Jessica Bennett on Becoming the First Gender Editor of The New York Times & How Failure Furthered Her Career

Jessica Bennett is an award-winning journalist and author who covers social issues and culture through a gender lens. She was recently appointed the first-ever Gender Editor of the New York Times. Jessica is the author of the bestselling book, Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace (HarperCollins), which has been translated into 10 languages, a podcast, and is being adapted for television. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, where she began her career; Time, where she was a columnist; as well as Vogue, Cosmopolitan, the Washington Post and The New York Times. Jessica has spoken about sexism and gender bias at a variety of institutions, including the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Harvard Business School, Facebook, Google, Thomson Reuters and others. Yes, she's in a real-life feminist fight club. You can keep in touch with Jessica by signing up for her newsletter, The Gender Letter, at nytimes.com/genderletter. In the interview, we talk about a wide array of topics: Jessica’s decision to write a major New York Times piece on failure on university campuses; why minorities disproportionately suffer from the imposter syndrome (and what to do about it); how she quickly bounced back after being laid off from Tumblr; how she ended up as the first gender editor of the New York Times; her writing process and failures in writing; and so much more. - Get your FREE copy of my e-book. Text OZAN to 345345 or navigate to weeklycontrarian.com to download a free copy of my e-book, The Contrarian Handbook: 8 Principles for Innovating Your Thinking. Along with your free e-book, you’ll get the Weekly Contrarian — a newsletter that challenges conventional wisdom and changes the way we look at the world (plus access to exclusive content for subscribers only). Don’t want to miss future episodes? Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on iTunes or Google Play. As always, thanks for listening.