Last Updated
April 2, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Christine Bader, co-founder of The Life I Want. [Live show recorded: March 31, 2020.]
Guest: Christine Bader
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
CHRISTINE BADER is co-founder of The Life I Want, a storytelling project with Eva Dienel reimagining a future of work that works for all. She is a coach, facilitator, writer, consultant, and speaker whose sweet spot is the messy intersection of business and society.
Christine is the author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil (2014). From 2015-17 she was Director of Social Responsibility at Amazon, where she built a global team working to ensure respect for the rights of workers in Amazon supply chains and operations. From 2011-15 her posts included advisor to BSR and visiting scholar at Columbia University, where she co-taught human rights and business.
Christine's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and numerous other publications. She has given talks to conferences, companies, and universities around the world, including a TED talk in July 2014.
After earning her MBA from Yale in 2000, Christine joined BP and proceeded to work in Indonesia, China, and the U.K., managing the social impacts of some of the company’s largest projects in the developing world. In 2006 she created a part-time pro bono role as advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for business and human rights, a role she took up full-time in 2008 until the U.N. mandate ended in 2011.
Christine has also served as a corps member with City Year, a special assistant to the New York City Mayor’s Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor, and a teaching fellow in community service at Phillips Academy Andover. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Christine was named to the 2012-13 class of the Donaldson Fellows Program, which recognizes Yale School of Management graduates “whose personal and professional accomplishments embody the school’s mission to educate leaders for business and society.”
Christine played squash and rugby at Amherst College and competed in the 2002 World Ultimate Frisbee Club Championships, but now finds her athletic glory running after her young twins. For 2018-19, she lived in Bali with her family as part of the Green School community. She now lives in McMinnville, Oregon, in the heart of wine country, continuing to search for community and a way of life that is sustainable in every dimension.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi. I'm Tim Cynova. And welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck Live. The morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Christine Bader. Christine is the co-founder with Eva Dienel of The Life I Want, where they're examining the role of work in business in our society and lives. She's the author of When Girl Meets Oil: Evolution of a Corporate Idealist. Written following her roles and policy and planning at BP. She was the former Director of Social Responsibility at Amazon. Previously held roles at the United Nations and Columbia University working at the intersection of human rights and business. And is a fellow member of the Amy Wrzesniewski fan club. Without further ado, Christine, welcome to the show. All right, welcome to the show.
Christine Bader:
There we go. Thank you again for having me. Yay. Good morning.
Lauren Ruffin:
Good morning. So one of the questions that we've been opening up with our guests for yesterday when we did this was how are you? How are you? How's your community doing?
Christine Bader:
Oh well how are we doing? It's up and down. It's up and down. I'd say the last couple days have been tough. I've got seven year old twins here so my husband and I are managing the best we can. But the kids are missing school which is obviously a wonderful thing to be very grateful but it's a little rough.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Christine Bader:
I mean we're healthy and we're safe and all those things to be grateful but this is definitely a difficult time.
Lauren Ruffin:
And so, can you tell us a little bit about how you found yourself on this path? I watched your Ted Talk so I know. But I'd love for you to give us a quick intro into how you got to the place where you are at home all day with the kids and writing books and consulting?
Christine Bader:
Oh sure. Let's see. How far back should we go. Well, I'll go to 2015. I got the job on Amazon that on paper looked like the job I'd been working towards my whole career. I'd been working in corporate social responsibility. Working for BP, formerly British Petroleum. Writing that book that Tim, you kindly held out, and landed this job at Amazon.
Christine Bader:
And so my family, we packed up. My husband left his job in New York and we packed up our kids, moved to Seattle. And I took this job and it was great. It was fun to be in this really historic company and I got to build this amazing team. And then one day, just over a year and a half in, I got home to my husband and our kids who were four years old at the time and they were sitting on the couch reading as they often were when I got home from work, but they were reading to him.
