The following is an original production of WTCI.

With a lengthy career in broadcast journalism, Soledad O'Brien has seen it all.

But there is much more to this woman than what you've seen on TV.

You know, Soledad O'Brien on TV doesn't really exist except on TV.

And Soledad O'Brien is a mom and I don't make dinner, but I definitely make sure it gets on the table.

And, you know, I clean up and I watch pots and pans and, you know, people who pretend like, oh, I'm boldface.

Name such and such.

That wears off very fast.

You're like, Yeah, well, boldface name.

Do me a favor.

Gather up all the dirty laundry and put it in the bin, please.

Find out how this hardworking woman balances life as a nationally acclaimed television personality while raising four children.

This week on the A-list, I talk with CNN special correspondent Soledad O'Brien.

Soledad O'Brien is a household name to news junkies nationwide.

And it's no wonder.

With over 20 years of television news experience under her belt, she has become a trusted voice in the world of broadcasting.

She was born in New York in 1966, the fifth of six children to her immigrant parents.

Her full name, Maria de la Soledad.

Teresa O'Brien gives some indication of the multitude of cultures that she grew up identifying with, living in a multiracial household in the middle of an all white neighborhood.

On the heels of racial segregation was not without its challenges.

But as she began receiving national attention, Soledad also became a role model for young women of all backgrounds trying to navigate their way through the professional world.

As a mother of four with a hectic career.

Time for Soledad is in short supply.

But still, she managed to make the trip to Tennessee to talk with the students at the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy about her experiences as a woman of color in television news.

When you study science and technology, the STEM fields, you really learn how to problem solve and you learn how to think about problems.

And that has turned out to be very helpful to me, even though today I don't really do calculus, I don't really do physics.

It helped me tremendously in the career that I have today.

So we're so excited that we are here in the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy Building.

And I know you had an opportunity to tour.

I did.

Talk to me a little bit about what it means to you to be able to now give back in this way to be an inspiration for these women.

Oh, it's great.

I mean, you know, it's funny because even though I'm so much older than much, much, much older than these girls, you know, you see yourself in them and you see sort of all that hope and opportunity and and fear and nervousness and anxiety and drama that can go on with being, you know, this age group.

It's wonderful to be able to answer some of their questions, which are often about, you know, how did you know what you wanted to do?

What's the hardest thing you've had to overcome?

What do you like about your job?

What do you not like about your job?

Very, you know, sort of pragmatic and practical questions for young women who I think are mapping out careers.

It's great.

I love it.

What advice do you give them that you wish you had when you were their age?

You know, I have never been great at looking down the long road.

You know, I look down the short road and then I freak out and I've been very lucky to be surrounded by people who always say, Well, let me take you down the long road a little bit.

And that's been helpful.

So I sort of back off the ledge.

You know, reacting to things that are here.

And I need to be more, you know, long term.

So that was the kind of advice I tried to give them to not worry so much about here and think long term.

You know, to me, learning that it was never about the mistake, but it was about how you recovered from the mistake was this epiphany.

And unfortunately, I learned when I was five, I wish I'd learned it when I was 15, because it would have been much more helpful in my life.

It's never about the mistake.

You know, the metaphor in our business in anchoring is and I remember watching Bryant Gumbel, right when he would flub a line, and he's brilliant, such a great interviewer.

But when he would mess up a line, he would just plow through and pick up and you realize, like, everybody messes up.

Just some people recover and they go on and other people make it worse by, Oh my God, I messed that up.

I'm so sorry.

And they stop and you realize you need to just recover.

And I think that's a metaphor for life.

Everyone's going to make mistakes, but it's how you pick up and move on from your mistake, whether it's apologizing to someone or just doing the work or fixing the problem, you know, that's really what you have to do.

I heard a great speaker who said the winners are those people who fall, but they get up quicker.

Yeah, it's always about the getting up part and the people who fail and yet keep going.

You know, bravery is always being afraid and continuing to go forward anyway.

Not it's not not being afraid.

That's what, you know, firefighters who who helped rescue people in 911 used to say, you know, it's never about not.

Of course, you know, you'd be an idiot if you weren't afraid to build a fire, You know, but bravery is going in anyway doing it anyway.

I think that's a that's good advice.

Let's talk about your childhood.

Sure.

