Who is:

Profiles of prominent figures whose identities are a primary focus of their story.

Come Out at Work: With Lyme Disease

Haig Chahinian

Debbi Morgan is one of those actors who seems to be in every show you watch, from “What’s Happening!!” back in the 70s to “All My Children” today. While she spends most of her energy acting as someone else, the Emmy Award-winner revealed a personal attribute on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show.” She opened up about battling Lyme Disease, and said:

It’s nothing fatal. Lyme disease is an infection caused by the borrelia bacteria from a tick. It’s a chronic condition, and I’ve had it in my system for over 15 years.

In divulging this aspect of herself, she helped fans understand why she’s been absent from “All My Children” since December, helped us see more of who she is, and educated those who may not be familiar with the nature of Lyme Disease.

Along with other public figures who’ve come out with the disease, she implicitly gave Lyme sufferers permission to be candid with coworkers on the subject. To be sure, if you have Lyme Disease, taking care of yourself typically involves taking time off of work. 

As a bonus, of late her name and image have been featured in numerous media outlets, helping increase her popularity. In fact, IMDB lists her STARmeter as up 18% this week. It feels callous to mention this fact, yet her profession is show business, where publicity matters.

We expect that number to keep rising.

If you live with Lyme, what has your experience been at work?

Image via

Your Whole Self and Profit: A Perfect Pair

Haig Chahinian

We find winter to be mostly miserable, and to add insult to injury we’re striving to shed the inches we’ve accumulated around our waistline over the last five years. The point of wearing a big coat is to cover up the effects of pizza we eat during these gray days and long, cold nights, right?

We’re feeling cynical, and hopeful, and we’re doing it via weightwatchers.com.  It got us thinking about the genius of business when integrated with your whole self.

Weight Watchers (NYSE: WTW) offers a service to individuals who want to develop healthier eating habits. They provide a frame of reference by which to look at and measure your consumption of food, provide social support to keep you moving toward your weight goal, and less helpfully, produce packaged processed foods. For more sedentary folks like us–do you know bloggers who DON’T sit all day?–there’s the online interface.

How did all this start? In the early 1960s, Jean Nidetch of Queens, New York wanted to curtail the effects of her penchant for cookies, which brought her to 200+ pounds. She needed encouragement to stick with her new nutrition plan, so she recruited some heavier friends who could benefit from group support, and the first “weight watchers” meeting was born. Fast forward to 2001 when the company went public, and ten years later, today’s stock price fluctuates around $37.

So where does bringing your whole self to work fit into the picture?

Jean Nidetch looked inside and tapped into her wish to find help in losing weight. Momentum grew around Nidetch’s success, and in time financiers at Artal Luxembourg and the H. J. Heinz Company identified the remarkable business potential of WTW. With the requisite knowledge, skills and abilities, they’ve made many people wealthy, and healthy.

How does one monetize an internal, invisible feeling?  We have alot to learn from WTW. In the end (couldn’t help it), it behooves your pocketbook for you to stay connected to your internal world. Pay attention to your own desire, dreams, and fleeting thoughts; this is a large part of what constitutes the treasure trove within you, waiting to become a worldwide multimillion dollar business.

Image by author, because we couldn’t find a picture of Jean Nidetch that was legal to use.

When It’s OK not to Talk About It

Haig Chahinian

Superstar race car driver Danica Patrick shuns talking about bringing her whole self to work. And we’re OK with that.

We know that many benefits come from learning about how our reference groups–meaning our gender, race, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic status, sexual orientation and physical ability–influence the way we work. Sometimes, however, talking about these ideas can distract us from our primary job.

Patrick has many achievements, including  winning the 2008 Indy Japan 300, and placing 3rd in the 2009 Indianapolis 500. She’s making a successful go of NASCAR racing in addition to IndyCar.  And at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, she has raced faster, and finished higher, than any other woman.

Yet she seems uninterested in focusing on the feminist themes of her rise in the race car ranks. Or she may simply prefer to dedicate her energy to becoming a better racer, as her male compatriots do, although without the typical haranguing about how their gender impacts their sport. From her New Yorker profile:

When reporters asked Patrick if [her win] had made a point about women in racing, her answer suggested that the burden of history did not weigh heavily upon her. “I made a hell of a point for anybody, are you kidding me?” she said.

And then, in reference to steamy photos of her widely broadcast:

Patrick says, “It helped me get the ride. The bottom line is, it takes money to go racing. If there’s money there, and it puts me in a really good car, then I can go show what I can do.” Regarding the objectification of women, she said, “I think people say that it takes away from what I do, it takes away from the driving, because people see that side of things, and it kind of overpowers what I’m doing. So, yeah. I catch flak. And I totally don’t care.”

Her unwillingness to dialogue and accept the mantle for women pioneers is surprisingly refreshing. She would much rather talk about the races. “I had so much fun in a race car today,” she recently told the press. “I can’t wait to do it again.”

Sometimes it’s critical to explore how our reference groups and our internal life affect the work we do. That’s what this blog is all about. And then, sometimes, perhaps because many are already examining the dynamics of personal identity in the workplace, we all don’t have to talk about it ad infinitum. We can just get in our cars and race.

Have you been asked at work to talk about your race or gender, for example, and effectively been seduced away from your primary task? How did you deal with this?

Image via

What Drives a Superhero to Work?

Haig Chahinian

Today is the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, so we’re thinking about superheroes like Dr. King himself.

