<strong>Pat</strong> Mitchell at the TED conference space in New York ’ EVERY TIME WE STEP UP A LEVEL, WE NEED TO REACH DOWN THE LADDER AND GIVE THE WOMAN BEHIND US A HELPING HAND’ After an award-winning career in media, working as a journalist, producer, broadcaster, executive and CEO, <strong>Pat</strong> Mitchell is working out what to call herself now that she has reached what she calls ‘the rewiring stage’ of her life. She may still have a job title – president of <strong>Pat</strong> Mitchell Media, her consultancy – and plenty of work with her multiple non-profit boards and consultancies, but that hardly fleshes out the details. The best self-description she comes up with is ‘an advocate for women and girls, who now focuses on curating and participating in women’s conferences worldwide, and mentoring other women.’ Not very snappy; maybe she should just go with what her friends and family suggest. ‘They say to just tell people, “I’m a connector.”’ Mitchell is leveraging every inch of her formidable business and media experience to elevate the status of women and girls, whether via industry mentoring programmes; her chair of the Sundance Institute and the Women’s Media Center; as co-curator and host of global conference TEDWomen; and a host of other initiatives. Being able to bring two or more people together, whether in friendship or in business, ‘brings me enormous joy,’ she says. ‘I actually can’t think of anything that makes me feel better.’ She’s currently writing a book, and so the question about where this trait might have come from is uppermost in her mind. ‘I think it comes from two sources – one of them is that I grew up in South Georgia, in a rural, disconnected place, and from my earliest memory, I knew I wanted to be somewhere else. The only way out for someone with no money, and no influence, was to make connections. I did it the only way that you can when you are a young girl in the 1950s in the South – I entered every contest imaginable, whether it was debate, theatre or whatever; anything that got me out of town to meet new and interesting people. ‘It was easy for me to keep up those connections, not only because I wanted to realise my own dreams, but because it also made my life that much more interesting.’ Now, she says, ‘I have a different motivation: it’s not so much about making connections for myself but about sharing connections with others.’ Mitchell’s other driver is her natural curiosity, which propelled her into journalism in New York in the early 1970s, and from there onto television as a news reporter and anchor. In the 1980s she turned producer at her own production company, before working for Ted Turner on award-winning documentaries and special features, rising to president of Turner Original Productions and later CNN Productions. She has sat on the board of the Bank of America, AOL and Sun Microsystems, corporate experience that is now used to mentor women in how to run their own businesses. ‘When I went on the Bank of America board there were two women, and when I left, there were six, and the differences were enormous, just from having that different mindset and set of experiences,’ she says. How does a better gender balance in the boardroom change corporations? ‘Most people don’t know it, but all the data collected over the last 10 years, from the World Economic Forum 10 LUXURE LUXURE 11
<strong>Pat</strong> Mitchell on her way to the Women’s Media Center Awards gala in New York 12 LUXURE LUXURE 13
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