Tell me what it was like.

Dr. Freud.

What would you like to know?

Tell me about the O'Brien household.

Oh, my gosh.

The O'Brien.

I have five brothers and sisters, and it was pretty chaotic, you know?

I mean, noisy family.

My mom had six kids in seven years.

So we're very close in age and very close.

We are a very tight family.

And I loved I loved being part of a big family.

One of my biggest regrets is that I only have four kids.

I'd love to have more.

I mean, I loved being in a big family, so it was pretty chaotic.

But we also really spent a lot of time together.

We're very close in terms of playing with each other.

And and to this day, it means we're you know, we're pretty good friends.

And also my parents are pretty high expectations for us academically, certainly in terms of social responsibility.

My parents are big believers in giving back and volunteering.

And, you know, to this day they're in their eighties working at soup kitchen.

And you're like, you can sit down now and, you know, really retire.

But no, they don't do that.

And I think also in terms of behavior, they just were very, very strict and expected their children to listen and and behave and do good things in their community.

And they were sort of and there's no alternative to that.

There's no.

And what if, I don't know, death was an option?

Hello.

I brought you in.

I can take you out.

The thought of.

Rob.

Do you think part of that was the immigrant mentality that here they are to find a better life in the American dream and doggone it, they're going to make sure their kids have that?

Yeah, I think it was more for them about we're just going to be distracted, you know, like we we've given up a lot to get here.

So someone's mean to you, who cares?

You know, we're here for the schools.

I really don't care.

The same as me.

Boys don't want to date you because you're the only multiracial kid in the school.

So what?

Great.

I was like, Oh, too bad for you.

But I'm thrilled.

You know, I'm going to date you, you know?

So I think that they looked at those things very much with an immigrant mentality of we're here for X, we're here because we chose to be here and we expect to get these things out of the school experience.

And, you know, your your personal happiness and satisfaction is really kind of like 10th on the list for us.

You're going to get a good education, you're going to be well-behaved, you're going to get back to your community.

And then after that, if you are you know, if you if you get to have fun at the mall, good for you.

But not they were never that worried about about that.

And I think that that's a difference I see today where, you know, I think parents often try to coddle their kids and make sure they're having a good experience.

So obviously, you know, bad experiences are great bad experiences teach you a lot.

Well, you'll never do that again if you have a bad experience.

They really recognize that, you know, losing games was good for building character, being thwarted and things was really a good way to learn.

Being unhappy usually brought about some kind of change.

They didn't protect us from that stuff.

And so I think that part of it was just a very pragmatic approach and also, you know, very much a I'm a first generation American and, you know, was immigrants to this country.

That was their approach.

That approach led all six of the O'Brien children to become Harvard graduates.

And for Soledad, an Ivy League education was only the beginning.

She began her broadcasting career in Boston in 1989 and did work for NBC and the Discovery Channel in the following years.

But in 1996, with the launch of MSNBC, Soledad was presented with the opportunity of a lifetime when she became the host of the Internet focused Daily Show.

The site of the Emmy Award winning program garnered much attention for the young journalist, and she went on to anchor NBC's Weekend today until 2003, when, after 15 years with the network, she decided to make the transition to CNN.

So it adds eight years at CNN so far have been full of many exciting opportunities.

She spent four years as co-anchor of American Morning and as a special correspondent has reported some of the most impactful news stories of the past decade.

How soon did you know this was your destined career?

I loved it.

The minute I started working in television news, I knew I would be in TV news somewhere.

But I think I've really honed into a concept of doing stories that fly under the radar and thinking of journalism as an opportunity to serve people and tell those stories.

After Hurricane Katrina, I think that was the moment when I realized, like, well, we actually have a big voice and we have a lot of leverage.

And we could bring you know, a lot of the Katrina story was never told, which was the back story, which was the poverty that existed, the lack of opportunity that already existed that led up to what you then saw unfold in Katrina.

So you realize no one was really ever doing that story.

We could tell all these stories because they obviously were shocking to everybody, to the world, not just to black people and not just to poor people.

But they were shocking to everybody.

So I think at that point I thought, well, this is a good opportunity to think about telling stories that most people don't ever explore.

And it's funny because, you know, you go in and you pitch a story about poverty and everyone's like, Oh, you hate that.

Who was that?

