I Am Debra Lee, page 1
Some names and identifying details have been changed whether or not so noted in the text.
Copyright © 2023 by Debra Lee
Cover design by Tree Abraham. Cover photograph by Anderson Hopkins.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022947910
ISBNs: 978-0-3068-2859-1(hardcover), 978-0-3068-2861-4 (ebook)
E3-20230118-JV-NF-ORI
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
For the Culture
CHAPTER TWO
Female CEO Status
CHAPTER THREE
The Climb
CHAPTER FOUR
Getting Through the Gauntlet
CHAPTER FIVE
Unapologetically Black
CHAPTER SIX
What Balance?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Feeling Undervalued
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lessons Learned
CHAPTER NINE
Leading Like a Woman
CHAPTER TEN
The Passion Phase
Epilogue: Legacy
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
To Ava, my daughter, my best friend, and my inspiration.
To Quinn, my son. We lost you much too early.
I miss you every minute of every day.
To all the shy girls, the introverts.
Believe in yourself, work hard, use your voice, and you can be anything you want to be.
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INTRODUCTION
“What salary do you see yourself making in life?”
Wait, is he serious? For weeks I’d been contemplating that same million-dollar question. But I had no idea that my boss, BET’s charismatic chairman and CEO, Bob Johnson, noticed the wheels churning in my head. Or that I had one foot already out the door. Bob was Bob though. He always knew what you were thinking before you said it—and he loved to put folks on the spot, which is exactly what he was doing by casually asking me “my number” over lunch. “What do you see yourself making in life?” My answer was simple: more. But I couldn’t say that. It had been nearly a decade since Bob hired me away from Big Law to become BET’s first general counsel. The open sky of the network’s possibilities had drawn me in and convinced me to take a huge pay cut. Now, almost 10 years and as many jobs later, I deserved more. Bob knew that but had shot me down months before when I requested a raise. What my boss didn’t know was that I had been plotting my exit ever since.
I took a beat, looked directly in his eyes, and offered my honest answer: “A million dollars.”
“A million? That’s it?” he said with a smirk.
I shook my head. This was just like Bob. Pulling me back in when he knew I was on my way out.
It had taken me a long time (too long) to work up the courage to ask for a much-deserved raise—nothing big, I’d requested maybe 10 percent more than what I’d been making—and Bob’s “no” was practically instant. When I first joined BET in 1986, I begrudgingly accepted an $18,000 pay cut. Cable was the Wild Wild West of communications, and I wanted in after five years of trying to shoehorn myself into a white-shoe law firm. By the time BET came around I was more than ready to leap into a new adventure. Plus, Bob assured me that I’d be making much more eventually. He’d all but guaranteed that his company was going to be the next big thing in the budding cable industry and the media world at large. The man spun magic. A salesman if there ever was one, Bob could convince anyone of anything. One of his favorite pastimes was proving to anyone who’d listen that bacon wasn’t pork! The man was unbelievable—and yet we all believed. His vision was the future, and the rest of us better hop on board or be left in the dust. He knew how to read people and get what he wanted. In a profile about his budding cable company, Washingtonian Magazine dubbed Bob “the Smooth Operator,” and that title followed him throughout his career. If Bob said the money would follow, then it would. Or so I thought.
But as the years racked up, so did my responsibilities. I was quite literally doing the most: spearheading our IPO, developing new business strategy, overseeing the construction of our first production studio, even heading up our budding magazine division. Bob’s favorite saying back then was “Oh, don’t worry, Debra can do that.” I could, and I did.
“Look, I’m doing all these extra jobs,” I explained during a long-overdue compensation committee meeting with Bob and Tyrone Brown and Herb Wilkins, both board members of BET Holdings. “I don’t mind doing the work. I love it, in fact. But we all know it’s a lot and much more than what my singular title of General Counsel indicated. I think my pay should reflect that, don’t you?” The two of them remained silent and took me in from across the table, revealing nothing. Bob’s philosophy had always been “pay everyone the same.” All the senior vice presidents earned equal salaries and identical pay increases. On the surface it seemed fair, although it was anything but. It took guts to stand up for oneself in that environment—and my stomach was in knots the entire time—but I knew what I was worth. The question was, did they?
“I’m just asking for recognition that I’m doing more and more extra work,” I said.
“Debra,” began Herb in a tone that was both condescending and unsurprising. “There are a ton of folks who would kill for a job like yours. If you don’t like what Bob pays you, then you should probably leave.” And that’s exactly what I did. I excused myself from the table, power walked to the restaurant’s bathroom, and cried.
