Maryam Banikarim on career chaos, C-suite pressure, and betting on yourself

Career disruption is accelerating across the economy—and few people have navigated it more boldly than Maryam Banikarim. The former CMO of Univision, Gannett, and Hyatt, and host of The Messy Parts podcast, Banikarim shares hard-won wisdom about C-suite politics, and what it means to ultimately bet on yourself. Growing up in Iran during the time of revolution, Banikarim offers a unique perspective on the current Middle East conflict—and her determined search for hope amid the chaos.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

Let’s start with The Messy Parts, because first of all, I love that word, messy. I feel like creativity is messy, growth is messy. We have plans, but life is really what happens when your plan didn’t work out. Have you always been drawn to messy?

I think I never knew anything but messy. I’m a kid who grew up in a revolution. My mom and dad went to college in Boston and left me behind with my grandmother in Iran when I was 3, which most people think is really traumatic, but what else did I know? I had a father who drowned windsurfing when I was a sophomore in college.

I only know messy. But what I also learned as a result is how to pick myself back up pretty quickly. And I think the sooner you learn that, the easier it gets. Not that we want people to have complicated journeys, but I do think you develop this muscle memory that, while it may be hard, you learn that it’s going to be OK.

And sometimes the mess is the opportunity, too. It’s finding the opportunity in the mess.

A hundred percent. Bloomberg talks about having started Bloomberg as a result of being fired. When people step away or pause, whether by choice or by somebody else’s choice, what ends up happening is that you have to decompress and deal and find a pathway. I had a job that I took at Ammirati Puris Lintas. It’s not even on my résumé.

I took that job, and a week in I knew, oh, things were not good here. And that was terrifying. But if I hadn’t walked away from that job, I wouldn’t have had a pivot in that moment that really became transformative for my career after that. It’s easy to see that in retrospect, but when it was happening and I was like, “Oh my effing God,” yeah, that didn’t feel so good.

Yeah, but it’s hard to walk away from things, especially if you’re someone who’s like, “No, I’m a successful person. I get things done. I solve problems. Why can’t I solve this one?”

I’m a professional problem solver. That’s generally what I say people in the world of business are. The hardest thing for me is sitting still. When that pause comes, it’s a real moment of identity shift, because I remember leaving Hyatt and taking a year and a half off, and literally, to a person, they would be like, “She’s the former global CMO of Hyatt,” as if somehow I had no value outside of that title.

I had headhunters who called me who said, “Don’t wait too long because you’re not going to be able to go back in.” There’s so much anxiety that’s placed on you when you pause, again, whether it’s by choice or not. And I think for people who are successful enough to get to that level, yeah, your identity is completely intertwined because you had to make sacrifices in order to be able to get there.

I know when I left Fast Company, where I had been for 11 years, it was a long time. And I did have this sense of, what is my relevance? Where do I go next? And you do feel a little lost.

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to be when I grow up. I don’t know where this journey is going to take me, but each thing leads you to the next thing. And so I think that belief that it will work out, even though it seems easy to say, is actually pretty much true. I would say that is the throughline among all the people who’ve come on. Now, some of them will tell you, “Live your purpose.” Some of them tell you don’t live your purpose. There’s a lot of competing ideas. But the one thing I will say is grit, resilience—they work hard, and they learn over time that even though they have these bumps, which are inevitable, it somehow works itself out.

You mentioned your upbringing in Iran. What do you make of it? Do you still have family there that you’re in touch with?

Yes, I still have family there. My aunt and her husband are still there. I left when I was 11, in fifth grade, at the end of fifth grade. And for sure, that was, I think, the beginning of a feeling of non-belonging in a way, because you were extracted in the middle of your life from the world that you knew. I have felt numb pretty much since then in some ways.

I remember when the Women, Life, Freedom movement broke out, there was this song called “Baraye,” which actually won a Grammy that year. When that song played for the first time, something in me broke and I cried. I don’t think I’d cried the entire time. For me, I was a kid as the revolution heated up. We had more and more kids who were being pulled out of school. We had teachers who left. We had martial law.

My father was under house arrest, but as a kid, oddly, I found it exciting. And so I had an American teacher. She did current events, and I remember at the end of the year she said to my mom, “Your daughter is going to become a journalist.” And as they were killing all the journalists, my mom said to her, “That is a fate worse than death.” But I think it’s hard not to look on. Obviously, there are a lot of civilians being impacted, not just in Iran, but also in all the other places where bombs are being dropped.

There’s no question that this has been a government that’s terrorized its own people. I think there’s a sense of, we’re going to burn it to the ground before we give up. So you worry about where the end is. I don’t think anybody who knows what’s happened in terms of the repression and really the aggression with which they’ve put down any kind of protest would be sad that things change, but I do think we’re going to experience a high cost in what you call unintended casualties.

Out of all this, you have been a very creative person yourself, as a marketer and otherwise. I remember during the pandemic, you threw yourself into championing New York City at a time when the city seemed scary and at risk, and you rallied people in the arts and outdoor performances. And you put together The Longest Table, which was this sort of block-long dining table in Manhattan to fuel connection. Now you’ve started a community called The Interval for executives in transition. Is there something that you feel connects those things?

The throughline is belonging. I think for me, as a kid who lost her sense of belonging, not only creating belonging for myself—which I really did by joining and doing, that’s how I found belonging. I was like, “I’m willing to help and get involved.” But also helping others find belonging for themselves. Nobody needs to repeat middle school, I say. I think we can all relate to that emotion. I think that matters.

In the world of business, when you step away, again, by choice or not, there is this incredible moment of vulnerability. And I think what’s amazing about The Interval is that you find a group that is willing to support you without judgment. I remember when I left Hyatt, my son said to me, “Mom, you’re the busiest unemployed person I know.” And I think motion was my default.

I think there are so many different ways to live your life. For me, The Longest Table, which is a nonprofit, has been a way to reinvent myself, to just give back in a different way. And honestly, I’m in a place to be able to do that now.