But then you realize that it's a it's a powerful story.

You know, we've we've done we're we've been so successful, you know, critically.

And I think good storytelling.

But but more importantly in the bottom line like, you know our stuff makes money for the company and I think you have to be on all fronts to show them that people like these stories are interested in, well told smart, thoughtful stories about stuff they haven't seen.

Everything does not need to have Lindsay Lohan going in and out of rehab to to get big ratings.

It doesn't have to.

So what happens when you go to a place like New Orleans after such a devastation or Haiti and have to report from a third party standpoint, but clearly from a very emotionally invested standpoint.

Think, no, I think it's just hard to report on other people's suffering all the time.

We just said, you know, and it's on one hand, you didn't lose anything.

Your family's fine, they're intact, they're Skyping with you that night back in the hotel.

But I think it's always just it's always hard to tell stories about somebody else's loss.

It's just hard.

It sometimes is physically draining, you know?

But on the other hand, I think it's important and I think that it's it feels like it's something you have to do so you can't mess it up.

I remember my co-anchor, David Bloom, died when I was anchoring Weekend Today and they called me on the air and Matt Lauer and I incurred the show.

And I remember thinking like, my job is to do a good job for David's wife.

Like it's not really about me, you know?

So when you go to it's about David, it's about remembering someone.

This is important for him and his family and for people who know him and are watching this.

And I feel the same way.

And Haiti and in covering the tsunami and wherever you go, you know, it's it's really sorry that you're working around the clock and you're eating granola bars because they haven't brought the food shipment in.

It's not really about that.

It's about bringing a story that's really, really important to people who don't have the access that you have.

So shut up and get back to work.

Stop whining.

And that's you know, that's what I always try to remember to do and not get dragged down into the emotion of it, to use the emotion.

I mean, I think if you stop feeling it, that would be a terrifying thing because then you wouldn't care anymore.

You know, it's sort of a good thing, right?

Seeing dead babies, that should make you cry.

That should ruin your month, that should piss you off and anger you and send you into a tailspin and have you talking to someone about PTSD.

It should write.

That's exactly that's exactly the right reaction.

If you can see a truckload of dead babies and dying babies and be like, Oh, that would really scare me if I didn't react.

So I think it's not a bad thing.

I think it's a good thing.

The question is, how do you take that and turn that into a story that grabs people by the throat and makes them realize there's something happening here that you need to know about?

You know, that's the challenge.

The challenge is not to flail about in your own morass of, you know, drama, but to channel that into telling a great story.

And so far we've been really successful in doing that.

Is it a nice respite, though, too, to be on the documentary front versus the reporting on all?

I hate to say the bad news on a daily basis.

It's very different.

I really missed it when I first switched from doing daily news to because, you know, things like, Oh, I'm not being sent.

And then I really learned to just relax and not worry about some of those stories that I would just not go cover.

And and I get to cover the big ones, the big breaking news stories, and then work on documentaries.

So I'm also busy.

I'm always traveling and working on those stories.

So it's not that I kind of wish I could just sit home for a few days and hang out and watch other people's work.

But I definitely miss it, you know, And I think luckily after time you sort of get involved in the stuff that you're doing and what I move on something else, I know that I'll miss doing documentaries, but I'll keep doing what the new thing that I'm doing, whatever it is, I'm a very probably my greatest strength is a pretty flexible.

I'm pretty good at just jumping into something and figuring it out and enjoying it and getting out of it.

What I can.

So that adds.

Transition from reporting to documentaries began in 2007 when she anchored the CNN special Black in America, a series that examined the struggles of black men, women and families in the 40 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The special was met with critical acclaim nationwide and thus the in America brand was born.

Since then, Soledad has produced a multitude of documentaries for CNN, dissecting a wide range of struggles facing the world today.

You sound really angry.

I am angry, for sure.

Man.

Do you understand what I'm giving up every single day.

For other people's children?

I see them as my children.

How much editorial control do you have over your documentaries?

We have you know, you have both.

I think it's a perfect amount, which is a lot.

And yet not all, which you never want, because I really.

I was nervous in places where people like, No, no, you should just do whatever you want.

You.

No, I actually want a really good editorial team is going to push back on things.

I want really smart people to tell me why my idea is awful and I'll push back too.