Present-day superhero Nathan Wolfe is the director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative and a professor of biology at Stanford University. Big deal, so what?  He travels the globe on the lookout for viruses that could cause the next deadly pandemic. Imagine: he tasks himself with the super-heroic job of identifying and stopping the next (write-in your favorite sci-fi doomsday virus) outbreak. And the very real viral outbreak after that, and the one after that, too.

What drives someone to pursue this line of work? Yes, with the Department of Defense knocking at his door for help, and with partners that include google.org, the National Institutes of Health, and the Skoll Foundation, his paycheck is probably not too shabby. Yet financial reward is likely only secondary compensation for him. We expect that he’s driven primarily by the internal gratification that comes from immersing himself in a subject he finds totally fascinating. And maybe also from helping save the world from large-scale devastation.

What led him initially to this field? As an undergraduate, Wolfe became interested in the way animals use plants as medicine, just like humans do. Indeed his interest may have stemmed from his own self-medicating behavior as a cigarette smoker. Then in graduate school a mentor advised him that while this subject would make an engaging thesis, studying the infectious diseases of animals and becoming an expert in viruses would have a greater impact. Wolfe was sold, and “got completely hooked on viruses.”

For the record, when he considers the fundamental questions “Where do major diseases come from?” and “Why are some viruses so much more deadly than others?” his reply is “We have no answers for many of those questions.” As a preeminent expert, he’s open about what he doesn’t know, which reflects what’s not known, period.

What question(s) drive you to solve the problems you address in your work?

Photo via

Being Critical of a Company Can Get You Hired

Haig Chahinian

Harsh thoughts and negative feelings are among the aspects of our internal life that we often strive to hide at work. Yet Sean Ryan, formerly of News Corp, demonstrates that coming out with your true thoughts, however uncomfortable, can advance your career. For Ryan, being critical of Facebook may have helped him land a plum new role at the social networking giant.

Back in April, Ryan blogged about gaming platforms, writing:

I’d strongly recommend producing a great OpenSocial version of your game and trying to strike deals with a set of SNS not named Facebook – there are lots of them around the world with 10 million or more monthly unique users…

Which was published on the Web and became part of his online footprint. Scary, right? Not at all. His sentiments built upon his breadth of knowledge on the subject, and were grounded in careful analysis. He could thus stand proudly behind his articulate trashing of the social network.

We recall Sun Tzu’s words, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” The hiring managers at Facebook may be guided by this ancient wisdom.

So feel free to speak your thoughtful mind at work. A new job, or perhaps a promotion may be awaiting you.

Have you attracted someone by criticizing them? What ensued?

Tell Everything, Hide Nothing, Become Superstar

Haig Chahinian

Sometimes at work we obfuscate what we think and feel, to the extent that when we speak our point, it becomes nearly unrecognizable. Yet when we’re completely up front with ourselves about our work, we’re able to relate more directly with those around us. And the outcome can be truly transformational.

George Papandreou is a surprising example of saying what he means. Surprising, because he’s a politician!

In December 2009, the Prime Minister of Greece was in Brussels for his first meeting with European leaders. From the New York Times story:

[Prime Minister George Papandreaou] might have tried to play for time. Instead, he told them everything. Not only was the Greek deficit twice as high as previously reported, but his country’s finances were also a mess. Corruption was pervasive. Tax evasion, rampant.

“I said, listen, let’s not, you know, beat around the bush,” Mr. Papandreou recalled recently, sitting in his cavernous office at the Maximos mansion, his backpack at his feet, his Kindle on the coffee table. “This is a problem. I will tell you what my view is and what I am trying to do.”

Improbably, perhaps, his strategy worked. Within months, he had managed to secure the bailout he needed while still maintaining good relations with his fellow European leaders — quite a feat, many observers say.

The Prime Minister doesn’t present a candy-coated picture in order to look more favorable. He understands that he needs help, and to procure the assistance he desires, he chooses to be totally candid with his European peers. Which is necessarily a product of being honest with himself, first.

In showing his country’s vulnerabilities, he demonstrates personal confidence, which then yields his allies’ confidence in him. So brilliant.

Have you had a conversation with a peer in which you were up front about the problems you were facing? How did it go?

Photo via

Career Talk Live: Jennifer Vidbel Pt. 1

Haig Chahinian

We considered calling this post “Jennifer Vidbel Revealed,” yet we’re starting a new feature focusing on guests of our talk show “Career Talk Live,” and this is the kick-off. The irony of course is that she was one of our most revealing stars to date!

We’re quite proud of ourselves — following our visit to the circus, we reached out to the director of communications at the Big Apple Circus and asked if we could interview Vidbel on the show. His response was yes, and we taped two segments two nights ago.

Through the whole ordeal we laughed, and then we cried. During the taping we giggled at unexpected turns in Jenny’s story, and then we cried when we were dubbing the master tapes to DVD and realized we hadn’t eliminated the tone from the beginning of the second tape. So you can see and hear the interview, along with a deafening ringing from beginning to end. Boo! A transcript of the second show will follow soon.

What did we discuss on air? In the first show Vidbel talked about the elephant who lay on top of her during childhood circus performances; hiking up mountains and going to the beach with her entourage of horses, dogs and goats; and how to run away with the circus, natch. Plus plenty more — her candor was engaging and charming, and she was fearless in answering our prodding questions.

Catch the first segment when it airs Tuesday, January 4th at 6:00pm ET (GMT-5) at mnn.org on MNN2. Just press play.

Have you ever dreamed of joining the circus?

Photo of Vidbel via. Video footage of Big Apple Circus used with permission.