Maria Shriver Reflects on Women’s Progress, Personal Growth

(l. to r.: Marcia Davies, Maria Shriver)

LAS VEGAS–Journalist, bestselling author and thought leader Maria Shriver has seen many changes during her career–and she enjoys sharing what she’s learned.

Shriver sat down with Mortgage Bankers Association Chief Operating Officer Marcia Davies Wednesday for a special mPower conversation at MBA Annual.

“I watched you talk about why you started mPower, and what you wanted to do with that, and how you wanted to pay it forward,” Shriver told Davies. “And it brought me back to the beginning of my own career and how nothing like that existed. There were no women in positions of power, no women who thought about how to pay it forward, no women who really thought about developing an organization to uplift other women, because it was just not in the zeitgeist.”

“There were so few women then, so I think, wow, it’s such an incredible thing that you have done that can change so many lives and so many futures and the way people see themselves,” Shriver said. “That’s one person doing that, and you see change in real time.”

Shriver noted how much has changed for women during her lifetime. “I tell my daughters that when I was at NBC and had my first child, there was no maternity leave. Zip. I remember the producer saying, ‘do you think you’ll be back on Monday?’ I’m having the baby on Friday.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had a kid before, and there was just no knowledge and no conversation about all the different roles that particularly women are playing in our society today, caring for children, caring for parents, caring for partners, trying to care for themselves working,” Shriver noted. “So, organizations like mPower are so important on so many levels. I want to congratulate you. Thank you and bravo, good job.”

Davies said Shriver publishes a free weekly newsletter called The Sunday Paper. “It is so inspiring, the messages that you have and the way you talk about what’s going on in the world, and the kindness and the way we need to show up is really, really inspiring.” She also suggested that people read Shriver’s new book, I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home. “It’s amazing. If you haven’t gotten it, please get it. You can open it up to any page and read it and be inspired by it,” she noted.

Shriver recalled that she was recently talking to a small group of women who were going through different changes in their lives. “I think we all go through different times in our lives where we’re wondering who we are, what is our role, what do I want to do with my life, what have I been doing with my life? I Am Maria is really a book about identity. Who are you outside of your job? Marcia, you’re about to retire, so you’ll be thinking about who you are differently once you’ve left the stage. Who is that person? How does that person show up in the world? What will that person be doing with their life differently than you’ve been doing for the last 20 or so years? Those are big questions that I think men and women have at the same time.”

Shriver mused that searching for identity and figuring out how we want to show up in the world is a quest that each of us go on. “You know, the writer Joseph Campbell talked a lot about ‘the hero’s quest,’ and ‘the hero’s journey,’ but there’s also a heroine’s journey, and how we find our way to understand that the journey is long and winding and full of ups and downs is really important. Also, that you have the strength; you have the resilience to manage this quest that we all end up on in one way, shape or form.”

Davies asked Shriver about her experience growing up in a public family. Her father, Sargent Shriver, ran for vice president in 1972 with George McGovern and started the Peace Corps., and her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, was a member of the Kennedy family and started the Special Olympics. “What gave you the courage to be out there, to be who you are, to deal with the challenges of being in the public eye?,” Davies asked.

“Well, fortunately, I was raised by an extraordinary set of parents who just got up every day and wanted to make the world better,” Shriver replied. “I was raised by a mother who had a briefcase, who wore pants and went to the office every day and was tough as nails and had a clear set of expectations for me and my brothers. She had this expression–which I didn’t even realize was kind of hardcore until I was in my 30s or 40s–when she would say, ‘I don’t want to hear a yip out of you. Just get out there and do what you need to do and change the world’.”

Shriver noted that conversation started when she was five “and it continued until the day she died. So I was raised to believe that you have strength within you, that you have to carry on, that you were not brought here to sit down, as she would say; you were brought onto this earth to do something with your life. That might be creating an organization to support people, like MBA Opens Doors.”

“That was her clear expectation. So it never dawned on me that quitting was an option,” Shriver continued. “There’s a great Emerson quote that says, you have within you everything that you need to continue this journey. And I think that’s true of every single person in this room. You are capable of unbelievable things. You might not even know of them yet, but you have all the strength you need to get through whatever life is going to throw at you, and community and friends and relationships is what carries you.”

When Davies noted that The Wizard of Oz is currently showing at The Sphere in Las Vegas, Shriver said she thinks we all feel like we’re in the Wizard of Oz at the moment. “Like, what is going on? And I think it’s actually a great message, because everywhere I go today, people are saying, ‘what’s going on?’ ‘What do you think is happening?’ ‘I feel so confused by what’s going on in the world.’ Well, businesses are changing. The business I’m in–the media–is changing right before our very eyes. And people are talking about AI and what’s going to happen. They’re asking, ‘will my business even be here tomorrow?’.”

But community will get us through this moment, Shriver added. “I believe people when they say they are depressed about this moment, but I’m actually inspired by this moment. I’m inspired by the people I see stepping up. I’m inspired by people talking about our collective humanity. I’m inspired by young people who are caring. I’m inspired by people who are talking about the importance of heart-based leadership. I’m inspired by the young men that I see coming to my table who want to be different kinds of fathers, different kinds of partners. I’m inspired by my daughters, who want to combine careers with motherhood and don’t feel that they have to choose. I’m so inspired by their work to save the planet, to work on climate, all of these things that are going on.”

“Oftentimes, I think the news focuses on the negative and makes us think that we’re so divided and angry at each other,” Shriver continued. “And I get that we are divided in many ways, but I think we’re also united in many ways, because we have similar goals. We want our children to go to safe schools. We want to live in safe neighborhoods, right? We want to be able to drink clean water and breathe clean air, and we want to feel safe where we are, right? Respected and seen. These are not partisan goals. These are unified goals. These are goals that we all share.”

“And I think if we start from that place, of asking, what do we have in common? What do we all want that unites us? Then we’re starting to have very different conversations,” Shriver said.