And I want to really come to the table with smart ideas so that the best thing rises to the top.

There's nothing worse than not being challenged at all in a meeting, and you're like, I don't even know if this is a good idea.

That's bad.

But also, you want to make sure that you know the unit is based around my voice.

And so, you know, my voice is is important and critical.

And so most people who work with me understand the mission.

You know, we're all on the same page.

And I think they also, you know, help know how I would ask questions and know the stories that I want to tell.

And so that's a nice luxury to have.

Is it hard for you to approach a subject matter if you're not personally vested?

But you know what's interesting?

You end up getting personally invested, right?

You meet the people.

For example, a good example is miners in West Virginia.

We're doing a story that will air this summer on a battle for Blair Mountain, which is a mountain in West Virginia, where there's this big fight going over the literal mountain.

Should it be held as a landmark national historic site?

And also a battle between coal mining companies and environmentalists over, you know, what will happen in this community?

So it's this big battle.

I don't know the first thing about coal mine, it's so funny.

The people there are lovely because they always like, oh, you know, coal mining doesn't work like that.

Honey.

That was like happening.

Like, oh, I said, well, they said, do you think we use picks and shovels?

And I'm like, No, not really, but I don't really know how you do it.

I've never actually seen real coal mining that's come along.

I'm going to show you, you know, you're very patient, you know, but you get into the story and stories about people, and the people are great.

The people on all sides agree there is no horrible person.

They're just people who have very different agendas, who disagree.

And most of the stories I cover, especially in a documentary, you get to hang out with people for a long time and most of them are really interesting, good people who just completely don't see eye to eye on a story and can do sometimes very hateful things, but have their reasons and their rationale and stories they want to tell on the side they're trying to show.

I find that part fascinating.

So you automatically get drawn in, even if you don't know anything about coal mining, even if you haven't had an interest in coal mining, because not really a story about coal mining.

It's a story about human beings who are afraid that their way of life is going to disappear.

People look at it and say, if you do your job well, they look at a story you're telling and they say, Well, I relate to that.

It resonates with me, even if I don't know anything about coal mining, because the story, the human beings, the story, but the stories are good if they're stories about the human experience and the human condition, humanity as a whole, you know, not, you know, 1 to 1 on how to mine coal out of a mountain that's know, that's not what the story I'm telling is, even if it's all about the mountain and coal.

Do you think that's something though, that you actually had to learn how to do or that you were just naturally good at?

You know, is that something that there's something that you can teach you how to talk?

Well, you can teach you how to, you know, have that broadcasting voice, but to be able to connect and to tell that good story, is that something when you look back at your childhood, that you're the one who always, you know, came home?

I think it's I mean, I think it's about like in people.

I think it's about liking people and hearing their story, you know, and then you get good at well, I wrote this in a confusing way or why don't we start with this and with that and framing it a little bit better and having it make sense.

And maybe you know, not sound full over here and this and that, but but really, ultimately it's like, are you interested in curious about people or not?

I have a lot of friends who are not journalists who be great journalists.

They just love people.

They're musicians, they're doctors, they're lawyers.

You know, they also love storytelling.

They just kind of exhibit it a different way.

So if so many people have the potential to be great journalists, how did you become such a great journalist?

Yeah.

Um, you know, I think I was really lucky.

I think I was just, you know, all the things that really serve me well.

And being a journalist, I've been very flexible so that when I got fired from the morning show, I got another opportunity.

And I think a lot of people didn't necessarily think that that it was going to turn into anything.

And I made it into something great.

You know, every time something bad happened, I was able to take the next thing and turn that into something good, because sometimes those jobs are just we'll give her this so she's fed up and go away.

And I always took the thing the sometimes it wasn't even a great prize at the end and said, well, this is not a bad platform.

And a lot of that was mentors.

I'd sit down with the mentor and say, Well, actually the thing they've given you is kind of interesting now.

How are you going to run with the ball?

What do you do with it?

How you turn that into something?

And we would build businesses around it.

You know, we did our first black in America and it was gangbusters.

So the next question was how do we build out of that?

Then?

How do we build a unit out of it and how do we build curriculum out of it?

And how do we you know, from something that I, I don't think anybody really thought was going to be anything beyond the little thing that it was to start.

Some of that was luck.