This wasn’t just about the money. That was never my North Star. I cried because my time at BET was over and I knew it. They’d crossed a line between what was fair and what was downright insulting. I’d spent nine years working harder and longer than what my job description called for, and they still didn’t respect me. There was no way I could pour so much of myself into a company and get nothing in return but a pat on the back. I didn’t want to leave, I had to.
I splashed cold water on my face and went back to my seat at the table with a tight smile. Herb looked satisfied as I eased back into my chair and silently picked at my plate. Bob knew exactly how upset I was; my eyes were still red. But we never talked about my salary again. That is until the million-dollar lunch a few months later.
“A million? That’s it?” The zeros didn’t matter. Listen, my mother worked as a ward clerk at the Black hospital in town, and my dad was a career military man. A million dollars was and is a lot of money. But what I didn’t realize then was that I could and should dream bigger, not only for myself but for them. I was trained to be a lawyer—to close the deals that made everyone else money—and my vision for my future had yet to catch up to my potential. I could’ve said $10 million, $25 million. What Bob really wanted to know was how big I saw my career, not my bank account. That smirk? He wasn’t mocking me (well, maybe a little), he was giving me a nudge. A million wasn’t enough because this wasn’t about a number, it was about where I wanted to go. Was I content being the network’s general counsel forever, or did I see myself as more?
“Would you ever consider being COO, Debra?” COO? I was weeks away from handing in my resignation because the man wouldn’t give me a 10 percent raise, and now he wanted to hand me the number two position?
The COO position was never on my vision board. First of all, the job didn’t even exist. BET was Bob’s company, and everyone there assumed he’d run it until the day he died. But his tight grip was taking its toll, and I think he knew that eventually he’d have to loosen the reins if he wanted the company to be his true legacy, lasting well beyond his tenure. And remember Bob’s favorite saying: “Debra can do it.” In reality, I’d been doing the job of COO for years, and still I’d never thought to ask for the official title. And, as I’d later discover, a few of my male colleagues on the senior executive team
The situation, of course, proved that old corporate adage that men apply for promotions based on potential while women reach higher based on proof. We wait—sometimes for years, keeping our heads down and working hard until we feel confident enough in our earned skill set to move forward. That’s what I’d been doing. Bob was pushing me out of my comfort zone but not off a cliff. I deserved to be number two. I just needed to see myself in the role. Shortly after that million-dollar lunch, Bob named me COO, a job I never saw myself doing and a job I would hold for the next ten years before eventually taking over for Bob as CEO. And to think I had been ready to quit.
Opportunities abound even when we can’t see them. My life and career have been filled with possibilities I didn’t see coming—from my childhood in Greensboro, North Carolina, to Harvard Law School and beyond. The trick is to be ready to accept the challenges when they finally reveal themselves. Don’t shrink under the weight of your potential success—because it is heavy—but allow yourself the space to grow into it. Be patient and give yourself plenty of grace as you rack up wins and losses—you’ll get there. As COO, I dove into every aspect of day-to-day management from programming to advertising to human resources. I had to get used to the men in the room—many of them Bob’s pals and my former peers—chafing at the very idea of reporting to me. The learning curve was steep, and I’ve never been a fan of roller coasters, but I strapped myself in and went for it. The biggest hill to climb? The fact that I was allegedly too nice.
My entire life I’d been trained to be the best, but not to expect the title, the respect, and the compensation that should come with being at the top of your game. Working hard was supposed to be its own reward. My father, a major in the army, took great pride in me being “nice” and always emphasized that I be a good girl—modest, quiet, selfless—which meant doing the work, keeping my head down, and rarely speaking up for myself. That mindset stayed with me for decades. But if I was going to succeed in the male-dominated corporate world, that approach would have to change—and fast.
“YSB isn’t working, Debra. Just shut it down, the whole damn operation,” said Bob from his corner office. I’d been COO for exactly six months, and I had begun pinching myself, but not in a good “This is the job of my dreams, I could pinch myself!” kind of way. The pinching was a nervous tic. “It’s just not working, and I’m tired of losing money,” Bob barked. “Get it done.”
Here we go, I thought. Bob wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. I knew this was a bad call, one that I would be forced to fix down the road, but I couldn’t bring myself to contradict him. Instead of giving him a piece of my mind, I quietly slipped the hand resting on my lap underneath my thigh and pinched—hard.
But this one really hurt. YSB, which stood for Young Sisters and Brothers, had been my baby from the start. It was the first national lifestyle magazine for Black teenagers. As head of the publishing division, I oversaw a team of 60 people who for five years worked their tails off to produce a high-class glossy that was making an impact on the budding hip-hop generation. Bob once told me, “It’s just 60 pages put together with a staple. Easy.” That was another one of his Bobisms—“It’s simple.” Normally it motivated you to rise to the challenge. There was no question in his world whether you could do it—just get it done.