Christine Bader:
And I thought, "When did you learn how to read?" And I wasn't working crazy hours, but just mentally, I wasn't as present as I wanted to be. And I had my kids when I was 40. I'm not having any more kids. And so I was never going to have another three year old or four year old or five year old. And I could see what my life was going to look like. And in some ways, it was like, well of course, why wouldn't I do that because my parents did that and everybody who I know does that. Meaning the work, kids, life juggle.
Christine Bader:
So it took me awhile to give myself permission to articulate that I didn't want to do that. And I didn't have to. So I left which was a hard decision, but I left in 2017. We hung out in Seattle for another year after that. And then decided to go on a much bigger adventure. So we packed up and heard about the school called The Green School in Bali which is all about sustainability so enrolled our kids there for the last school year. And we can talk more about that if you're interested.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I'm fascinated.
Christine Bader:
Yeah. And then, landed back here because my husband is also an ex-corporate person and had been working on his photography so had really honed in on his love and appreciation of artisans practicing their craft. And so pitched to A to Z Wine Works, the largest wine producer here in Oregon to do a year in the life photo project.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm very familiar with that Pinot Noir.
Christine Bader:
Very good. Excellent. So he's now their first artist in residence so he's documenting a year in the life of a vineyard.
Lauren Ruffin:
This is so ... I'm really excited. Okay. Tell us about Bali.
Christine Bader:
Yeah, Bali. Gosh. I had lived in Jakarta, in Indonesia's capital, in the year 2000, working for BP. And so I had these hazy, rosy, foggy memories of jetting off to Bali for the weekend with my crazy, ultimate Frisbee playing friends. And for these really fun partying weekends. And so I thought it'll be just like that.
Lauren Ruffin:
With my twin four year olds.
Christine Bader:
Exactly. And so somebody asked me the other day what advice I would have for people looking to do an adventure like that. And I would say first of all, stay the heck off of Instagram. It looks like oh it'll all be smoothies and swings. And we got there and I just forgot what it was like being in southeast Asia. We get in the car from airport and we pull out and we're surrounded by a swarm of motorbikes. Which I'd forgotten about, but my husband and my kids had never experienced. They were like what have we done.
Christine Bader:
So there was that. And then there were three big earthquakes in the first month that we were there which was physically and psychologically unsettling. And so I had just forgotten about all the risks of being there. The health risks of Dengue and Rabies and the lack of road safety and infrastructure and potable tap water and all the things that we take for granted. So I will say that it was the family adventure that we were looking for. And we learned how to live out of one suitcase each so that I have all these lessons and takeaways about consumption that we can more about. And just how little we need, right?
Christine Bader:
And being in this place and living in a village where we were surrounded by people who made much better use of what they have than we do here. And really live in a way that embodies community and spirituality and nature and all these things that it was really profound for us to experience.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's amazing. You've officially made me second guess my desire to ... I lived in Australia for a year and I really want to bring my wife and kids there. And now I'm like I don't know. Let me really go back and find these memories so see what this going to be like with 20 years later with two kids.
Christine Bader:
It'll be different.
Lauren Ruffin:
We're different. But we're going to have a thrill line for this conversation which is wine. The Barossa Valley of Australia, another great wine place.
Christine Bader:
Absolutely. And my writing partner, Eva, so part of her back story is that she left her job in San Francisco a couple of years ago to move to Australia with her Australian husband wine maker to run their family vineyard which they'd been putting together for 10 years.
Lauren Ruffin:
Amazing.
Christine Bader:
And ATR Wines and they've won some awards and they're in Australia and so she went from being a full time communications professional to doing freelance writing and being part of running this wine business and so she's building the life that she wants. And that's part of how we were inspired to launch this storytelling project because I've been on this journey to figure out what do I want to be when I grow up and what do I want my life to look like and how do I put those things together. So that's what The Life I Want is about.
Tim Cynova:
One of the pieces that Lauren and I discussed, or referenced in a earlier podcast episode that we did was the one where you interviewed Christopher Delacruz and wrote a piece called "Work Is the New Religion." And that concept has been on my mind for some time after reading your piece as I meditated on it and then the work of our friend, Amy Wrzesniewski around job career calling. Can you recap that piece for people who might not be familiar with it and give your thoughts on it several months on now?
