At Glamour, we talk to a lot of important women—astronauts, pro athletes, executives, and the occasional first lady. And while they span the professional spectrum and live all over the world, we’ve found that high-ranking women tend to have one thing in common: They’re truly excited to hold the door open for the women coming up behind them. In our Future Forward series—part of our College Women of the Year coverage—we asked some of those industry leaders to welcome the next generation to the table with their hard-earned life and career advice. Abby Phillip, CNN’s senior political correspondent and anchor of Inside Politics Sunday, shares hers below.
Abby Phillip was barely old enough to drink alcohol the first time she rode on Air Force One—and that’s far from the only remarkable “first” on her personal highlights reel. Her first job? At Politico (covering President Barack Obama, hence the Air Force One trip just after her 21st birthday). The first newspaper she worked at? The Washington Post. The first debate she moderated as CNN’s senior political correspondent? A 2020 Democratic presidential debate. And her performance there helped her land another impressive first: being hired as the first Black woman to anchor Inside Politics.
Phillip is more than happy to offer advice to the next generation of journalists—she’s signed on to mentor one of Glamour’s 2022 College Women of the Year, Maisie Brown, a political science major and grassroots activist, but she doesn’t want anyone to pay too much attention to what she’s doing. “People often ask me, ‘How can I get where you are?’” she says. “My response to them is ‘Don’t worry about where I am or where you want to be. You should be worrying about what you’re doing.’”
And she suggests doing it all, at least when you’re just starting out. “That sometimes means volunteering to help more senior people, or saying, ‘I’ll work the late shift, I’ll do the tasks that no one else wants to do,’” she says. “That’s when you can show people that you work with that you have the skills.”
Below, Phillip shares more career advice, a peek into her morning routine, and her workday essentials.
Glamour: What’s your typical morning routine?
Abby Phillip: My daughter is 15 months old, so the morning kind of belongs to her. We get up and my husband and I make coffee. We sort of take turns on who makes the coffee and who makes the bottle. It’s kind of our family time; from 6:00 a.m. to around 7:30 a.m. or so, we hang out as a family. Things are very busy all the time, so it’s usually one of the few times that we really get to have alone time. But once my daughter is with our nanny, that’s when I start to work. It’s usually calls, and I’m getting dressed while those things are happening.
What was your first childhood dream job?
I think I wanted to be a teacher until I was in high school. My dad was also a teacher, so I guess I was a little biased. I loved the idea of having a classroom and being able to set rules.
What was the moment you realized, “Okay, I might actually be successful…”
It was the first time that anyone ever approached me to hire me. It was The Washington Post. So I think that was the moment that I realized, “Okay, maybe I do know what I’m doing. And maybe I might actually make this journalism career thing work.” I think that would be the beginning of me feeling a sense of confidence in my career trajectory and the work I was doing.
How do you deal with rejection in your field?
You keep trying. I’ve learned that you can’t take it personally, and you have to realize that sometimes you’re not the right person for the opportunity. Maybe people are rejecting you because it’s not the right moment for them to engage with you. And then, sometimes if you just try again and keep going, it works out. And sometimes, when things don’t work out, they just weren’t meant to be.
I experience rejection often, and rejection comes in a lot of different forms. As a journalist, I reach out to people all the time, and they don’t respond to me, or they tell me no. Or, professionally, within my workplace, I sometimes don’t get opportunities that I think I deserve. Or I’m just told no, or I can’t do this or can’t do that. And, really, the key is just to keep going.
What’s the most valuable career lesson you’ve learned through experience?
That sometimes your highest highs are accompanied at almost the same time by your lowest lows. You have to recognize that those low moments are just part of the same journey. As you celebrate the highs, keep in mind that those lows can also be instructive.
When I moderated a presidential debate in the 2020 campaign, it was probably the highest high in my career up until that point. But when you’re in the spotlight like that, you’re also the subject of a lot of scrutiny. So that was also a moment where I experienced some really sharp and very hurtful criticism. I think having both of those experiences at the same time was incredibly difficult but really instructive. You have to learn to celebrate your wins but also to learn from and become more resilient as a result of what might feel like a low for you. A “low” is really just part of your own personal journey. It gives your life a little bit more texture and a little bit more depth. I think that I emerged a lot tougher.
What’s the best life advice you’ve been given, not related to your career?
When I was in college, my mother told me always do the hard thing first. It seems a little bit counterintuitive, and I actually think that a lot of people have the opposite philosophy. But she told me always do the hard thing first, and I swear that I live by this advice. Whenever I’m really stuck and I feel like I’m not making progress, I devote whatever energy I can muster to the hard task—the thing that I want to do the least—I give that my all, and then move on to the easy stuff. I apply this to work. But it also really applies to your life: Like when you have to clean your house and there are these are things you really don’t want to do first. But once you’re done with that hard thing, everything else will seem so much easier.
What personal quality is nonnegotiable for success in your field?
I think it’s respect. I think not everybody lives by that, especially with people less senior than them. And sometimes it seems like people who are not respectful do just fine. But I think that for me, that’s a minimum, to have a basic level of respect for people that you work for and with. Because you never know when they’ll be there to help save you when you need them.
As a journalist, respect is a huge part of the job. We’re in politics, and we’re covering people who maybe we don’t agree with. But the one thing that I promise everybody I deal with is that I’m always going to treat you with respect. I think that, at a minimum, that allows people to have a sense of trust: They can talk to you—they can tell you what they need to—when they expect you to treat them with respect.
Post-interview thank-you notes: handwritten, emailed, or don’t bother?
Definitely email. But I also think that they’re not as important as people make them out to be. I think that a thank-you note is not a make-or-break-it thing if you’re a great candidate.
Name the five work essentials you can’t live without.
I’m pretty simple. I can’t live without my MacBook Pro. I always have an Apple brand cell phone charger. My AirPod Pros. (They double as earplugs on the plane!) A travel coffee mug. And my reporter’s notebook. Oh, and Twitter. Does Twitter count? I need Twitter for work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jillian Kramer is a journalist who writes about health, wellness, science, and adventure. She taps into a broad network of experts to write in-depth articles for leading publications, including Glamour, The New York Times, Scientific American, Travel + Leisure, EatingWell, and Food & Wine.