But publishing a monthly magazine that tackled culture, current events, and more was far from easy. It was hard work, and we had done the impossible year after year on an incredibly tight budget. Shutting YSB down felt like a betrayal to our mission at BET to uplift Black voices and also to the talented team I had handpicked. In the end, it was our bottom line that sealed the magazine’s fate. We’d been operating at a loss for years, and Bob, like any CEO, didn’t like losing money. I understood that as COO, but the failure still stung. What’s more, I had never been in control of the magazine’s advertising sales and didn’t think the company had tried hard enough to market the title. But Bob would hear none of that. He had decided it was time, and now it was my job to do his dirty work.
Later, in the bathroom mirror, I would have all the snappy corporate comebacks, running down YSB’s profit margins and ROI that a little patience could earn us. But in person? My tongue was lead. Speaking up was never my superpower even as the company’s number two. It would take years for me to get used to the sound of my own voice. Instead, I pinched myself. It got me through the rest of that meeting with Bob and later that same day when I had to take the elevator from the executive office suites down to the conference room on the YSB floor and deliver the bad news about the magazine. Causing myself pain allowed me to put things in perspective and redirect the sting of chauvinism to something more manageable in real time. Okay, this was tough, but I was tougher. The pain was relative. I could muscle through another meeting voiceless with just one pinch.
Eventually the bruises—both psychical and emotional—caught up with me. My silence wasn’t protecting me, it was rendering me invisible. My voice, my opinions, my passions were being muted, and I was the one with my thumb on the button. It took far too long for me to recognize that what I brought to the table—a brilliant legal mind, public policy expertise, a love of Black culture, and a soft touch paired with a tough spirit—deserved some airtime. That I was in the room for a reason. Playing small and staying quiet not only stole my power, but it also took away my purpose. I couldn’t let that happen. Because I did have a purpose—I always knew that. I wanted to amplify Black stories, build up the community, celebrate our culture, and usher more Black people, particularly Black women, into positions of power. Really, at the end of the day, what I wanted was for us to be seen. But first I had to see myself.
My power wasn’t just being in the room, it was owning the room. Being happy to be there doesn’t serve anyone or anything. I no longer sit quietly while “the experts” talk over me. I am the expert. I speak up. It took an unprecedented climb to the top ranks of corporate America to learn how, and in this book, I’ll show you each and every step. I had to learn how to lead like Debra and not like my dad or Bob or anyone else. How to reconcile my personal responsibility with my passion and my power. How the revolution can happen in corporate America. How money isn’t contrary to community uplift. How to have the following conversation:
“Debra, you talk too much in board meetings,” he said. Did I hear this man right? I’d been on the board of this company for nearly two years, and he’d been there before I started. He called stating that he had something urgent to discuss and cut straight to the chase. I’ll call him Peter.
Me? Talk too much? That’s rich. “Really, Peter? Come on. You know that’s not me at all.”
“Well, if everyone talked as much as you do, we’d never get out of our board meetings,” he chided.
The old me, the Debra who’d pinch her thighs during difficult business conversations, would have apologized. She would have shrunk to make everyone else more comfortable and to keep things moving along smoothly. She wouldn’t have pushed back. But that Debra had been gone a long time now.
“Well, Peter,” I began, “after George Floyd’s murder, companies are talking about race in the boardroom, and I speak up when those issues are raised. I’m the only Black woman on the board, remember? And I’m the only person on the board who has certain expertise. So when people come in to discuss those areas, I ask the questions that others don’t know to ask—”
“—we have other people who know something about—,” he cut in.
“No, let me finish. That’s not the same, and you know it. I’m an expert here, and you better believe I’ve got a lot to say. I won’t apologize for knowing more and sharing that knowledge with the board. You’re welcome.”
CHAPTER ONE
FOR THE CULTURE
As a leader, the power of “yes” can be dizzying. Knowing that your thumbs-up can launch a career or create a cultural moment can make the top spot feel more like a throne. The yes is power. But, of course, it’s the no that truly tests your ability to lead. Because for every green light there are five times as many reds—and roadblocks. One yes is only possible because of all the noes you had to navigate to get there. And despite all the practice you get—and, believe me, you’ll get a lot—saying no is one of the toughest parts of the job. Nobody wants to hear it. Musical giants, rap moguls, corporate executives, and record label heads? Even less so. But whether you’re running a 24-hour cable network or a two-person team at a boutique company, getting cozy and comfortable with saying no is the real superpower. Just ask Aretha Franklin, the woman who taught me to say it, mean it, and respect it.