Christine Bader:
Yeah, happy to. So when we launched this project, I put out a call on Facebook. Just a general call for people to share stories about people who were thinking about work differently. And a high school friend put me in tough with her pastor, Reverend Christopher Delacruz of First Presbyterian in Jamaica Queens. And I interviewed him because he's launching a coworking space for the young adults in his congregation. That they're calling 2030 Dream Hub.
Christine Bader:
And it seemed to dovetail nicely with all the statistic that we've all seen, drawing on research from that Atlantic article by Derek Thompson on work-ism. And research from the Pew Research Center and the Economic Policy Institute and the Public Religion Research Institute that 45% of US worker define themselves by their job or their employer. And the percentage of Americans who don't identify with any religion has tripled in the last 25 years. And it's now at about 25%. A third of Americans under the age of 30 have no religious affiliation. And we all know intuitively that working hours are up. Attendance at religious services is down.
Christine Bader:
So what the Reverend wanted to do is he got a grant from something called the Zoe Project. And it's a joint initiative of the Princeton Theological Seminary and the Lilly Endowment of churches reaching young adults in new ways. So he launched this coworking space and we had a fascinating conversation about the tensions that he's experiencing, right? Because he wants to help financially empower his community but he said, "How do we empower folks without idolizing the American narrative of work being the only source of meaning?"
Christine Bader:
So there's inherent tension in what he's doing which I found fascinating. So he's like okay. Well, I'm setting it up in the old parsonage house. And it's a house. So there are all these different rooms. And can we create one room that's just for meditation and reflection. And so that's what the piece was about. Just how ... Whether or not you live a religious or a spiritual life, how does that come into play? How does it fit with work?
Tim Cynova:
We have a question from one of our viewers. If work is our new religion, basically giving us ideas, do you have advice for people right now who are suddenly finding themselves underemployed and feeling a sudden loss of identity?
Christine Bader:
Oh gosh. The only piece of advice I always give people is never to follow anybody else's advice.
Lauren Ruffin:
Excellent advice.
Christine Bader:
Because nobody knows what you need to thrive. And that's part of why Eva and I are taking this approach of sharing stories, right? We're sharing other people's stories. We're not writing the 10 step manual to here's how to be happier at work and in life. And so, Diane, I guess all I would say is to look for examples out there right now and there's such good writing emerging right now of people being reflective and thoughtful. I assume these people don't have school age kids, but such good writing right now of people who are thinking about their identity exactly because of what you raise. And so, I think just look for other people's stories. I'm not going to give any trite advice on how other people should find meaning in their days because I'm having enough trouble with that right now.
Christine Bader:
But it really is about looking or other people's stories. And I think also now, fiction and great literature is also a really nice place to look.
Tim Cynova:
One of the things you wrestle with on The Life I Want. And it's something we've discussed in our own journey, our own wrestling with and you've talked with our Fractured Atlas colleagues Courtney Hart and Nicola Carpenter about this. This is privilege. And in particular, it's specifically white privilege. And when you think about crafting your work, crafting your life, this shows up so much in creating a life we want. And for me, these days, with a phrase that's been rallying around is privilege pandemic. And when we think about virtual work and remote work and who has the opportunity to do that or do you have a home office or do you have a kitchen table or do you have high speed internet access or are you borrowing from the building or do you have kids that you have to homeschool and take care of? And can you talk a little bit about your journey. You've written about it on the website for people who want to know more. But can you talk about this journey that you've been on?
Christine Bader:
I will say that Eva and I in this project are hell bent on making sure that this is not a story of privilege. That this is not ... It's not about everybody moving to Bali. Right? And one of the things that is our tenet, our foundational belief of this project that is actually underscored by this pandemic is that we can't thrive unless we all can thrive. And so it can't be about the work life balance conversation which tends to only occur above a certain income level and people who can drop 28.95 on a hardback or whatever.
