Hillary Kun

I had the amazing privilege of hearing Hillary Kun interviewed at The 21 Club over lunch today. During the networking period ahead of her talk, the buzz was all about the march on Saturday. I keep meeting extraordinary women at the Women’s Media Group (WMG) as well as hearing exceptional speakers.

Highlights from today’s talk–Hillary’s first day on the job with Jon Stewart‘s The Daily Show was 9/11/2001. Tracy Ullman was a scheduled guest, but that never happened. Ms. Ullman had to drive cross-country back to CA as no planes were flying. The show immediately took a sharp turn away from sitcom stars to guests with more gravitas–like Aaron Brown, the first guest she booked as soon as The Daily Show went back on the air two weeks later.

Jon read every book for every interview he conducted. His book endorsements were legendary for landing authors on bestseller lists, especially Freakonomics, whose authors could only get booked on other media (e.g. Charlie Rose) once Jon Stewart agreed to interview one of the authors. That book remained on the best seller list for the next three years. Dee Dee De Bartlo, today’s interviewer, had been the publicist for the book and happened to live in the same building as Ms. Kun. In fact, they shared a laugh about how Dee Dee pitched the book to Hillary in the laundry room of their apartment house!

Jon Stewart, Hillary Kun told us, never embraced social media, has no twitter account or presence on Facebook or other site. In spite of that, he leaves a legacy of lasting impact of engagement on the Millennial generation, though humbly takes no credit for that.

My favorite personal story of the guest speaker was how she got into her fabulous career. “I looked in the Yellow Pages under ‘p’ for production trying to find a job.” Her first employment was as a page, not at NBC, but at Fox 5. She’d sent hundreds of resumes out, one of which eventually landed in a Comedy Central folder where a staffer at Bill Maher’s earlier show, Politically Incorrect, requested an interview. After that, the rest is history.

Would you like to read about some other remarkable women?