Lesley Stahl, wowOwow.com’s Blog

The following is a conversation with Liz Smith, Mary Wells and Joni Evans I moderated on wowOwow.com that originally appeared in April 2008.

JONI: This conversation is about mentoring and about who have been our mentors, or who we are mentoring and what great advice there is that we’ve received or ever gotten or want to give out. (Find out here what advice we do give young women.)

LIZ: I was mentored by all the great men I’ve worked for – about six famous, fabulous men, in my youth. And they all helped and encouraged me and were great to me. I was a dumb, green kid and they kind of liked my nerve. But I evolved from working as a lowly assistant to being an actual writer and producer. And in television I’d get these impossible tasks to produce a show from someplace where you couldn’t even get a signal out, or to book a VIP guest. And one day I found out that I was enjoying going back to these important bosses at times, saying to them, “We can’t do it.” And I realized I was actually taking pleasure from telling them that what they wanted was impossible. As soon as I got onto that, onto myself, I didn’t need more mentoring. I realized I needed to start thinking like a boss; I had to become the boss. Read More »