-track other women to join her at the top, where power is more readily replicated and dispersed. A sponsor can change the dynamics of a workplace by “advocating for, protecting, and fighting for the career advancement” of women lower down the ladder.

Stacey Abrams personifies this concept. Long before she became known as perhaps the nation’s leading voice on voting rights; years before she became the first African American woman gubernatorial nominee in the nation; and well before she made history as the first woman to lead either party in the Georgia House of Representatives, she was a twenty-nine-year-old tax attorney and entrepreneur who was appointed deputy city attorney for my hometown, Atlanta. As someone who grew up “genteel poor” (as she says her mother called it) in Gulfport, Mississippi, Abrams says the deputy city attorney job was her first real access to power. And what did she do with this power? She immediately began to share it.

When she recognized that the group of talented secretaries she relied on daily were ineligible for raises because their job title didn’t technically allow them to move up a pay grade, Abrams got creative. “They were mostly Black women who had worked there for fifteen years. They knew the law and could tell me the legislative history of any bill, but they couldn’t afford to go to law school to earn the paralegal title the city required to promote them,” Abrams told me. So she promptly petitioned the city to create a paralegal training program that would elevate the women’s education, titles, and salaries. Even though her newfound power was still relatively fragile, Abrams did not hesitate to lift while she climbed.

It is not surprising that later in her career, when she had a national platform and the name-recognition to raise significant funding for her decade-long effort to strengthen the Democratic Party and end voter suppression in Georgia, she continued to share her power. “While women often huddle for collective communal power, we rarely have the collective financial resources to accelerate that communal power, to strengthen it, to turn it into the fierce engines that we need,” she said. So in the years leading up to the 2020 election, when Abrams led her landmark efforts to register voters and flip the state of Georgia, she gave away a quarter of the funds she had raised for her own organizations to other groups across the state that were also largely run by women and doing similar work. Abrams told me she wanted to make sure she didn’t “hoard” her access and power because then, she said, “you become just as problematic as those who were against you.”

Another woman who refused to hoard her power, the renowned producer and director Ava DuVernay, told me a similar story on the New Orleans set of her award-winning TV series Queen Sugar. DuVernay had thrown down her ladder so gloriously that “sponsorship” feels too weak a word. For all twenty-six episodes of the first two seasons of her series, DuVernay chose to hire only female directors—a majority of whom were women of color. Moreover, most of these directors were from the indie-film world and DuVernay was entrusting them with their first shot at the more commercial and lucrative TV scene. In the time since we spoke, DuVernay has shot two more seasons of Queen Sugar, and has continued to exclusively hire female directors—something only a few other shows on television can boast.

When I asked DuVernay why she chose to use her show as a mechanism for empowering other women when she could have kept the spotlight for herself, she answered with a story about attending a birthday party for a white male friend in the industry. In this room full of her professional peers, DuVernay was the only Black person and the only female. “I don’t want to be at the party by myself!” she answered with a laugh. Instead of seeing the one female seat of power as her own exclusive prize, DuVernay saw it as a lonely throne. “How does this ever change if I don’t open the door for my friends?” she asked. “Let’s bring them into the party too!”

DuVernay was excited to tell me that she had already made headway in opening the gates to women in her profession, having helped circulate an entire new class of female directors into the television industry. Some of the women she’d hired for Queen Sugar had already gone on to direct episodes of other top television shows such as American Crime Story, Greenleaf, Dear White People, Transparent, Scandal, and Grey’s Anatomy. Her decision to sponsor these women had already paid off. She reminded me that because Queen Sugar is produced by OWN, Oprah had been responsible for giving her the green light to hire these less experienced directors in the first place. It was an unconventional choice that may not have gotten approval at other networks, but because a woman like Oprah threw down her ladder to DuVernay, many other women benefited. And today, those Queen Sugar directors are infusing television with more female perspectives that tou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Prologue
• One: The Mother of All Huddles
• Two: The Huddle Wasn’t Invented by Women in Pussyhats
• Three: Girls Getting Loud in Boy-Free Zones
• Four: From Scarcity to Abundance in a Man’s World
• Five: Passing the Mic
• Six: From Solitary to Solidarity
• Seven: Multiplying Respect
• Eight: Healed by the Huddle
• Nine: Tend and Befriend to the End
• Epilogue: How to Find Your Huddle
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher