That's what I love about journalism, and I think that's the best thing about being a journalist now in twenties, that we recognize there are stories that have not been told, or they were told from a very different perspective that probably was wrong. We know so much of history is told from a perspective of our and not of who was there, and so I think that's really a great
thing that journalists can do now. That is Nila Budo, Award winning journalists and host of Axios Today, a daily podcast that conveys the morning news in just ten minutes. The show provides insights and analysis on everything you need to know for the day, from the White House and Congress to the economy and the trends shaping our world. I'm Kim Azzarelli and this is Seneca's one hundred Women
to Hear. We're bringing you one hundred of the world's most inspiring and history making women you need to hear now. Nila Boo Doo is a perfect post for a daily news podcast. She's worked as a journalist in major media markets across the US for companies like Reuters, The a P, and MPR, and most recently, she was the founding host and executive producer of the one, an award winning weekday
daily news program for Illinois Public Radio. And as you'll learn from our conversation, she's an optimist and someone who understands the critical role that women journalists play and the importance of telling everyone's stories. Listen and learn why Nila Boo Do is one of Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear. Nila, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. It's such an honor to be here. So you are the host of an exciting new show, axiost Today, a
new daily podcast. Tell us a little bit about the podcast, it's mission and what makes it different, so Arida. Axios is famous for its smart brevity, which is the idea that journalism as we know what I think a lot of way. I think a lot of the journalism that we do is a little broken, and I think we
also don't respect people's time. And that's why I was so excited to join Axios and develop a new flagship podcast for them, because I think this was a great opportunity to show that we can be smart and thoughtful and provide good analysis and not do that in half an hour, but do that in ten minutes, and so are pledged to our audience is that we if you give us ten minutes of your time in the morning,
we will make you better informed about your day. And you know, when you go through sort of creating a show. One thing that we did, and I think is a very helpful thing for journalists to do, is a human centered design experience. And in my mind, the perfect user or the target user for EXIST today is what I call is zoom Mom. So she's a woman who is very See. I feel like zoom Mom is maybe like
a twenty term. Yeah, next year it won't be zoom Mom, but it'll be something something else, all right, But let's be honest, it is she'll be as busy as she was this year. Um. You know, I think I think about I don't have children myself, but I have very I have a lot of friends who are moms and are juggling that. Um. I have seven nieces and nephews, so I'm very familiar with the demands that are put
on women on a day to day basis. And I really designed this for women who are smart and want to be informed, but also don't have a lot of time. And I really feel like, this is our promise to the audience that we try to honor on a daily basis, which is just not wasting people's time. I love that mission. Please do that. We all need that in our lives.
So you have covered the news for many many different media companies, Reuters, the ap uh, W B Easy in Chicago, the Miami Herald, Public Radio in Florida and Illinois, among others. What has working in so many markets told you about
this country and about media more broadly? You know? I do think that working across the country has taught me that people value journalism in every market that I've worked in, And I do think that's a really and and maybe that I think this is something that's become more apparent and maybe more obvious in the past four years because
of President Trump directly attacking journalism. I think we've seen more attacks on journalism American journalism in the past four years that we've seen in a long time in this country. And I think that's really brought to the four how important it is to have independent journalists working in the function that we play in a democracy. But I do feel like I um I grew up in Miami, I
was born and raised in Miami. My first job was being a high school intern at the Miami Herald when Hurricane Andrew hit and I saw first hand there how important a newspaper could be to community in a time of a natural disaster, and that was just huge. I mean, the paper helped inform people afterwards. It was a catastrophe for South Florida, and that was sort of one of my first That really was my first experience with journalism,
but in Chicago or Washington. I started a show outside of Chicago a few years ago, in Champagne or Banna. I think they're smart, curious people everywhere who are really hungry for knowledge and information. And I'm always impressed wherever I go at how curious people are and how engaged they want to be. And so I think that's just something that I always appreciate about being a journalist. Um Also, I think being in DC this year moving I moved to DC this summer, but moved back to d C
for this job for Axios. I am amazed at how many people you know. Obviously I'm not leaving my home very much, but I'm surprised when people find like the few times I've gone, like, for example, to the Supreme Court, when with Bader Ginsburg died, or just when I was like shopping in Ikea in a socially distance line. For a very long time, people find out your journalists, and people have actually thanked me for being a journalist, which I really appreciate, and I hope that's an attitude that
continues in this country for the next four years. We need you, so that is that we're we are happy to have you, and we're happy to have you on this show. You know, from your perspective, is there something different in being a woman journalist? You talk about RBG, and of course it brings to mind everything that she's done for all of us. But why is a woman's
perspective so important in journalism right now? I mean, I think it's important just because for so long, and I think this is a conversation we're having, not just in journalism but across all different companies and industries about perspective and voice, right. And I think it's very clear that having a diversity of opinions and having a newsroom that reflects this country is important because people bring their lived experience, right. So I am a woman of color. Um, my parents
were immigrants. I am Asian American. My parents are also West Indian, So I mean there's so many different labels that I could put on myself. But I also think what that really says is, these are the different experiences I've had and I think for so long, and I think even in my career as a journalist, a lot of times men have been in charge, and I think men bring a very clear perspective, and I think women,
I mean, everyone's individuals. Everyone has their own perspective. But what I think I have become very cognizant of, especially in the past five or ten years as a journalist, is how important empathy is. And I think you're starting to hear journalists talk about this. I think is a female journalist I'm very proud of. I don't think empathy is the domain of just women, but I do think having a perspective of thinking of being respectful of the
people that were interviewing. I think being a woman watching the Me Too movement made me very cognizant of power dynamics in journalism. I think when you have a microphone in front of someone, when you put a microphone in front of someone and you were on the other side of that, as journalists were an inherent position of power, and I think it's incumbent upon us to recognize that. And I think so I think those sort of when we think about when I say empathy, I think it's
really important to respect people's stories. I think it's important to give people a space of note and knowing that they can trust us. And I say that recognizing that a lot of journalists have not done that, and I think that's a mistake that and that's a mistake I made also, I would say at the beginning of my career of just sort of just assuming that people would
talk to you or that. I think one thing I'm really appreciative of being in public radio is just that I think gave me a real respect for people's stories and for how important someone's story is. And as I ask people to share their stories, I'm very cognizant of
what it takes for them to do that. And I think at the same time it can be something that can be very cathartic and can be verying for people, but it's also something that we're asking people to do, and I think it's important that we recognize that kind of brings you back to what you were talking about having a human centric approach to designing your current show. I think that's an interesting way of thinking about journalism.
I think that human centered design, like I've seen this in journalism, and I've heard people, I guess, people who are on the digital forefront, Like I think when you're thinking about digital startups in journalism, there's been so many amazing local journalism startups. I do think that's a more common thing now. I would say in the past five to ten years. It's probably not as common as it
should be. And I think again, like I think again as a woman, I am thinking about the fact that, like, as journalists, journalism is not about broadcasting out the information like that's been gone for a long time, right, So we're not the arbiters of that anymore. But we can provide good information, we can amplify correct information, we can shine a light on things that other wise maybe we
wouldn't be able to do. And so I think that kind of like and that is in a way, like I think thinking about our end user, the audience, and I think the idea of for example, you'll see now a lot of there's a lot of jobs in journalism that are audience engagement. It has that sort of in mind, and I do think that's kind of a newer thing in journalism, but it's desperately needed. Senecas one hundred Women
to Hear will be back after this short break. So let me ask you in terms of women in journalism, are there women past and present who you admire or women that maybe people don't know about that they should know about. I mean, I am very grateful for my time in Chicago because I think I learned a lot about women like Ethel Payne Um and she's like I think when you say this, like people know I T. B. Wells right, and they know that R. T. B. Wells
is someone to um. Like even here in d C in the Museum of African American History, I love that, Like when you walk up the staircase, UM, there's an ID B. Wells quote about righting the wrongs, like shining the light of truth on that um. But Ethel Pain is someone she was known as the first Lady of the Black Press, and she worked for the Chicago Defender UM and worked, you know, covering wars as an African
American woman. And I think that when you think about the legacy of those women and how much they risked to do their job and to tell people's stories and also to defend their own story and say that they had a right to be there. Um, I really appreciate that. I think we had done an episode about the journal Truth earlier this year, and it was so interesting to hear how history had kind of changed the narrative about
her famous speech. And so I think what you're saying is so important, which is even being able to defend your own narrative and then taking the risk to defend other narratives that are sort of being perhaps changed. Yeah, that's what I love about journalism, and I think that's the best thing about being a journalist now in twenty twenties, that we recognize there are stories that have not been told, or they were told from a very different perspective that
probably was wrong. And so like projects like the New York Times where they're going back and doing obituaries of people who were overlooked, Like, I think those are really important because we know so much of history is told from a perspective of power and not of who was there. And so I think that's really a great thing that journalists can do. Now, and I think that's something that's
really important for female journalists to do as well. And that's exactly why we have the cenic Woman podcast network. It's it's to tell those stories of women's you know, amplify the voices of women who you may know and some that you may not, and some that you think you knew. So you're doing all this though in an incredibly challenging year. You're in the thick of it reporting every day. What is giving you optimism right now? Despite
all that's happened in the world. It has been exhausting, right, It has been really bad here, I think, you know, it's just been so hard, you know, I think the pandemic and when we look at I was just talking to a friend about this last week. She was like, you know, you talked about this on Axius today. But the way women have been affected by this pandemic, Like when we think about the job losses, um, we think about women who were forced to leave the workforce because
of neating someone to take care of their children. UM. So I feel very fortunate to be have a job and work for a company that is very mindful of our Like we have a great company culture at Axios that is very mindful of the fact that we are working under really difficult conditions. So I think that's it's easy for me to be optimistic when I work at
a place where or I know that my work is valued. Um, We're in a great our company is very healthy, and I feel like we are being told on a daily basis by my co workers or by people in charge that we are making a difference. And I think that's a for me, just from a personal standpoint, that's I'm
very grateful for that. I think that partially because of that and because I am by nature an optimist, I think I'm a un usual journalist because I am like most journalists are not optimists, and I definitely have a healthy skepticism about things, but I am I always do. It's just sort of my nature to try to look for the better side of life. And I will say, even when we think about like the election and how much I mean, you could there's a lot of negative
to focus on there. But I think one thing that I'm so hopeful for is just looking at voter turnout and looking at what a win for democracy it was that we had record voter turnout. We had an incredibly Like when we think about the number of women, the number of young people, the number of Asian Americans, the number of black women. I just it's so wonderful to see people engaged in the democratic process because I actually think, you know, I love people. For people to be engaged
in journalism. I think that's a way of being engaged in democracy. I think it's very easy to be apathetic and get caught up in our own day to day lives and not realize how important this actually is, like sort of the outside world. Um. So I'm like, I take a great sense of positivity from that. Um, you know, I'm really hopeful there's a vaccine. My was just talking to some family was talking to my mom this morning, and she was saying, one of my my favorite aunts
in the UK is supposed to get a vaccine this week. Wow, And I was just like it just was It just made me so happy. You know, she's eight years old. She's like one of the people I'm closest to, and that means hopefully I'll be able to see her next year. And so I think that I am very hopeful. Fore I think we're going to go through look like I want to be realistic, Like, I think the next couple of months are going to be really difficult. I think there might be some of the worst months we've ever
seen in this country's history. Are that's very likely, But I do think that we can see the end of this hopefully, and I'm hoping that that is kind of like what gets people through this um But again, I just I do like, I mean, there's just so much pain that we're going to have to go through in the next couple of months. But what I'm hoping for is that, like there is a light at the end of this tunnel, which is kind of a cliche, but I think in this case is a really appropriate one
when we think about the pandemic. Well, we are so happy that you're doing this daily show Axios today and we're thrilled that we can be tuning in every morning to get the latest news and to see see what we should know about our day and hopefully, as you said, you'll be reporting on a positive trend after we get through these next couple of months. So thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to to
listening to you. Thanks for having me. Nila Boud has such a great outlook and I share her optimism for Here are three things that I took from the conversation. First, every industry and every endeavor benefits from a diversity of perspectives. As Nila reminds us, journalism gets so much better when women's voices are part of the mix and when empathy and respect are part of the process. Second, we all need to be able to tell our own stories. We need to make sure that women's voices are heard and
that history reflects our narratives as well. Third, human centered designs should be foremost in everything we do. That's why I'm excited about Nihili's daily podcast Axios Today. It takes women's real lives into consideration, and it's built around the awareness that our time is valuable. Tune in next Tuesday to hear about our next featured woman and discover why
she's one of Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear. Ye Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PNG. Have a Great Day,