Some of that was, you know, I'm really demanding on certain things, quality of work, but I am not more demanding on anybody else than myself.

I work really hard and expect anybody else around me to work really, really hard.

And, you know, and again, I think I'm good at asking questions and getting help.

I will go to the president of the company and say, So you have 5 minutes.

Let me run something by you.

Here's what I want to do.

Here's what I think we can do.

Here's how I think we should build this or build that.

I always do that.

And I think that that's, you know, because I want to extend the brand of CNN.

I want to, you know, have a win for them and a win for me and grow our audience.

And they recognize that.

So all those things, I think, help, you know, are not journalism skills.

Those are just business skills.

Those are life skills that can make you a good journalist.

Defining Soledad O'Brien as a good journalist is a bit of an understatement.

Her list of honors and awards is a lengthy one, including multiple Emmys, the National Association of Black Journalists, Journalists of the Year Award, and the ACP Presidents Award, among many others.

In 2010, she published her critically acclaimed book, The Next Big Story My Journey Through the Land of Possibilities, a memoir that chronicles some of her most influential experiences in television news.

And with such a full career, it's amazing that she has the time or energy to focus on anything else.

But she's a working mom who manages to balance her demanding career while maintaining a focus on her family.

So how do you gauge when you've been successful?

You know, at CNN, they'll say there are three things, right?

There's there's ratings.

Then there's.

Is it good for the the brand?

Is it something we're proud of doing?

And then there's a sense of is it you know, is it critically acclaimed?

And you try to win on all three of those fronts, obviously, and often our documentaries do.

I guess for me, it's about impact.

You know, I know our Black in America series was huge.

Well, I can't walk through an airport without people literally.

And no one really knows the name they always like.

I love being black in America.

I love what it means to be black in America.

I love how to be black like it's called black in America.

Oh, but those are good titles to think about that, you know?

So I know that there's impact, though.

You know, we've been approached to turn it into curriculum at all the historically black colleges and universities, which is a brilliant idea.

So we'll probably do that.

That's that's impact.

So that's a lot of it.

But, you know, that's a different question than how do you know if you've been successful that success in a documentary?

You know, life success has not a lot to do with successful documentary life successes.

Are you a good human being?

Life success is, you know, are you teaching your kids the right thing and are you balancing so that you feel good about what you're accomplishing and you feel like you're giving time to your kids and your family, but also making time for yourself?

You know, being a martyr for the cause and being miserable is not, you know, how I'm going to live my life, you know, life successes.

Do you look back and feel like, wow, I inspired a couple of people to do something?

Well, the documentaries, you know, they'll come and go in 20 years.

You know, if you're lucky, someone mentions, Oh, yeah, he ended a black America thing a long time ago.

But everything else, you know, you're the legacy of the people who know you is the inspiration that you can pass along like that.

That's the measure of success.

So what are you most proud of?

You know, I think that so far we've made it work.

My husband, I juggle a lot, but we have four kids who are great and healthy and pretty good at recognizing that they're pretty blessed and and pretty compassionate.

I think all those things have to be taught and and you have to sit kids down and make them really realize the opportunities that they have, which means that they sort of the onus is on them to to help other people.

My daughters will go to him this year to volunteer at an orphanage.

We took Sofia last year and then Cecilia will come with her nine.

I think it's a good age to do that.

The boys want to go anywhere with the pool.

I know they're not quite there yet with the compassion thing.

They're just like, And can we have ice cream and can we eat the ice cream in the pool?

But, you know, I think it's about about that.

You know, I travel a lot.

I have a very crazy job.

And we've been very good at letting them realize that, you know, my job is different, but they get to come do interesting, fun, different kinds of things.

You know, we're not I'm not going to go on the field trips all the time.

That's going to be somebody else's mom.

But your mom will take you to volunteer in an orphanage in Haiti.

And like it or not, that's the mom you got.

So, you know, we made it work.

And we we haven't forgotten how lucky we are and how blessed we are.

And you know, how in the business of journalism, there's a lot of not fun jobs.

There's a lot of, you know, things that you could be doing that aren't emotionally fulfilling and professionally fulfilling.

And I have one of the best jobs in TV news, like literally probably one of the top five.

That's a pretty pretty damn good.

And we're glad you're there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for sitting with us.

My pleasure.

Thanks for having me.