Christine Bader:
That it's not about those people being able to be even happier. There has to be ... That our project is also about the collective. So right now Eva and I are thinking about this in terms of four pillars of how do we fix work. It is partly about our individual relationship with work and how do you think about that. But shifting your individual relationship with work and how you think about work will only help so much if you're working in a hostile environment. Which is why we're also looking at employers like you guys who are really on these journeys to be a truly equitable workplace.
Christine Bader:
We also want to look at communities. Like how are communities supporting each other? And that is obviously coming to the floor right now. How do communities in and outside of work support you in living the life that you want?
Christine Bader:
And then finally governments. What are the structural obstacles and that's like too obvious to even get into right now? So we're looking at them in these four pillars because again a lot of these books about being happier at work or just about be happier. Like change your attitude and it'll all be okay. So that's about the project. And I think as Eva and I are writing like any good authors, for us this is also personal and we are both acknowledging our privilege and the fact that we even have the time and luxury and energy to be able to take on doing this project.
Christine Bader:
And so, for me, my privilege is always about well how do I use that to serve? And I think also part of the lesson of being in Bali last year is also realizing like what is enough and that we have enough. We're not rolling in it. And the kids are going to have to pay their own way through college but we've got enough. And so that's part of what we hope to pick apart too is how do we think about people's individual relationships with work and money and power and then also layer on all these structural pieces of the very real obstacles of health care, cost of education, cost of child care and all those things.
Christine Bader:
So privilege is a theme that runs strong through this project and through every conversation that Eva and I have about how we're going about it.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's a pretty radical idea to even begin to think that work should make you happy. My father's attitude about work is work is the thing that sucks so bad it makes you appreciate the rest of life so much more. That's how I was raised, right? Work is terrible. But the purpose of it being terrible is that you can really appreciate play that much more.
Christine Bader:
Right.
Lauren Ruffin:
If all of life is fun ... And I mean that was my attitude about working. It's privilege. But it's actually subtly really freaking radical. As I was watching your Ted Talk, one you're living in a town called McMinnsville?
Christine Bader:
McMinville.
Lauren Ruffin:
McMinville. I grew up in a town called Woodstown. And I was thinking those towns with those basic names are probably pretty similar except now I know that there's a winery there. Although we have wineries in Woodstown now. Now the town I grew up in which was the town with the oldest rodeo in the United States is now New Jersey wine country.
Christine Bader:
New Jersey wine country?
Lauren Ruffin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Christine Bader:
Bring it on.
Lauren Ruffin:
But as you're talking, I'm thinking about we still had vocational school and I grew up in the church. And I was always fascinated by vocational school and I wanted to take classes. I wanted to get my CDL and drive a truck across the country. My dad was like "Absolutely not, you're taking college prep courses." So I did and I'm like "Well, why do these kids get to have a vocation. Like being a plumber or a truck driver is a calling and college prep is just got to go do this thing that's slobbing through life."
Lauren Ruffin:
But as you were talking about the pastor who set up a coworking space, it strikes that there's a lot of synergy in that work. And in thinking about work as religion and who gets to think about work as religion and who gets to think about work as just slobbing through life.
Christine Bader:
I love the way you're putting that out there. Because I think part of my evolution in thinking about work, just in the past year since we launched the blog and have put out the call for stories and have gotten a lot back. In part, this project grew out of Eva and I having these really interesting discussions about fixed work or blank work. And because interested in all these stories about great employers and but part of me was like, "Man, I had my dream job. And it just didn't work."
Christine Bader:
And so for a while I was like, "Man, work just doesn't work. It just doesn't work." Right? But some of the interviews and the stories and picking up Stud Terkel's Working Again. That classic book interviews of people from actually almost 50 years ago now, right? I have come to realize that work is also how people find their place in the world. That's not all good because people are put in a place, right? And viewed a certain way by the work that they do. But it is how a lot of people figure out how am I of service to society? Where do I fit here?
Christine Bader:
And again, obviously, there's a dark side to that, but work is how a lot of us figure out our place in the world. I have moved off of that work is bad thing. And nobody should have to work and let's just pump up the universal basic income and nobody should have to work and people should just do what they want to do. But I get the value to work. And even in my own journey of I definitely went through this period of like I am not working again.
Christine Bader:
But now I get it. That again, there are skills and experiences that I have that I want to deploy to serve. And so now it's just figuring out well what does that look like? How do I piece together a life that enables me to do the things that I want to do? And tend to my family and have a sense of place and be active in my community and do all those things. It's more just how do I construct that is the question?
Tim Cynova:
Viewer question. Wonder if you're finding stories of people who prefer to or have to keep their identity/thriving/being separate from their compensated employment?
Christine Bader:
Yeah. This is such a good question. And I'm fascinated by it. I actually interviewed a couple yesterday that I hope I'll be able to profile in the blog in the coming months. And they're a married couple who work together. And they're doing a venture now and they talked about how they have completely different approaches to work. And so one of them is like somebody will criticize my company and I'm like, "Oh that's really interesting. How can I fix it? I'm so sorry you feel that way?" And the other partner is like "I just feel attacked. I just feel like somebody has punched me in the face if somebody criticizes my company."
Christine Bader:
I think it's such a good question and it is one that I struggle with. And one of the many topics that I look to our friend, Amy Wrzesniewski's work for because we see both sides of the good and bad of both. Part of why my last job didn't work out for me is that I couldn't leave it in the office. Even though I could. Like I left my laptop in the office and I didn't have calls at night and I didn't do work. But I couldn't mentally compartmentalize it.
Christine Bader:
And so part of me admires people who can do that. But then the other side of it is obvious, which is that if we're going to spend so much of our time and energy and our identity tied up in work, like it had better be something that's meaningful and that I care about. Finding both. And I'm not placing a value judgment on either. But I'm just curious about both because I've certainly had days where I'm like God, I would just love a job where I can just go and somebody will just tell me what to do for a couple hours a day. And I'm part of a structure within infrastructure and organization and processes. And part of me thinks that would be really nice for a little while. And then part of me knows that maybe it wouldn't.
Tim Cynova:
Another viewer question. How can people who are trying to find sanctity in their work or already do so counter the rising survivor's guilt they may feel in the current situation? How can this reframing help them?
Christine Bader:
Wow. That's heavy. Rising survivor's guilt. Well, you serve. I mean you give it all back and give till it hurts and volunteer if you can and give your money if you can't. That's what we're doing here. I know our food banks need volunteers. I'm not in a position to be able to do that. But we're giving as much money as we can to our local food bank and to our local shops and to our local independent store. And to the restaurants that are shutting down right now. And I don't know. I mean, again, this is one of those things where I'm not going to advise other people not knowing other people's situation but I don't know if you can have guilt about survival assuming that you're not doing it at the expense of others. Right? I don't.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Christine Bader:
I don't know. But I think that's going to be one of the questions that emerges. How do you serve? How do you be part of acknowledging what helped you thrive and survive and honor that?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. So we've got a couple minutes left?
Lauren Ruffin:
I have more questions, but hopefully I'll get a chance in the future. Make the rest of folks out there jealous. But as we're wrapping, do you have anything that you feel like our audience should know or anything that's particularly pressing top of mind right now you want to share?
Christine Bader:
Oh gosh. I mean this time is just so ... Everything is up in the air, right? Everything's an unknown. And I just ... I mean I'm still an idealist and I'm still an optimist even with all of the privilege that I have. I'm finding this time incredibly difficult. So I guess my hope and my call is that as we all try to figure out how to rebuild that we do it in a different way and that we rethink every move, whether it's moving back towards going back into the office or spending the way that you used to. Or consuming the way that you used to. That each step back in is thoughtful and deliberate and in keeping with building the life that we want and the communities that we want and the societies that we want.
Tim Cynova:
Christine, thank you so much for being on the episode with us today. Absolutely wonderful to spend time with you. Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck live adventure with us when on our episode, we're joined by Laura Zabel, Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts. If you've enjoyed the conversation, or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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